James Thornett The views and opinions expressed here are my own and not those of the BBC, my employer.
Posts Tagged ‘content’
The Perfect local Media Company in 2014
Tomorrow’s Local Social Summit ’09 in London promises to be an interesting and thought provoking day. I’m speaking in a panel discussion on Local Content & Monetisation although coming from the BBC angle my focus will be more on local content and social opportunities rather than commercial monetisation. Some key questions I’d like to discuss [...]
Guardian Local due for 2010 launch
The Guardian have announced a move into the provision of local news on the web in 2010 with the launch of Guardian Local in three UK cities.Sarah Hartley, the Guardian local launch editor said: “While researching developments at the grassroots of community journalism, I’ve been impressed by the range and depth of coverage from local [...]
Microsoft to partner with local newspapers for MSN Local News Map
Microsoft, through their MSN Local portal, are hoping to provide local news on a map, in partnership with local newspapers across the UK. Peter Bale, executive producer of MSN, said: “We are hoping to take feeds from local newspapers and tag every piece of information to a map. Hyper-local news online has never been more [...]
Northcliffe Local People media briefing
Northcliffe explain the launch of Local People “a network of websites for people to get together and discuss the issues affecting their communities“.
Birmingham Local Blogs Wire
Following my recent post on Will Perrin’s Talk About Local initiative, Jon Bounds has pushed ahead and created a Birmingham Local Blogs Wire by feeding a selection of blogs about Birmingham through Yahoo! Pipes. You can read all about the thinking behind the Birmingham Blog Wire here. Robin Hamman (@cybersoc) and I spent many an [...]
4iP funds local community website project
Talk About Local is aiming to “empower 3,000 people directly in 150 places across nine English regions with a focus on the most disadvantaged areas.” by offering free advice, training materials and support to anyone who wants give their community a voice online. Run by Will Perrin, the project is starting up in the West [...]
MySociety unveil Mapumental
Yesterday MySociety announced Mapumental, a new service designed to help you plan your life better using the wealth of public transport and travel information available across the UK. Currently in private beta (you can register here) the application has been built with support from Channel 4’s 4IP programme. Take a look at the video: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVZkHuomqfM] [...]
MP Expenses Map
With all of the recent attention focused on UK Mp’s expenses it’s no wonder that a number of maps are appearing to help browse the data. One of my favourites is this one using MS Virtual Earth created by Shoothill.
Google Street View in the clear
Following protests and complaints over the introduction of Google’s Street View technology in the UK, the UK’s Information Commissioner has today ruled that it should not be stopped. A spokesman for the privacy watchdog said removing the entire service would be “disproportionate to the relatively small risk of privacy detriment”. More from BBC News.
Local (radio) websites from the BBC
I don’t normally blog about specific BBC projects or work that I’m involved in on the ‘day job‘, you can catch all of that information on the BBC Internet Blog. However, as my recent trips to Canada (photos pending) and Cornwall have left me feeling very out of touch with the online world then what [...]
Residents complain over Google street view cameras
Another story from BBC News today on the privacy issues surrounding Google’s Street View technology – residents of Broughton, near Milton Keynes, staged a protest and accused Google of invading their privacy and facilitating crime. Twenty five UK cities went live on 19th March with the Netherlands version also going live on the same date, [...]
Guardian allows users to geo-tag content with launch of new Open Platform tool
The Guardian has today launched Open Platform with the hope of freeing up their data and allowing users to build other tools and services using Guardian content. Of particular interest is the work on a crowd-sourced solution to geo-tagging. “Stamen and OpenStreetMap developed a service that they hope will encourage Guardian readers to “geo-tag” the [...]
BBC Trust rejects local video proposals
The BBC Trust confirmed today that it has refused permission for a planned BBC Local Video service after concluding its public value test (PVT) into the proposals. Diane Coyle, BBC Trustee and Chairman of the Strategic Approvals Committee, said: “The Trust is committed to improving regional and local services from the BBC for licence fee [...]
BBC Trust says No to BBC Local Video
The regional and local newspapers of the UK had an early Christmas present today with the announcement from the BBC Trust that it has rejected proposals from the BBC for adding video content to its network of local websites.(Disclaimer: I am involved in this proposal as part of my day job at the BBC.) After [...]
Lessons to learn from the BNP map
Details of over 10,000 members of the UK British National Party appeared in the public domain after a former member supposedly leaked the list online. Links to the data were made highly visible on sites such as Digg.com. Then a Google map mash-up was created – zoom in to find the BNP member in your [...]
ITN puts news on the map
Following Trinity Mirror’s experiment with the Liverpool Echo, journalism.co.uk has reported on ITN’s use of Google Maps to provide users with geo-located news stories. The simple interface currently allows you to specify a minimum number of stories, a central location point and a time period over which you are interested in news content. Upon entering [...]
Mapping and poverty (Blog Action Day 2008)
The 2008 theme for Blog Action Day is Poverty, a subject that hasn’t been out of the papers in one form or another for a long time. I thought I’d start with a fairly obvious Google image search for “poverty map”. Geographic.org appears to come up trumps with the fairly straightforward World Poverty Map (2000) [...]
How to plan your next holiday
After I published a post on my personal blog about the lack of decent tools on the web to help plan a holiday a friend pointed me in the direction of Opodo’s new AirTools service. It’s not quite the complete answer but it’s certainly heading in the right direction. Within a very short time of [...]
Trinity Mirror launches local wiki website
Coming hot on the heels of their Liverpool Echo news map, the Trinity Mirror have launched a wiki site for the North East of England. The website, www.wiki-north-east.co.uk, is aiming to be “a collaboration of editorial articles and user generated content for and about the people, places and events of the North East.“ Read an [...]
Trinity Mirror launch beta local news map
As reported by The Guardian, Trinity Mirror have today announced the launch of a map-based local news service on their Liverpool Echo website. Chief Executive Sly Bailey said that the service was a follow-up to the development of a series of hyper-local websites across the group. “As a next step we’re launching a map-based news [...]
Initial conclusions on BBC Local Video proposals
The Ofcom website is today announcing that the BBC Trust’s Public Value Assessment (into the BBC’s proposals for a new Local Video service) and provisional conclusions will now be published by the 27 November 2008. Ofcom will submit the Market Impact Assessment to the Trust so that it can be published on the same day. [...]
Going for a run?
This morning I ran 6.6306 miles. The first mile was very much downhill but the 6th mile was a very steep uphill climb. During the run I burnt 937 calories*. This is all good news**. What is even better news is that I know all of this information without having spent a single penny on [...]
Google investigating strange trees
Stinky Journalism goes into the detail of how this poor attempt at cloning in Photoshop could be very damaging to the reputation of Google Maps – issues of accuracy and trust etc. The prospect of well done, difficult-to-detect photoshopped photos taking over Google Maps – as opposed to the amateurish tree cloning exhibited in the [...]
Job title includes ‘Hyper-local’!!
Noooooo!!!! I’ve already mentioned my aversion to the use of ‘hyper’ and ‘ultra’ as supposedly valid prefixes to the word local when it comes to defining interactive services or content propositions. Now for the first time I’ve just seen the phrase included in a job ad, for a Hyper-local Video Journalist in Las Vegas. Apparently, [...]
