Journalistic.co.uk - the UK digital journalism blog

Watch out over the coming months, Journalistic is going to get a bit of a makeover.

We will be upgrading to a different content management system and changing from being a blog.

A new look, enhanced content and a few surprises will make Journalistic even better and more relevant to working journalists looking to make the most that digital media has to offer.

Our focus will be on news, features and reviews.

If you want to write for us and be part of Journalistic, send an email to: leslie@journalistic.co.uk

If you have always wanted to have a book published, then watch out for Lulu as it arrives in the UK.

This Canadian-based on-demand book publisher is to start printing its books in the UK as well as expanding across Europe.

So if you are fed up with getting rejection after rejection from traditional publishers and feel that your book is worthy of publication, then Lulu is a good and serious alternative.

BBC News reports:

The world’s fastest-growing producer of print-on-demand books, Lulu.com, has announced plans for five new European sites as part of its global expansion.
Lulu allows readers to download single copies of books stored on its site without needing huge print runs, and thus helps would-be authors into print.

The five new sites, to be phased in, will be in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Holland.

More than 1,000 new titles a week are now published on Lulu.

Well a quick round up of what is of interest to me at the moment.

1. Morning freesheet Metro is set to revamp its website. Via Guardian.

2. Flaming cricket fans force BBC to close down message board. Via Guardian

3. Guardian gets into comments. Via Journalism.co.uk

OK, so there hasn’t been a posting for about a month now.

Well, things are busy and paid stuff must always come first. Paid work being my various Jewish sites including SomethingJewish, DailyJews and other sites.

Lots of expansion for them over the coming months.

But as always, if you want to email me asking some questions or need some advice, then drop me an email.

Daily Telegraph South Asia correspondent Peter Foster writes an excellent blog for his newspaper. Focusing on his life in India, the people he meets and his quest to learn Hindi.

A recent entry by Foster commented on an article by the editor of India Today, which itself is very spot on.

Aroon Purie, an elder statesman of Indian journalism and the man who’s edited the magazine for all of those 30 years, finds himself looking forward to the next three decades and speculates on what they might hold.

“Today teens and twenty-somethings don’t consider editors and reporters to be god-like figures from above telling them what’s important,” he writes, “A growing number don’t want news presented as gospel. They would like to engage and even question journalists in more extended discussions.

“News will become a commodity and journalists will have to be masters in their areas of expertise, ready to be held accountable … These are exciting times … there will be enormous change but what will not die is the art of story-telling in whichever form it comes. Compelling, well-told stories will always have a market.”

Well, here we are 2006 .

So what will you be seeing from Journalistic.co.uk

Probably a few more regular updates.

Also, a new look for Journalistic.co.uk

Want to contribute? Then get in touch.

Moving data from computer to computer can be quite a daunting prospect. You could copy what you want to CD or DVD and wait a while for it to burn to those disk, you could copy it to 3.5inch floppy (which these days many people don’t have to either copy to or copy from) or you could copy it to a USB enabled flash drive.

For the last few years, small flash drives which are no bigger than a pack of chewing gum have become an essential way for people to move their data from one computer to another. They provide a great way to show photos at a family gathering or share other important files with others without the need to complicate the process of saving data for sharing.

A few years back, 128MB was considered quite a powerful flash drive, these days with the advances of technology, its 1GB that you should be getting. And it’s no ordinary flash drive you should consider. The way to go it to make sure it is U3 enabled.

U3 is new technology that has been adopted by many flash drive manufacturers including Kingston Technology and Verbatim.

Through U3, people can take data on the move and even more clever that standard flash drives is that U3 technology allows users to sync files between their computer and the flash drive.

It means that when you are on the move you can connect the flash drive to any PC and that PC will then show your personal setting and files. As soon as you remove you flash drive, that PC will no longer have your data. Ideal for those who are on the move.

Even better of course is that you take your personal setting of software and its applications with you. For example, if you have a Skype account for making phonecalls, then by putting Skype onto your flash drive, whenever you are on a computer you just insert your flash drive and your Skype settings are exactly the same as you home or office computer. All your history is stored.

The technology built-in to U3 also means that you can set up password protection to stop unautorised access to data on the flash drive.

For a 1GB drive, expect to pay around £50.

Both Kingston Technology and Verbatim offer 1GB devices.

Kingston’s U3 Datatraveler is ultra-slim and very stylish. It offers everything you expect from a flash drive and comes with a five year warranty.

Verbatim is slightly larger that Kingston and comes with McAfee anti-virus which means everything is auotmatically scanned before its is stored on your flash drive.

Of course, regardless of what software comes with the flash drive, you can install almost anything you want and that includes other virus checkers. There’s also a version of the Firefox web browser available that can be installed on the device and whenever you use it all the setting are stored.

If you are looking for a flash drive for home or office, then make sure it is U3 enabled as over time you will certainly be able to do much more than standard flash drives.

Related links:

Kingston Technology

U3

Advertising guru Martin Sorrell has said it’s time for newspapers to start charging for online content.

MediaGuardian reports:

Advertising guru Sir Martin Sorrell has told newspapers to start charging more for online content to rescue falling revenues. The WPP boss said it was “very strange” and “bizarre” that so much content is available for free on the internet.

Mike Ward has emailed me some details of an exciting opportunity.

He writes:

The Department of Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire has joined forces with UK regional newspaper group Johnston Press to establish the Johnston Press Chair in Digital Journalism.

Details about the post are at www.uclan.ac.uk/other/hr/jobs/external.htm

JP are funding the post - the first of its kind in the UK - a clear example of a traditional media player now thinking outside the box.

The Department says this Chair would suit either a practitioner with a track record of published high quality analysis or an academic interested in applied research in this area.

For infomal discussions about the position, contact Head of Department Mike Ward on:
TEl: +44 (0) 1772 894731
Email: meward@uclan.ac.uk

The BBC news website and Ceefax teletext service has a new editor.

BBC reports its own story:

Steve Herrmann has become the new editor of BBC News Interactive, which publishes the BBC News website and Ceefax teletext service. Mr Herrmann was previously World Editor of the department, which also produces interactive TV news and digital text.

well, when it comes to the web site that is for the official informaiton on digital tv.

web site is at www.digitaluk.co.uk

But of course, try entering just digitaluk.co.uk

Looks like another one has not set up their server correctly.

Site appears to be hosted by the BBC and is on their servers.

So how much did a site like that cost? How do they manage to forget something really important like setting up the server correctly?

How many people will think the site does not exist by leaving up a Red Hat Linux test page?

Good piece in The Guardian about paying for newspaper content. The piece starts with revealing that the New York Times now has 270,000 paid subscribers to its Times Select service.

The New York Times’ early success suggests people are prepared to pay on the web and offers another model for newspaper executives round the world to ponder. The paper has said that half the subscribers to TimesSelect had signed up on the back of print subscriptions, while the other half were online-only customers.

The service, which costs $49.95 a year or $7.95 a month, offers exclusive online access to the paper’s columnists and its archives.

What if Google bought Amazon and what if online media was controlled by Google?

Well, check this out. It’s from the future!

Well, it is now a week since UK Online became my broadband provider and so far, so good for this £14.99 2meg connection.

No real problems to speak of when it comes to the quality of the service.

Only downwide is that unlike BT Yahoo, if you are travelling, you can’t use UK Online for sending emails unlike BT Yahoo which allowed sending of emails when a person is away from their home connection.

UK Online says it is to cut down on potential spam going through its network, but it is a bit annoying especially when you spend nearly an hour on the phone trying to get through to someone at UK Online to explain that they don’t offer the facility for sending out email through them when you are on the move.

Of course, this was a nice feature of BT Yahoo, but at £12 a month more expensive than UK Online, it is something you can do without and besides, there are other ways to make sure your emails are sent out when you are on the move.

Well, I finally got round to getting myself a Blackberry and thought I would share this current great offer that T-Mobile is making for the 7290.

Click here to see it.

Of course, this offer can only be found if you run a google search for Backberry, as if you try to find it on the actual T-Mobile site, it is not there!

So for £19.99 plus £5.99 delivery, you get a Blackberry 7290.

You also then get 12 months half price line rental, but of course, it is an 18 month contract you sign up for.

You get 300 minutes to any network for £14.50 (instead of £29).

First 9 months are half price, then 6 months at full price and then the next 3 month half price and also at the end of the contract you can carry on with half price if you want.

Plus, and here’s the cool and very useful bit for all of us who want to check email on the go, for an extra £10 a month you get the always on email service.

T-Mobile says it is unlimited email, subject to fair use with the following terms: “If a customer exceeds 50Mb in a given month, we may request the customer reduce their usage of the service.”

Well, the average email seems to be around 10k or so, so that means, an average of 160 a day.

Not sure if that is a reasonable fair use these days, especially for those of us on lists and also the amount of spam that comes through.

This is the page on instant email charges.

Anyway, thought I would share that as it is a good offer and just wait to see what happens if you exceed the usage as there is no mention of what excess charges are if any.

Well, after two weeks of waiting, UK Online is now my broadband provider.

BT Yahoo! went off at arounf midday and in came UK Online at 5pm.

So far, it’s been connected for about five hours and seems to be just as good as my previous and more expensive BT Yahoo! account.

So for £14.99 a month, as opposed to £26.99, it certainly is a major saving. Just hope that in terms of connection, it is as reliable as BT Yahoo was. Well, only time will tell.

In case anyone else has not yet seen this.

www.itvlocal.tv

Only one ITV region at the moment, but does offer a good pointer to the future of TV on computer through broadband.

As has been widely reported, Google has not been able to work out a deal with a company that claims UK rights in the name GMail.

Here’s the story.

So Google now has the following page:

But look closely and you can read this - (my words here: could existing Gmail.com users find their free account email address taken away?)

Google words as follows:

What if I’m a UK user who already has a Gmail address? Will that address ever change?

Unfortunately, we don’t know. We would love to say that your address will always remain the same. But the trademark issue is still unsettled, and unfortunately, we cannot predict what the other party or the courts might do here. You can always use your same username with an @googlemail.com address to avoid this issue later on. But trust that we will do the best we can to make sure your email address won’t ever have to change.

So if like me you have a Gmail account, you may want to keep on eye on this.

Here’s some stuff that has caught my eye.

Well, after over two years with BT Yahoo (and previously BT Openworld) as my broadbad provider, I’ve take the plunge and decided it is time to leave them and find another broadband provider for a better price.

First of all, let me say, BT Yahoo has been excellent as a provider of broadband. I don’t recall more than two occasions in over two years when it has been down. And even when it was down, one occasion was for a few hours and the other about hour. Annoying when it happened, yes, but it can happen from time to time.

My reason reason is purely based on price - BT Yahoo is way too expensive compared to others and importantly, where BT Yahoo offered a quality service and others not as good, the “others” have now caught up and improved themselves.

My first year of BT as a broadband provider was a freebie, so can’t really complain from March 2003 to March 2004 about the pricing, but since then, I’ve been paying. Usually it’s £26.99 but various months I’ve been charged £20.25 as part of BT’s policy to retain customers who when calling up and requesting the MAC - special code number you need to give to another broadband provider if you want to leave and migrate to them.

But Friday 14 october 2005 is the day when I was informed by email that my current promotional rate of £20.25 was going to change back up to £26.99. So I called up BT Yahoo and the best they could offer would be 10% off £26.99 a month if I signed up to a new one year contract.

Some will say, the better the devil you know. But a 2meg connection from other providers is much cheaper and the quality of service can be just as good.

After an hour or so of some serious surfing and looking at user comments, both complaints and saying good things, I decided to go for UK Online.

I remember them from years ago. UK Online was launched by Italian technology company Olivetti. By 1996, the company was sold to Easynet. Why do I remember them? Well, a few hours before the company was sold to Easynet, I got a tip-off about it from a reliable source and ran it as an exclusive in my technology column on Teletext. It was a great scoop for us to have.

After that UK Online continued. But a few years ago, as a brand within Easynet, it started to make some major impact with broadband and offering some great prices by undercutting everyone and having a business model that allows it to also make money.

Anyway…

With my MAC I decided to go with UK Online and for £14.99 I will have a 2meg connection enabled on my phoneline within the next few weeks.

BT Yahoo wants £26.99, UK Online wants £14.99.

Even with a 10% discount, BT Yahoo for me would be over £24 a month, so why would I or indeed anyone outside of a contract wish to start with BT Yahoo and its current pricing.

Sure there is some hassle for moving to another provider, but it’s not that complicated and if it saves you atleast £10 a month and provides atleast the same level of service you are getting, then you should also consider leaving.

Of course, I may regret the move if UK Online doesn’t provide a good service. But looking on the web and in various forums such as ADSLguide, I thnk I have made a good decision.