Covering the London Marathon using social media: 5 lessons learned :: Kate Day April 29, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentKate Day reflects on her experience — perhaps the most important point is: "Let the story choose the medium rather than worrying about playing with all the toys available to you."
So armed with my camera, three lenses, a laptop and an iPhone, I decided to see what it was like using social media to cover a live event. In fact, the process began a few days before the race. I knew my starting point would be great photos. So I asked my followers on Twitter where I should shoot from. They duly came back with ideas and one of them asked if I could send small pictures of each location out in my Twitter stream.
I began to see Twitter as a kind of glue that held the various pieces of coverage together, a way of giving a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it was like to be there photographing the event.
French town of Eu seeks search engine optimisation (SEO)? February 27, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : Online , add a commentA great story explains the problem:
Anybody entering the word “Eu” in a search engine is likely to get a number of results, but most will be a reference to the past participle of the French verb avoir (to have), not to the pretty market town in Normandy.
The search also brings up pages related to the European Union.
Accordingly, the small town, which boasts a number of attractions, including an impressive château and gardens, is being bypassed.
It goes on to quote the mayor, who advocates changing the town’s name rather than paying search engines such as Google to boost its ranking. SEO probably wouldn’t work just for “Eu” — but “town of Eu” now comes up trumps. Helped, no doubt, by the story in the Telegraph (and elsewhere).
Ironic errors online February 20, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : Online, Subbing , add a commentI tend to think of formatting errors cropping up more in print than on paper. But here’s a Telegraph article with more than a few lines going awry
– and some erratic italics, too (below).
The article is about, well, paid subscriptions to online newspaper content…
Such errors are easy enough to make, eg if one is taking formatted copy from one system to another and inadvertently carries over code with it. It will be interesting to see if it gets corrected!
Bad Science » Nerdy fun with URLs February 4, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentBen Goldacre has fun at the expense of the Express and Telegraph websites — and perhaps causes red faces at the Guardian, too:
"I thought this was fairly well known, but for those who haven’t joined in the lolz, the websites of Express and the Telegraph, at least, let you substitute whatever text you want at the end of their web addresses."
Twitter: a step-by-step guide to getting started :: Shane Richmond January 16, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentA useful guide from Shane Richmond at the Telegraph:
"Twitter is not a publishing platform, as I said yesterday, so you can’t simply go to the site and read it. Well, you can but that’s not really the point. To get the most out of Twitter you need to build a network and then start using a few tools."
Bad Science » The Daily Telegraph misrepresent a scientist’s work, then refuse to correct it when he writes to them. January 9, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentBen Goldacre on the trail. University press release might be partly to blame.?
“To my mind this is poor quality journalism followed, more importantly, by cowardly editorial decision-making. This article could very easily be retracted or corrected, clearly and unambiguously, in the newspaper.”