30th December 2011
“Hello humans,” he says, looking almost surprised that anyone has bothered to turn up.
“This is our first show. We have a million planned, literally.”
The scene resembles something from the mid-nineties, your typical late night smokey chat show fronted by a charismatic presenter who will probably never air at any time other than 1am — which is just the way he likes it.
But this isn’t a show about music, or film, or theatre or art. It’s about technology. That’s right – a show for geeks. And the presenter, Joshua Topolsky, isn’t delving into the mind of some troubled musician or actor – he’s talking to entrepreneurs, CEOs and other people responsible for some of the tech that is, to some people at least, changing how we live.
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29th December 2011
We’ve covered the story at some length, and while we probably won’t come back to it before a decision is made, I thought it was worth sharing Phonedog’s statement in full.
Public reaction to the story has seen sympathy falling largely with the employee – at least from where I’ve been sitting.
But you wonder what impact the case will have if Noah wins. Will companies be reluctant to invest in Twitter from here on in, knowing that the investment could, potentially, walk out the door as employees come and go? Definitely one to watch.
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5th December 2011
Send me your tales of crappy CMSs, dodgy workarounds and other online publishing nightmares. Can be anonymous. Email.
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Have you ever listened to a journalist using a content management system? It usually goes something like this:
*Click*… *click*…*sigh*. Wait. Waiitt. “Oh for fu… oh, it’s working, I think”. *Click*. “Why’s that bit not showing? Oh right, I need to put that in there. I always forget that”. *Click*… *click*… “Oh it’s fuc…. oh… no… erm… oh right. Joe, that’s live now”.
And that’s on a good day. On a bad day, Joe gets told he’ll have to wait because a glitch means the page looks completely insane. Or all the text has been gobbled up never to be seen again. Or a crash at a crucial moment means your entire effort is blasted out into the digital void, leaving the journalist to explain to an editor that it did exist, and it was brilliant, but no, I didn’t back it up in Word because there was simply no time. I’ll stay late.
I’ve said it many times: Online journalism is, in many ways, the purest journalism of all. A medium defined not by constraints, but by possibility. Think about it: TV journalism needs pictures. Radio needs great audio. Print needs, well, a day’s lead time.
But in online, to quote Yomanda, you’re free to do what you want to do.
At least that’s how it should be. Content management systems (CMS) are the most neglected part of the online journalism process, a vital cog that, in too many newsrooms, is allowed to fall by the wayside through under – or over – investment, ignorance or internal politics.
Systems and processes are becoming defined by workarounds and hacks rather than good design and intuitive publishing – and this is a big big problem.
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21st October 2011
Note: This post contains some very strong language.
It was when I realised I was reading comments from a user identifying himself as ‘MuslimFuckJew‘ that I realised something was very wrong with YouTube.
The username didn’t surprise me. You’ll always get offensive buffoons on the internet.
No, what surprised me was that rather than just stumbling across a soon-to-be-banned lunatic, MuslimFuckJew’s profile has in fact been active for almost a year.
In that time, he’d taken a moment to fill in his profile.
Occupation? “nigGER HATING FUCKING HATING THEM NIGGERS”
Favourite film? “The HoLOLocaust live tapes: Jews get gassed”
Books? “Mein Kampf, and Around Blacks Never Relax”
It’s no surprise then, with members like this, that my friend refers to the world’s most popular video-sharing as the ‘arsehole of the web’.
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