Planet Marc

o2sms version 3.11 is out now. It works with o2's new website.

The new o2 site is a beast. Using the network analyser of the indispensable Firebug, the page to send the web text alone takes over 30 seconds to finish rendering and makes an incredible 288 HTTP requests to completely load the page (I develop with the cache disabled). This is well above the 5 seconds generally recommended by usability experts.

Not only that, there's no way to "stay logged in", meaning to send another message later on that day involves logging in again and making the 4 or 5 clicks to get to the send message page, with each page taking an eternity to load.

Any web monkey can whip up a page with a few simple inputs that loads in 100ms. Surely o2's bells and whistles shouldn't add too long onto that.

Can we be blamed for using o2sms and other similar tools to avail of the free text messages we're entitled to with our o2 contracts?

Over 200,000 of you subscribe to this feed, and after 5 short years, Dilbert.com finally has an official feed for you: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DilbertDailyStrip

They've also blocked access to the comic images, so you should update this feed address if you want to keep reading! Thanks for all your support over the years - dwlt.

I was discussing the US election with an American last week and pointing out John McCain’s conduct in some online videos as a means of highlighting that his campaign wasn’t representative of him as a person. I highlighted the following video clip but got an interesting rebuke. During the clip a voter says that she doesn’t trust Obama because he is an Arab, McCain takes the micro phone away from her in embarrassment and explains that Obama is a decent, family man. However, the person who I was having the conversation with pointed out how clever McCain was with his words. He doesn’t address the fundamental accusation by simply replying that Obama is a proud American. Instead the thought of Obama as an Arab is left to linger - a shameful communications ploy.

• Azul Systems - Cliff Click Jr.’s Blog

I happened to be in the TV3 studios last Thursday bringing a guest onto their new chat show Midday. Terry Prone of the Communications Clinic was another panelist on the show promoting her new book. One of the topics for discussion was the Government’s decision to rescind on its decision to introduce a cervical cancer vaccine programme for 12 year old girls next year due to the current economic climate. Interestingly, Prone highlighted that one would have assumed that the programme was currently in place given the huge backlash the Government is currently experiencing on the issue at present. Due to how the programme was announced, it is perceived to have been taken away from the public. In terms of communications strategy, the Government has to be extremely careful in how it communicates new initiatives, least it be perceived of reducing the quality of service the public can expect from it.

In the current economic climate this is an important point to note for the Government and other organisations. What we are witnessing in the wake of the global economic crisis is a breakdown in trust between the public and institutions which once formed the pillars of society. When making forward looking statements, every organisation has to be cognisant that its audiences will not simply take its word for granted and will look back after a period of time has elapsed to see whether the organisation kept its promise. In simple terms, make sure not to write cheques your ass can’t cash.

http://www.dyson-game.com/

This game is awesome.

I have been pouring over statistics associated with Barack Obama’s US presidential campaign. The most comprehensive breakdown I have seen was compiled by Pete Quily. A wave of excitement has broken out across the Internet and short-sighted analysis seems to imply that Obama won the election because he had a larger and more consistent use of digital media than his rival John McCain.

First let’s start with the statistics. While Obama may have had a large online presence and used digital tools to communicate with his supporters on an ongoing basis, one has to note the importance of content. If we are simply going to talk about statistics, then surely Viagra would have won the US general election given how many spam emails people receive about it I disagree with Richard Delevan’s view that the key statistic to look at from Obama campaign is the number of voters contacted compared to the total contacted by the McCain posse. This figure can’t be looked at in isolation, you have to look at what both politicians represented. Importantly it should also be noted that if we were to break down the demographics, then it would quickly become apparent that digital tools are far more suited for Obama’s supporters than McCain’s. No matter how many times I’ve been contacted by email offering me some form of Viagra or other stimulant, I’ve never taken up the offer. The content didn’t appeal.

We’re going to see a number of politicians try to replicate Obama style campaigns over the next couple of years and fail miserably. Anyone remember any of the woeful YouTube videos from Irish politicians during the last election? A personal audience with Politician X in his kitchen doesn’t cut it. Neither does a random Bebo profile. What should be drawn from Obama’s campaign that it consisted of a integrated communications strategy and encouraged the participation of the general public, as opposed to keeping it confined to the old boys club.

Karlin Lillington had an interesting column on the subject in the Irish Times last week. My Edelman colleague Seamus Mulconry and Simon McGarr offer some good comments in the piece:

“It’s not just the technology on its own that won the election. It’s a means of communication,” says Séamus Mulconry, a consultant with Edelman Communications and former technology specialist with Accenture who also did a stint as head of policy for the Progressive Democrats.

“Politics is a heart, not a head business. Any way you can engage emotionally with people is very powerful. And the web allows you to use music, video and images, and create communities to make that emotional connection.”

New technologies such as video “allow you to break out of soundbites, too”, he says. “Since at least the Nixon campaign, political campaigns have been defined by the tight soundbite. Oratory has been dead in the electronic age, but YouTube brought it back.”

Technology and heavy use of social networking technologies also gave the Obama campaign “a victory over the vast geography of the US”, says solicitor Simon McGarr, who set up the VoteTube.org website during the last Irish general election to showcase political videos and encourage their creation.

“For Obama, the issue was to find people to come into the system and become door-knockers.”

Obama harnessed people who had not in the past joined a political campaign. He connected people, created communities and give them meaningful jobs to do.

Lillington’s summary of Mulconry and McGarr’s analysis sums up why Obama’s campaign was successful - he connected people, created communities and gave them meaningful jobs to do. Fundamental to connecting his supporters was content. That is what Obama represented. He tapped into the societal changes in America and gave those who were not represented in the political system a voice. They didn’t vote simply for Obama, they voted for what he represents - change.

If you step back and take a look at the Internet, what’ll you’ll find is that it has proved very successful for bringing communities with similar interests together. Again what binds these communities is content. Adam Cohen captures this in his book about eBay, ‘The Perfect Store‘:

Collectors are people with a passion, and they seek out other who share their passion. Before the Internet, many collectors were geographically isolated. Someone in a small town with an interest in Depression glass or southern art folk might have trouble finding like-minded people nearby. But on the Internet, thousands of collectors with the same fascination were only a few mouse clicks away

Simply adopting Obama’s tools isn’t going to replicate his success. It is akin to saying that anyone that picks up a paintbrush will be the next Leonardo Da Vinci. The truth is that they have the potential to be the next Da Vinci. However to achieve this potential in a political sense, politicians fundamentally have to find methods to get as many people involved in the political process as possible. By instilling a fascination in the political process among supporters, then the Internet becomes the logical tool to bring this audience together and to activate them.

Strip out all the statistics and the core element you’ll find running throughout the Obama campaign is passion. If you don’t make your supporters passionate then it doesn’t matter how many emails or text messages you send. will.i.am’s series of videos throughout the election campaign encapsulate the feelings Barack Obama instilled in his supporters. I’m slightly surprised at myself for saying it, but ‘It’s A New Day‘ is actually a good song, but more than that it actually represents the thoughts of millions of Americans on 4 November.

What the 'christian' wackos are really afraid of.

Note the sandworm.

Noted 'libertarian' (code-word for mad person) open-source gun nut Eric S Raymond is at it again.

I mean, really! Barak Obama, 'hard-left'? About as hard-left as Mary Harney.

Sometimes, I wish Raymond would go back to fetchmail and stop ranting insanely all over the place.

Is it just me, or is this the least reassuring thing about the economy ever seen?


I mean, things are so bad that even America's retarded president is looking a bit worried. Argh.

I suspect that this is a common phenomenon. I used to be good at maths, damnit. I've just realised I can't remember any of it, after a couple of years of being out of college.

Someone should publish a book for people who had a maths-oriented education and then replaced all that information with crap about databases over a couple of years. A sort of catch-up. I want to be able to deal with things like moments and integration and so forth again!

I just saw an ad for a gay speed-dating night in one of Dublin's gay bars, on Facebook.

First thought: Good ad-targeting.

Second thought: That's absurd.

Third thought: Though realistically, maybe I should go along.

Fourth thought: I'm probably too shy and nervous to even be able to go to an event designed for losers without seeming insane.


Fifth thought: Maybe all the other people would be as well. That would be okay.


Hmm, must stop having arguments with self about embarassing social events.

Though, I may actually end up going.

McCain did something very silly in the election, something which destroyed any chances he might have had left. Vice-president Palin! So, why her, of all people?

Well, they had a problem. A section of Obama's support base voted for him not particularly because they believed in his policies, or even understood them (that many people took McCain's 'socialist' charge seriously shows that a significant section of the American population really has no idea about what is involved in running a country at all), but rather because they wanted to be part of a historic election, the first election in which a black person was elected.

Of course, McCain couldn't nominate a black person himself; a large part of the Republican support base is made up of racist dolts. One need only look at what happened to Democratic support in the southern states after the end of America's apartheid. Nor a Jew, because, well, there are a surprising number of those crazies who go on about Jewish conspiracies out there, and they almost all vote Republican. Romney might have been an option except that, well, he didn't feel different. He went out of his way to downplay the Mormon thing throughout his campaign.

McCain, as well, did not appeal to the Jesus-freak segment, who are also big Republican voters.

So, there were two constraints; the VP candidate had to be a woman, all minorities being deemed unacceptable, and she had to be a wacky religious person. But there was really a third constraint. A lot of Republicans, even female Republicans, are very, very paranoid about 'feminists'. Quite what they think feminists are is unclear; certainly nothing to do with the normal definition. But they don't like them, and thus a competent, successful woman would seem a threat. Some were considered at one point, apparently both the EBay CEO and Carly, the Killer of Alphas, were considered. But ultimately, they could have frightened some of the voters.

So, instead, they got the dim, crazy governor of Alaska. On paper, she seemed okay. Weird religious views and affiliation with a scary anti-Semitic group, total bemusement about the world around her, and a history of massive abuse of power for personal ends. There was, however, a hitch. McCain's campaign had special circumstances; while normally the VP isn't that important, and there is only a vague chance of them becoming president, in this case, it was practically certain that McCain would die, if not in his first term then in his second. I don't think anyone, not even the dumbest, most bigoted, fag hating cross burning bible thumper, could quite imagine President Palin. The image was just too disturbing. Meeting with leaders of countries she'd never heard of, dictating finance, when, let's face it, she probably doesn't know what complex interest is, behaving in the interest of her country when she couldn't even put the interests of her state over her personal neuroses... It couldn't have worked.

And that, to a large extent, is why McCain failed. He was caught in an impossible position; there was really nothing he could have done to make it right. Thankfully. Imagine four or eight years more of the Republicans. Not that I'm convinced Obama will be all that much better, but he could hardly be worse.

Sorry I have so dreadfully neglected my little blog for the last month or so. I've been terribly, terribly busy, and not in a great mood generally. Things should improve a bit from now on, though, and I may, even, eventually get back to my post-a-day habit. I haven't forgotten you, really!

Given the week that is in it, some people might find this headline strange. In my opinion Obama is phenomenon, but not something that we will see repeated on these shores. From a local perspective there has been a heralded return to street politics after the mass protests in reaction to the government budget. While opposition parties may be rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of snatching power from the current incumbents, it should be noted that the global economic crisis and the mistakes made by Fianna Fail in office have gifted the opposition parties their leads in the opinion polls, rather than the alternative that they offer the Irish public.

I attended my first political meeting in a personal capacity last week. It brought to life why people are so disengaged with the political process. The three things that hold politics back for me are political parties as brands; the blame game; and how parties are organised.

Political parties as brands - The problem for the main parties in Ireland is that the general public find it hard to distinguish between them. Hence parties like Sinn Fein and the Greens stand out as they appear to represent something different. When one of the political representatives at the meeting was asked what makes their party stand out, he quickly responded that there are four things that make them stand out. Fiscal rectitude, blah,blah and blah….Sorry fiscal rectitude? Is that meant to mean something to the average member of the public? Political parties need to be able to explain what they stand for in plain and simple language.

The blame game - Is it just me or does political debate seem to inevitably degenerate into a slagging match. In the single meeting I attended, a quarter of the time seemed to be spent putting the boot in on other parties. This really annoys me. In the world of the soundbite, why waste your valuable time criticising others when you should be strengthening your argument.

How parties are organised - The biggest challenge for any political party is how they are organised. As a new member I felt the meeting was pretty inaccessible unless I wanted to let off steam about a given subject. Attendance at these meetings seems to constitute of four groups - the crackpots (who want to give out about how corrupt Fianna Fail are), the elderly, the do-gooders and the politicians (whose ambition probably makes them the ones to worry about.) The format of meetings is mostly to offer candidates a platform why you should vote for them and afford the crackpots some time to let off some steam. Unfortunately the people there who actually contribute, whom I was impressed by during the few minutes they received, don’t get ample time to voice their views. Furthermore there doesn’t seem to be an immediate way to offer your insights or access resources to build your knowledge about a given topic.

None of this is to say that I won’t go back. The danger for political parties is that they seem more enthused to do something on YouTube than actually address a few simple home truths. My take on YouTube and politics (ignoring the Obama phenonmenon) is young people don’t care about politics. Using Youtube to push your party is akin to selling beetroot in a cake shop. If you want to engage any particular demographic then it has to be issues based. If you don’t treat your political party as a brand and differentiate yourself from the competition, then you will only be able to benefit from government misshaps like the recent buget on a short term basis. Ultimately there are key learnings to be made from the Obama campaign in the States - the fundamental lesson is the use of the Internet as a tool to rally your supporters.

Big furore here in Ireland over the recently announced budget. Its aftermath has seen government rowbacks on cutbacks on medical cards to the old age pensioners and a 1% tax levy which would also have affected the most vulnerable in society. Government cutbacks in education have also faced massive opposition, with 12,000 people turning out to protest last Wednesday evening. It is fair to say that the education sector is in need of reform, however the impact of some of the cutbacks are draconian. Schools will now have less language support, which means students in disadvantaged areas will suffer as teachers struggle to accommodate migrant students. Teachers are scratching their heads at the lack of substitute support, which will effect Leaving Certificate geography students’ field trips or foreign language students’ oral exams.

Despite the economic climate, these education cutbacks are seriously shortsighted. There are countless studies out there highlighting the importance of education in addressing societal problems such as obesity or crime. Popular Mechanics has a really interesting interview with Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway scooter and AutoSyringe (hattip to BoingBoing and PSFK). During the interview, Kamen hits the nail on the head of the importance of education:

What do you think is the most important science and technology issue to be addressed by the next president? What’s the biggest issue he should take on?

Is it energy? Genomics? Is it bird flu? Is it the polar caps—are they really melting? Is it terrorism? You pick the crisis du jour: The answer to all these issues is going to be an educated, competent global society. This country ought to lead the world, for lots of reasons. And we ought to help the rest of the world get educated, because if they are educated, their impact on the environment is actually way less. If they are educated, they’ll have better ideas than killing each other or killing you and me.

My headline might read a little harsh but a truly well educated society (that isn’t taught in prefabs and that has computers in the classroom) is a society where as Kamen points out “all kids are part of the solution, not part of the problem. And with 50 percent of the kids in the 20 largest school districts in the country not graduating high school, they’re part of the problem. This is unsustainable. It has to change.” Just this week a report published by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland showed that “a growing body of evidence documents the link between education and health inequalities,” according to IPH chief executive Dr Jane Wilde in an article in the Irish Independent.

Underlining the importance of education in these challenging times, Sheelagh Drudy, professor of education and lifelong learning at University College Dublin, has a great op-ed in the Irish Times about how Ireland should imitate Finland’s rescue via education and R&D. However as Tom Farrell from Nokia points out in a letter published in the same paper in response to Drudy’s op-ed, we need to realise that when it comes to education (much like the medical cards) that if we want a quality service, we have to pay for it. More importantly in a post Celtic Tiger era, we need to decide what type of society we want to live in and shift our cultural values to reflect this.

The strength of regional media was underlined at a political meeting I attended last week. The politicians present lamented the fact that their regional counterparts had much more opportunity to engage their constituencies via the media. Rural TDs benefit from the fact that regional media, particularly radio, are far more powerful in their locality than the national press. For example, Highland Radio in Donegal has a better listenership than the likes of RTE and Today FM because its listeners tune in for programming that is relevant to them.

Unfortunately for Dublin’s politicians, they must get into the national press in order to get the same cutthrough. This however is a much more challenging task. While there are numerous local papers to serve the various communities across Dublin, the editorial quality varies. Publications like the Fingal Independent stand head and shoulder above some of their peers, but it does not have the same influence compared to regional publications.

Yay!

...

I wonder will he actually be any good? I just like him because he seems vaguely reasonable and is not either a war-crazed geriatric or a wacky moose-lady.

Also, how will they dislodge Cheney? Is there a special spray you can get?

Does your monitor have enough random certification authority marks on the back?! Well, does it?


Please note that the offending monitor contains mercury, hourglasses, and the European Economic Community.

I was playing around with Slattery Communications‘ Facebook widget/application a couple of weeks ago and it got me thinking. Get Creative is a brainstorming tool where users can input ideas into a database or search it for inspiration. Clicking into the database you can see that Slattery staff are mining ideas and good work that they’ve spotted.

The funny thing that ran through my mind before contributing an idea was the thought ‘If I share my ideas, am I not technically putting myself at a competitive disadvantage by sharing knowledge with the competition?’ Slap to the face as I realised what a stupid thought that was. I would credit the Internet for playing a big role in my rise through the ranks. The reason for this is amount of knowledge I had access to at my fingertips. Whether it was PR veterans like Tom Murphy or other novices entering the ranks at the time like Stephen Davies, I was able to compliment my experience on the job with insights gleaned from my peers online.

I recently picked up a copy of Manuel Castells’ series of books on the Network Society after reading about it in John Grant’s ‘After Image‘. Grant gives an overview of a key observation by Castells:

Sociologist, Manuel Castells, studies the Network Society. His three volume book on the subject charts a global shift, taking in the rise of the Internet and the fall of communism. Castells describes the overall trend as ‘Informationalism’. Which means a technology-driven change in the organization of society.

He points out that it’s not enough to say we live in a ‘knowledge age’. Knowledge has been the key driver of progress in many past societies. The Romans had roads, laws, engineering and drainage. The protestants had printed books and accountancy.

What other ‘knowledge ages’ didn’t have, according to Castells, was a new technology paradigm with three special features:
– A self-expanding processing capability (eg integrated circuits)
– A recombining ability (eg the World Wide Web)
– A distributional flexibility (eg networks and mobile phones)

These aren’t just Internet or IT properties. Castells shows that they also apply to genetic engineering, which has the same potentially explosive impact on society and economics. His point is that we have built technologies for self-reinforcing, accelerated learning.

It was stupid on my part to even think about hoarding knowledge. The whole point about innovation is about figuring out how to do things simpler and then sharing this knowledge with society as a whole in order to improve the processes we use in our every day lives. The web makes this easier, as Grant points out it is self-reinforcing, accelerated learning. Get Creative is a great tool in this respect, albeit that I think it is better suited for a site like LinkedIn.

For Mel and I, this year was about getting some International race experience – with this in mind, earlier in the season I decided that the final round of the Marathon World Cup series held in Ornans, France was going to be my last race. Flight options didn't look great, so Alan (who kindly put himself forward to help me for the weekend) and I flew to Basel in Switzerland VERY early (getting up at 4am does not agree with me!) on Saturday morning, i.e. the day before. Not really a good way to do things considering an early Sunday start for the long race but with work, what could I do?

When I originally planned to race here I expected it to be a nice warm, dry race for me at the end of the season – boy was I mistaken. The weather was much colder and wetter than Ireland – Dooh!


Ornans was a beautiful town nestled in a valley surrounded with wooded mountains – real postcard stuff with an atmosphere in the town to match.


Unfortunately (and this was mega frustrating) an administrive error in Ireland meant that my UCI points from the National Championships were not added to my UCI profile which effectively placed me in 185th position on the grid to start instead of somewhere in the 30s. I was very annoyed about it all but at the end of a long season, I just had to calm down and get back to business.

Race morning arrived with the car beeping at us telling us to be careful – it was -1 Celsius outside! There was basically a freezing fog in the air! I had not really considered such cold conditions and barely had enough cloths with me to warm up in – I was contemplating wearing a 'going-out' shirt under my jacket. The warm up itself was tough, I didn't have a turbo trainer with me and had to ride out of the town to find an area where I could ride without having to slow down every 10 seconds. I found a hill and started riding, about a minute later my fingers were frozen – I could barely shift gears or use my brakes but I was somehow able to get my heart rate up to the 170s (just) within the warmup. 15 minutes of that and I had enough and went back to the start line...

Alan grabbed my 'extra' clothing (I would wear a Gilet and arm warmers over my kit for the first 1.5 hours) and was called up to my start in 185th position – this sucked. Knowing that I had done everything correctly to be gridded somewhere in the Top 30 but yet have to start all the way back – not nice.

With the countdown reaching zero the gun went off... and nothing happened... damn this gridding. A few seconds later there was movement and my long race had started.

The first few kilometres were a bit of a blur – basically, I was doing everything possible to pass as many people as I could as quickly as I could yet remain safe. I only had one dodgy moment when a rider leaned a little too much into me but in general it was okay. With about 20 minutes of riding done, I started to approach the lead group which was about 30 strong. I had been killing myself as these guys cruised and as I caught on, the fireroad climb we were on deterioted into a wet and slippy double track and everyone sped up.

I did my best to stay with the lead group but I had already been working hard for a while fighting through the traffic and although my heart rate was still low, I felt a bit 'cooked'. The TV quads zoomed in and out between myself and the other riders and that helped pull me along – trying not to look too bad on the bike. Eventually, we made it to the top of the first major climb where Alan fed me at the first feed station (he had a busy day too driving from feed to feed). I grabbed a fresh bottle a headed onto the first big descent.


The race basically went on like that for the first half – I rode in groups of various sizes and mostly made up positions as I went along. At about the half way point, Roland Golderer and I started to ride together. I was on the front a lot of the time in the technical terrain but Roland put in a very strong push over a 6km flat section (about the only fast flat part of the course) towards the end of the course. When it came to the final 8 km hilly loop around the town both of us attacked and kept attacking. The last section of the race was the most enjoyable (and my HR the highest). There was a half dual-track, half single track long climb followed by a technical and fast singletrack descent back to the middle of the town. Fortunately, I was a little stronger than Roland and won the sprint. I covered the 82km, 3200m climb course in 4 hours 52 minutes placing 25th. That, and my other results means I'm currently ranked 42nd in the UCI World Marathon standins :)


One of the main things that stood out, was that throughout the race the descents were amazing – most descents were on singletrack and all descents were technical. The climbing was very tough but the descents made up for it – in fact, some of them were so long and tricky that you were hoping for it to end so that you can 'relax' a little and get the feelings back in your arms!

The weekend not only held the final round of the World Cup but also many other Marathon races suitable for everyone from purely recreational riders all the way up to the Pros. 1,000s took part and I highly recommend the trip to any rider.

After all this, I switched my brain into 'off-season' mode and enjoyed the next two days in Switzerland and France with Alan, drinking beer and eating fine food. Many thanks to Alan for coming along – I hope you enjoyed it all as much as I did.

One of Steve Rubel’s recent blog posts caught my attention. Rubel states that he believes that the future of news is the newsfeed. The newsfeed, for those unfamiliar with the concept, is similar to a scrolling news ticker listening off headlines during the course of the day. It’s a similar concept to RSS whereby the reader has the latest headlines delivered to a personalised page.

My big hangup about all these debates stating that such-and-such is the future is that these discussions simply seem to be focused on tools as opposed to content. There is an interesting discussion about the future of news brewing and we should look to learnings from the newsrooms of today to influence how we move to the future.

A number of commentators are quick to point out that a number of stories break online first. Then when you examine where the stories are emerging, new tools like Twitter or FriendFeed are being highlighted. Ignoring the fact that they are niche sites, there are two concerns that immediate spring to mind - speed and volume of news stories.

Some people seem to think that because news breaks on a certain medium first, then that medium is inherently the best news source. That is a dangerous assumption. Firstly there are editorial standards to consider. Following its coverage of the Beslan tragedy, the BBC introduced a time delay as part of the its editorial guidelines in order to underline the point that accuracy should come before speed. Secondly one has to serious consider the quality of news sources. For example, a report on CNN’s iReport that Apple CEO Steve Jobs suffered a heart attack played havok with Apple’s stock price despite being incorrect.

My apprehension about the shift to the Internet as the public’s primary news source is that the importance of a news story seems to be dictated by the volume and frequency of posts about the story. From a consumer journalism perspective it can be worrying because numerous studies have shown that a subset of consumers produce content for the web. Invariably this content is content that they are passionate about, which may not reflect its true value as it is not reflective of society’s interest as a whole. Seriously, just look at all the online chatter about Web 2.0, Twitter et al, which doesn’t even resonate with the general public. Yes everyone can contribute, but not everyone does.

My old boss in Drury Communications, Padraig McKeon, offered the best insight into the shifts in the communications landscape. He remarked to me one day that:

The Internet will be the medium people turn to for breaking news.
People will tune into broadcast media because it captures the emotion of a story.
Newspapers will continue to be read because they will provide analysis of the event.

I hope that he’s right about the third point, as it is the analysis of trusted sources - be they traditional media or new media - that should influence the public. The danger about collaborative news reporting is that the minority could dictate the news agenda. I recently attended the Atlantic Corridor conference on science education and promotion and arranged an interview for Lord Robert Winston on Today FM’s Last Word. Winston briefly discussed the public reaction to stem cell research with the show’s host Matt Cooper and pointed out that the public reaction was that of a small minority who were passionate in their arguments about stem cell research. However when the public as a whole was surveyed, it could be shown that their views were not representative of society as a whole.

Personally I dislike the thought of the newsfeed or RSS as the future of news, despite the fact that RSS is my primary source of news. I am more comfortable with the thought that when soceity finally shifts online that they will still consume news similar to the printed format where by the judge a story’s importance based on the media source and its presentation - i.e. lead story on the homepage with an attention grabbing picture, rather than another entry on a newsfeed.

I was out for a drink after work last night with a few programmer-y types. It was, of course, Halloween, and about half the people in the bar were in costume.

So, a girl comes up to me, and says "Harry Potter, right?" No, this is just the way I look naturally...

I'm not quite sure if it was just an unkind joke at my appearance or if she really thought I had dressed up as Harry Potter.