Author: Rachel

podcasting

Yahoo Podcasts

Yahoo have released a beta of a podcasting service. Nice webpages, great to have someone else in the space but I think I’m being particularly slow on this as I can’t get the subscription service to work in Doppler. It looks like I need some other software to do so, such as itunes or Yahoo […]

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General

Teenage Internet Use

One of the sessions at Web2.0 was a conversation with 5 teenagers (17-18yo) from the Bay-area, California. Jeffrey Mcnanus and Kareem Mayan both post about this talk. As with the Social Computing Symposium back in April, (notes here) there seems to be some surprise about how this group of people are using the tools, and […]

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blogging, technology, web stuff

Blog and RSS studies

Yahoo and Ipsos Insight have released a study on RSS. (In pdf). Looking at RSS usage inthe US, it shows that many people who are using RSS do not know they are going so. Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet users. 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used […]

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fun

More weather

TheTimes took the Met offices policy decision about weather announcements becoming mroe friendly and explored. “There could be a few showers when the match kicks off.” (Translation: You know that bit in The Matrix Reloaded when Neo finds that everyone on Earth has turned into Agent Smith? Remember their fight? With the rain beating down […]

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fun

Ig Nobel awards

The IgNoble awards were presented on Thursday night. My favourites from the winners: LITERATURE: The Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters — General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A […]

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technology, web stuff

Weblogs

In the second Weblog sale this week, Dave Winer’s weblogs.com has been bought by Verisign. The ping server needs investment to cope with the exponential increase in blogs, plus the investigation and work on how to clean up pings from spam blogs. Verisign have put forward their vision for the continuation of the service: Free‘Basic […]

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life

Thoughful Reads

Lloyd Davies has a write up from a talk by Theordore Zeldin on the art of conversation, both face-to-face and online. conversation is an art, so there is no guaranteed way of becoming a good conversationalist and everyone develops their own style. Until recently people had to fit into fixed categories. Now the individual is […]

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marketing

Playful sites

Via Adverblog, a couple of very nice promotional sites that encourage you to play, before giving the company your precious email for them to continue their conversation with you. The first is to create buzz for a new Australian men’s magazine (Explode) and lets you customise a car (‘Bling My bomb’)with all sorts of accessories, […]

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entertainment

Serenity Publicity

Serenity, which opened here yesterday, continues it’s slightly unusual publicity drive. The Whedon fans have always being in a buzz about it but the hype was increased in May when special screenings of the unfinished movie were provided acorss the US and in a few other countries. Leading up to the launch, there were screenings […]

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technology, web stuff

Snippets 5 Oct

Jason Calacanis confirms that his Weblogs Inc has been bought by AOL. A great scoop by PaidContent. BBC Radio 6 confirms (presumptively) that Aplle will be unveiling the new video iPod with a press event at the BBC. Ben talks about the leak. But maybe not, according to ThinkSecret. Don Dodge writes about how Napster […]

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life

The Impact of Global warming

The weather in Britain is about to get better – or at least that is what the weather presenters are going to be telling us. The Meteorological Office have issued new guidelines, to ensure the presenters emphasise the positive and don’t dwell on the negative. So instead of Occasional Showers, it’s going to be mostly […]

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fun

NagMonster

At dinner last night, I was discussing procrastination and getting things done (in a round about way). And decided using a combination of AI and IM could be the way to go; a solution could be a friendly (or not so friendly) buddy who would ask me questions about whether or not I have completed […]

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web stuff

Ning

Lots of people talking about Ning, Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for building and using social applications. Social apps are web applications that enable anyone to match, transact, and communicate with other people. . I’m not really any kind of a developer, so can’t really […]

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life

Newspapers run out of opinion?

A colleague at work had an interesting experience last week; the Evening Standard (local London paper) rang her to ask her to submit a letter to the paper on a specific subject (the resignation of newsreader Philip Hayton over personal clashes). She’d sent in a letter about a year before, so they had her details […]

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marketing

Buzz before Ad

Jeff Jarvis is advertising an ad. Or the potential appearance of an ad on his site before it actually reaches the site. Sometime today (when my webmaster gets off the school bus), a big-ass ad will likely appear atop this page. It’s for a Warner Brothers movie and they came to me, which is cool. […]

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blogging

ReStyle Part 2

OK – i’ve worked my way through the rest of the templates, tested in the three browsers I have and from what I can see it’s working OK. Thanks to everyone who commented – did I miss anything?

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technology, web stuff

Snippets 4 Oct

Astromoners display their TV preferences with the discovery of a moon orbiting Xena, the 10th ‘planet’. Predictably, the moon has been called Gabrielle. Yahoo reveal their input into the digitisation of the world, supportting the Open Content Alliance in creating a digital archive. Unlike Google, Yahoo’s offerieng is opt-in, so they may avod beign sued […]

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marketing

Spam Comments and Poor Judgement

Tonm Coates has a tale about spam comments appearing on his blog. But this was not one of the usual random comments offering financial advice, chemicals or various recreational activities, it was a seemingly genuine comment related to the post but placed by a completely fictional character who was created for Cillit Bang advertising. The […]

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life

Solar Eclipse

There’s an annular solar eclipse today, which will probably not be visible from much of the UK due to cloud. The BBC are again requesting everyone’s photos, a cheap way to get photo stock as well as incuding people. Meanwhile you can watch the eclipse over the web, instead if damaging your eyes, via various […]

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blogging

Dilbert and Blogging

Dilbert continues to include the world of blogging in strips, today’s being timely with the recent sacking of a publicist for blogging about her work

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