Puffbox

The Daily Telegraph web team‘s blog is worth an occasional visit. It isn’t as ‘high-concept’ as, say, Simon Waldman from the Guardian – but they make some interesting points, and it’s good of them to list their top-rated stories each week.

But I’m going to take issue with a comment made there, earlier this week by the site’s production editor Ian Douglas.

The more informal blogging tone doesn’t really suit hard news, though.

I disagree. I can’t think of a better example than the 7 July bombings in London, when the Guardian’s news blog became the best source of information (such as it was) in the immediate aftermath. It doesn’t seem to have been archived, but the live commentary by the blogger/s there was excellent. They weren’t afraid to admit to their own uncertainty, and they did their best to keep the updates coming. It was just what we needed.

If blogs are about brand engagement, why shouldn’t they work in the ‘hard news’ field? Take the example of Sky News, where I used to work. Sky’s brand is about ‘being part of our gang’, as opposed to the BBC’s more patrician tone. So why not have a blog of the latest BREAKING NEWS snaps through the day, plus a summary of the newsroom gossip and banter? Journalism remains an aspirational profession, and it makes sense to capitalise on that.

If the ‘old school’ news business is series about embracing blogging, it has to be more than simply forcing the same old content into a presentation template with permalinks.

Great presentation of data is something I’m surprised we don’t see more of. So full marks to Google (again!) for doing something smart with it, on its new Google Finance site.

For any share price, say Microsoft, you get an instant graph of the last couple of days, with the important news stories flagged on top. You get a nice zoom effect when you choose a different timeframe, either clicking the presets or dragging the boundaries – and keeping up the example of its mapping app, you can drag the chart left and right. (I’m particularly impressed by the way the Y-axis regenerates.) Look for some other nice tricks, like the hover effects on ‘related stories’ and ‘management’.

It’s all driven by Flash, rather than Ajax, but I doubt many people will notice, and fewer still will care. Yahoo’s Jeremy Zawodny reckons they could have done ‘a ton of stuff… to really blow people away’, but this will do me for now. 🙂

The addition of a new BBC journalist blog, as mentioned the other day, is a good thing. Nick Robinson‘s insights are a genuinely fantastic addition to the news environment, and whilst Newsnight is usually a bit beyond my bedtime, I’m sure Paul Mason will make a similarly valuable contribution.

But – at the same time, I notice they’ve switched the RSS feeds from ‘full text’ to just ‘summary’. It’s always a tricky decision, and my instinct has always been to favour summary feeds myself – otherwise you don’t get to see how many people are actually reading your stuff. Yet I’m looking at Nick Robinson’s summary-only feed, and I can’t help feeling it’s a backward step. I’m not sure I’ll always be bothered to make that extra click. (Sad but true.)

I had a feeling something was in the works, when Nick Robinson warned of possible downtime on his BBC blog. And here it is… Paul Mason, Newsnight’s business correspondent, joins the blogosphere. Nice use of pictures, by the way.

Very interesting to see Google and Nike joining forces to create Joga.com, a ‘community for soccer players dedicated to keeping the game beautiful’. It’s another example of this emerging trend for social networking sites built around a specific theme.

Nike effectively owns the rights to a number of world-famous names – not least the Brazilian national team, and the undisputed best player on the planet, Ronaldinho – and it looks like this site will lever that. The ‘about’ page explains: ‘Joga is about getting to know your fellow fans; creating games and clubs; accessing athletes from Nike; and enjoying video clips and photos (you can even upload your own).’ Sounds to me like a blogging platform, with access to a free multimedia library dominated by Nike properties… oops, I mean, players.

Myspace succeeds because it’s defined by its connections with the music business. ‘Early adopter’ sites like digg or del.icio.us succeed because, implicitly or explicitly, they appeal to the tech community. Nike are clearly looking to appeal to (arguably) the largest and most passionate community on the planet… the football fans, in World Cup year. And good luck to them.

(Worth noting, incidentally, that neither Nike nor Google are official partners of the World Cup. But Adidas and Yahoo are. This is a great way to tie yourself to the year’s dominant media event without paying big euros for ‘official sponsor’ status.)

Stuck for something to listen to on a train journey, I downloaded a recording (not strictly a podcast) of the opening session from last week’s South By Southwest interactive conference. Jason Fried of 37 Signals is a man talking my language: keep it small, keep it simple, stick to what you’re good at, don’t waste money. And perhaps most importantly, kill all functional specs.

That was all the encouragement I needed to download Ruby On Rails, and have a play with it. Inevitably, it took a little hacking to make it all work, but once I got it working… wow. A truly jaw-dropping moment. The tutorials aren’t kidding when they say you can have a functioning web app within minutes.

There aren’t many total-idiot descriptions of what Ruby On Rails actually is: so here’s my attempt. All web-based applications are basically the same. There’s a database underneath, probably the open-source MySQL. There’s a web server on top. You have to create a database structure, then write a load of HTML pages and scripts to add stuff to the database, view it, edit it, delete it, and so on. So why go to the trouble of writing all that stuff from scratch every time? Ruby On Rails won’t create your database for you, but within a couple of minutes, you’ll have a blank application template, with a load of bare-bones forms and scripts to get you started.

OK, of course there’s an awful lot more to it than that. Ruby is a whole new programming language, of which I’ve barely scratched the surface. But in one day’s tinkering, I’ve seen enough to realise that this is an amazing thing. I predict a few late nights.

I wouldn’t have known anything about an anagram-based Tube map if Transport for London hadn’t made a fuss about killing it. Of course, once it’s ‘out there’, there’s no such thing as ‘removal’ – Google helped me find a copy within a couple of clicks. It’s very amusing.

You know what they say about imitation and flattery? TfL should be openminded about this sort of thing, and embrace the ‘mash-up’ culture. In a statement to The Register, they say: ‘The present Tube map created by Harry Beck in 1931 is a design classic.’ EXACTLY! – and that’s why people want to pay tribute to it. Every time someone makes the effort to do something creative with the Tube map, its status as a global icon is enhanced. It’s probably in TfL’s interests to let them do that.

Protect your copyright, sure. But if ‘numerous requests (to produce an alternative) are received every week’, TfL should allow them unless there’s a good reason not to, rather than refusing unless there’s a good reason to allow it. Work with your customers where you can. Even to the extent of having a gallery of the best mashups on your own website.

News International weren’t seriously thinking of attaching The Times to Myspace, were they? The Guardian thinks so… and then thought better, by tying it to The Sun. Or rather, tying The Sun to Myspace. There’s no doubt that The Sun needs Myspace, rather than the other way around. (Still no sign of the planned UK-specific version of Myspace though…)

I finally took the plunge at the weekend, and registered for the site. I’m feeling 20 years too old to even be there, and I have yet to get beyond my default one friend. (Thanks Tom, don’t know where I’d be without you.) It’s going to be a l-o-n-g journey.

So Microsoft confirms that the ‘iPod packaging’ video was produced by its own people.

‘It was an internal-only video clip commissioned by our packaging [team] to humorously highlight the challenges we have faced RE: packaging and to educate marketers here about the pitfalls of packaging/branding.’

As I mentioned before, I don’t think this is as good a thing as Mr Scoble suggests. Yes, it’s good to be able to laugh at yourself. Yes, it’s good to be so creative that you can spend (clearly) a lot of time putting something like this together. But if the packaging people have to resort to such dramatic tactics to ‘educate‘ (!!!) the marketing people, there’s your problem right there.

PS: Oh, by the way, there’s no such thing as ‘internal-only’ any more.

So Rupert Murdoch now thinks the internet is great? Shame he wasn’t saying that five years ago, before I left his empire. Still, you have to hand it to them now… it turns out Sky (or rather its agency, Devilfish) was behind the real-life remake of the Simpsons credits, which is the #1 video on Youtube this month.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjPw]

My lasting concern with Youtube (or more accurately, with its users) remains the nasty issue of rampant copyright infringement. But remarkably, a lot of its most popular content is advertising: movie trailers, pop videos, deliberate virals, and just plain old commercials.