10 Aug 08 Social Media – Twitter
I guess when you use many online services, and when many people in your online circle do too, you tend to be a little surprised when you find those that have never heard of it.
One example of this is Twitter.
I use Twitter daily, multiple times daily. What do I use it for? I keep in touch with the wide world with world news from the BBC; I get hurricane alert news; Cricket scores, and local weather. I also keep track of some of the local bloggers and them of me, as we tweet snippets during the day.
I also use it to keep in touch with my wife when we in different places, as it’s easy to use via SMS on a cellphone. It’s the brevity that’s good too. Not a huge amount of options – just 140 characters of text (which can be a URL) and away you go.
Perhaps it sounds a pointless little app. What’s wrong with a phone call, or just a text message. Well, nothing perhaps, but that forced brevity is good compared to a phone call that is meant to be short, but goes on for a half hour or more; twittering is easier if you’re at a PC, than finding the cellphone and using the keypad, even if you’ve got a latest generation smartphone.
I would suggest you try it out if you haven’t. You might find it’s more useful than you imagined.
Tags: alert news, bbc, bloggers, brevity, cellphone, cricket scores, different places, half hour, hurricane, local weather, multiple times, phone call, sms, snippets, text message
19 Jun 08 Internet Bypasses TV In The UK
According to ZDNet, Internet advertising in the UK will overtake TV this year. I am not suprised really, it was almost bound to happen at some point.
Take myself. I watch very little television, mostly because I am not interested in much of the content; secondly because on network television there are so many commercial breaks it spoils the few things I am interested in watching. I really don’t want to see an ad for injury lawyers, or for a new drug every 6-7 minutes.
Now, I appreciate that everything costs money, and advertising pays for those costs; after all, I have a number of blogs on which I carry advertising, including this one, as it pays for the costs of running them. However, no-one has to click on any ads on my sites, unless they want to, and that’s the same on most other sites I visit.
I keep in touch with what’s going on in the world. I read the local newspaper. I read the New York Times. I get a daily podcast of the Wall Street Journal. I frequently visit the BBC news site – as I feel they are less biased, and more trustworthy in their news reporting than Fox, or CNN for example.
Sometimes, I find the advertisements on web sites are useful. Sometimes I click on them, and read about the product and service that is interesting me. Sometimes I go on to make a purchase. One reason is that the advertisements online are more likely to relate to what you’re reading, unlike on television, where a commercial for a backache pill comes in the middle of a history documentary.
Tags: advertisements, bbc, bbc news, blogs, cnn, commercial breaks, costs money, fox, history documentary, injury lawyers, internet advertising, network television, new york times, news site, one reason, podcast, spoils, wall street, wall street journal, zdnet
31 May 08 Rockferry
In my spare time, when I’m away from the computer, I like to relax with either a good book, or some good music.
Of course, one’s tastes in either are very subjective; I tend to prefer non-fiction, and science, history, and geography when reading; and my tastes in music are fairly wide, covering classical, country, folk, rock, soul, and jazz.
It’s difficult to give any one specific genre, and I can’t ever truly name favorites – it really depends what mood I’m in at the time, when it comes to my choice of listening.
This afternoon, while doing some work, I was listening to Paul Gambacinni on BBC Radio Two. I wasn’t listening all the time, as I was talking as well, and concentrating too. One track caught my ear enough to listen intently afterwards to catch the name of it.
It’s called Warwick Avenue, and it’s off the debut album from Duffy entitled Rockferry
Duffy [born Aimee Anne Duffy on June 1st 1984 in Nefyn, Gwynedd, Wales], is a Welsh female soul singer-songwriter. She signed with A&M Records in 2007
During late November 2007, she performed on the excellent BBC2 television show “Later with Jools Holland”, which resulted in a second appearance on his show, well his Hootenanny, which has seen the New Year in great musical style for the past few years.
On the show she performed with soul legend Eddie Floyd. She came back a third time in February this year, and performed three tracks from the album, which was released in March 2008. Duffy is the first Welsh female to achieve a number one pop single in the past 25 years.
As befits an album that begins with ‘Rockferry’, a mournful, slightly unsettling tale of moving on, and ends which ‘Distant Dreamer’, a soaring epic that finds Duffy contemplating “all the things I’d like to do with my life”, Rockferry is a musical journey that’s both sad and stirring, and is in a largely retro-soul style.
I thoroughly recommend it.
Tags: aimee, bbc, bbc radio two, classical country, country folk rock, debut album from, duffy, genre, geography, good music, nefyn gwynedd, non fiction, rockferry, science history, singer songwriter, soul singer, spare time, tastes, warwick, welsh
