Thursday 19th August:
Relive history, day by day
Blogs are usually so now, now, now that it’s interesting to see the form being used to relive historical events. It’s the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, which ran from July 10 to October 31 1940.
On July 10 this year, Tony Rudd and his team started posting the day-by-day happenings of the battle. You’ll be able to track what went on right through to October 31.
Via http://battleofbritainblog.com/about-this-blog/
Tagged with: Online, Publishing
Monday 14th June:
Everyone’s getting app-happy
For Wallpaper*‘s forthcoming August issue, the magazine is encouraging readers to design their own bespoke cover using a nifty online design-it-yourself app. Users will be able to play around with (rotate, resize and colour or pattern) a host of shapes, illustrations and typographic assets supplied by James Joyce, The Hort, Anthony Burrill, Kam Tang, and Nigel Robinson. (Good spot, Joslyn.)
The logistical wizardry that Wallpaper* must have masterminded to be able to print, bind and deliver each subscriber’s magazine with their self-designed cover is mind-boggling. And very impressive. Here’s a screengrab of the app in action:
Ref. http://creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/june/design-your-own-wallpaper-cover
Tagged with: Personalisation, Publishing
Thursday 22nd October:
Lo-gloss glossy
Manzine is a quirky, DIY take on the male glossy magazine. It’s produced by a group of writers and designers who work for the likes of The Guardian and British GQ. The zine’s lo-fi materials (it looks photocopied), obscure articles and generally rough-hewn aesthetic give Manzine a distinctive quality that’s hard to come by these days. The zine is distributed at various locations around London, and is also available for order on their blog, http://themanzine.blogspot.com/.
Ref. http://www.psfk.com/2009/10/manzine-a-return-to-the-lo-fi-print-zine-aesthetic.html
http://www.weatherpattern.com/
Tagged with: Lifestyle, Publishing
Wednesday 12th August:
Staying local
Many local newspapers are struggling just now but some are showing real resilience. What’s their secret?
Tindle Newspapers owns over 200 local papers and is Britain’s tenth-largest local-news publisher. It’s run by Sir Ray Tindle, an octogenarian who believes that local news should be, well, local.
When Tindle Newspapers took over the stricken West Wales Observer, Sir Ray changed its name back to The Tenby Observer. He made sure its journalists only covered things that happened in and around Tenby itself. This focus on truly local news, politics and happenings has seen it go from strength to strength.
Ref. http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14085662
Tagged with: Authenticity, Publishing
Friday 31st July:
The ultimate digest
How come The Economist is so successful when so many other weekly news magazines aren’t? Michael Hirschorn of The Atlantic magazine identifies several possible reasons:
1. Quality and breadth – ‘The Economist is truly a remarkable invention. This weekly newspaper, as it calls itself, canvasses the globe with an assurance no-one else can match. Where else, really, can you actually keep up with Africa?’
2. Ability to distil the news and offer a point of view – ‘The Economist has reached its current level of influence and importance because it is, in every sense of the word, a true global digest for an age when the amount of undigested, undigestible information online continues to metastasise.’
3. Smart analysis and razor-sharp clarity instead of original reporting – ‘The Economist virtually never gets scoops, and the information it does provide is available elsewhere . . . if you care to spend 20 hours Googling’.
What’s interesting is that The Economist has managed to do all this without knowingly adapting to the realities of Web 2.0. In fact, even Hirschorn admits that The Economist ‘has never had much digital savvy’. The Economist, which almost demands to be seen first and foremost as a print publication, appears to stand alone online, unlinked to other news sources.
‘While other publications whore themselves to Google, The Huffington Post and the Drudge Report, almost no-one links to The Economist. It sits primly apart from the whole orgy of link love elsewhere on the Web’.
At the end of the day, The Economist feels like the only magazine you need to read’. Suggest we subscribe!
Ref. http://blog.futurelab.net/2009/07/innovation_and_the_future_of_m.html
Tagged with: Globalisation, Publishing
Thursday 5th March:
How can you transpose one media for another and connect with the YouTube generation?
Think like Wordia, a visual dictionary that encourages members of the public to contribute to a collective pool of video definitions. As with any online dictionary, users can search for the traditional meaning of a word, thanks to the involvement of HarperCollins with 76,000 words and 120,000 basic textual definitions. But appended to an increasing number of those traditional definitions are videos—both professionally produced and user-generated—expressing individuals’ own, personal meanings for the words in question. Look up “purple,” for instance, and two young “orators” tell you that it means “wacky… and kinda deep and mysterious… spiritual… agitated… royal… eggplant?” Search on “nascent,” and you’ll get a video definition featuring Michael Birch, the Bebo founder who is now supporting Wordia.
Ref http://www.springwise.com/media_publishing/video_dictionary_with_a_wiki_t/
Monday 2nd March:
How can you help people be more optimistic about the future?
Think like Future Me, which allows you to write an email to your future self. In a year, two years, even ten years from now, an email will pop into your inbox from your younger self. Will you be who you hoped you would be? Will you still care about the things that were important to your younger self? (Thanks to Laura for catching this one on the radio)
http://www.futureme.org/index.php
Click on the ‘what?’ link to find out more. You can also have a nose at other people’s letters if they’ve allowed it.
As Daniel Gilbert, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and best-selling author of Stumbling on Happiness, puts it, ‘Dear Future Me lets us eavesdrop on the silly, serious, hilarious, and heartbreaking conversations that ordinary people have with the extraordinary people they hope – or fear – they will someday become, providing a fascinating view of the human mind on its one-way trip through time.’
Tagged with: Publishing, Social networking