Journalistic.co.uk - the UK digital journalism blog

Some quick links to what is making the news and should be useful to know about

Piers Morgan buys press Press Gazette - I used to write a weekly internet column for them. This then became a monthly column and then after four years was no more. Maybe Piers will ask me to write it again. Piers, you can email me: leslie@journalistic.co.uk and my fee is very reasonable!

Bursary honours brave BBC web columnist - Journalism.co.uk writes: The BBC has launched an online journalism bursary in honour of technology journalist Ivan Noble, who died from a brain tumour in January this year.

Telegraph poaches Times new media boss - The Telegraph under new owners the Barclay Brothers look to develop their online offering with Annelies van de Belt joining as new media director. Will be interesting to see how this develops as there was talk earlier this year that the Telegraph was scaling back its online operation.

Cnet comes to the UK - Leading US popular technology site Cnet now has its own website. Nice use of video on the home page with the editor welcoming readers and giving them a guided tour of the site.

If you fancy doing some snooping on your neighbours or indeed in trying to find out the value of houses or flats, then the new HousePrices.co.uk site will help you out.

Unlike other sites around, there is no need to register and there are no charges in using the site which uses the Land Registry’s database of how much property is being sold for.

A simple and easy to use site that should be an essential bookmark.

Yes, it seems to be about 10 days since the last posting, well actually, it is about 11 days.

So some quick thoughts.

1. If you decide to use any spam filtering software, always make sure you go into where the spam is filtered in case important emails get trapped by it. Over the last couple of weeks, the excellent Cloudmark and its Safetybar has been flagging some email as spam when it isn’t.

2. Great to see that Orange will be running live news through its 3G network. At last something useful to view when using a 3G phone. Just hope the battery life these days is better than when Three brought out its next generation handsets which meant you were lucky to be able to view video for two hours before needing a recharge. Live information on a 3G is a killer application and one that will help the networks grow.

Just upgraded Journalistic to the fantastic new version of Wordpress.

Wordpress is now up to 1.5 and has some pretty good new features and better protection against spam comment.

Thanks to Podz for making sure the upgrade went smoothly.

One of the first ever conferences I went to which looked at digital media and journalism was Net Media. Set up and organised by Milverton Wallace, Net Media took place in Islington, north London in its early years and eventually went to Europe.

I remember in the early days there were 100 of so delegates from various media and countries. I was there for Teletext and it gave me the chance to talk to other journalists from around the world who were doing really interesting things on the web.

So, it was a real pleasure to hear from Milverton who let me in with what he is now up to.

“My new project is NextTech, a series of conferences, workshops, pilot studies and research reports on emerging digital media technologies. The first event in the series, scheduled for 19 September, will be on podcasting. My partner in this adventure is University College London,” he told me.

As someone who has helped countless journalists understand the internet and digital media better and provided a way for them to start learning more about how to make the most of it, Milverton is one person who has done much for digital journalists.

His new project sounds exciting as well. As soon as I get more details, I’ll post them up.

In the meanwhile, here’s a piece he wrote recently on Towards a Literacy for the Digital Age.

Bit of a shocking headline - will Ofcom, the telcoms/TV/radio et al regulator need to also take on a role for internet content?

MediaGuardian reports:

Media regulators across Europe could be forced to police internet content for taste and decency in the same way as television programmes, according to proposals under consideration in Brussels. The plans have led to fears at the British media watchdog Ofcom that this may stifle innovation in the nascent broadband content industry and prove impossible to enforce.

This year the UK regulator will review the likely impact of broadband and other new services such as 3G over the next decade and consult the public and the industry over whether content delivered over them can and should be regulated.