Doing more with less in the B2B sector

Are B2B magazines lagging behind their customer colleagues when it comes to digital media?

Well the answers yes if you believe the survey by the American Society of Business Publications Editors (ASBPE).

They found that 80 per cent of respondents in the sector complained of a lack of training in the tools and techniques of digital media.

While b2b editors are working without much, if any, training for the digital world, their workload increasingly involves online publishing. The survey found that 38% of editors spend at least half of their time now working on digital content, and even more (62%) feel that spending more time on digital would benefit their publications.

Ht-Martin Stabe

European privacy threatens American freedom of expression

An interesting take from the New York Times' Adam Liptak on the Italian google ruling earlier in the week.

He writes that whilst in

one sense, the ruling was a nice discussion starter about how much responsibility to place on services like Google for offensive content that they passively distribute.

in another,

it called attention to the profound European commitment to privacy, one that threatens the American conception of free expression and could restrict the flow of information on the Internet to everyone.

What the Sunday's are saying

More bullying revelations,the army in crisis and the handshake that never was.

The Mail on Sunday is in possession of tape recording which shows a bullying Prime Minister in action.

one of his closest aides revealed in a sensational tape-recording how the Prime Minister shoved him on the stairs inside No10.

It adds

The adviser says Mr Brown’s staff have made excuses for his bullying behaviour for years. And, damagingly, he questions whether they had been right to do so, arguing a ‘core part’ of being Prime Minister is to treat people properly.

Meanwhile in the Observer it's week 2 of the Rawnsley revelations.According to the paper

Tony Blair descended into such a deep depression after the Iraq war that he told Gordon Brown and John Prescott he would quit No 10 the following summer

The head of the army has warned that British troops are facing a crisis of deteriorating morale on the home front that risks undermining the war in Afghanistan is the lead in the Sunday Times.

In a confidential draft memo prepared for ministers, General Sir David Richards, chief of the general staff (CGS), said that recent cuts to the defence budget are having a “cumulative and corrosive effect on our soldiers and their families”.

Yesterday's Chile earthquake is covered in all the papers,the Independent says it killed

at least 210 people, bringing down homes and hospitals, and setting off a tsunami that triggered warnings and evacuations across the entire Pacific

In the Chilean capital,says the Telegraph,

some five million woke up to "hell" as the earthquake, which struck in the small hours of Saturday morning, collapsed tower blocks and bridges and swallowed cars as it ripped cracks in the roads. Rescue teams worked throughout the day to dig out people buried alive in the rubble.

There is much political coverage.The Sunday Telegraph leads with the story that a Labour minister says his party has been infiltrated by a fundamentalist Muslim group that wants to create an “Islamic social and political order” in Britain.

The Independent claims that The Conservatives would abandon Labour's belief that "pumping" money into the most deprived areas is the way to solve Britain's social problems,

The Telegraph says that David Cameron will declare that he will not retreat into the "Conservative comfort zone" and will carry on with his modernising crusade as he attempts to arrest his party's dip in fortunes.

The Express claims that disruptive pupils will be put back on track by a task force of ex-Army officers under ground-breaking Conservative education plans.

According to the Sunday Times,disgraced MPs will retain their privileged access to the House of Commons even after losing their seats in parliament.

Hundreds of the best-performing comprehensive schools appear to be covertly selecting pupils from more affluent backgrounds and blocking those from more deprived families,reports the Observer

A double story on the front of the News of the World.As Wayne Bridge

refused to shake hands with his former friend and team-mate when the pair lined up against each other at Chelsea yesterday.

the paper turns it attention to Peter Andre and reports how

ex-model Maddy Ford reveals how the Mysterious Girl star swept her off her feet only eight days after his divorce.

Meanwhile the Sunday Mirror reports that Simon Cowell has told Cheryl Cole she must not go back to cheating husband Ashley, telling her: Its time to think of yourself, kiddo. He's had enough chances.

According to the Sunday Times,exam watchdogs secretly downgraded the GCSE results of thousands of pupils last summer to avoid a damaging public row over grade inflation,

Finally,The Sunday Telegraph reports the comments of Hilary Mantel, who has announced that girls are ready to have babies when they are 14 years-old.

The 57-year-old novelist said that society ran on a "male timetable" which dictated that women should have babies at an older age.

Addiply to the fore

I’d encourage other geographical hyperlocal start-ups to sign-up to addiply as we have done. You might just find it makes sense.

The words of Bournville blog's founder and now Guardian Cardiff local blogger Hannah Waldram who celebrates the blog getting its first advert through the Addiply business model.

For those who don't know the Addiply story,it essentially offers publishers a chance to allow businesses to target a focused readership generated by hyperlocal sites so that the two can meet and hopefully generate a long running relationship between the two parties.

And whilst as many recognise at the moment it's not going to turn those being hyperlocal sites in publishing millionaires,as more and more sites get signed up synergies will begin to take place.

I am currently in the process of setting up a couple of hyperlocal sites and am planning to take on board the Addiply model.

Keep watching this blog for more developments.

The power of twitter at Sony

Sony have clearly demonstrated the power of using twitter after it revealed that it has generated over £1m in sales through its twitter account.

New Media age reports that

Speaking at Marketing Week’s Social Media for Brand Building event yesterday, Sony head of corporate communications Nick Sharples said the company sees Twitter as a viable sales platform as well as a tool to amplify PR activity.

adding that

Sony launched a campaign for a special edition of its Cyber-shot camera range last year and used social media to extend PR coverage over nine months, resulting in over £12.5m in revenue.

What Saturday's papers are saying

With renewed rumours of an early general election,many of the papers return to political themes on their front pages.

According to the Telegraph,the Conservatives are planning tax cuts,George Osborne will unveil an emergency “enterprise” budget within 50 days of a Conservative election victory which will sharply cut taxes for business,says the paper

The Guardian claims that the Tories are planning for a hung parliament.Ahead of their spring conference says the paper

David Cameron has established a special unit to prepare for a hung parliament, amid growing fears among senior Tories that they will struggle to win an overall Commons majority.

The Independent meanwhile looks at the activities of lord Ashcroft claiming The Tories have spent £6m over two years in the parliamentary seats that hold the key to election victory.

According to the Times,Alistair Darling is set to reveal details of how he plans to cut £11 billion from Whitehall spending in the pre-election Budget including

Some hospital buildings face closure as the government seeks to save billions of pounds from more efficient services,

It leads with its exclusive yesterday though reporting that unions at the BBC are threatening industrial action over 600 possible job cuts as two radio stations and half the corporation’s website may go.

The Guardian claims that the

decision to dramatically cut the BBC's scope and expenditure follows increasing pressure from the Conservatives, who have threatened major cutbacks if they come to power at the general election, and rival media organisations struggling to compete with the corporation's activities.

The High court ruling on the Binyam Mohamed case continues to attract headlines.As the Independent reports it has emerged that a senior judge had suggested MI5 officers could not be trusted to tell the truth.

The Telegraph reports on the comments of the head of the Army, General Sir David Richards who says British forces could be pulled out of Afghanistan within five years,

Sir David said they have reached a “turning point” in the battle against the Taliban.

But there were more problems in Afghnanistan yesterday as when 17 people died in a car bomb attack in Kabul apparently aimed at Indians working in the Afghan capital.

The Mail turns its atention to the postal service reporting that First class post has plunged to its worst performance in more than a decade.

Nearly one in four letters sent by first class post did not arrive the next working day.

The Express meanwhile leads with news that staff at the Met Office have been awarded £12million in bonuses despite repeatedly getting forecasts wrong,

A big sporting showdown at Stamford Bridge today as the Sun reports that Wayne Bridge last night vowed to snub John Terry's handshake before this lunchtime's big match.


The seven-hour verdict that cost Thaksin $1.4bn is the headline in the Independent as it reports that

The Thai authorities were last night braced for demonstrations after the country's highest court seized $1.4bn of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's assets and ruled that the exiled tycoon had abused his power in office.

Finally the Telegraph reports that whilst Charles de Gaulle famously bemoaned the difficulties involved in running a country with 246 different types of cheese the French are failing out of favour with the industry.So in an effort to fight back

The Association Fromages de Terroirs (AFT), which aims to protect France’s traditional cheese culture, is now trying to fight back with a series of posters of “Fromgirls”, displaying scantily clad women working in the industry.

Crossroads of civilisation

A lovely find from Richard Sambrook

Needed to celebrate desire to contribute for free rather than question it.

Just love this quote from Arianna Huffington

"Self expression is the new entertainment, We never used to question why people sit on the couch for seven hours a day watching bad TV. Nobody ever asked, 'Why are they doing that for free?' We need to celebrate [this desire to contribute for free] rather than question it."

Thanks to Seth Godin

Media under attack from Home Office report.

Also in the news this morning is a report out from the Home office which warns that that children are 'over-exposed' to sexual imagery, and that parents have little power to stop it.

In an attack on the media,the report advocates tougher regulation of adverts and the placing parental controls on mobile phones.

It has created headlines such as Sexy videos should be banned until after TV watershed in the Telegraph.

The report, by psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos, also recommends the banning the sale of lads' magazines such as Zoo from under-15s, and restricting them to the top shelves to keep them out of children's eyeline.

But should we in the media be concerned.Toby young certainly doesn't think so.Writing this morning in the Telegraph he says that the report

feels like a bit of cheap electioneering rather than a serious piece of research.

and questions whether indeed

there’s a “clear link” between sexual imagery and violence against women

The report he concludes

is a not a serious investigation into the causes of violence against women. Rather, it posits a link between that violence and various things that Dr Popadopoulus disapproves of — such as lad mags and airbrushed photographs — in a spurious attempt to either ban them or regulate them on grounds of public safety.

Beeb-getting its house in order before a Tory government does it for them?

If correct then this morning's Times has usurped the BBC with reports of its strategic plans.

According to the paper,the corporation plans to close two radio stations, shut half its website and cut spending on imported American programmes.

The radio stations to close are 6music and the Asian network as the paper says

Mark Thompson, the Director-General, will admit that the corporation, which is funded by the £3.6 billion annual licence fee, has become too large and must shrink to give its commercial rivals room to operate.

adding that

It will be seen as an attempt to show a potential Tory government that the BBC understands the effect the deep advertising recession has had on commercial rivals and that it does not need outside intervention to get its house in order.

It is interesting that one of the proposals is to halve the content of its online presence,no doubt trying to calm the nerves of local newspaper groups who see the continued moves of the Beeb as unfair competition.

The BBC have yet to comment on the story.According to the Times,the document goes before the Trust and will be announced next month

What Friday's papers are saying

Both the Telegraph and the Guardian lead with what the former calls frightening echoes of the Baby Peter case,in which a seven-year-old girl starved to death by her mother might still be alive if she had not been failed by social services, a High Court judge has ruled.

Khyra Ishaq, who weighed just 2st 9lb (16.8kg), was said by a paramedic to be like a concentration camp victim when she was finally rescued from her home.reports the Guardian

The Mail says that

Khyra Ishaq was beaten with a cane and allowed to die a slow and agonising death, despite being monitored and visited by at least nine social workers, education officers, teachers and police

Meanwhile the Times claims to have got sight of awideranging strategic review at the BBC in which it

will close two radio stations, shut half its website and cut spending heavily on imported American programmes

According to the paper

Mark Thompson, the Director-General, will admit that the corporation, which is funded by the £3.6 billion annual licence fee, has become too large and must shrink to give its commercial rivals room to operate.

RBS stands accused of creating 100 millionaires on the front of the Independent despite says the paper making a loss of £3.6bn.

the bank will reward its 16,800 investment bankers with £1.3bn in bonuses. The average that each of them will pocket comes to £160,000, made up of a basic salary of £80,000 and the same again in bonus, although that will be paid in shares. That compares to the national average full-time wage of those whose taxes are propping up the bank of about £25,000.

Meanwhile says the Guardian,

Fears of a double-dip recession and a sterling crisis in the run-up to the election were raised last night amid news of collapsing investment in British industry and a warning from one of the world's leading financiers that the pound could plummet within weeks.

The latest opinion poll in the Telegraph shows that Labour could still win the most number of seats at the general election

The latest survey indicates there will be a hung parliament, but it would be Gordon Brown who would be in the position to try and form a government as leader of the largest party.

and the Independent reports that George Osborne is seen as "lacking experience" by Britain's business leaders but still outscores the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, according to its latest survey.

Professor David Kerr reports the Times, one of the architects of Labour’s NHS reforms is to become a key adviser to the Conservatives.

Many of the papers report that Italy's highest appeals court have quashed the four-and-a-half year prison sentence handed to Tessa Jowell's estranged husband, David Mills,

However says the Times, the court ordered Mr Mills to pay €250,000 (£220,000) to the Italian state for “damaging” its image.

Insult to the 7/7 victims is the lead in the Mail as it says that families of the July 7 victims reacted furiously yesterday to the decision to include the deaths of the four bombers at the inquest.

More climate change controversy in the Express as its front page reports how climate scientists yesterday stunned Britons suffering the coldest winter for 30 years by claiming last month was the ­hottest January the world has ever seen.

War seems to have broken out on the football field

Wayne Bridge's dramatic international retirement has caused the simmering tension between the Manchester City left‑back and his former best friend John Terry to erupt into open warfare.

reports the Guardian

I cant forgive Terry he makes me sick says the front page of the Mirror

However the Sun says that Wayne Bridge was last night accused of damaging England's World Cup hopes by the ex- lover who broke his heart.

Back to more important matters and the Telegraph's headline "Barack Obama health care summit descends into bickering" is covered in many of the papers

It did not take long for the bipartisan health care summit to degenerate into the kind of bickering and points-scoring that has created a crescendo of anger about the conduct of politics in Washington.

reports the paper

Staying on the subject of America,the Mail reports that

America's refusal to support Britain in the Falklands oil drilling row was last night blamed on the UK's decision to release sensitive U.S. intelligence on a terror suspect.

Finally watch out Switzerland,Muammar Gaddafi has appealed for jihad against the country after its referendum in November to ban the construction of minarets on mosques.reports the Times ,

Though Gutenberg's invention made possible our modern world no one, much less Gutenberg himself, could have foreseen his press would have this effect

This blog has written on many occassions about the changing business models for content.

Forgive me therefore for pointing you in the direction of a piece that sums up what has happened in publishing.

It comes from Jason Epstein who writes in the current New York review of books

“The transition within the book publishing industry from physical inventory stored in a warehouse and trucked to retailers to digital files stored in cyberspace and delivered almost anywhere on earth as quickly and cheaply as e-mail is now underway and irreversible. This historic shift will radically transform worldwide book publishing, the cultures it affects and on which it depends. Meanwhile, for quite different reasons, the genteel book business that I joined more than a half-century ago is already on edge, suffering from a gambler’s unbreakable addiction to risky, seasonal best sellers, many of which don’t recoup their costs, and the simultaneous deterioration of backlist, the vital annuity on which book publishers had in better days relied for year-to-year stability through bad times and good. The crisis of confidence reflects these intersecting shocks, an overspecialized marketplace dominated by high-risk ephemera and a technological shift orders of magnitude greater than the momentous evolution from monkish scriptoria to movable type launched in Gutenberg’s German city of Mainz six centuries ago.”

Ht-Stephen Abram

Italian ruling threatens Internet freedoms

Yesterday's ruling in Italy could be regarded as a threat to internet freedom or another step in trying to curb the power of Google.

Three Google executives were convicted of violating privacy laws by allowing disturbing footage of a disabled Italian boy being bullied to be posted on the internet.

The decision stems from back in September 2006 when footage was posted of an autistic teenager and who was being bullied by four other boys, at a Turin school.

It remained online for two months before being taken down but the event was prior to You Tube being taken over by Google in Italy.

Google's defence was that it was nigh on impossible for individual videos to be checked due to the sheer volumes being loaded on a daily basis.


America's ambassador to Italy, David Throne said of the ruling that

This founding principal of internet freedom is vital for democracies which recognise freedom of expression and is safeguarded by all who take this value to heart.

Google executives pledged to appeal, saying if the verdict was allowed to stand, "the Web as we know it will cease to exist."

They added that

"If intermediaries like Google or the person who hosts your Web site can be thrown in jail in any country for the acts of other people and suddenly have a legal obligation to prescreen everything anyone says on their Web site before putting it online, the tools for free speech that everyone uses on the Net would grind to a halt.

Obstacles for hyperlocal in Ventnor and Leeds.

As the growing move towards hyperlocal continues,two rather worrying stories emerged yesterday seemingly putting up barriers to journalistic independence.

Down in the Isle of Wight,the husband and wife team of dedicated reporters at the Ventnor blog were prevented from entering a coroners court.

We were told by the coroner’s officer, Richard Leedham, that the coroner, John Matthews, didn’t recognise us as a member of the press (despite VB publishing articles for four and a half years and NUJ membership for longer) and he didn’t want us in “his court.”

Judging from the comments on the blog, 56 so far,this issue is going to run and run.It seems that this dispute centred around controversy around a previous report back in 2008 as the coroner made it clear that they would not be admitted even into the public gallery as public members.

Meanwhile in Leeds,it seems that local councillors no longer want their meetings tweeted.As the council agreed a 2.5 per cent increase in council tax,Guardian Leeds reports that

Lord Mayor Judith Elliott told everyone at the start of the meeting to 'switch off all electrical equipment' and said there should be 'no Tweeting' on social networking site Twitter.

What Thursday's papers are saying

The worse hospital scandal for 10 years says the Independent as it reports that Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, announced an unprecedented five separate reviews of measures to protect patients yesterday.

Up to 1,200 people lost their lives needlessly because Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust put government targets and cost-cutting ahead of patient care.says the Mail but adds that not a single official has been disciplined over the worst-ever NHS hospital scandal, it emerged last night.

No one on the board at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust has faced censure and all of them were either paid off, walked into another job or allowed to remain in post. The man who ran the hospital trust received a large pay-off despite his part in the scandal. adds the Telegraph

The Guardian says that the appalling picture painted by the commission - which described how some patients drank water from vases because they were so thirsty and how many had to rely on their families for food - was not exaggerated.


The Times leads with an exclusive reporting that a night-time raid in eastern Afghanistan in which eight schoolboys from one family were killed was carried out on the basis of faulty intelligence and should never have been authorised,

Bullygate continues to hog the headlines.The head of the civil service has admitted discussing with Gordon Brown how he should treat his staff reports the Telegraph whilst the Guardian reports the latest revelations of Rawnsley's book

Gordon Brown repeatedly shouted at Tony Blair "you ruined my life" in the final confrontation that forced Blair to agree to announce a date by which he would stand down as prime minister

Meanwhile the Independent reports that the Tories received more than £10m towards their election war chest in just three months,far more than the other parties combined.

Though says the Times,the Electoral Commission revealed yesterday that The Conservatives have arranged to borrow up to £5 million from a boutique private bank once run by Jonathan Aitken.

According to the front of the Express,one in four mothers nowadays is single and 57 per cent of women with a child under 13 have never married or lived with a man.

Three Google executives were convicted on Wednesday of violating privacy laws by allowing disturbing footage of a disabled Italian boy being bullied to be posted on the internet reports the Telegraph.

The company vowed to appeal against the ruling, which it described as "an attack on the fundamental principles of freedom on which the internet was built" says the Guardian.

Meanwhile it folows upo its lead yesterday claiming that while Andy Coulson was still editor of the News of the World, the newspaper employed a freelance private investigator even though he had been accused of corrupting police officers and had just been released from a seven-year prison sentence for blackmail.

The big news from the redtops is that Cheryl Cole's divorce will be a quicky.

According to the Sun

The Girls Aloud beauty is also throwing herself into removing all traces of the Chelsea and England soccer ace from their Surrey mansion, especially photos.

Meanwhile according to the Mirror,Ashley thinks all this is Cheryl's fault for working too hard.

Finally the Mail is on hand to see the Queen's latest foray into public transport

the Queen is the last person you'd expect to see nipping through the gates on the Tube.Yesterday, however, she was spotted nosing around Aldgate Underground station.

In praise of the foreign reporter

This blog will often put the way towards great journalism and there is a great piece of international reporting in the New Statesman courtesy of Tristan McConnell who reports from the Somalian capital of Mogadishu.

It begins

After dark, the dull thud of mortars and the staccato popping of machine guns come more frequently. Sometimes the explosions make it hard to sleep, so I lie awake counting, learning to read the Mogadishu soundscape: one . . . two-three . . . four. Pauses follow sequences of explosions like Morse code, each bullet and mortar landing somewhere, ending or ruining a life.

The end of the political poster?

Reuter's Mark Jones believes that social media's proliferation in the political agenda could spell the death of the political poster.

Whilst social media is changing the advertising landscape generally,for political campaigning he points out

Rising doubts over the power of political advertising have been underscored by the emergence in recent weeks of sites and social network groups aiming to channel the wit of party supporters to disrupt the expensively created messaging of centralised political campaigns.

and with the electin fast approaching at the very least he adds:

it might add some fun to the campaign?

Just watch this-Gordon Brown is turned into avatar

Great spot-Malcolm Coles

"We just carried on snuffling up the profits like pigs around a trough.”

Press Gazette's Grey Cardigan,the parody of the old fashioned newsroom has been thinking about the future

“You know, Grey,” my ex-boss says, “I remember meetings back in the early nineties when we didn’t know what to do with all the money we were making. We had to find cunning ways of hiding it from the shareholders. We were hitting margins of over 30 per cent and were turning advertising away despite constant rate increases.
“The daft thing is, we all knew that it was going to end. We knew that the internet would eventually take away our ad revenue; that classified would go first, followed by property and sits vac. And yet we did nothing about it. We didn’t plan for the future or invest in innovative content and means of delivery. We just carried on snuffling up the profits like pigs around a trough.”

Social media and the government portal

Some interesting comments from Andrea DiMaio who is a member of the Gartner Blog Network who talks about the future of generalist government portals.

He asks whether in the age of social networking they are irrelevant citing one whom he visited saying that

“Should we stop caring about the user interface, which has been sucking so much of our efforts, and rather focus on APIs and build widgets that would be used wherever clients want?”.

Claims of regional bias not borne out by study

We often hear the complaint that regional news is heavily bias towards the South Eastern corner of the country.

So news of the Newsography project is welcome.

It has set out to

see what basis there is for this argument? And is it possible to determine the extent of regional under representation whilst proving London enjoys near constant attention from the UK media?

They have come up with this splendid visualisation based on stories from the Guardian



which suggests that

the results challenged the initial proposition with London appearing to be under represented given it’s population size whilst cities such as Oxford, Cambridge and Brighton feature much more prominently than larger cities.

You can download a PDF to see how where you live features on the news agenda and Manchester,perhaps not surprsingly comes fairly high up.

Ht-Martin Belam

Committee recommends reform of libel laws and more powers for a toothless PCC

Whilst the headlines from the Commons committee will be about News International,let's nor forget that the main body of this report concerns privacy.

In particular the issue of the Press Complaint's council (PCC) which it describes as "toothless".

It recommends that it should be able to levy fines on publications or even suspend them for a day.

The Libel law should also be looked at with its key recommendation that ­lawyers should no longer be able to claim the 100% "success fees" for ­winning cases against the media, but should be limited to an extra 10%.In addition it recommends limiting the scope of the so called "libel tourists".

The committee added that if a defendant in a libel case is in the right, it "should not be forced into a settlement which entails him sacrificing justice on the grounds of cost."

Its chairman John Whittingdale said:

"A healthy democracy requires a free press. It is essential that newspapers should be able to report and comment on events, public figures and institutions, to be critical of them and to be a platform for dissenting views.
"At the same time, the press must be seen to uphold certain standards, to be mindful of the rights of those who are written about and, as far as possible, be accurate in what they report.

A damning verdict and where next

Making the headlines this morning is the verdict of the Commons culture committee on the News of the World's phone tapping which the Guardian says

News International could face a judicial inquiry after a highly critical parliamentary report today accuses senior executives at its top-selling newspaper of concealing the truth about the extent of illegal phone hacking by its journalists.

NoW executives are accused of having "collective amnesia" and of"deliberate obfuscation" whilst Scotland yard should have

have broadened its original investigation in 2006, and not just focused on Clive Goodman, the NoW's royal reporter.

The committee claimed that some of the celebrities involved might well have had their silence bought and whilst New International is adamant that the select committee had been hijacked by MP's with a political agenda,there is no doubt that the News of the World's activities have gone a lot further than simply Clive Goodman.

Surely then the spotlight will once again fall on Andy Coulson who jumped ship when this story first broke to join the Tories.

Noodles with your I-phone sir?

It was going to happen sooner rather than later.Now there is a I-phone app where you can order your noodles.

Wagamama,reports Brand Republic,has introduced an app that

allows users to place an order for take-out directly from the handset.
The app also enables users to locate their nearest branch of Wagamama and browse the menu to place their order.
The order is then sent straight to the kitchen in a similar way to the wireless hand-held devices used by Wagamama restaurant staff. Users can state a preferred collection time and pay for the order via the app.

The digital divide -is broadband tax funding the wealthy?

The Commons Business Committee has criticised the government plans to introduce a 50p-per-month tax on households to fund superfast broadband as 'regressive', saying it will result in the poor paying for a service used mainly by the wealthy.

In what will be seen as a rebuff to the method of funding the next generation of internet coonections,the committee said that the charge would have a much greater impact on the less well off who will pay for an enhanced service which only a minority will enjoy.

They added that if public funds are required for next generation access, they should be raised through general taxation, in the same way as for any other national infrastructure programme."

Tory MP Peter Luff joined the debate saying ‘market will determine the roll out of super-fast broadband.’ and urging the government to focus on getting people who are offline online instead.

Eurosport launches mobile app

Eurosport has joined the clamour for this year's top media must have.

It has announced that it will be releasing its mobile app version of its streaming device at the cost of £2.39 a month.

Last week the BBC finally got its act together announcing that the I-player will be available to sports fans in time for this year's world cup.

Paid Content's Andrew Roberts explains the business rational behind the move

Media operators are gaining in confidence that they can charge on mobile where they don’t through other media.

—The recurring-subscription adjunct offered by Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0 is proving highly attractive to publishers and broadcasters.

—This is an example of how content owners can go direct to viewers, routing around traditional platform gateways like pay-TV operators.

Palestinian journalist sentenced to 18 months by West Bank court

Tareq Abu Zayd, the correspondent of Hamas-run TV station Al-Aqsa was found guilty by a Palestinian Authority military court last week.

He was found guilty of charges of seditious acts and impart information and smuggling money to parties hostile to the Palestinian National Authority in a manner contrary to the provisions of Palestinian law.

A group of Arab human rights organizations in a public statement said that the court ruling about the Palestinian journalist Tareq Abu Zeid by a special military court is illegal and unfair and considered a precedent and contrary to the standards of protection of Freedom of speech and expression.

According to RSF

The supreme court in Ramallah ordered his release on 12 January but the order was ignored. Zayd was arrested several times last year by militias loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hu keeps the Chinese Twittersphere hanging on

Twittermania has overtaken China as the country's president Hu Jintao has registered himself for its equivalent of a Twitter account.

According to the Telegraph,

Within hours of appearing as a registered user on the micro-blogging platform of the People's Daily, the main mouthpiece of the Communist Party, Mr Hu was garnering followers at the rate of 600 per hour all waiting for his first pronouncement.

However says adds the report

24 hours later, Mr Hu, now with 16,687 followers, had yet to make his first post, or decide which of his many fans he might like to follow on the site.

Tuesday's papers

Bullying not surprisingly features in the papers this morning.The independent reports that Downing Street's top civil servant made an extraordinary plea to staff yesterday to come forward if they had been bullied.

It adds that Labour's poll recovery is being jeopardised as the PM's behaviour is questioned.

The Times says that most civil servants working at the heart of Gordon Brown’s Government are afraid to challenge the way Downing Street is run.It has seen an internal survey of cabinet staff that suggests a third want to leave, and 6 per cent want to quit “as soon as possible”.

But there is good news from the polls for the party in the Guardian which publishes its latest ICM poll which suggests that we are heading for a hung Parliament.

The Telegraph chooses to lead with the news that British Airways crew have voted to strike and could throw the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers' into chaos as early as next week.

Results of a second strike ballot released last night showed that more than 80 per cent of cabin crew, on a turnout of 79 per cent, were prepared to strike over changes BA has introduced to its in-flight service.

says the Times

The Mail turns its attention to the energy companies which it says are are making more than £100 out of every customer by refusing to cut bills during the record freeze.

A bungled airstrike in Afghanistan has dealt Nato's effort to woo hearts and minds the third such blow in a week, with Kabul claiming the bombing killed 27 civilians reports the Independent

Meanwhile the Guardain reports on moves afot by the Afghan President to tighten his grip on the country.

According to the Telegraph,Barack Obama is scaling back his plans for far-reaching legislation in an attempt to save his party from disaster in elections later this year.

the president is trying to dissociate himself from complex bills which have been held up by political disputes and tarnished his image as an agent of change.

The saga of the Coles continues in the tabliods,the Sun reveals that Cheryl has been dating dancer Derek Hough since walking out on cheat husband Ashley.

The Mirror's 3am girls report how there was

Plenty of chitter-chatter was apparently the order of the night for Cheryl and her cute new mate Derek Hough, before he was spotted leaving her hotel (clutching his ickle wickle pet dog - aww, we like him already) at 4.15am.

The Mail reports that serial criminal Walid Salem has walked out of court for the third time since invading a businessman's home with two knife-wielding thugs.

Twittering for a living

I have spent the day back at my old stomping ground at Uclan taking part in a seminar organised by Francois Nel on twittering for a living.

It's part of three workshops aimed at getting students from both the media and business faculties to enter the entrepreneurial world of work.

This,the second of the three was aimed at showing how social media can be used to build a brand both a personal one and a business one and how social media can help to build a network.

I used by experiences at Innovation Manchester as a case study in point whilst my co presenter Simon Harrow looked at the theory behind networks.

One of the questions that came up was the time factor and we both made it clear that creating a social media brand was not something you could do overnight.In fact we both agreed that the strategy could easily take six to twelve months.

It was interesting to note how few of the assembled audience used social media tools other than facebook and as I pointed out in the question and answer session,converting some of that facebook time to social media sources could well benefit them.

We were joined on webcam by Joanna Geary from the Times who told the audience that she had always been more comfortable using social media as a medium for communicating with her audience and emphised how building a brand is so important now especially in the world of journalism.

The exact science of measuring web traffic

Web-traffic measurement, despite recent advances, remains fraught with conflicting numbers. The Internet's inherent accountability, stemming from the digital trace left by every Web site visit, has spawned a multitude of measures, but little clarity.

That's the conclusion of the Wall Street journal which over the weekend took an in depth look at the science of measuring web flow.

Amongst the problems identified,hits could be the same person from different machines,whereas smaller sites are saying that these inflated figures could cost them when advertisers seeking a broad reach dismiss them because of their seemingly paltry audience sizes.

Surely you keep blogs out of pay walls?

As the New York Times prepares for paywall territory,Arthur Sulzberger, Janet Robinson, and Martin Nisenholtz of the NYT all took the opportunity to talk at length about their paywall plans.

Reuters reports that

Nisenholtz did say quite clearly that he expected ad revenue to go up rather than down, which implied to me that that paywall was going to be pretty porous.

However the biggest shcok seems to be that the blogs will be behingd the wall and this could really be a bad move.

blogs rely on loyal readers who come back to read them often. But few blog readers are loyal enough to pay for the privilege of reading that blog.

Later says the report,the NYT's confirmed that yes blogs would indeed be behind the paywall

What Monday's papers are saying

Yesterday's claims of bullying by the Prime Minister dominate the papers this morning as the Telegraph leads with the story that an anti-bullying charity said several Downing Street employees had called its helpline seeking advice and counselling.

Christine Pratt, the chief executive of the National Bullying Helpline, made the claims hours after reports that Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, had approached Gordon Brown about his treatment of personnel. says the Times

Acording to the Mail,Christine Pratt said she decided to go public after being incensed by Lord Mandelson's denial of lurid allegations about Mr Brown's treatment of his staff.

The Guardian says that Sir Gus O'Donnell is under pressure to launch a formal investigation into Gordon Brown's treatment of his staff.

The Independent is the only quality not ot lead with the story instead reporting that an end to Aids could be in sight.

An aggressive programme of prescribing anti-retroviral treatment (ART) to every person infected with HIV could stop all new infections in five years and eventually wipe out the epidemic,

The Telegraph says that a cure for peanut allergies could be available within three years,

According to the Times,Ministers are to crack down on excessive housing benefit payments.

Yvette Cooper, the Work and Pensions Secretary, plans to cap the highest rates paid to private landlords — as much as £1,800 a week — to stop families on benefit living in palatial homes at the taxpayers’ expense,

The Indy claims that the CPS is underinvestigation for segretating black and white lawyers.According to the paper,

Some of the most disturbing claims centre on a Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) office in south-east London, where the botched investigation into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence led to findings of institutional racism against the police.

Meanwhile the Guardian reports that an interim report by the children's charity 4Children shows that families believe public services are failing to meet their needs and politicians do not understand the reality of their lives,

A shopkeeper has been killed while trying to repel members of a teenage gang who were trying to rob him. reports the Telegraph

Gurmail Singh, 63, was found in a pool of blood by customers after being bludgeoned with a sledgehammer.

says the Mail

According to the Express,even the dead will have to pay council tax.It says that the Gordon Brown

will clobber the elderly with a savage pay-as-you-die tax bombshell that could force people to give up their home on their death,

The death toll in Madeira continues to rise and the Telegraph reports a British woman was among dozens of people swept to their death in flash floods and mudslides.

More problems for Eurostar after hundreds of passengers became stranded when a train broke down on its way into London says the Guardian.

and staying with travel,the same paper reports that British Airways passengers face prolonged travel disruption next month as cabin crew push for a strike lasting at least 10 days if a ballot endorses industrial action.

The week will see more controversy over bank bonuses although the Independent reports that the chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland has agreed to go without his £1.6m bonus and as the Times reports the chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group was under intense pressure yesterday to give up his bonus .

Finally according to the Sun,aliens could be among us - but we just cannot recognise them, Britain's top astronomer has said.

Lord Martin Rees said the visitors might be in a form beyond human understanding."They could be staring us in the face and we just don't recognise them."

What the Sunday's are saying

It was always going to be the big story of the morning as the new look Observer previews Andrew Rawnsley's book The End of the Party,which charts Labour's second and third terms in power.

The big revelation is that Gordon Brown's abusive behaviour and volcanic eruptions of foul temper left Downing Street staff so frightened that he received an unprecedented reprimand from the head of the civil service.

The Mail on Sunday has uncovered new evidence of Mr Brown’s extraordinary eruptions, including an incident in which he hurled a tirade of foul-mouthed abuse at Bank of England Governor Mervyn King in a stand-up row.



The Independent also leads with the story but it has an exclusive interview with the PM in which he reveales his frustration at the way he is portrayed by what he sees as a "hostile" media.

he dismissed the suggestion that he once assaulted a senior aide while rushing to a Downing Street reception.

Poliitics features in fact of many of the front pages.The Telegraph carries the comments of Lord Hesletine who says that David Cameron will not win a general election outright and will struggle to form a government.

Meanwhile the Sunday Times claims that the Tories faced with declining popularity are planning a bank shares bonanza for millions of families.

The “people’s bonus” plan comes as a Sunday Times/YouGov survey today reveals that the Tories’ lead over Labour has slipped to the narrowest gap in more than a year.

Most of the papers report from the island of Madeira where floods and mudslides have killed at least 32 people and left hundreds of others homeless.

More than 60 others were also hospitalised as torrential streams of water and liquid mud swept through the capital, Funchal, destroying homes, overturning cars and felling trees

.reports the Telegraph

Sports stars continue to dominate the tabloids.However the Sunday Times reveals that the football stars are going to come under scrutiny for their earnings by the taxman

Some 20 tax inspectors from HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC) special civil investigations unit in Solihull are writing to top players who receive part of their income from their clubs in return for “image rights”.

The News of the World reveals the latest Ashley Cole problem as it reports

love rat Ashley Cole sobbed down the phone to his American one-night stand as he suddenly realised their secret fling was in danger of being exposed.

The People claims Cheryl Cole has vowed to take revenge on her wayward husband Ashley by imposing a lengthy sex ban,until she makes up her mind whether to leave him or not.

The Mirror says the singer is sick of being made to look an idiot by him and wonders is there anything left to salvage.

Staying with showbusiness,the Mail reports on the tragic death of Channel 4's high-flier who was behind How To Look Good Naked

Sarah Mulvey, a Channel 4 commissioning editor and a highly regarded TV producer, was found dead in her flat in North London by police who broke down her door after they were alerted by a concerned relative.

The Observer reports that there is new evidence that one of Britain's most notorious multiple murderers Jeremy Bamber may be innocent.According to the paper

Analysis of police negatives by one of Britain's most eminent photographic experts has found them incompatible with the principal prosecution case used to imprison Bamber for the White House Farm murders 25 years ago.

One of the week's big stories is still on the front pages.The Telegraph claims that ministers were told that Israeli immigration officials at Tel Aviv airport secretly copied the British passports which were then used by the hit squad which assassinated a leading Hamas official.

Another big foreign story of the week is followed up in the Independent which reports that Argentina has excluded war but tensions continue to riserise as Buenos Ares recruits allies and promises to use all legal means to stop British oil drilling.

The Sunday Times reports that dozens of sailing students were forced to spend over 40 hours in life rafts being battered by huge seas, after their training ship sank off the coast of Brazil last Wednesday.

Many of the papers report on the death of Alexander Haig, a former US secretary of state and senior aide to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal,who died ­yesterday in a Baltimore hospital at the age of 85.

Finally back to showbusiness and the Mail report that Gabby Logan by her own admission went into ‘meltdown’ after anchoring coverage of the France-Ireland rugby clash in Paris last week.The cause?

The 36-year-old presenter was involved in an embarrassing altercation with station officials at the Gare du Nord after turning up 20 minutes too late to board the last train to England.

If you are going to charge for content then get your act together

“71 per cent of global consumers say that if have to pay for online content it must be considerably better than what is currently available for free.”

That was the result of new research from Nielsen which in addition found that 79 per cent of users would no longer access a Web site that charges them.

It's an important consideration and one that sites need to consider before thinking paywall.

The net in 2020-how twitter will be on your reading list and how google will make us cleverer

Pew have released another report into the future of the internet based on a survey of 900 Internet stakeholders.

It reveals some new perspectives on how the Net is affecting human intelligence and the ways that information is being shared.

The majority believe that that the Internet and search engines will enhance human intelligence by 2020.

Far from the saying that Google will make us stupid,many believe the ooposite.

The smartest person in the world could well be behind a plow in China or India. Providing universal access to information will allow such people to realize their full potential, providing benefits to the entire world."

that quote not surprsingly comes from Google.

As to the twitter effect,I liked this from Gene Spafford,

Most writing online is devolving toward SMS and tweets that involve quick, throwaway notes with abbreviations and threaded references. This is not a form of lasting communication. In 2020 there is unlikely to be a list of classic tweets and blog posts that every student and educated citizen should have read."

Introducing the social media treasure hunt

Concerned that journalists spend too much time behind their desks in the virtual world.

Well Paul Bradshaw is as well so much so that he has devised a Social Media Treasure Hunt for students on his online journalism course.

The game says Paul will

* Get them meeting people in person rather than virtually – a much more effective way of building social capital

* Get them away from a desk. It seems to me that most people approach online journalism as a deskbound job – actually, it opens up enormous opportunities for production on the move: moblogging, liveblogging, photoblogging

* Get them to open their eyes, ears and noses. These students have spent 18 months learning how to be journalists – looking for angles, structuring a story. Now I’m asking them to unlearn some of that when they approach a blog: put out unfinished material; observations; raw material. Sharing – not processing. That can be a hard habit to get into.

Read more about the rules here

Great news for the Indie-No Liddle

Roy Greenslade broke the news yesterday that Ron Liddle negotiations with Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev are understood to have ended yesterday.

Bloody good news-enough said

Nepalese media under pressure

Journalists in Nepal who are supposed to cover the news are becoming the news themselves.

That's the claim of Kunda Dixit writing a guest blog at CPJ.

The latest threats have been directed at Nepal’s largest media company, the Kantipur group, for reporting on police investigations into the murder of media tycoon Jamim Shah on February 8. Shah was gunned down in broad daylight in a heavily guarded part of Kathmandu by assassins on motorcycles who blocked his SUV and fired on him in the front passenger seat.

Since starting its move from monarchy to democracy,four journalists have been killed or disappeared in the last three years.

Jamin Shah was the chairman of the Nepalese television station and satellite network Space Time Network.

Oops-AP's non profit distribution service has a few teething problems

An interesting piece from Nieman Journalism Lab's Laura McGann who looks at the first six months of AP's non profit distribution project.

As she says it looked on launch to be a win win scenario

the wire service was going to begin distributing content from four top nonprofit news outlets: ProPublica, Center for Public Integrity, Center for Investigative Reporting, and the Investigative Reporting Workshop. Newspapers could run in-depth content from well respected outlets, and nonprofits could broaden their audience.

The reality though is that it appears that AP members have used little if any nonprofit content which may be down to the delivery platform AP uses to share the stories.

there’s no alert system to notify editors when something new has been added. Nonprofits’ stories are not distributed over the AP’s main wire services, as a major AP investigation would.

From the heart of Royston,angry locals in dog poo uproar

There's nothing that seems to get people more uptight about their community than bin collections and dog poo.

The former is the lead story in this morning's Telegraph but for the latter,a great story courtesy of Angry people in local newspapers which reports from Cambridge where

Schoolchildren are being forced into the path of traffic by piles of dog mess on pavements,

Anna Greetham headteacher, from Tannery Drift First School in Royston,tells the paper

Over the last two weeks I've had quite a number of parents saying it has been a problem.
"Please could whoever it is pick up their dog's mess so that children aren't at risk from walking it into school and the classroom - there are health implications for the children.

What Saturday's papers are saying

Every front page has pictures of Tiger Woods apologising to his fans for his behavior

The blue backdrop, the bare podium, and the respectful audience gave it the air of a presidential press conference. Except that presidents generally take questions. And instead of geopolitics, the newsflash that stopped the world spinning for almost 14 minutes yesterday was this: Tiger Woods has given up extra-marital sex. says the Independent

Tearful Tiger Woods yesterday apologised to his wife, his fans and his sponsors in a TV broadcast watched by billions – and admitted: “I have let you all down.”reports the Mirror

The Times says the golf star gave a sorry performance

Whilst the Sun puts him alongside Ashley Cole on its front page who it says bedded a girl during a Chelsea tour of America.

voters' 'submerged optimism' will stop a Tory win is the headline in the Guardian as the paper reports that Labour plans to stop the Tories winning the general election by tapping into a "submerged optimism" about the future and by applying Barack Obama's reliance on word-of-mouth campaigning,

According to the Telegraph,Labour candidates have been told not to campaign on the party’s record in office.

It though leads with the news that fortnightly bin collections are to be extended across the country to save money.

According to the Independent British soldiers have gone on the run from their posts on more than 17,000 occasions since the start of the Iraq war

Meanwhile the Times has learnt that The Government’s own human rights watchdog has demanded a public inquiry into claims that British intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of more than 20 detainees in the War on Terror

Fresh questions have been raised about the date when ministers first knew British passports had been used by a hit squad that killed a Hamas leader in Dubai claims the Telegraph

A Daily Mail investigation has found speculators cashing in on the weak pound have created a shortage of at least 40 drugs,

NHS patients are being put at risk because profiteering pharmacists are selling prescription drugs to Europe says the paper

The Express claims that town hall chiefs are enjoying massive pay rises while millions face redundancies, pay cuts and soaring council tax,

Finally the question that has been on everyone's lips has been revealed.

Stacey Branning killed Archie Mitchell, it was revealed last night in EastEnders' first live episode.says the Sun

From schools to genealogy-the fall and rise again of Friends Reunited

How short time travels in the world of social media?

It wasn't that long ago that Friends Reunited was the talk of the town.Everybody was on it,looking up their old school aquaintences,establishing who had made the most of their lives.

It was even being blamed for divorces and seperations as old aquaintences sparked into life.

And at the height of it all,ITV jumped on the bandwagon and paid £170m for it.

Yesterday that dream came to an end as the competition commission gave the go ahead for its sale for £25m to Brightsolid.

Brightsolid for those who haven't heard of them are in the geneology game,at its height at the moment with the grey pound meaning the older generation have mich time on their hands to research their family history.

It is estimated that up to 2m are currently reaserching their family origins

Better networking or information overload?

The arguments have been heard many times but are we actually better off for all this technology?

As Vaughan Bell writes in a cracking article over at Slate magazine

Worries about information overload are as old as information itself, with each generation reimagining the dangerous impacts of technology on mind and brain.

As far back as the sixteenth century a Swiss scientist,Conrad Gessner,wrote of how the modern world overwhelmed people with data and that this overabundance was both "confusing and harmful" to the mind.

Maybe no different to the scare stories that we read about the internet today?

But it seems ecah technology brings it warnings.As Bell writes

When radio arrived, we discovered yet another scourge of the young: The wireless was accused of distracting children from reading and diminishing performance in school, both of which were now considered to be appropriate and wholesome. In 1936, the music magazine the Gramophone reported that children had "developed the habit of dividing attention between the humdrum preparation of their school assignments and the compelling excitement of the loudspeaker" and described how the radio programs were disturbing the balance of their excitable minds.

However all the evidence suggests contrary to what the Daily Mail might think,that those who use the net and social networks actually tend to have better offline social lives.After all being social is all about making connections,the net means that they are more easily made.

What Friday's papers are saying

A debt crisis for Britain?

The Times warns that

Gordon Brown’s launch of a Labour election campaign promising economic recovery was in jeopardy last night as a record slump in tax receipts fuelled fears that Britain could slip back into recession.

whilst the Telegraph says that,Britain is at risk of a Govenment deficit crisis worse than that of Greece

Meanwhile a warning in the Independent whose survey has found that the number of town hall jobs to be axed as local authorities desperately attempt to cut running costs in the recession has risen to 20,000.

The other story of the day is the Mossad hit squad and the Mail leads with the continuing developments in the story with a report that says MI6 was tipped off that Israeli agents were going to carry out an 'overseas operation' using fake British passports,

Ministers are under pressure to explain whether they knew two weeks ago that British passports were used by a hit squad that killed a Hamas leader in Dubai says the Telegraph

The Guardian reports the comments of the emirate's police chief who said Interpol should help arrest the head of Mossad if Israel's spy agency was responsible for the killing of a Hamas commander in Dubai,

It leads with a report from the UN that says out the world's 3,000 biggest companies one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment.

Two British soldiers have been killed while taking part in a major offensive against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan reports the Telegraph adding that the soldiers' families have asked for a 24-hour period of grace before more details are released.

The true face of the Tories says the front page of the Mirror as it reports how Sir Nicholas Winterton, the outgoing Tory MP for Macclesfield, has hit out at the new expenses culture at the House of Commons by saying he is "infuriated" he can no longer travel firstclass on trains.

Meanwhile according to the Guardian,The Conservatives have refused to back a proposed 200mph London-to-Birmingham rail route in a move that shatters the political consensus over a high-speed train network.

the Tories will not endorse a route proposal amid fears of a backlash from voters in the home counties and West Midlands whose homes may be blighted.

Many of the papers report that the court made famous for running a trial without jury has lost one of its defendants.

Peter Blake, 57, is being hunted by police after fleeing the Royal Courts of Justice yesterday afternoon. He is one of four men on trial accused of taking part in a £1.75m armed robbery at Heathrow Airport in February 2004.

says the Independent

Finally the Mail reports on the Pilot who'intentionally' slamned plane into an IRS building in Texas in revenge flight after feud with the taxman.

The pilot allegedly set fire to his house before taking his plane and aiming it at the government building in Austin, Texas.
One office worker was said to be unaccounted for and two more were taken to hospital with burns.

The Speccie leads with sport

I wonder how often the Spectator magazine has led with a football story but this week it does and a cracking piece from former BBC man Mahir Bose who writes that the game is England may be beautiful but it is also broke

Last week’s Financial Times carried an advert seeking a buyer for the bankrupt Crystal Palace. Portsmouth FC, winner of the FA Cup just two years ago, is unable to meet players’ wages or pay for a website. Dozens of clubs are wrestling with their creditors, and the game is effectively divided into two financial leagues: those with, and without, a foreign sugar daddy to write the cheques.

and he adds

Worse still, the global success of the English game has done nothing to nurture English, or even British, talent. It has never been harder for an English player to make it in the English Premier League.

Labour's election machine prepares

Beware if you are a journalist wanting to attend Labour functions during the election campaign.

According to Sam Coates writing in the Times

The Labour Party are organising accreditation so journalists can attend their general election press conferences.
In addition to home address, home telephone number, work or mobile telephone number and e-mail address, which is already stretching it somewhat, they have just ask for:

» Passport Number (if you have one)
» National Insurance number
» Driving Licence number (if you have one)
» Your private and company vehicle registration numbers
» A passport style photo in an appropriate digital format

Return to the 1980's

The Sun must be happy this morning.

It has a throwback to its heyday at the time of the Falkland's conflict as the latest spat over the islands ramps up.

The paper announces on its front page that

A POWER-PACKED Navy warship has sailed to the South Atlantic in a re-run of the 1982 Falklands conflict.
Type 42 destroyer HMS York was last night in waters off the islands' capital Port Stanley - spearheading a new British task force in the escalating oilfield drilling row with Argentina.

How long befor e we get a GOTCHA

Saddleworth hyperlocal site launches

I came across a great new hyperlocal venture in the North West yesterday.

Saddleworth News has been launched by Richard Jones covering a much neglected but exciting and vibrant area of the region.

Richard explains the concept on his site

This is a new website giving news and information about Saddleworth and the surrounding area. It’s for people who live in Saddleworth as well as those who like to visit. To use a trendy piece of jargon, it’s a ‘hyperlocal’ website, which basically means it contains information about what’s going on in a particular local area. Sites like this one are starting all around the UK, as local people fill the void left by cutbacks and closures in the traditional media.

Put another way, stop schmoozing and start listening.

Andrew Haeg over at his blog,the future of news discusses how journalists can harness the power of social media and reminds us of this recent piece in the Harvard business review.

In the classical networking approach, the game is about presenting yourself in the most favorable light possible while flattering the other person into giving you their contact information. This approach quickly degenerates into a manipulative exchange where the real identities of both parties rapidly recede into the background, replaced by carefully staged presentations of an artificial self. These staged interactions rarely build trust. In fact, they usually have the opposite effect, putting both parties on guard and reinforcing wariness and very selective disclosure.”

As he points out

Put another way, stop schmoozing and start listening. The corollary for journalists: Stop source-hunting and start discovering.

OFT may investigate MEN sale

It seems that last week's sale of the Manchester Evening News is not quite done and dusted just yet.

The Office of Fair trading is to step in to askfor representations about whether it should investigate Trinity Mirror's acquisition.

It will be worried that Trinity will be creating a near monopoly of news in the North West.It already has the Liverpool Echo in its stable as well as titles in Cheshire and North Wales

Goodbye Readers digest

So that bastion of doctors and dentists surgeries is no more.

It had been on the cards for sometime after its parent company announced plans for voluntary winding up last year but now the Reader's digest magazine is no more.

Sadly brought down by its pension fund as it failed to secure backing from the UK pensions regulator to support an agreement to fund its pension deficit,currently at £125m.

As today's Independent reminds us of its past glories

What could be fustier than the Reader's Digest, with its prize draws, free radio alarm clock offers, and its natural habitat of dentists' waiting rooms? And yet what could be more cutting-edge than a magazine which was the first content aggregator when it was founded back in 1922, or that helped to establish the link between smoking and lung cancer in the public mind in the 1950s?

a reign of 72 years comes to an end and the closure threatens 117 jobs at the company’s offices in Canary Wharf, East London, and Swindon, Wiltshire.

What Thursday's papers are saying

The conroversy over the Dubai killing of a Hamas leader continues.The plot thickens says the Independent as it says the row sharply escalated yesterday with claims that he had been lured to Dubai by the Israeli intelligence services.

Whilst the Guardian reports that The Israeli ambassador has been summoned to the Foreign Office to "share information" about the assassins' use of identities stolen from six British citizens living in Israel, as part of the meticulously orchestrated assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Meanwhile says the Telegraph, Gordon Brown pledged a "full investigation" into the use of faked British passports by the alleged hit squad.

The Sun is besides itslef with events in the South atlantic as it reports that a Type 42 destroyer HMS York was last night in waters off the islands' capital Port Stanley - spearheading a new British task force in the escalating oilfield drilling row with Argentina.

The Times says that

The sudden expansion of the dispute over territory followed the decree this week by President Kirchner requiring ships that travel between the Argentine mainland and the Falklands, or crossing waters claimed by Argentina, to seek permission from Buenos Aires.

It leads with news that it has recieved a letter suggesting that Labour’s Cabinet tour of the country is engulfed in controversy after it emerged that ministers were using the regional visits to stage party events before an election campaign.

in a leaked letter from Ms Harman seen by The Times, she made plans to meet candidates, officials and trade unionists from across the South West region to discuss campaign strategy.

Meanwhile the Telegraph says that Council chiefs in England and Wales have refused to disclose the salaries of thousands of senior staff,their excuse being that it would lead to a public outcry.

According to the Guardian,Labour is planning to rebrand one of its local authorities as Britain's first "John Lewis council", offering council tax rebates to residents in exchange for helping to run services, in a direct challenge to the Conservatives' pioneering "easyCouncil".

The Independent reports that radical plans by the Conservative party to allow parent groups, charities and trusts to set up and run their own schools have come under renewed criticism today after academics warned the flagship scheme would not improve the quality of education in Britain and may leave a budget black hole

The latest medical news from the Mail is that Women with breast cancer who take aspirin at least twice a week can more than double their chance of surviving, researchers say.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1251720/Aspirin-halves-risk-women-dying-breast-cancer.html#ixzz0frVvo6U4

The Guardian reports that Friends of Ray Gosling, the TV reporter who was arrested today on suspicion of murder, had known for more than a decade that he had killed his dying lover,

The Express is worried about immigration,no surprise there as it claims that UK bound migrants were yesterday massing in their own comfy members-only club in Calais before making their bid for Britain.

According to the Times,an analysis of the most recent accounts of Alexander McQueen’s British companies show that their current liabilities totalled more than £32 million

Many of the papers report that Tiger Woods is to make a public statement at the PGA tour's headquarters in Florida on Friday morning.

The Telegraph reports that It will be the first time the world has heard from the sexually shamed Woods since he went into hiding following his car crash at the end of November last year.

Disaster for Middle England as the Mail reports that lawns are turning pink

The harsh winter has led to the worst outbreak of snow mould for more than 20 years.
The fungal disease exists on many lawns without usually causing any problems. But when under a blanket of snow, it starts to thrive.

Finally the strange case of UFO's over Michael Howard's house in in many of the papers.

As formerly secret files containing the details of hundreds of close encounters with possible extraterrestrial life were released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) today,the Independent is one that reveals that

a large triangular UFO seen hovering above the home of the former home secretary and Conservative Party leader Michael Howard in March 1997. Eyewitnesses said they had seen a "humming" object the size of two passenger planes close to his house near Folkestone in Kent, but an RAF investigation found nothing unusual..