The (e)Grommet

links for 2010-03-10

The Gromm — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:05:03 +0000

Academic publishers seeing strong growth from e-book sales | theBookseller.com

"Nearly 90% of commmercial academic publishers have seen growth in e-book sales over the past two years, according to a cross-sector survey released today (10th March) by the Association of Learned Professional and Scholarly Publishers. Growth in some cases was more than 1,000%, with e-book sales now almost 10% of total book sales of the publishers surveyed."

(tags: Education ebooks via:mento.info)
Journalism jobs and news from Holdthefrontpage.co.uk

Johnston set to create subbing hub across Yorkshire Regional Newspapers – only slight prob is some subs may have to do a 200 mile+ round trip for work.

"It is understood that subs have been told they can either apply for five reporting vacancies across YRN or relocate to Sheffield, which is 102 miles away by road."

(tags: Journalism subs centralisation Johnston via:mento.info)
Steal Our Stories – ProPublica

You want some Propublica copy to post on your site – there's a CC licence for that.

"We’re licensed under Creative Commons, which provides the legal details. (The license says “no commercial use.” We’re fine with ads appearing on the same page as republished stories, but you can’t resell the stories or sell ads specifically targeted to them.)"

(tags: Journalism creative-commons propublica open-source-journalism via:mento.info)

links for 2010-03-09

The Gromm — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:04:09 +0000

Liverpool papers' new blog gives local politicians unmoderated access

Politics group blog for Liverpool's politicians – courtesy of Trinity Mirror:

"Trinity Mirror's Liverpool papers have taken a new direction with the launch of their latest group blog, aimed at increasing political engagement amongst its readers.

The new Liverpool Party Central site will see the leaders of the five main political parties in the area contributing posts in the build-up to the forthcoming election. The politicians will be able to publish directly to the site, using a basic content-management system for which they have their own logins."

(tags: Journalism groupblog trinitymirror kmatt via:mento.info)

links for 2010-03-04

The Gromm — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:05:25 +0000

Town website publisher's porn business

Newspaper uncovers link between site and designer's past in designing porn sites. But readers decide to remeind the Hull Daily Mail how it makes some of its money too…..

"Typical Dull Daily Fail trying to attack local businesses. How can they take the moral highground when they take classified ads from prostitutes?"

(tags: Journalism Web-2.0 community comments Hull via:mento.info)

links for 2010-02-17

The Gromm — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:03:29 +0000

Review of the BBC's New Social Networking Guidelines :: Blog :: Headshift

@cybersoc: "My former employer, the BBC, has issued new guidelines for the official use of third party social networking and micro-blogging services. The new guidelines should not be confused with the guidelines issued several years ago on the personal use of blogging and social networking sites by BBC staff but instead are intended to cover official, albeit non-contractual, BBC activities on third party websites."

(tags: Journalism BBC Twitter socialmedia via:mento.info)

links for 2010-02-11

The Gromm — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:04:27 +0000

Universities to achieve business goals through technology : JISC

As in media, so in education

“The ‘Agile University’ is about the capacity to innovate, particularly in new business or operating models. It requires a creativity in how an institution is structured and people are equipped to lead and manage it. It also requires a strategic and entrepreneurial approach to the use of technology.”"

(tags: Education jisc elearning agile entrepreneurial via:mento.info)
New Statesman – Increase in rejection of FOI requests

"analysis of Ministry of Justice figures shows that 22 per cent of FOI requests were refused in the latest three-month period on record"

(tags: Journalism FOI Government secrecy via:mento.info)
Brighton Argus launches parliamentary candidate tracker | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog

Future of News group for Brighton spins out idea, which gets taken up by the Brighton Argus.

"The MP candidate tracker page also displays tweets sent out by each candidate." says Jo Wadsworth of the Argus.

A definite way forward, and one that could generate really good user-driven data about the election campaign.

(tags: Journalism Brighton Argus map elections user-generated-data via:mento.info)
The future of newspapers – Alan Rusbridger at Sheffield Uni

The Guardian guru lays out his idea of a collaborative future…
“And you can’t do that from behind a pay wall,” he added"

(tags: Journalism Rusbridger future participatory trafigura via:mento.info)

links for 2010-02-03

The Gromm — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:03:00 +0000

BBC News – Hi-tech exam cheating increases says Ofqual

Tackling the sneaky students who sneak tech into their exam strategy

(tags: Education exams technology cheating via:mento.info)

When you look at NSFW pics beware the camera crew

The Gromm — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:28:00 +0000

An Aussie bank worker is probably in line for some serious grief from his boss after he was seen looking at naughty pictures of women with very little in the way of clothing, while a colleague was being interviewed by a TV crew from Channel 7.

Sit back and gawp as the camerman zooms in before yer man realises what is happening. (The zoom in is from the Youtube vid as other versions don’t do it)

Live TV catches Australian banker looking at semi-nude photos (news.bbc.co.uk)
Work and Porn Don’t Mix [Video] (cityfile.com)

Quick thought: Virtual supervision

The Gromm — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:21:35 +0000

This year I’m working with two different students as their dissertation supervisor. One is a postgrad and the other an undergrad.

After talking to both of them we’re going to be using Googledocs to share their thoughts and allow me to review what they are up to.

One of them is already using googlechat with me to do interim session and problem solving chats, coupled with the face to face timetabled work.

So far I’m finding it invaluable.

Rapid development and journalism projects

The Gromm — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:09:16 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

As a long term Wordpress user I’m a bit biased when it comes to simple, out-of-the-box CMS software. I’m currently starting to play around with the coding required to make themes work for a number of personal and work-related projects. I’ll be collating links and sharing Wordpress hacks as I go along.

One of the simplest things I’ve found, that has made my life a lot easier, were suggestions for a virtual development server. As a Mac user I know that I’ve got one built in – and have used Terminal to play around with Django, which meant kicking in the server. But this was a little complicated.

After a bit of digging, I found suggestions for using MAMP (Mac) and XAMP (Windows) as a dev server – so I can hack around to my heart’s content.

The only issue I found was working out the web address for the project – the MAMP site left me scratching my head, so I did a bit of searching on how to set up MAMP for a Wordpress install.

Basically you drop your site into the appropriate MAMP folder and set up the Wordpress config file as per the instructions. Then just run the installer at http://localhost:8888/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php

I’ve started digging around in the theme folder – I’m currently looking at magazine-style themes and looking at Arthemia and Scarlett, both of which offer some interesting possibilities but neither of which quite do what I’d like them to do. Hence the reason for starting to hack around.

Starting points

I’m currently reading .net magazine’s issue 199 which has a good article on Wordpress and an old .net article on Wordpress Themes for Designers.

links for 2010-01-29

The Gromm — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:04:23 +0000

Five Ways the iPad Will Change Magazine Design | New at Pentagram | Pentagram

"Editorial content started moving online, shrinking to fit computer screens and then even smaller for PDAs and 140-character tweets. The iPad represents the first time this trend has been reversed. Instead of smaller, more low-res content, we have the chance to get bigger, brighter, sharper content. Designers used to making it smaller may have trouble learning to go the other way.”

(tags: Journalism Magazines ipad apple via:mento.info)