fandom

What’s Next? #westwing Fan fiction on Twitter

A week or so ago I started following Josiah Bartlet on Twitter. Turned out he was already following me, as he likes to follow people who are tagging tweets #westwing. I don’t get a lot of the references to contemporary American politics in his tweets, but there’s the occasional reference to the show

marketing

Do you strip or crunch? A lazy marketer’s guide to social media campaigns

Imagine the following brief:  Bourbon biscuits want to relaunch to attract new younger consumers; our demographic is dying out and young people are more into fudge brownies from Starbucks, we need to bring Bourbons into the 21st Century. What’s the betting that agencies will come back with the follo

facebook

Chris is working for Facebook while he’s asleep, try it now

Here’s an interesting one for you. I got a message from Facebook today that said: “Chris is chatting with Facebook friends using AIM, try it now” Now I’ve mentioned that to Chris, and it’s not something that he asked Facebook to send out for him; point of fact he doesn’t use AIM for Facebook chat. S

Using Twitter in Higher Education

While archiving some old files just now I came across this article, which I wrote for Viewfinder magazine last year. Viewfinder is the magazine of the British Universities Film & Video Council, and the article is pitched at helping academics think about how they could (should?) use a tool like Twitt

books

A posh restaurant style poached egg: home cooked comfort food at its best

I just poached an egg. I just poached a proper grown up actual poached egg. Now let me tell you something about poached eggs: I can’t cook them. Let me tell you something else: I bloody love poached eggs, me. So much so, that I keep a little league table of bloody brilliant poached eggs. It looks… C

howto

The “one email address, many alts” Google trick

Ever wanted to set up an alternative profile on a service but been unable to because you need another email address to register a new account? If you use Googlemail / Gmail then you can sidestep that pretty easily… This is really simple, and yet a lot of people don’t know about it. When you… Continu

apps

My new favourite web app: Tom’s Planner – Gantt Charts

This is one for my students mainly, but also anyone who needs to visualise a project quickly. I haven’t needed to make a Gantt chart for a long time, but I’ve been on a bloody training course on Microsoft Project, and even bought an epic book on that package. Today for the first time in years, I… Co

comics

Geek Squared

My BCU colleague Inger-Lise Bore got me into reading Piled Higher and Deeper – a web comic about being a research student. The humour is pretty geeky and quite niche on a good day, but the last three instalments have ticked all my geek boxes. The three parter is about a trip to a comic-con, and… Con

conferences

Help Me Investigate: the social practices of investigative journalism

Last week I attended the 2010 conference of the International Association of Media & Communication Research where amongst other things I gave a paper, Help Me Investigate: the social practices of investigative journalism. Taking all of your ideas and presenting them in less than 15 minutes is pretty

conferences

Social capital: you’re doing it wrong*

(img cc kelvin255) *not really. I’m being provocative, but I do have some ideas about another way of using the concept when talking about the Internet. I wrote a brief piece over at Interactive Cultures last week, which was a neat distillation of a lit review I’ve written about social capital and a

blogging

Video Cultures – only £1.00 per night

This week I’ve contributed two posts to Video Cultures, a new joint from two BCU colleagues. In their own words Video Cultures is: a research project looking at the history and cultural significance of the medium of video with an emphasis on the sale, rental and collecting of video formats. Develope

digital culture

Web Standards is the new Comedy is the new Rock’n’Roll

So when exactly did coders become rock stars?   In the course of my morning I had cause to be looking at some stuff by Jeffrey Zeldman on A List Apart, and then shortly after to be on Amazon which threw up a suggestion that I buy the new edition of his book  ‘Designing with Web Standards‘… Continue

learning and teaching

Enabling digital participation in Higher Education

OK so being as Ana and Jen (part 1 & part 2) blogged about posters, I guess that means it’s what we do now. So here’s my regulation blog post about a poster. A few summer’s ago Dave Kane, Anita Reardon and I were given a small grant for a pilot project in the uses… Continue reading Enabling digital

ethics

Professional ethics and informal social media

Last year I spoke to a big room full of occupational therapists at their annual conference and I promised to do a follow up with a smaller group over at Therapy Learning. So today I took a day’s annual leave from BCU, and went to Melton Mowbray (where the pies come from) to talk to a few occupationa

pr

Digital Communications & Social Media

This may be of interest to some of my contacts and students. It’s a report on social media in PR and comms agencies, based on interviews with industry bods. I’ve only skim read it, so this is not an endorsement of the content or the methodology, but there seems to be some interesting points raised…

blogging

Why do companies blog? – The non-snake oil answer

Why do companies blog?  A common answer is: “to join the conversation”. That’s a pretty good answer, especially if you’re in the business of helping them to have that conversation. But actually, that’s the answer to the question “why should we have a company blog?”. Why do companies blog? A lot of c

Domain scams, digital participation, and plain English

The other day I was chatting to Nick Moreton about a domain name scam someone tried to pull on his Mum. I mentioned the Domain Registry of America to him as a point of comparison. I hadn’t heard from them for a long time, but funnily enough Domain Registry of America tried to scam me the very next…

Big Culture Blog

Tonight I’ve been posting a few things to http://blog.birminghamculture.org/ as part of a 24-hour snapshot of goings on in Birmingham. So far there have been 97 posts to the site. I’m going to contribute a few more things tomorrow morning before he event ends at 12pm. If you want to show your suppor

Would you do voluntary work for a big PLC?

I get lots of emails with opportunities for my students and graduates. Some are for paid work, part-time, full-time and temporary; others are for unpaid placements and some are for voluntary work. It can be controversial point, but I don’t normally mind people asking for unpaid placements. Our stude

The Gas Safe Register – getting avatars wrong

I’ve just had my boiler fixed by a nice guy called Laurence, who runs a business from the bottom of my road. He’s on the Gas Safe Register (that’s CORGI in old money) so I know he’s a safe pair of hands. The only thing is, you might be forgiven for thinking that your local gas engineer… Continue rea

A very polite and useful note from O2 on iPhone roaming data

A week or so ago I was getting a connecting flight at Schipol airport. I was looking for some wifi to check my email, when suddenly my phone connected via 3G. I double checked, and my data roaming was definitely off (see below). That was a bit of a worry. Anyway, sure enough I got billed… Continue r

business

Digital Birmingham Web 2.0 for Business Seminar

This morning I spoke at a Web 2.0 for business seminar at Digital Birmingham, as part of the digital champion project Below are my slides from this morning’s Digital Birmingham seminar.  Digital Birmingham – Web 2.0 for Business Seminar http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=event1-10

china

Context and making meaning out of food

When we teach students about textual analysis we often talk about “context” and how that can help shape meaning. By that we mean things like how someone comes to a media text (a TV programme, a film, a song, a newspaper article etc.), how and where they are consuming it, what their personal backgrou

Photo for beer commercial / self portrait #fb

It’s Tsingtao time. This beer goes into second place in the “best place I’ve had a beer” all time top ten. What was your favourite beer moment?  SHARE THIS: * Share * * Twitter [https://theplan.co.uk/photo-for-beer-commercial-self-portrait-fb/?share=twitter] * Email [https://theplan.c

Getting around blocks on Twitter & Facebook in China

So Twitter is blocked in China. I wasn’t sure it would be. Apparently it comes and goes, as does Facebook. I don’t really have that much to say anyway, but I’m a bit worried about keeping track of what’s happening with the Fused project, and I was relying on it to update Facebook via selective tweet