Craig McGinty

Presenting an online insight

THOSE kind folk at the online travel magazine Travolution have been thoughtful enough to publish a collection of presentations from their recent conference.

Naturally they come from the likes of Lonely Plant, Silverjet and TUI but they offer an intriguing insight into where some of the biggest online players see things going in the near future.

One I found interesting was the collection of slides from Peter Ward of the WAYN.com website, which points out the phenomenal growth the site has enjoyed, but highlights the range of services, tools and methods of monitisation the site employs.

Andrew Crofts on writing

ON the Freelance Writing Tips website I have been putting together with Linda Jones there is a great piece about living the life of the freelancer by writer Andrew Crofts.

Titled The best time ever to be a freelance writer, Andrew explains that with modern technology and the demand for writers at such high levels with a little planning you can make a success of whatever form of writing you want to do.

To highlight the demand for words he quotes publisher Random House who say they sold four times as many books in 2005 as the entire worldwide book industry did in 1955.

Andrew has rewritten his guide to earning a living from writing The Freelance Writer’s Handbook to take in the world of online publishing and the opportunities that offers.

My Telegraph pushed into the light

AN interesting development by the Daily Telegraph is the soon to be launched My Telegraph, that Shane Richmond outlines in a post and offers up a tantalising screen grab of.

There are pros and cons with such a move, from both a technical and copyright issue, and it is interesting to compare this to the BBC Manchester blog method of linking out and using tags.

The 4 Hour Work Week

I HAVE filed this short piece under the Earning Money category, but you might consider this is not the best place for it if you read the first part of an interview with US author Tim Ferriss on Problogger.

His new book on shifting down a few gears and using technology to get you out of the office and living life is titled The 4 Hour Work Week and his accompanying website may prove interesting as well.

On it Tim points to an interview he gave to travel writer Rolf Potts that features some of the major points behind his belief that your goal should be "living more and becoming more".

Click back to beat splogs

I RECEIVED an email recently from a journalism pal, Sheelagh Caygill, who was talking about so-called splogs, something online publishers may cross quite often.

These are websites usually housed on a blogspot domain name which draw in content by re-publishing RSS feeds, but they are surrounded by Google Adsense in an attempt to get a quick hit in search results so that people click on the ads.

You can usually tell you are on a splog as there are no contact details, large blocks of text that make no sense and adverts are usually plastered across the site.

Just keep it simple

IT is interesting to see mention of a survey that questioned "406 top level business people" about their thoughts on the world of Web 2.0.

A number said a lack of understanding of things such as blogs and networking websites was to blame for their slow adoption, or that departments lacked the skills to develop applications.

Firstly I would leave the development of new Web 2.0 services to the small, nimble footed start-ups out there, most big businesses don't have the best track record in this field.

And why don't they just start looking at what they can do with a simple blogging package, follow industry keywords via Technorati and get subscribing to RSS feeds to see what is being talked about?

I would also suggest that they look beyond their IT departments for users of such tools, they may get a surprise.

Any news on Manchester wi-fi?

WITH the City of London enjoying free wi-fi for a month, I wonder what has happened to Manchester Council's own plans to offer a similar network across 400 square miles?

Plans were unveiled in December that were designed to attract comment and opinion, but I've not read anything since.

If anyone can add more please feel free to post a comment.

Boris cashes in

THE next time you are arguing over the going rate for a feature or 1,000 words with a newspaper or magazine, tell them you only want similar to what Boris Johnson earns for his Daily Telegraph column

Press Gazette:
MPs are on to an earner cashing in on journalism

The web is watching you

IF you have ever wondered just how easy it is for websites to track your passage around the internet, how about this for an example.

I've just been searching Amazon for Thomas the Tank Engine as I'm looking for a present for my god daughter (hope she doesn't read this).

So as you do you browse around, don't see anything and head off elsewhere, this time to a political blog and an article about young people leaving France.

But lo and behold down the left hand side is an ad block from Amazon and guess what it is displaying? Yep you got it items about Thomas the Tank Engine, click the thumbnail image above to see.

And try it yourself...

Market research from blogs

ONE of the things I highlight to users of blogs is that they are a super efficient way of finding out if what you currently do, plan to do or just have an inkling about will work.

Just crossed a great example of this on the Southwest Airlines blog:

I blogged, you flamed, we changed

How long would it have taken the airline to receive this feedback, and make a decision on what changes were required, if it had gone down the focus group path?