Poliblog Perspective

When I started talking the Daily Roundup podcast, back in January I said:

I have been running a short “alpha” trial across my sites and a number of blogs of friends and colleagues who are kindly helping to test the system - these are currently highlighted at the top of the page. It seems to work reasonably well, although it has been interesting figuring out a way to collect credible statistics. I see the “alpha” trial as continuing for another week or two.

The trial has been running for around a month now, and I have done about 25 podcasts. The three key points are:

• It has taken me roughly 1 hr on a good day to prepare the roundup and podcast.
• This is too much time to spend every day for one person without making it a really major priority, but has a lot of potential.
• There is a good deal of advantage in doing both a written roundup and an audio podcast - perhaps as much as 25% on the total time.

I am doing one more podcast for tomorrow with reflections, and I will be looking for a small number of collaborators to look at continuing to produce the podcast.

If you may be interested, please drop me an email.

I’ll be writing a more detailed set of comments as my Blog Platform column tomorrow.

The Daily Roundup is a “First Edition” roundup of news from the British and International press, media and the occasional blog:

• It is produced as a roundup article and short - roughly 4-5 minutes - podcast.
• We aim that the cast and article are published in the early hours to ensure that we are the first source checked by bloggers and opinion formers.
• The written roundup appears at the Wardman Wire, and on the dedicated Politics Daily website.
• The podcast feed is here.

Daily Roundup Players

There are also widgets available to put a “Daily Roundup” player in the sidebar of your blog or website. There are two advantages:

• The short audio programme gives your visitors new content every day - which is especially useful if you do not post daily (or if you are taking a break) as it keeps them coming back.
• Your blog becomes more “sticky”. Visitors will tend to stay for the 4 minutes or so length of the programme, even if they are reading other blogs in different windows, as leaving your site will cut the roundup short. The length is long enough to give time for visitors to read down your site, but short enough to prevent them becoming bored.

The two versions are below:

Single Edition

Read Roundup

Multi-Edition Player

Read Roundup

Wrapping Up

If you would like to place one of these on your website, then please email me at mattwardman AT gmail DOT com.

Hugh McCleod of Gapng Void is one of the cartoonists I often feature.

This is a video - recorded by Andy Carvin - of Hugh in action. It is about 12 minutes.

Click To Play

This is Andy’s comment:

So Chuck Olsen and I had just finished shooting our interview with Dan Rather and we were having a drink at the Omni Hotel in Austin, uploading the footage to his laptop. Then a scruffy guy with an odd American-Scottish accent came over to us and send he was a blogger attending the “S-X-S-W” conference. We weren’t sure what to make of him but he was nice enough. Then just as he was getting ready to leave, Chuck noticed he was wearing Stormhoek Winery shirt drawn by Hugh Macleod of Gaping Void fame.

“Are you a fan of Gaping Void?” Chuck asked.

“I am Gaping Void,” the scruffy Scotsman replied. “I’m Hugh Macleod.”

I’m so glad Chuck asked him that; otherwise we wouldn’t have had the pleasure of his company over drinks. Hugh is best known in the online world for drawing cartoons on business cards, so Chuck and I had the honor of watching him in action, drawing a blank card for Chuck and doodling on one of my NPR business cards, all the while talking about his craft.

I shot around 12 minutes of video of him doodling and talking, and for Gaping Void fans, it would have been a crime to edit it down to the highlights. So here’s the full video. Enjoy.

Andy’s blog is well worth an occasional visit (even though the photo makes me think of Oscar Goldman whenever I see it), as is Minnesota Stories, which is edited by Chuck Olsen.

Is over at Westminster Wisdom.

The roundup is a compendium of last week’s outstanding posts in the British Blogosphere.

This posting is about blog buttons for blogs listed in Iain Dale’s Guide to Political Blogging 2007.

This article explains how to get an alternative button for designs for buttons for blogs in Iain Dale’s lists.

The designs are at the end of the article.

How to get a button

This is easy. If you are in one of the “Top 100″ lists, then send an email to mattwardman AT gmail DOT com, including:

• Your blog
• The list
• The rank number

And I’ll create your burron and send it to you. I will ask for a link back here in return.
Continue Reading »

This article was published in error - my apologies

I hear that this week’s Britblog Roundup is looking for a few out of the ordinary posts to publicise tomorrow.

If you have seen any good posts this week - especially perhaps from non-political blogs - please submit them. You can nominate your own posts.

If you make the roundup it usually generates something between a few dozen and a couple of hundred visitors for your blog. More importantly, it will expose your writing to a significantly different and diverse audience - which may result in some links and subscribers from whole new areas of the internet.

You also have a chance of being featured on Radio 5, and existing forever in the Britblog Archive.

Nominations need to be emailed to “britblog AT gmail DOT com” by lunchtime on Sunday.

Like Thorntons chocolate - you know you want to.

And the sex? it is implied by chocolate. But why not submit something about sex - like this - to the roundup.

I had a phone call today from Immigration, who opened the conversation with the question (with no premilinaries, and they didn’t say who they were until I asked):

Do you have somewhere for helicopters to land?

The story

a) They are looking for a list of airports in the East Midlands where people can smuggle themselves in or out.

 

b) Their current listing includes one called “my village” airport.

c) My house (we do Bed and Breakfast) is the only one that came up in the phone number search for “my village”. Heaven knows where they did the search.

d) They therefore decided to cold-call me.

A few relevant facts and thoughts

• The “airport” is probably a helicopter maintenance depot that closed down the best part of 15 years ago.
• I would seriously hope that a Government Department concerned with immigration would know where to get an up to date list of airports, and ascertain their status without having to phone up random members of the public.
• I even had to give them the number of the County Council.

My conclusion

Bloody hell.

 

This is worthy of a Campari Advert.

Tags: campari, lorraine chase, luton airport, immigration, mike rouse, iain dale, helicopter depot[tags]campari, lorraine chase, luton airport, immigration, mike rouse, iain dale, helicopter depot[/tags]

I note (in poking around on Technorati) that both Ordovicius and Bob Piper have reached a Technorati Authority figure of 100 recently.

Congratulations to them both.

For readers who don’t track metrics, it means that they have received links from 100 different blogs in the last 6 months, which is a fairly robust measure of how often other people take notice of you. It is not a measure of traffic.

On this measure it places them both almost in the top 50,000 blogs worldwide known to Technorati.

Bob Piper … is Bob Piper

I won’t say much about Bob Piper - he has been blogging since 2004, and pretty much everyone knows him. 3 years and still here is cause for congratulation in itself - whether or not one is in agreement.

Ordovicius - “Wales is not England’s bitch”

Ordovicius has made it quickly - the blog is only just over 5 months old - and has the distinction of (I think) being the newest blogger profiled in the 2007 Guide to Political Blogging by Iain Dale.

I believe that there are only two blogs profiled that started in 2007 in the Political Blogging Guide - and the other one is The Wardman Wire. I did my first posting on March 6th, 11 days before Ordovicius trumpeted his “Wales Awake” clarion call:

I’m a Welsh Nationalist, but this isn’t a blog solely about independence, though the cause for Welsh Independence will be a key ingredient. Likewise it is not a blog solely about politics, though politics will play the lead role in it, I’m sure (especially in the run up to the Assembly elections this May). This is also a blog against defeatism, against the idea that Wales is a defeated nation. The Saxons couldn’t defeat us. The Normans needed 216 years, the most advanced technology in warfare at the time, and a lot of luck to take away our sovereignty, bankrupting Europe in the process. And still we rose again. Even afterwards our warriors -employed by the Normans because of their experience in battle - were recognised as the most hard assed bastards in Europe. You only had to say the words “Welsh bowman” to make a seasoned French knight shit his armoured breaches back then. A lot of us seem to have forgotten this, and seem to border on being apologetic for being Welsh. Wales is not England’s bitch.

I keep getting referrals from http://glamorganshire.blogspot.com/ - the blog of Christopher Glamorgan - in the Wardman Wire.

But when I visit I am informed that it is “invitation only”. Click below to see.

I have no idea whether it is a technical hangup, or deliberate.

However, it is rather like standing outside a door, not benig let in, while knowing that they are talking about you.

Grrrr.