Slideshare doesn't seem to like the Below you'll find the presentation on mobile journalism I'll be delivering to students on the MA Magazine and Newspaper Journalism course at City University, London on Thursday. The presentation looks at:
• service providers - why do companies offer services which enable mobile content uploading and social networking?
• citizen journalism - what motivates people to "report" what they witness; what sort of content do they create and share?
• journalism - how are professional journalists and new organisations using mobiles?
• tools - what tools are available for documenting and sharing content online?
And at some point during the lecture I'm hoping to involve some professional mobile journalists - by mobile, of course....
This Thursday, and next Tuesday, I'm going to be doing a series of lectures and workshops with my City University MA Journalism students on using mobiles to capture and share content. In preparation, I'm seeking some editorial and technical help from you:
1) I need some interesting examples of mobile phones being used BY mainstream media (eg. Journalists who get paid to report)
2) some links to blog posts by journalists, citizen journalists or bloggers discussing how to use a mobile to create and share stories
3) Some cutting-edge examples of News of other content sites on mobile interfaces
4) the mobile settings - this is my technical question - I need to get my O2 pay and go SIM to work in my unlocked (formerly t-mobile) nokia n95 so that I can use it to demonstrate qik, flixwagon, zonetag, etc
I'll repost the resulting lecture, workshop agenda and links to student work here so that everyone can gain from helping out. Thanks in advance...
It appears that conference season has begun.
On Tuesday I moderated a panel about using social media to have "difficult conversations at Social Media Influence in London with panelists Headshift's Lee Bryant (my boss), Andy Hobsbawm from Agency.com and Paolo Valdemarin of Evector.
[Photo by Kris Hoet]
Today, I'm on two panels during the final afternoon of DNA2009 in Brussels. I'll be joining Laura Oliver (journalism.co.uk), Darren Waters (BBC), Katharina Borchert (WAZ) and Bart Brouwers (Spits) for a panel about twitter, moderated by Ben Hammersley and possibly being joined remotely by Jeff Jarvis.
Later I'm on an experts panel responding to questions about social media.
Follow it all on twitter...
update...15.17:
John Thompson, publisher of the excellent Journalism.co.uk, streamed the panel live. Here's the first of his four clips:
My friend and former work colleague, Matthew Cashmore, who is soon to leave BBC Backstage for his dream job at Lonely Planet in Melbourne, has teamed up with a couple of his mates on a Journey to Russia to raise funds for charity.
They're documenting their journey with blog posts, maps mashups, a live daily video stream and podcasts. Here's what it's all about:
"Journey To Russia is explained simply; 3 Blokes, 3 Bikes, 3 Weeks. The journey starts in September 2008, when Matt, Stace and Patrick leave London for the far flung cities of St Petersburg and Moscow.
The journey will cover several thousand miles in a very short period, crossing the familiar western Europe and venturing into eastern Europe before entering the former USSR. The chaps will visit:
Holland, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Luxembourg, and France...
Motivation - Matt, Stace and Patrick wanted to do something to raise the profile of a charity very close to their hearts, Everyman. Everyman is dedicated to funding research to cross out prostate and testicular cancer."
If you're based in London, you can catch me speaking, alongside Michael Pranikoff, Director of Emerging Media at PR Newswire, and Robert Andrews of PaidContent, at the next PR Newswire Meet the Media event on 04 September 2008. The free events, sponsored by PR Week, are targeted primarily at newcomers to the Public Relations industry, help build knowledge and connections between PR and the media.
On 12 September, I'll be at the International Broadcasting Conference in Amsterdam, for which I've organised a panel which will include Chris Vallance from BBC Radio and others (likely to include someone from a social networking service and another person from publishing or broadcasting) discussing the impact of Social Media on broadcasting. The panel will be chaired by Andy Davy, Controller of Portfolio Management, BBC Future Media and Technology. This will be a free session - see the website for details.
From 14 - 17 December I'll be in Dubai where I'm giving a presentation at 
thenewmediaevent where there will be a two day conference with optional half day workshops taking place before and after. In addition to being in a great location, this one should be really interesting given the likelihood that the audience will be quite different in terms of people, organisations and experiences than the typical London or Northern European social media conference. Also speaking are Angel Gambino (Bebo), Mohamed Al Fatatry (founder of Muxlin), Phillipe Borremans and others.
When the English county of Berkshire was hit by flooding last year, Ollie Williams, then at BBC Berkshire, put together a map that mashed up BBC coverage, the location of emergency relief centres, flickr photos and youtube videos.
Now Ollie's moved to BBC Sport where's he's built a map for the Beijing Olympics that mashes up results, blog posts and geo-coded twitter tweets.
It's quite a nice implementation although, it could be improved with the addition of photos and video, both of which could be easily created and uploaded on the same 3G or wifi enabled mobile as the tweets are coming from. That said, this is a really good starting point for using maps as a way of navigating BBC content - something you're bound to see more of in the future.
Speaking of, James Thornett, another former BBC colleague, has a new(ish) blog called Straight to the Point which is all about mapping, location based services and the like. Well worth a look.
I don't really know what went on behind the scenes, but my iphone has been returned to me by Carphone Warehouse. I got a call from the manager saying that they'd had a call from the headquarters and it was all sorted, all I had to do was go collect it. Which I did. So thanks if you had something to do with sorting this out behind the scenes, or maybe it was just lucky or sense prevailing. Still, it shouldn't have happened and I'm going to be asking for some compensation... will keep you posted.
Off to set up my new phone!
Last Friday I queued up with all the other early adopting Apple fan boys to collect my new 3g iphone on launch day. I took photos of it. I hyped it. I even taught my two year old to say "daddy gotted iPhone" in anticipation of my shiny new toy. As of a short time ago, I no longer have that iPhone and have a ruined credit rating to boot. Here's what happened...
I'd pre-ordered from Carphone Warehouse which, when 02 ran out of stock prior to the launch, still had a few of the 16gb version available. I ordered it and got a confirmation that I'd passed the credit check. Then I got another email, saying they'd run out of stock. A day later, I got yet another email saying that I did in fact manage to secure an iphone and it would be delivered to the branch of Carphone Warehouse at London Bridge Station, as I'd specified.
So on Friday I came in to London early and joined the queue at the shop only to be turned away an hour later when staff told us it was unlikely any of us would be leaving with an iPhone because their system was down.
I went back after lunch and collected my iPhone. They didn't check my ID, ask for me to sign, look at a receipt or anything. I just walked in, told them my name and was handed an iPhone. I took it back to the office and showed it to my envious colleagues. Then I tried to sync it with iTunes which, as those who tried to do the same on Friday know, took many attempts - in my case, several an hour for around 12 hours. Eventually it worked. I registered. I put some of my music from itunes onto the iPhone. I waited patiently for my iPhone to register on 02, the network provider chosen by Apple in the UK.
I waited. And I waited until Sunday when I could wait no more and went into my local branch of Carphone Warehouse where I bought a nice case for my iPhone and asked when it would be online. The member of staff there laughed and said it could be another day or two, such had the problems been on launch day.
On Tuesday, a fully 96 hours after I'd collected my phone, I began to get a bit upset. It still wasn't on the network. I phoned the Carphone Warehouse helpline. The friendly person on the other end asked me my details and found my order but said that, as far as she could tell, it was still open.
I hadn't, from what she could see, collected or paid for my phone.
I explained that I did in fact have it. She phoned someone in their web sales department, then another in their IT department, trying to close the order so that I could get connected to the network. After a while she asked if I'd prefer for her to phone me back. I said yes but, two hours later, still hadn't heard from her and went home for the day.
On Wednesday I phoned again. They tried to do the same as the previous helpline employee and also encountered difficulties. They suggested I take my iPhone to the shop where I'd bought it which, at the end of the day, I did despite realising that I could probably have simply kept the thing without ever paying for it.
On Wednesday evening I spent an hour in Carphone Warehouse at London Bridge Station. The staff were genuinely helpful and here's what they found out:
1. I'd ordered my phone and asked for it to be delivered to one of two Carphone Warehouse outlets at London Bridge listed on the website.
2. That London Bridge shop had actually been closed... more than 3 years ago.
3. The City Link courier knew that the other shop was closed so delivered, as it was on his daily round, my iPhone to the store where I collected it.
4. Only the store that no longer existed could close the order.
The guy in the shop tried to sort it out over the phone and, after an hour, got the store helpline people to cancel my original order. I then went home so it could go through the system.
Today I spoke to the manager. He had the phone transfered into his system, reopened the order, and set everything up so that at lunch all I'd need to do is pop in and confirm my identity using a chip and pin credit card. I did this but it wasn't at all straight forward and what happened next is totally unbelievable.
I could see on his screen that I had passed the credit check done originally. I could also see that there had been a subsequent check made, also passed. I'd asked the manager earlier, and had been assured that, no subsequent credit check would be made on me. For those who aren't familiar with the system, each credit check undertaken actually reduces your credit rating, particularly if you happen to get declined.
I wasn't pleased, but the excitement of my iPhone finally getting onto the phone network - after 6 days - kept me from getting upset.
Then there was some sort of problem with the system so I was asked to do the chip and pin check again, which I did. Again this was fine. He hit some buttons and told me I'd have to have a new sim card. I selected a number from the screen, he put it in the system and hit some buttons. Suddenly there was a problem. He could see the results of the two previous credit checks on screen but the system was telling him to contact Carphone Warehouse because another credit check had been run and I'd failed.
The manager explained this and calmly called the store support line who he spoke with for around half an hour. It transpires that they'd actually run as many as five credit checks on me (he wasn't entirely sure) and that although I'd passed the earlier ones, I'd failed the last one - precisely because they kept running them and, perhaps, because they'd authorised, deauthorised, then authorised my setting up of a new account with 02.
After hanging up the phone, the manager told me that I could, if I want to, go to the Carphone Warehouse and immediately order an iPhone and, because I'd already passed the credit check there, they wouldn't run another one.
Yeah, right.
Then he told me that the phone - the iPhone I'd queued up for and, as far as I knew, had paid for, installed stuff on, put music on, personalised, etc - was in his store's stock. He was very sorry, but he couldn't let me leave the shop with the iPhone because it belonged to Carphone Warehouse, not me.
So I handed it over.
Because of the incompetence of Carphone Warehouse I was given a phone, after quite a long time waiting in queues, that I never should have been given. And because of Apple's incompetence in planning for the sale of millions of the new iPhones, I had to spend hours trying to sync that iPhone. I spent hours then switching the phone on and off hoping that would trigger the network ping from 02 needed to activate it. I moved music, some of it purchased from the iTunes store and thus with DRM which limits the number of devices I can install that content on, over to the iPhone. I spent hours configuring bits and pieces of software, downloading apps (over wifi) and getting to know my new phone. I spent several hours at the Carphone Warehouse store and on the phone trying to sort it out.
Up to that point I didn't have a working phone but at least my credit rating was in tact. Now, because I was honest and took a phone that had been given to me with NO attempt to verify my identity, acquire my signature, or anything else - making it totally untraceable - back to the store beacause I just wanted it to work, I've now come home with NO IPHONE and a RUINED CREDIT RATING.
So thanks Steve for the new iPhone and for choosing as your partners a company that has demonstrated to me over several days and several ways that they are totally and utterly incompetent.
I've noticed a dramatic increase in the number of near-misses I've had with lampposts, traffic lights, signs and other street furniture since I started using twitter on my mobile. Now the team here at cybersoc labs* has come up with a solution: safe-T-weet.
Safe-T-weet does all the things you'd expect from a twitter client - you can see your messages, send replies and direct message friends.
But what makes it special, and potentially life saving, is that it also accesses your mobile's forward facing camera and let's you see, on-screen, the view ahead of you whilst walking. It's like a heads up display for twitter addicts.
And safe-T-weet's functionality doesn't end there. By continually making fine adjustments to your cameraphone's auto-focus, safe-T-weet can actually measure the distance between you and any obstacle. Get too close and a warning appears inline, as a tweet, stopping you before a collision can occur.
Safe-T-weet also integrates fully with TwitPic, grabbing an image of the street ahead at user defined intervals and sharing it via twitter.
Cybersoc labs* is now working to extend the functionality of safe-T-weet with additional features, including:
* smile recognition which can help you recognise friends without the need to stop tweeting
* potentially dangerous individual (PDI) alert to keep your phone out of the hands of muggers and you away from threatening individuals
* integration with zonetag to allow street view images to be uploaded and mapped effortlessly in the background as you tweet
* full plurk, friendfeed and jaiku integration so you don't have to have a Lisa Nova moment when twitter is down
Safe-T-weet is currently in invite only pre-Alpha testing.
[* Cybersoc labs, the developer of safe-T-weet, is a fictional entity which, like the application itself, is a figment of my overactive imagination.]
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