Saturday, April 22, 2006

Welcome to Sky News Viewers

Welcome to this blog to the viewers of Sky News Technophile with martin Stanford (pic, left). I'll be on the programme from 10.45 to 11am, so I hope you enjoy the discussion we'll be having on blogs. This blog provides a mix of political comment, insight, gossip and humour (well, it's supposed to!) as well as the odd comment on the fortunes of my beloved West Ham United... Hope that doesn't put you off returning regularly.

6 comments:

Biodun said...

I just watched it.

On the issue of "right of reply", and blogs giving individuals the opportunity to make opposing points, it appeared that the presenter was trying to equate that unique feature with callers who phone into live radio shows.

Basically arguing that blogs aren't really doing anything new.

I was hoping that you'd make the points that due to the nature of live radio shows
- There is a limit to the number of opinions given because of time constraints,
- You cannot edit the comments which come in for quality
- Many people do not even get a chance to listen to the show much less phone in (especially if it took place during working hours)
- Unless they make the transcripts of athe broadcasts available online, the comments will never be stumbled upon or accessed by the wider public the way blog comments can be.

Tim Worstall said...

You really do need to set up trackbacks Ian.
Instant response here:
http://timworstall.typepad.com/timworstall/2006/04/sky_news_on_blo.html

Anonymous said...

Good discussion, not sure that Martin fully understood blogging from the other side of the news desk though.

Let's see if he does start his own blog.

Iain Dale said...

Biodun, good points, some of which I had thought of but because I had been given rather more time than the others up to that point I didn't think I could really butt in again
Tim, what are trackbacks? Please email me.

Tim Worstall said...

What are trackbacks?

Puhleese!

Ok, alright. Imagine that I am writing at my blog. I see something on yours. I decide that you’ve got a good story, something I want to tell my readers about. Excellent, we all know how that works. A quote, I link.

Now, how do I let you know that I have done so? How do I let the readers of your story know that I have done so ? You, of course, can look at your vistor logs. But how do your readers know that there’s an addition to the conversation taking place elsewhere?

That’s what a track back is. It’s me, in the above, being able to leave a little sign at your place, that I’m talking about the same subject at mine. Expanding, denying, rubbishing, whatever.

Adriana would possibly explain it better but the point is that they allow the conversation to move across blogs, develop as they do so, umm, become the horizontal dispertion of information, rather than the vertical, in which only those links which the author of a blog commits are seen by the readers.

Ouch, that’s getting a bit heavy.

Put it another way. I can leave a comment. As long as this. Or I could write something at my own place, link to you, and you and your readers wouldn’t know. But if I could trackback, you and they would.

Technically, Haloscan can add trackbacks to a blogger blog. I’d be careful about it, worth spending the odd 50 quid on an expert like Chris at Devil’s Kitchen. Adding Haloscan can wipe out your previous commemts

Anonymous said...

Trackback also, inevitably, increases your readership and the number of people who link to you. Well worth adding.