Big Brother is watching you

Today I finally got the proof that linking to other sites does have an effect on my viewing number of my blog. Yesterday I linked to Silobreaker. - No I did not forget to link to Silobreaker now, I deliberately did not link to the site and that has a reason:

Yesterday I was writing that I find it quite hard to get used to Silobreaker. I linked to it, of course. Today I received an e-mail BY Silobreaker, asking me why I find it so hard. Now they are waiting for my reply and suggestions what to do better.

That was a shocking experience. They actually went on my blog and read my post. OK, I'm never going to say anything bad about anyone or anything anymore. They might read it and send me e-mails. That is scary.

photo published in Zeit

Review of Session

photo taken from room214

Last Friday, Kathryn Corrick, a digital strategist at McCann Erickson, came to our class to talk about social media and more research tools for journalists. I thought this is going to be another repetition of the stuff we talked about in class, such as delicious, twitter and so on.

However, I was very impressed with those dozens of new sites and possibilities she showed us. First of all, she said journalists with Iphones were quite behind. I swore to myself not to buy one of these things ever. I guess I have to, now.

I think the search tool addictomatic is brilliant. It gives you the most recent news on a certain subject on twitter, blogs, youtube and so on. I haven't signed in for Brightkite yet, but what I heard intruiged me. It is a location-based network where you can check out what friends in your area are up to.

What? Another social networking site? At the moment I am a member of four networking sites, including Facebook and Myspace - and it takes half an hour in the morning to go through all of them. Now, Friendfeed should solve that problem by showing me all updates on networking sites at one site. However, your friends have to use friendfeed as well in order for you to get updates.

Twitscoop is showing you what the most used words at the moment are. This could be quite useful when writing news stories for Debell Publishing as I always have to be as up-to-date as possible.

Some sites she mentioned were very hard to get into. I did not manage to use sites such as Marumushi or silobreaker in the way Kathryn Corrick showed us.

But all in all, I enjoyed her talk and I was proud that she liked our group blog wandersee.

A Review of Google Reader

photo taken from The Wardman Wire

I have used Google Reader for a week now. No, that was a lie. I had a look at it four times maybe, but you cannot say that I really used it. I am very fond of Google News, but Google Reader is just a bit too much.

I can appreciate the idea. I quite like to have MY news on one page. My first impression was: WOW. This semester I read much more online news than newspapers. But I really do not like going on different websites and find my way through that information jungle. There is just too much news and I can't really find my way through it.

With Google Reader, at least, I have everything at one glance. I now have a list of World News from the BBC, bits and pieces from The Guardian, anti-racist coverage from indymedia and blogs that I subscribed to. So, there is a way into the jungle.

But it is still not a European forest. It is just too much information. When you think you finally scrolled down to the end of the page, there is more news to come and more and more and more and then you just give up. It only shows you the news stories that have been updated at last, but that doesn't mean that they are the most important.

A review of Google News

When Jim mentioned Google News in one of our sessions, I was the only one who used it before. I was quite surprised. I was even surprised that Jim seemed not be that amazed about Google News than me.

I think this Google tool is just awesome. It made my life so much easier. I am using it for a couple of months now and since then at least four times a week. I need it for my job as a writer and editor for Debell Publishing, a company that offers current affairs to hotel guests all over the world. What I have to do is to rewrite news on the internet and put it in a layout. This will be sent to the hotels in many different countries at 1am. It has to be up-to-date, so I am only working at night. Obviously I cannot start writing so early, which is why I have to do it under time pressure. That is where Google News comes in.

Google News gives you a general idea what happened around the world. It is offering Top stories, as well as world, technology, entertainment, Health, Sports and Business news. But you can also personalize your Google News page and get other news as well. This tool allows me to work really fast. Even though I have to write only 800 words overall, I have to research into at least ten different stories in current affairs, sports and entertainment.

Google News tells you how many news websites have covered one story. This is a good hint if this story is a top story or not. Moreover you have an overview of different websites that have covered the story plus the matching headlines. This makes it very easy to compare different angles.

I am often using the German Google News page and it taught me a lot about German media and how different media cover stories differently.

A review of this week's sessions

photo by Antelope View

In this week's sessions I learned so many amazing things that make my life so much easier and maybe even more interesting.

On Thursday we had a look at Google News and Google Reader. Well, I am using Google News since a couple of months now and I just love it. What I did not know was that I can personalize my page. Jim showed me a tool that will be incredibly helpful for me in the future as I am using Google News at least four times a week for my small writing and editing job.

The website I did not know was Google Reader. But this again makes my life so much easier. No more random search for various topics I want to read about. Now I have everything on one website. Reviews about Google Reader and Google News will come soon after I will have worked with them for a while.

But also the research tools such as Technorati , journalism.co.uk and Blog Search are fantastic. I did not know that there is so much out there. This will not only improve my knowledge for this module, but help me to do all my other assigments in all theory and practical classes. It will also be useful later when I have to do research for my articles.

Furthermore I realized how amazing blogs are when we had a look at some of them. First I thought, blogs are either online diaries for people who obviously don't have any friends or media and informatic geeks. But there are really professional blogs out there, such as Green Daily, a blog that found a niche market and is now covering green consumerism. Not only the commercial blogs fascinate me, but also some private ones, for example Random Acts of Reality, a blog about a guy's job at the London Ambulance Service.

I enjoy this module so much that I was actually quite sad that I got the afternoon free. What about writing reviews online? Looking at YouTube? Writing comments? Networking? I do not want to miss out information on this one. And no, I do not think that I will get a better mark by only saying the whole module is great. But the only negative thing I have to say about it, is that we do not get taught everything that is listed on the schedule.

This is my third post today and after pressing the "Publish Post" button, I will start writing my opinion piece on busking. This is the first module where we are encouraged to write and write and write. In the other practical modules we wrote not more than five articles - within twelve weeks. I think this is post number ten after three weeks of doing the module. And there are much more to come. I am looking forward to it.

Silver Surfers - Research Exercise

photo taken from Hantsweb

Guardian- podcast of technology correspondent on new networking site for old people

Older People and the internet- statistics on older people using the internet in australia

BBC- article about old people missing out when they do not use the internet

Baby Boomers join the Information Age- by Emma Aldridge, web site manager for Age Concern - good contact

Herald Tribune- Social networking sites take notice of seniors