After coming home from my holidays, I thought it was time for a bit of a change at Taking Aim. Hence the much improved new look.
Why does it look so good? Because I didn’t design the theme myself. Thanks must go to iqwolf, for his snappily titled theme: Unnamed One.
The new design isn’t just a pretty face - click on the ‘Open/Close’ link in the top right hand corner for some fancy pop-down menus, or try a quick search and sample the new style results.
I’ve spent most of the last couple of weeks playing wih my new toy - a Windows Mobile phone. (Sorry to those of you who have been expecting regular updates - now you know why).
Browsing blogs on the move has now become a part of my daily routine, albiet a frustrating one at times. Newsgator Go!, which I’ll review another time, makes the job of keeping up with my RSS feeds simple. But browsing individual blogs online (including my own!) can be a real hassle on a small screen.
Well, I can’t really do much about other blogs, but I can make sure that my own is as easy to read as possible on a mobile. So, with thanks to Alex King, I’ve installed Wordpress Mobile Edition for those few of you daft enough to try and read this page on the move…
Update: Hmm, something’s gone slightly awry with uploading the screengrab, which is oddly low-res in my browser. Trust me though, it looks great in my paint programme. And, more importantly, it looks extra-lovely on my Windows Mobile phone!
Catherine Sanderson, the woman behind Petite Anglaise has apparently just netted a two book deal with Penguin - worth a cool £400,000. Colin Randall, at the Telegraph Blog, has the scoop.
No one likes talking figures on these occasions, but I have reason to believe the contract is worth in the region of £400,000 and that more may end up going her way from deals with America and the rest of the world.
An eventual film also seems a strong possibility.
Not bad for the Yorkshire lass who, only a few months ago, was wondering how she would ever keep up payments on the flat she was buying, having been summarily dismissed from her job at an English accountancy firm.
Kudos to her - it’s a great blog, and she deserves every penny. But I kind of get the feeling I’m in the wrong blogging niche…
Britain is to get a brand new internet tv station covering news and politics. 18 Doughty Street - which will broadcast for four hours each evening - promises to “break the mould” . Here’s the trailer:
Having just watched the trailer myself, I must admit, I found it difficult to muster much enthusiasm. Dull, but worthy, was my immediate reaction.
I would be happy to see a new non-mainstream tv news channel, though, so I am keen to see how it develops. And, yes, I’ll happily eat my words if I turn out to be yet another cynic with a blog.
Vladimir Rakhmankov, the editor of the online publication “Kursiv,” went on trial on September 21 for running an article with the headline “Putin as Russia’s phallic symbol.”
Rakhmankov faces up to a year of jail time (also known as ‘corrective labour’) or a fine.
The launch was very smooth. The trip to the station felt long but it was worth it. I cannot keep my eyes off the windows. Earth is magnificent and peaceful from up here. You don’t see any of those awful things you hear on the news, from up here.
Written by Anousheh Ansari, the first female space tourist. Admittedly, she had to blog via email - I don’t think Wordpress works properly outside the earth’s atmosphere - but it’s still pretty cool.
If I once thought the regional news on S4C or BBC Wales was parochial, I now stand corrected as to what that word actually means.
[…] we had the story of a small lorry which got stuck when crossing a makeshift bridge over a ditch, the ditch in question being about a metre wide and six inches deep. An interview with the driver was of particular benefit to the viewers.
“There is not much choice. There is not, because we screwed up. Not a little, a lot. No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have.
“Evidently, we lied throughout the last year-and-a-half, two years. It was totally clear that what we are saying is not true.
“You cannot quote any significant government measure we can be proud of, other than at the end we managed to bring the government back from the brink. Nothing. If we have to give account to the country about what we did for four years, then what do we say?”
I’ve been remiss this week in not publicising the great work that Robert Mayer has been doing over at Publius Pundit recently.
He’s just been on a trip around Eastern Europe, investigating the failed attempts to remove Alexander Lukashenko from office in Belarus, and the more successful Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Here, in One Student’s Struggle in Belarus, he interviews a Belarussian democracy activist, who is managing to continue the struggle in Ukraine.
One of my websites was recently stolen and turned into a splog - that’s a spam blog to you and me.
So, naturally, I was interested to read this Wired article about the rise and rise of splogs, and their battle with search engines and blog hosting companies.
Mostly, it’s a pretty good article. However, personal experience means that I can’t agree with Six Apart’s Anil Dash, who believes that charging people to set up blogs stops sploggers:
Ultimately, he thinks, “the solution is going to be accountability. You have to know that somebody is who they say they are.” Six Apart’s TypePad blogging service enforces accountability on its bloggers in one of the simplest ways possible: It charges them at least $4.95 a month to host their blogs. Not only is the token payment enough to discourage scammers who want to operate thousands of blogs at once, but it also establishes bloggers’ identities by tying them to a bank account.
My experience arose out of a blog about Russia that I used to write (some of you will remember it). Being my first blog, I took the safe option of hosting it on Typepad. But, about a year ago - by this time I was a bit more tech savvy, not to mention protective of my bank account - I moved the blog to Wordpress. Happy with Wordpress, I closed the Typepad account pretty soon after, and promptly forgot all about it.
You can imagine my surprise when I checked statcounter last week, only to find that by long dead Typepad blog had risen, phoenix-like, from the ashes, and that it was referring people on to this site.
Visiting the old Typepad site, I found that my blog had been accurately reproduced - design and all. Every single word I ever wrote on that site was displayed on screen, but with one tiny difference - and here’s the fun bit - mixed in with my profound prose were some very graphic keywords and links to a bunch of hardcore porn sites. Not all of them involving human to human sex.
Lovely.
Fortunately, there is a happy ending to this tale - for me anyway. I wrote a slightly alarmed email to the Typepad administrators, and they took the site down within a couple of days.
I can’t fault the way Typepad responded once I alerted them to the problem. They acted quickly and professionally at all times, and were a pleasure to deal with.
But my experience doesn’t do a lot for Dash’s claim that charging people to set up blogs will prevent sploggers from abusing the system.
For starters, someone managed to set up a splog on Typepad using a defunct account that they presumably had to pay for. And, second, the only reason it was closed down was that I happened to notice its existence, and have the perseverance to find the right contact form on Typepad’s website and let them know about the problem.
Update (7/9/06): Check out Anil Dash’s response in the comments.
Update 2 (7/9/06): An email from ‘Brian’ dropped into my inbox this morning, offering me $100 if I would place a few advertising links on my blog. Here’s a quote from the email:
I noticed that you are no longer updating the site. However, it still has some value for advertising for my company, which specializes in selling event tickets.
I’d like to pay you US$100 for the right to put about 10 links on the site for a year. They could be on the right-hand side, under your statistics area, and wouldn’t look like advertisements at all.
To be honest, if I wasn’t aware of splogs, this would seem like a pretty tempting offer. After all, as Brian says, I don’t update the blog any more, so $100 would be money for old rope. I would probably be a little puzzled, though, about why a blog about Russia would help someone sell event tickets.
Yes, it’s that time of year again, when we all get together and link to five new blogs from around the world. I’m not quite sure why - probably to celebrate the diversity of the blogosphere or something - but I’m going to take part anyway. So, here goes - in honour of Blog Day 2006, I’ve selected five blogs, all of which are new to me over the past month or so, and which I’ve enjoyed reading.
The magnificently named qwghlm.co.uk. Not picked for name alone though, oh no. It’s got quality writing too. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s home to the Daily Mail Headline Generator, which I’m told has been used to train countless generations of right wing journalists. Will the French lead Cliff Richard astray is indeed the question of the hour.
Not a lot of people know that I wrote both my undergraduate and my postgraduate dissertations on Central Asian politics. So I was, of course, thrilled to see the arrival onto the blog scene of The Roberts Report on Central Asia, written by Sean… um… Roberts, who seems to know his way around Central Asia pretty damn well. He looks to be setting his stall out to become one of the definitive Central Asia blogs. Well, he’s got a ways to go before he matches the mighty registan.net, but he’s made an impressive start.
Our Word is Our Weapon. Everything you need to know about development (of the international variety), plus a whole lot more. I only found this today, so not too much to say about it yet, except that I’ve probably learnt more about development than I did at university. Top of the blog today is the rather alarming statistic that there are more than 47,000 HIV+ patients per HIV clinic in Sudan. In India there are 5,000 patients to a clinic. In the United States and the United Kingdom, there are less than 100 patients to a clinic.
I couldn’t let this list go without a Russian blog. I’m a bit of a Russophile myself, as you might have guessed, but I couldn’t resist being a bit contrary today. La Russophobe is written by the indefatigable Kim Zigfeld who is certainly passionate about Russia. I don’t agree with the tone of the blog one bit - as you might imagine, it’s relentlessly negative. Russia has its problems to be sure - major problems. But there is plenty of good in Russia too - it is truly a beautiful country, with people just as nice as you’ll find anywhere else in the world (no better, no worse). And if ever a country needs to be given a break now and then, it’s Russia.
OK, one last blog to go. Taking the spirit of finding new blogs, I’ve just popped over to Technorati, typed ”random blog” into the search box, picked a random page of results (page six, as it happens), and picked a random blog from that page. And, the winner is… Tiffany in Kimchiland. According to her sidebar, Tiffany lives in Singapore. More impressively, according to her latest post, she’s an expert on Korean Drama, and has posted her list of 50 things you can learn from a Korean Drama. My favourite was number sixteen -
“If you have a nosebleed, you most definately have cancer. And you have no money to pay for the surgery that will save your life. And your liver is missing. We’re not sure where it went, but it’s making your cancer progress faster”.
Number one caught my eye as well -
“Hot, rich, younger men love fat, older vulgar women”.
OK. That’s all the blog day 2006 goodness for this year. The instructions say that I have to go email all the people I’ve linked to, so I’m off to try and dig out their email addresses.
Nosemonkey has spent far too many hours than can be good for him compiling a list of the best new British blogs. Never one to knowlingly over-state something he warns:
…all of them are, however, in some way promising.
I’ve found a few more additions for my blogroll, but I am imost mpressed by the number of professional journalists that have taken to blogging and - most importantly - sticking to it after the initial buzz has worn off.
A year or two ago, back in my siberianlight days, Robert Mayer of Publius Pundit and I briefly discussed the idea of going to Belarus, to provide independent blog coverage of the Presidential election from on the ground.
I never got around to it, because I was too poor (and, let’s face it, too lazy). But Robert is made of sterner stuff than I and, this summer, has spent several weeks travelling around Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, taking a long hard look at how democracy is faring.
Today, Robert has posted the first of a series of articles based on his travels - Walking Among the Tent Camps - which explores the mixture of disillusion and hope that is felt today by many of those who worked so hard to bring about Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.
Sergei is his name, a 23 year old student of political science who has been an activist for a few years now. He is one of the main coordinators of the camp, making sure that the little village of 52 volunteers, most between the ages of 20 and 30, runs smoothly. And it does. PORA’s base is well-regimented. Political leaflets are handed out as leaders try to persuade passersby to support their cause, the camp is kept clean, intruders are kept out, and volunteers are sent on missions to bring food and drinks for those staying in the tents.
He explained to me that he and the rest had been out on Maidan for nearly a month and would be out there until August 24th, Ukraine’s independence day, because they don’t like the coalition that was formed in parliament and believe that their country needs change. They know longer want to be part of Russia’s sphere of influence and because of it consider themselves true patriots of their country.
Robert has plans to visit more newly emerging democracies and totalitarian countries around the globe - but blog journalism like this doesn’t come cheap. He’s looking for donations and, if you value quality independent journalism, I’d urge you to contribute a few dollars if you can.
Someone out there doesn’t like Polly Toynbee. Actually, lots of people don’t like her:
Polly Toynbee is, far and away and without a shadow of a doubt, cyberspace’s premiere Fiskee. Some of usaregrosslyrude about her; othersmore polite, relatively. But on days such as this, when she returns to her favourite theme - we must be more like Sweden, and only one man from Fife can deliver this Utopia - a veritable peasant’s army comes crawling from every shack and hovel to take arms against this dowager Empress of the left-liberal media Establishment.
I spent much of yesterday tinkering with the design of the site, to give it a lovely 3-column look. It looks beautiful in Firefox.
If you’re using Internet Explorer 6, however, it looks like a bit of a dog’s dinner. The sidebar is still viewable, in all it’s glory. It’s just at the bottom of the page, rather than at the side.
Ho hum. I’ll take another look tonight, to see if I can figure out what went wrong.
If you aren’t reading this through an RSS feed, you’ll notice that the vSlider theme that has been this blog’s public face until now has gone.
In it’s place, I’ve decided to use the K2 theme, which offers a bit more functionality, and emphases clean lines over graphical style.
I hope you like the new look. Two additions you’ll notice right away on the sidebar are a list of my recent del.ico.us links, and a list of recent comments.
Over the coming days I’m sure to be making the odd tweak, so bear with me if things go a little wonky from time to time. First up, I think, is to find a decent banner image…
[Labour] have announced this competition to offer an “up and coming blogger access to this year’s Party Conference”. If all that is on offer is “access to all the key speeches and events at Conference and you’ll be blogging from the floor about your experiences” then it is pretty underwhelming.
Hmmm. I think I’ll enter anyway. If only to make snarky comments about how out of touch with the modern world most British politicians are.
Oh, and while I’m on a “they don’t understand us” rant… I watched Newsnight on the BBC last night - they were talking about how the blogosphere broke the story of those doctored photos of the Lebanon conflict. Only, it wasn’t “bloggers” who did it - it was “internet bloggers”.
I must confess, I never actually read the magazine, other than the odd idle browse on the newsstand, because its just too expensive over here in England.
But, I’ll keep an eye on the blog, which has already drawn my eye to one story I’d like to blog about.
The New York Times has launched its redesigned website, and its now packed with snazzy new (well, they were new a couple of years back) ideas, such as lists of most blogged stories. They’ve also made the site wider, after taking note of the fact not many people still have 800×600 monitors. Anil Dash, from Six Apart (they of Movable Type and Typepad fame) thinks the new design shows that the NY Times have been learning from bloggers, not just because of the content innovations, but because of their design “aesthetic” - mainly lots of white space.
I have to say that “it looks like a blog” wasn’t the first thing that sprang to mind when I saw the new site. Instead, I was surprised by how much more like the New York Times print edition. One big picture to give focus, with the lead stories of the day arrayed around it.
Which, actually, in my book is a good thing. I know we are supposed to use they web in new and exciting ways. But, in all my time, I’ve never really found a website that, for front page design, has bettered the humble print newspaper.
I really don’t see it as a ’scrounge off the taxpayer’; much of my professional life is ‘Ministerial’, paid for by the taxpayer, and part of that has to be about engaging with people, and this helps me do that.
In theory, I don’t really have a problem with spending a decent amount of money to customise a blog, to make sure it fits in with the ministerial webpage. Image is all important in politics, and we (the blogging community) would have crucified the poor guy if he’d have turned up with a bog standard wordpress or movable type template.
But two related things I wonder about:
Ministers move from Ministry to Ministry quite a lot, at the whim of Prime Ministers.
It costs six thousand pounds to integrate a blog with a Ministry website.
So, just how many times will David Miliband’s blog consume six thousand pounds of taxpayers money over his political career?
Browsing blogs on the move has now become a part of my daily routine, albiet a frustrating one at times. Newsgator Go!, which I’ll review another time, makes the job of keeping up with my RSS feeds simple. But browsing individual blogs online (including my own!) can be a real hassle on a small screen.
Anil Dash, from Six Apart (they of Movable Type and Typepad fame) thinks the new design shows that the NY Times have been learning from bloggers, not just because of the content innovations, but because of their design “aesthetic” - mainly lots of white space.
