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Posts tagged ‘Internet forum’

23
Nov

Beebs College of Journalism to go live in December

Nearly five years ago the BBC launched a new virtual training service for its journalists called the BBC College of Journalism – or CoJo.

CoJo has evolved considerably since it first started but is basically a mixture of digital courses, face to face courses and information/best practice provided in the form of a blog and articles.

Their are focused exercises looking at things like writing that includes digital courses, videos, guides and advice from people within and outside the BBC.

There is also a very impressive, and fun, virtual newsroom application that throws story updates and tasks at you in quick order.

Well this incredible resource for BBC staff will be opened up to the wider British public on 14 December. It will be free for British users and under a subscription for people accessing it internationally.

The team behind the service have been busy “writing, editing, blogging” to get the content ready to launch the site to the wider public.

As well as the learning resources and blogs the team are also making use of feeds like twitter and delicious to pull in information from around the rest of the web.

According to Kevin Marsh of the team, there are currently around 2,500 pages within the site, a couple of hundred videos and dozens of virtual newsroom scenarios.

Once it has gone live I think this will quickly become an invaluable resource for journalists, bloggers, academics, students and even people sharing stories with their friends.

And hopefully it will be picked up and used by people contributing to message boards, comment systems and phone-ins as the libel courses would help make those platforms run more smoothly.

One to read

Story Curve: Emerging into the light

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20
Jan

New look iPlayer boards

The iPlayer message boards are a really interesting place to hang around – mainly for some of the vitriolic comments from people that can’t get shows they want or can’t make it work.

But the other thing that makes them interesting is that they seem to be the first of the BBC message boards to go wide.

iplayer_index

As well as going wide and stretching things out a little bit there is a much cleaner look and feel to them.

The text is on a white background – in boxes that are in turn on the black iPlayer background.

The links are the iPlayer dark pink and there are permalinks to every section and post clearly labelled.

iplayer_thread

There are a few issues – when you view your discussions it no longer tells you how many posts have been made on that thread ‘since’ your last visit or highlights the threads with new posts.

It’s also a little tough to get used to at first with the really bright white on a black background – but it works. It’s stylish compared to other BBC message boards and hopefully the way the rest will go.

iplayer_thread

It doesn’t feel nearly as cramped as other boards (such as Points of View) BUT to a certain extent does feel a little too open and wide.

iplayer_thread

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10
Sep

Cleaning out the drafts

Drafts and a bin

I have a pretty rigid routine for checking the web every morning. I always visit the same sites in more or less the same order – usually after checking my e-mail.

The routine basically involves going through message boards, blogs, news sites, reading columnists and visiting various other websites I’m into.

While I’m going through all these sites I’m making a note of things that spark my interest (I should probably add them to delcious but I never remember) so that I can do something with them later.

And then I open WordPress. When I have WordPress open I write new posts around the ideas and things I gathered during my morning trek.

But I don’t. I write a headline, I add a weblink and sometimes I even get as far as writing a couple of paragraphs – but I rarely ever actually finish them.

It’s got so bad that until a few minutes ago I had hundreds of draft posts just sitting there unlikely to ever be completed – but because I’m an ADHD, OCD riddled geek I couldn’t bring myself to delete them.

Well I’ve finally done it – I’ve gone from having hundreds of draft posts to just five draft posts. And as soon as I click publish – five will become four.

The other four posts I’ll be writing at some point (hopefully before I forget why I’ve saved them) are:
Bloggers: Saviours of local news?, Jelly as an art form?, Earning man points and British Cultural Expansion.

I think they fit the brief I’ve set myself with Up Your Ego, basically to ‘create a guide to surviving life in the 21st century’.

And in the meantime – I’ll try and remember to add my ideas to Twitter and Delicious instead of creating draft blog posts nobody will ever see!

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