1st May: RSS Awareness Day

Gray Day

Gray buildings. Gray sea. Gray sky. Gray clouds.

Paying Users for Generating Content

A while back I mentioned user generated content, and wondered how long before forums and hosting sites that make money out of users content (eg from all the advertising that is on popular pages) would start paying producers for that content. of course, after hosting costs and overheads and profits were taken into account. So far I've only seen competitions and reader discounts, and no financial rewards. Until today, where I followed up a link to some videos on metcalfe.com and looked at their http://www.metacafe.com/producer_rewards/

I like the fact that it tells you how much the producer makes for a certain video. Nice way to attract more content from the "I can do better than that" brigade.

There was a nice human drama playing out in one of the comment threads of a how-to-make-a-stove video. Someone alleged that the stove blew up when they followed the instructions and they were consulting a lawyer. Whether genuine or not, it opens up content providers and hosting companies to abuse. Be careful when giving advice online.

Long weekend approaches

Will the weather be as good as this at the weekend?

QoS wins

Despite all the talk from the Aberdeen fans in the office, I was surprised to read that the Dumfries team had actually won at the weekend. The Dons fans were on about the terrible game and how it was a waste of money ... I was under the impression that it had been a walkover for Aberdeen. But no. The underdogs win.

I don't follow football at all, but Queen of the South are from my home town, and also the only football game I have ever been to when I was young, so what the heck.

That means they are through to the finals of the Scottish Cup. Wow.

Match details from BBC site

PS: if anyone wants to console Sheila, feel free.

Online Community

I've been investigating a virtual world with a class. Should be fun seeing how it all turns out as the students all have their secret missions relating to employability skills.

Weather Changeable

It was snowing all last night and this morning. Like a badly animated cartoon, the snow seemed to disappear at street level. Now the sun is streaming through the windows and big fluffy clouds are making the afternoon feel oppressive. Or it could just be all the outstanding paperwork i have to catch up on. And my big cumfy works chair died. It collapsed when I was on the other side of the room in a similar way to the BluesMobile.

What I did on my Holidays

Took some photos with my new camera. Noticed that the photo of me has appeared in the wall of fame by the library.

And then got knocked out by manflu last week. Blegh. Last year I walked across Scotland at Easter, this year there were days when I couldn't even walk round the supermarket. Double blegh.

The Final Frontier

Following an article on the BBC News about a robotic space ship docking under its own control with the International Space Station, I noticed that they were using this GoogleMaps mash-up site to plot the position of the space vehicles.

http://www.n2yo.com/?s=25544

Sorry, the 'they' mentioned were the BBC and not NASA/ESA. But the way Google's going, you just never know ;-)

Another tracking site is:

http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shiplocations.phtml

Clicking in the ship details can even bring up its previous course.

How to Become a Famous Blogger

Courtesy of Dave Walker at weblogcartoons.com

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Radio 4's 2.0 show back on the air

iPM is back on Radio 4 this afternoon. It uses a blog and forum to generate user discussion for  the show. It is led by Eddie Mair, once an armchair general on a BBC2 wargaming show (not many of them to the pfennig)

Site link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ipm/

Just by browsing the links I find some interesting stuff. A civil servant being taken to task by her employers for her blog, and some "griefers" causing, well, grief, by using javascript on an epilepsy forum. Real life isn't a computer game.

Link 1: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/25/civil_serf_blogger_suspended/

Link 2: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/03/epilepsy