middledigit.net | jonathan hopkins

Just catching up on my feeds and this popped up - a glimpse into what teenagers love and hate reading. Some interesting stuff in there, if a bit random - including the fact that reading “My own blog or fan fiction” comes in at number 4 most loved and that Facebook is number 9 most hated. How odd. What is encouraging is that “80% of the teenagers surveyed write their own stories and keep up-to-date with current affairs by using sites like BBC Online” but then again, it seems books with more than 100 pages are a big no-no.

Looks like it’s part of the National Year of Reading 2008 (me neither) and is tied into Piczo where you can get more of an insight into da yoof - including this little gem “i ♥ anne frank bookz. i hav been twoo the anne frankk house && it wozz rlly interesting :D”

Most loved reads
1 Heat magazine
2 Bliss magazine; online song lyrics
3 Online computer game cheats
4 My own blog or fan fiction
5 The Harry Potter series
6 Anne Frank’s diary
7 Film scripts
8 Books by Anthony Horowitz
9 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by CS Lewis
10 BBC Online; the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson books by Louise Rennison

Most loathed reads
1 Homework
2 Shakespeare
3 Books of over 100 pages
4 Magazine articles about skinny celebrities
5 Books assigned by school/teachers
6 Encyclopedias and dictionaries
7 The Beano
8 Music (scores); the Harry Potter series; maps/directions
9 Facebook
10 Financial Times; Anything in another language

[Via Guardian]

The LA Times reports on lifecasting and Qik.com, the software I got all excited about earlier this week when a live video stunt took place in Norway using Qik.

Jason Calcanis is interviewed in the piece and besides calling himself a “nerd who builds websites” he predicts that “The worst moment in almost everybody’s life is going to be captured on film”.

That’s lifecasting for you.

Jemima Kiss lists out the latest ABCes for the main newspapers. No surprises that the numbers are up year on year across the board, but as she points out, very interesting that more and more so lots of traffic is from outside the UK. More fuel for the fire in my mind which tells me that to try and split digital comms activity into US, UK and so on is getting even more ridiculous. We need to think about (and do!) things differently, fast.

“Even given meteoric online readership trends, January’s results from the ABCe are remarkable. The Mail Online’s unique user numbers increased 165% year on year to 17,903,172. In the same period, Telegraph.co.uk increased 65% to 12,348,706; Sun Online grew to 13,322,535, up 40% from January 2007, and Times Online increased 39% to 15,087,130. Guardian.co.uk remained the highest traffic website with 19,708,711, a rise of 26% year on year”

Happy new year, have a good Christmas (?) etc to everyone.

Ged tagged me over Christmas to help fuel the “My Week In Media” meme that came off the back of this and this. Back then I was sat on a sofa in Northumbria with a patchy broadband connection so I decided to leave a comment directly over at Ged’s, which has since randomly gone AWOL. Now the meme is growing (full list here), I feel obliged to take part, even though as I haven’t been at home or work over the past week so this is a weird twisted version of what would normally be my week in media.

1) What I’ve read
Daily Mail, every single day. I’ve been staying at my parents house and yes I do try telling them.
News of the World, back to front a few times. Hmm.
Hello! magazine. Jesus Christ there are some messed up things to be seen in there. Jordan, Andre and the kids dressed as a Nativity scene in particular.
Guardian, bits of.
Scotts of Stow catalogue, a few times.
Maplin catalogue, as above. They have inverters for about £30 so you can plug 240v mains into your car. I’m getting one.
Microtrends, like loads of other people I bet I got this as a present. I’ve read the intro, the first few microtrends and skipped to Social Geek.
Stuff on my Cat, the book. Was working with Yahoo! a couple of years ago when the site this book is based on was nominated with a Finds of the Year award. The Blue Cross charity wrote to us to complain. The book is still funny mind.
Instruction manuals, lot of. I got loads of amazing presents for Christmas, including a Canon 400D and Guitar Hero for the Wii. As Hugh would say, rock on!
Online I haven’t been as active, with next to no 3G where I was and that patchy broadband connection to cope with. When I did get online I check my feeds in Google Reader and scan Twitter/Techmeme mainly. For an instant hit or just to find something nice and interesting, I check out popurls. Usually I’ll be all over stuff, but in the past week I haven’t.

2) What I’ve watched
As people have pointed out, Christmas TV was fairly cack, so I’ve mainly watched movies and the odd bit of TV.
Transformers, a few times.
Simpsons movie, just the once. Good but is just like one big episode though don’t know what else I was expecting.
Most Haunted, Series 8. I can’t help it. I like it and got the box set.
Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Can’t decide if Simon is a cock or not.
Local news in Northumbria. Genius, nice bit of Look North.

3) What I’ve listened to
Pandora, lots of.
Linus Loves, Stage Invader.
Justice, Cross.
Radio 1 in the car.
Radio 4 at my parents house.
Lots of dog barking.
Kids talking on their own language (Favourite is that “Rips” = Father Christmas)

Now, I’m going to try and get the digital peeps to take part so I tag Iain, Yacco, Flo, Faris and Amelia who I don’t think have taken part yet.

BBC is reporting that the website MyFootballClub, set up to buy a stake in Ebbsfleet United and help run it, has been given the go ahead and a deal struck. Great idea that I’m sure you’ve heard about already. This is surely the start of a lot more exciting things like this. Maybe we could all have a say in how our country is ran? With advances in technology and the rise of the mobile, it’s now technically possible. Bring it on.

The 20,000 MyFootballClub members have each paid £35 to provide a £700,000 takeover pot and they will all own an equal share in the club. Members will have a vote on transfers as well as player selection and all major decisions.

Chris Anderson blocks email from PR people and lists their email addresses online. There’s someone from Bite on there too, which is nice. Could this be the first signs of a new trend?

A great article by Danny Bradbury published on the Guardian yesterday - “The growing number of websites that mix and match low-quality articles produced by amateurs in order to generate traffic is causing concern”. PR, SEO and online advertising are mixing quicker than ever before and we’re having to get even more technically literate to understand what that means for each of our industries. This is right where I’m at right now. And it’s complicated!

As I’m sure loads of people did yesterday, I was invited to take part in the beta test for the BBC iPlayer which launched today. All very nice but it doesn’t work on a Mac. I think it’s bit rubbish not to release a Mac version at launch, especially as it’s called iPlayer! I’m sure there’s lots of reasons why and the BBC has said that it is aiming to provide for Mac and Vista users in future versions (see cut and paste below), but even so - I feel a bit left out in the cold, especially after being invited to take part.

“To take part, you must have access to a PC with broadband at home. It must be a PC running Windows XP. The technology is not currently compatible with an Apple Macintosh or Windows Vista - although we are aiming to provide for these in future versions.”

Disclaimer - I work with Apple and have done so for the past 3 years.

Charles Arthur has let off some steam about PR. He’s had a shocker of a week. Great insight into why PR needs to get a whole lot more “digital”.

Not if London Dog Tails has got anything to do with it. Out in July. Will be keeping an eye on it, even if I am a cat man. Pretty sure it’s aimed at humans and not dogs.