I was pleased to be asked, and am now one of the Birmingham Post’s bloggers on its newly relaunched website. Despite the hallowed environs of the mainstream press it’s not a paid gig – so why am I doing it? And more to the point what am I doing in the Lifestyle section?

Adding another blog to write for wasn’t really the aim, hell I could start another in a second on any topic I wanted. there was, however, something exciting about writing for a different audience. The Post as a local broadsheet is quite an odd beast, one that I’ve admired but never really engaged with because of how poor their web-outing was (a man can only read so many papers without a commute). I’m guessing that the new site will introduce a fair number of people to blogs, people who– rightly – aren’t excited by the “a kind of online diary” thing that sections of the media still use.

So, Lifestyle? Well, I won’t be writing about alternative medicine, or shoes (except maybe the odd fantastic pair of pumps), I’m currently thinking that my aim here is to write more informed pieces about the stuff I normally go on about. Something halfway between here and BiNS, intelligent, modern, culture stuff with an interweb slant. I don’t intend to modify my style, or re-hash other stuff. The first post was a odd one, as it had to be written before the site was live, I’m not sure how reading the other blogs on the site will affect future stuff.

It’s also exciting that the people working on the Post, and the site, have really taken the internet to be something different to the paper. Joanna Geary was terrified of blogging only a couple of months ago, but she’s recruited and started off a whole host of bloggers for the section.

Oh, and they use Movable Type, something I’ve never had a go of before, which is nice.

• Online Shops for Niche Products / ShopWindoz - Etsy for europe? One stop shop for leather leiderhosen min-dresses and amigarumia at the mo'
• South By South West Midlands - A group from the West Midlands go to South By South West Interactive. Lucky, lucky, sods, we're not jealous or anything… But seriously, they're offering to spread the weird by letting youse lot tell them what to go and see (within reason I guess).

These are my links for 26th February through 28th February:

• GeoPic II geotags your Nikon shots, saves on battery - Engadget -
• ITN doctors footage - Apparently they dropped advertising into the background of Brits items? Dodgy
• TweetVolume - see how often stuf gets twittered - a sort of "twitterfight"
• press complaints commission to investigate media scraping of social media content -
• Google Talkabout: Google Talk chatback - 'Guest' chat widget for people to connect with you via GoogleTalk - very clever for small blogs. untill someone invents GTalk spam

Since I’ve had my iPhone I’ve become interested in the names people give their wifi networks, the way that the phone brings them up for you as you walk around made that inevitable. So I took to writing them down - I found that I was interested in what it said about the thoughts of who set them up. ‘Secure’, ‘Home’, or peoples names – or those who cared so little they left the default on. I collected these ones here on my normal travels around Birmingham (UK) in January and February of 2008 – the larger ones in the ‘cloud’ do represent multiple networks with the same name, but I haven’t done that scientifically.

I think it works quite well as a poster - I uploaded the graphic to a cafepress store so I can buy one when I get some royalities of some of my other shops.

I spent an enjoyable hour or so today talking about blogs in a way I hadn’t really considered before. A TV company are hoping to make a programme or programmes based around Reading (no not the Berkshire town) - and had for some reason asked me to contribute to a ‘taster’ version (I’m, guessing a short non-broadcast pilot to show commissioning types).

I knew it was aimed at children, so went through my Google Reader looking for blogs that might be relevant to kids - some animal nonsense, music and sport mainly - but really thought that I’d be trotting out the usual stuff about democracy, speed, obsessions, the usual “why do people blog?” stuff. Maybe in a slightly more simple way.

It turned out the way the programme is structured is to encourage people to read, and it doesn’t matter what (within some reason I suppose), and so after a very quick introduction I spent time reading from a few favourite blogs (Cute Overload, Oh and Flying Saucer) that might appeal to kids. And then saying “this is what I’m reading in 2008″.

It was an odd experience to think of blogs divorced, almost, from their context and as pieces of writing alone. The two more text based blogs stood up well, CO not such much - although it was fun to say “snorgling” to a TV camera – but I realised that I don’t think of blogs so much as pieces of writing – more as information.

Information that I can get quickly, information that I understand the context of, information from sources I either trust or know exactly how I don’t. There are blogs that I don’t have much interest in subject-wise, but enjoy the writing – Flying Saucer a case in point there – but they’re not what I immediately espouse as the value of the blog.

Just something I found interesting really, and I will ponder more on.

• FriendFeed - Not sure if this is interesting - it's a very light social network build on your existing feeds.

• Puffbox on the Telegraph Style Guide - "As you might expect it?s a curious mix of the web-friendly and the conservative (with a small, and probably also a large C)."

• Wordpress Newsletter Plugin » ShiftThis.net
  The WordPress Newsletter Plugin allows you to create and manage newsletter creation and mailing list management all within the WordPress environment. - paid for plugin.
  (tags: blog wordpress plugin newsletter cms)
• Fahlstad.se » WP-Forum, WordPress plugin
  (tags: wordpress forum plugin)

• No pictures, or sound, from Olympic Bloggers
  posting of sound, moving images, and still pictures is not permitted. This guidelines apply to any Olympic events, including the “sporting actions” themselves, the ceremonies, or any other activities that require an “Olympic identity or ticket.”

• OUseful Info: MyMaps GeoBlogger - Blogging From Google Maps
  The pipe effectively allows you to use a Google My Map as a “geographical blogging surface”. Each marker on the map corresponds to a separate post, or feed item.
  (tags: mashup maps googlemaps google geotagging blogging yahoopipes georss geocoding yahoo rss blog)