Libel and Defamation law for Bloggers

Being a traditionally trained journalist (prior to entering the blogging world a few years ago) I have always had a healthy respect for the libel law in the UK, which is, in the main, anti-media, anti-journalism, and now out of date in the new online world. However, a recent conversation with an extremely helpful lawyer, Victoria McEvedy of McEvedy & Associates (www.mcevedy.eu), has resulted in her sending me a “Primer

Recent sightings of me on TV

Here are my recent appearances last week on Sky and Channel 4 News talking about the Microsoft bid for Yahoo. It was a crazy Friday involving getting across London twice in one evening. Kinda fun though. (Thanks to Paul Walsh for the videos). On Sky News: http://qik.com/video/14393 On Channel 4: http://qik.com/video/14385

Is Twitter now an enterprise productivity tool?

I would have to concur with Marshall Kirkpatrick. I also now use Twitter as a working tool, not just for ‘status upates’ (which I don’t really do any more unless I can say something vaguely informative or funny). I use it to interrogate and interact with my work and social contacts. It’s now one big ongoing conversation which can help me in my work, and especially in writing stories. I

Here’s why TV is in trouble

People in the TV business are some of the most creative people you will ever meet. So why is it that the body set up to market the major broadcasters to advertisers (Thinkbox) allows you, via their site, to watch some of the most creative, clever adverts you will ever see… but you can’t embed the ads in a blog post or share them on a MySpace on Facebook profile.

Twitter killed the Status Star

When Twitter started out it seemed like a cool new web application to update your ‘status’ (what you are up to) for friends and, well, the world in general. Like Facebook status updates, but out on the Wild Web. But when people started having conversations via their Twitter status updates using the “@” symbol (e.g. “@mike Yeah, I thought that”)I was initially quite annoyed. I even direct-messaged some people to

Social media cafe as flash mob

Last year fellow blogger and social media expert Lloyd Davis came up with an idea for something called a “social media cafe” where people working in social media (bloggers, marketing people, technologists etc) could get together in the same space and work. Sort of ‘vertical co-working’. He’s been looking for potential venues – I’m talking physical space here – in London. But this requires cash investment. However, it strikes me

It’s been a while

I hate blog posts saying sorry for not updating here for a while, but…. sorry for not updating here for a while. I have been busy trying to crank up TechCrunch UK since the re-launch and doing some glamourous-sounding (but hard-working I might add) trips to events abroad, including Web 2 Expo Berlin and Les Web 3 in Paris. And on that note, the fruits of my efforts appear to

The New New Newspaper

As I was reading the free daily Metro on a train the other day I was daydreaming about a different kind of newspaper but similar in form to the Metro. Instead of giving me a brief run-down of the news which lasted 20 mins, my “New Metro” would have similar stories, but also print lots of URLs so I could go and find out more information. And I don’t mean

House style killing US newspapers?

When I wrote for a US-owned magazine (The Industry Standard), the house style on almost any story, for example about a company closing, was like this: “John Smith looked at his watch. As the seconds slowly passed, he knew it was time to step up to the plate and tell the board what was going to happen in the next six months. But something stopped him… yada yada.” This was