Stags Watch on Twitter

We’ve launched our ChadNews twitter service - the take up hasn’t been phenomenal but it’s early days. Undettered, we’re not Twittering our popular Stags Watch updates. Let me see if I can insert a nice Twitter badge of it here…

…

Ok, that didn’t work. I suppose WordPress doesn’t like Flash, or something. I wish I understood HTML.

Anyway, just go and see our Stags Watch Twitter updates here. And of course, if you text FOLLOW STAGSWATCH to the number on my previous blog on this subject, you can start getting updates on your phone. Marvellous.

 

Twitterbook

Our Twitter news updates are now synced up with our Facebook updates, using the Twitter Facebook application. Sweet. I’m not quite sure why the word ‘Mansfield’ is appearing at the start of each update in the status box (not pictured), but I can live with that for now.

Received wisdom is that the ‘unofficial’ TwitterSync application is better designed, but I’m unable to test it for myself at the moment because it’s currently offline due to an issue with Twitter’s IM service.

Hey… can maybe I can sync our Twitter updates with this blog! But do I want to? (UPDATE: I just have. It’s there on the right.)

Twitter

I’m not very good at explaining what Twitter is, despite a number of attempts. I’ll give it another go:

It’s social networking via mobile phone. It’s a bit like your Facebook status, but hooked up to you and your friends’ mobiles. So you update your status, and 50 of your friends (am I being ambitious?) immediately get your new status texted to their mobile. For free (in the UK). Not only that, but you can also update your status with your mobile phone.

This may not sound essential, but it’s got a lot of journalistic potential. For one thing, it’s an easy and cost-free way of sending out mobile phone alerts about news stories. For the last week, we’ve been putting all the headlines onto our Twitter feed as soon as they emerge. And you can get them sent to your phone. Here’s the pitch:

Do you want to get Chad headlines sent to your mobile phone for free. You can, right now. All you need to do is text FOLLOW CHADNEWS to 07624801423. You’ll get sent a text asking you for your name - just reply to that and you’re good to go. It’ll cost you up to 15p for each of those two text messages, and that’s it.  If you want to cancel updates, just text LEAVE CHADNEWS to the same number.

Personally though, I think you should go further than that. I think you should get your own Twitter feed set up. Just go to Twitter.com and sign up, it’s easy. Have a play, find out what you can do with it, and see if you like it. There’s a lot more to it than I’ve gone into here. Be warned though, it can cost you money if you’re not careful (ie. you send loads of your own Twitter updates via mobile), and I’m not footing the bill for you.

We’re building this up slowly, so we’ve not flagged it up on the site / in the paper yet. We will soon.

Long time, no me

Almost two months this time. Shameful.

Things have quietened down now the football season’s over. We’ve ended our current run of Stags Talk (which we’re all still quite pleased with). It’ll be back, stronger than ever, for next season. If there are any interesting takeover developments between now and then (don’t hold your breath), maybe we’ll do a special edition or two.

That was our one podcast success. Our Entertainment Weekly one failed to ignite, and is on permanent hiatus until we work out how to make it a) entertaining and b) relevant. Our third intended podcast, News Talk, is still pending. The longevity of Stags Talk (I think we’ve done 18 episodes now) brought into focus the amount of work needed to keep these things going week in, week out, and we need to be careful we don’t bite off more than we can chew. Besides, there’s more to life than podcasts.

Like what? Like Twitter. That’s the next big project. So big, in fact, that it deserves its own post…

Come on you purples!

“Did you hear? Mansfield Town could be renamed Harchester United, after a team off some telly programme. Cool! Where can I buy one of those purple shirts?”

That’s not a sentence you’re likely to hear around Mansfield. But go on, admit it, it’s funny. No? Ok, it’s not funny. It’s deadly serious.

Either way, it’s our biggest story all year, and got us loads and loads of traffic. We broke it first, don’t you know?

Just thought I’d mention it, really.

Elephants? In Mansfield?

We’ve got some good videos up this week. Not only have we got some lovely footage of the Mercian Regiment marching through Mansfield yesterday, we’ve been given some interesting archive stuff by the lovely people at Mansfield District Council.

The most significant of these is a Royal visit in 1949 from Princess Elizabeth (before her coronation) and Prince Philip. But there’s also some footage of Billy Smart’s Circus coming to town, and bringing a herd of elephants with it.

This footage follows some video of the Flying Scotsman coming to Mansfield Train Station. Sadly I can’t put a date to these two events just now, although I’m hoping to get a bit more info on that soon.

I’m hoping that this might kick-start a bit of a trend for finding some interesting archive stuff to show online. Our Memories of Yesteryear photo section in the paper has always been popular, and it seems prudent to try and launch a video counterpart to that now that we have the facilities.

In other news, I’m planning something FUN for the website. That’s all I’m saying just now.

WordPress thinks I’m beautiful.

It seems patience is the key. Now I just need to find a better photo.

Do the shake and map

There was an earthquake recently. Maybe it woke you up, maybe it didn’t. It woke me up and left me thoroughly confused.

After I’d shaken away that confusion, it dawned on me that it was a good opportunity to try using an embedded Google map to add to the story. This was the result. As people left their comments, we added them to the map.

Sadly, we didn’t get that many comments, and it wasn’t a story where specific locations were really needed — Mansfield was pretty much shaken across the board. But the map itself was easy to construct, and bodes well for when we put it to more constructive use.

The birth of Bill’s brill book blog

Some of my more productive moments today have been spent adding Bill Purdue’s fledgling book blog to our small stable of Chad blogs. Bill, now retired, was until recently a librarian at Selston library. He’s kindly volunteered to contribute a blog for us on books - of all shapes, sizes and subjects. I needn’t really tell you more - if you’re interested, you just need to click this link.

WordPress thinks I’m ugly

As if I don’t have better things to do, I’ve spent the last half hour grappling with wordpress in the name of vanity. I want an Avatar up. It’s nice to be able to put a face to things, and I want to put my face to this thing.

 I sorted it out for John Lomas on his blog; I sorted it out for Stephen Thirkill on his blog. But when I try to upload my own picture to my own profile, wordpress steadfastly ignores me.  

I’ve given up now. It’s not even a very good picture.