This ain't something else.

The podcast finally reaches pensionable age – if it were a woman – and show 60 sees Angry, Ben and I discussing the week just gone, which includes Angry making a drunken tit of myself in front of TV’s David Mitchell, me getting into trouble at the Tate Modern, and Ben finding the Oscars very, very dull.

All this plus dog insurance, a new drug called meow meow, how to deal with recruitment consultants, and a list of disgusting things that have been in our mouths.

We are also happy to announce our new website, which can be found here: Angry & Cliff – The Podcast.  It’s almost finished, so feel free to come by and say hello.  As of next week, this site will return to being a ‘blog’.  A rarely updated, distinctly unpopular blog, but a blog nonetheless.  Which means of course that the show will now be published on the new site.  It won’t make a difference to your feeds or anything, so you shouldn’t even notice the difference, if you’re a subscriber.  If you’re not a subscriber, then I ask why the hell not?!

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Now my bit, which I haven’t just cut and paste from Angry’s blog. Our joint website is up now and  we’ll keep it updated instead doing the podcast and publishing it on both our blogs.

I have to say it’s looking really good, and I can say that in all humility because Angry did nearly all of the work while I sat in a virtual hammock sipping brewskis, occasionally lifting the brim of my hat and going: “I think it should be ‘Home, Podcasts, About, Contact Us’ instead of  ‘Home, About, Contact Us, Podcasts’.” And then Angry changes them about.

It feels a little like moving in together, but Ben is very happy about the arrangement. There’s lots of room for him to play, it’s around the corner from his own blog and it’s not near any main roads, so it’s ideal really. And the hosting? Oh my god. You would die. I won’t even tell you. Angry got it as part of his existing agreement, you know for his other website? Well. We just snapped it up right there and then on the spot.

But it means this site won’t be the place for podcast things anymore and will probably go back to some writing or stuff, although I will write about that in another post soon. Oh good, writing about writing, you say. But no, seriously, there is an incredible amount going on.

Actually, what about ‘Home, Podcasts, Contact Us, About’?

 

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The earthquake in Chile on 27 February illustrated the differences in how news organisations use Twitter.

The greatest strength of the microblogging site is that there are few rules beyond that of the 140 character limit, leaving editors to use Twitter however they choose.

Take National Public Radio as a recent example. The American public service radio news broadcaster, like many US news outlets, has several personality-led programmes. It’s one of the big differences between American and British current affairs programming. CNN has Larry King Live, Anderson Cooper 360, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, while the BBC News has Click, Hard Talk, Fast Track, World News America.

In the same way, NPR has many personal Twitter accounts, and in the wake of the earthquake and amidst tsunami warnings, its journalists put out the following alerts via their own user names:

NPR Twitter list to monitor tweets of possible interest re: Chile quake & tsunami: http://bit.ly/cweJfw
RT @acarvin: Got around 50 people on the NPR #chile #quake #pacific #tsunami Twitter list, more to come: http://bit.ly/cweJfw
RT @acarvin: Volunteers needed to find+add emergency resources to CrisisWiki for Chile, HI, NZ, etc. Instructions: http://crisiswiki.org

These are fine examples of solid, public service tweeting in the form of action-oriented updates which don’t cross over into its core coverage. In addition, however, the following updates from NPR appeared over a two hour period:

Rescuers Struggle To Save Lives After Chile Quake http://su.pr/1d5YhB
Chile Struck By One Of Strongest Earthquakes Ever http://su.pr/1d5YhB
Huge Quake Hits Chile; Tsunami Threatens Pacific http://su.pr/1d5YhB
Hawaii, Pacific Under Alert For Post-Quake Tsunami http://su.pr/2jUoS9
Chile Struck By 8.8-Magnitude Earthquake http://su.pr/9c3CO3
8.8-Magnitude Earthquake Hits Central Chile http://su.pr/1d5YhB

Four of these links go to the same story, one is about the rescue operation and four are about the earthquake itself.

NPR used Twitter as a kind of rolling news ticker, pounding out the same story to the same audience different URLs, sometimes with a similar headline, sometimes completely different headlines but to the same URL.

If users wanted to find out which was the main story, they would have to click the link on each update. Alternatively, they could wait half hour for the next tweet with the expectation that it might be the latest version of the story, or it could turn out to be a background piece and the updated article would be at the original URL which was sent when the story first broke.

Would the main story be the original one or the latest one? Maybe the user should just visit their NPR homepage and find the main story that way, which would involve visiting its Twitter profile page and clicking on the link in the biography.

It’s a confusing way of presenting the news, a bad user experience and one at odds with how ordinary people (and it’s still a social network) use Twitter.

If this was a deliberate strategy on the day of the earthquake, it could be due to NPR’s editors hearing the increasing number of audience members who say: “I don’t visit news websites. If it’s important, the news will find me.”

This comes up increasingly in user research and it means: “I spend a lot of time on Twitter and Facebook and my friends will let me know if something happens.”

Despite many people heard about Michael Jackson’s death and the Hudson river crash from friends on the web, news organisations don’t act like our friends.

For a start, your friend wouldn’t say every fifteen minutes: “There’s been an earthquake here’s the story.” “There’s been an earthquake here’s the story.” “There’s been an earthquake here’s the story.” “There’s been an earthquake here’s the story.”

In contrast, here’s how Reuters covered the story (in reverse chronological order)

Hawaii prepares evacuations ahead of tsunami http://bit.ly/dxZdxN 5:09 PM Feb 27th
Factbox: Chile has history of big earthquakes http://bit.ly/b2zzn3 5:07 PM Feb 27th
Massive earthquake strikes Chile, 122 dead http://bit.ly/9WkWL0 5:07 PM Feb 27th

And that’s it. One main story, one fact box (presumably a box with which to fact me up) and a sidebar. Three stories in quick succession. There were tsunami angles a couple of hours later, but the main story went out once.

Note to editors: don’t repeat yourself on Twitter. Leave the retweeting to the audience – your followers already know what you’re saying.

News organisations have a great opportunity shape how companies use Twitter, but if they want be in the spaces where people are, they need to join them not beat them.

Podcast 59 is upon us, with Angry, Ben and I discussing our experiences over the last week, which includes a telephone encounter with a ticket tout, being whistled at in the station, and learning how ‘watching strangers have sex in the car’ became known as dogging.

Ben has also prepared one of his special quizzes, which is loosely based on footballers.

All this plus Tangerinegate, broken PS3’s and all of your everyday items that sound like they should be sex toys.  There’s a lot of sex this week, isn’t there?  It is Ben and Angry’s fault, they’re insatiable.

We will have a new website for the podcast soon, but here are your links in the meantime.

Ben’s now joined the ranks of full-scale bloggers, and you can sample the fruits of his e-loins from the links below.

Here’s the science bit:
iTunes
Subscribe to the feed
Twitter
Email

Skype – angryandcliff
Ben’s Blog
Angry’s blog

 

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• Things That Are Great Day Continues: Hey, Watch This OK Go Video –

I can sum up twelve years of marriage in a simple conversation about hockey.

Last night me and Mrs. This were sitting down on the couch. I’d said all week I was going to watch the hockey final, because it would contain awesome.

At sometime Pacific Time

Me: Do you mind if I watch the hockey?

Wife: No, do you mind if I read my new Twilight book?

Me: Yes, it might disturb my hockey game.

I was joking, reader. It’s just my way.

Wife: It might be really bloody and gruesome, though.

Me: No, see, this is Olympic hockey. It’s goes against the whole um, ethos, of the games. It would be frowned upon. There would be repercussions. Besides, it’s just not sporting. It’s like – it’s like, ok, Olympic boxing. There they wear padding and their objective is to sc-

Wife: I meant my book.

Me: Oh.

—

There’s me trying to hold court, if not interest. Perhaps not presiding but grant me diverting, if nothing else. And we’re having a conversation about two different things, but it doesn’t matter. Maybe it matters more than if we were talking about the same thing, otherwise I wouldn’t have written this.

I get the vampire thing by the way. Vampire fiction, yes, very good. Well get this: vampire pugs.

Yeah? See, always thinking.

Vampire pugs, reader.

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Which limp geological feature was also an Olympic Games host city which in 1980 was marked by the “Miracle On Ice” hockey game where underdogs USA beat the USSR and went on to win the gold?

Lake Flaccid.

BOOM. Ain’t never lost it. So here’s a song for the hockey fan in all of us. Canada face the USA in the final on Sunday and it’s a big deal. Here to play us out are sardonic beat hosers The Tragically Hip.

The story behind the song is a good one and shows that sport goes further than teams or anything I can explain.

Go, eh?

Listen – Fifty Mission Cap

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