Get Lucky & Claim It!

This stuff is pretty damn hot - check it out.

Get Lucky Ski Trailer

Matchstick Productions presents Claim
(from www.getoutdoors.com on Vimeo).

Can't wait to watch these films. Check out at 1:50 in the Claim trailer when the guy takes himself out on a tree - classic ownage!

Blog Breakdown 3 - Gossip Blogs

Ahh celebrity gossip. What better way to waste one's life than talking about the lives of others of higher public notability. Still, considering the sales of magazines like Hello and OK! (reader base of 30 million), not to mention the internet traffic flowing through certain gossip sites, there are enough views to make it a worthwhile topic.

The main blog I'll be focussing on today is PerezHilton.com, a site created and authored by Mario Lavandiera, a 30 year old former magazine journalist. He started his blogging career with pagesixsixsix.com, which quickly gained notoriety for it's scything remarks about some of Los Angeles' celebrity populus. PerezHilton was the successor to PageSixSixSix, and today recieves anywhere in between 1.5 and 2 million unique visitors monthly.

Lavandiera's site is very colourful, predictably feature a whole lotta pink. Stylistically, it's probably one of the best laid out blogs of all genres that I came across, with a big well designed banner across the top of the page (see the logo above), and features across the page including:

• A centrally placed blog column. All blogs have large pictures accompanying them, often 'shopped or painted with Lavandiera's controversial doodling (for example see the Palin family portait here).
• A video box on the right-hand side of the page, where Lavandiera posts any media of interest related to celebrity lives and lifestyles.
• A 'Starseeker' search tool, complete with a drop down list of all persons commented on in the Perez blogs, along with a date search facility.
• Advertisements related to the site and it's expected fan base.
• Easy and clear information on how to contact Lavandiera.

The posts are well written (as would be expected from a former magazine writer), and feel personal and conversational to the point where it is hard to click away half-way through a post. Whilst I'm not normally one to care for these gossip blogs, I did find Lavandiera's angles and style fairly humourous, even if the stories are overly focussed on the happenings of LA.

Regarding competition for PerezHilton, it's interesting to note (ok, no it isn't) that Hello magazine is yet to create a blog, and OK! magazine has a very basic one yet to be worth its while. There are some others which are ok though, primarily because of their placing at the top of a google search for 'gossip blog':

• TMZ.com
• TheSuperficial.com
• Defamer.com
• CelebCrust.com
• DamnImCute.com

TMZ is a big hitter here, getting as much as 5 million unique visitors on a good month. They have an unfair advantage in this area, being owned by Time Warner, with a staff setup more similar to a tabloid journal. The site itself is very large, containing videos and pictures in gallerys on dedicated pages, but with all the blogs posted to the home page they are a main feature. The layout is less than great - the page is simply too busy looking, however the posts themselves are good - large pictures, catergorising enabling viewers to look at only the stories interesting to them. Because of their use of the paparazzi they are able to get hold of more stories first than Perez Hilton, helping to explain their larger viewer base. The videos and photos would also go someway to explaining this (videos appear in web searches and are sometimes used by larger news agencies when reporting the stories - The Kanye West blog I posted a few days ago included a TMZ video I first saw on the BBC website). They also have the money to pay for advertising, something not done by PerezHilton.

The Superficial boasts unique visits in the region of 630,000 per month, which while not as colossal as Perez or TMZ, is still a hell of a lot of people. IMHO it's soo much better than TMZ as a blog, using the same sharp comments and humour found on Lavandiera's PerezHilton, if not even more biting (on the front page today are suggestions of Hugh Heffner's impotentce, Kanye's 'flipping the fuck out' and Criss Angel's being a 'douche'...nice). The layout is good, with a dark, stylish background discreetly including a site sponsor, with a clear white colum through the centre for the blog postings. All the posts have large pictures, as is appearing to be the norm with these gossip sites...perhaps Nick Robinson could learn something from this? Overall - We like.

The Defamer is the next site on our whistle-stop tour of the gossip blogs. It's layout is almost identical to that of gadget site Gizmodo (reviewed 2 days ago)...of course this is probably unsurprising as both sites are owned by the Gawker Media Network. The articles are less shameless than those on TMZ, and take a less offensive stance than The Superficial, whilst being more about celebrity news on a professional angle than that of the celebrities' lives. It's a pretty good effort, with 3 writers contributing articles every hour or less. I think it's fairer than the afforementioned blogs, but it isn't being fair that gets people reading your blogs - it's about being interesting and funny. I'm not sure this blog has enough going for it to attract larger numbers.

DamnImCute and CelebCrust are much smaller offerings, only really making into this list because of their google listing. I don't have much to say about these two which I haven't already said about the other gossip blogs - they're all opinionated, all feature large pictures. DamnImCutes' unique selling point is it's 'Damn I'm Old:Celebrity Birthdays' feature, whereas CelebCrust takes a more focussed view at the high-level actors and mucisians, along with film and music news related to them. They're ok, but not as comprehensive as the others, so less drawing.

So there we go - that's my rundown of all three genres. Yes, it may be a little long-winded, but it tells you all you need to know about them, and I think it gets my points across...

Now back to normal service...Tomorrow I'll bring a run-down of some of the best viral videos doing the rounds right now.

Until then.

Worthwhile Distractions #1

Just came across this whilst writing my latest blog review...it's worth a lol or 2. Poor old Murray.

Gordon Brown's Curse

Blog Breakdown 2 -Political Blogs

Well from what I've seen so far, political blogs aren't even nearly as popular as their gadgety and gossipy counterparts. Whether this suggests something about the interests of internet users into politics being less than their interest in consumer goods and the obsession with celebrity I don't know...but it seems likely. Considering those who read blogs do so on some form of computer, it seems fair that they would be interested in the latest on newer technology, whereas finding out what gaffe Gordon Brown has made this week (i.e. lots) must just bother them less. No matter, there is obviously still some demand for political blogs amongst those who do care about the state of the nations and their leaders, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this, would I?

Today I'm gonna focus on The Times Online's political blog, 'Red Box', and compare it with several other UK politics blogs, namely:

• The Guardian Politics Blog
• Nick Robinson's BBC Newslog
• Guido Fawkes' Blog
• Ian Dale's Diary
• Harry's Place

What I noticed whilst searching for these blogs was a) A lot of them are blogs run by well known names in media (i.e. BBC, The Times, The Guardian), but also that the bloggers themselves are actual journalists. Nick Robinson is one of the BBC's most prominent political correspondants, appearing on TV almost daily.

Starting with the history, the blog is part of the central-right wing newspaper The Times, and is contained within the 'Comment' section of their website. The Times first started in 1785, making it one of the oldest newspapers in the world, however their blogs have only existed for a few years now, obviously being non-essential to the main business of reporting news.

Starting with the layout of the Red Box blog it appears to be standard of all blogs, with the thin column for posts, with other features and adverts down the side (in this case, the right). The adverts have obviously been more strictly controlled than those found in most blogs - no doubt due to the blog being part of The Times and its more mature audience. There is also a thin column dedicated to navigation of the blogs and website, with links to the latest posts on the blog, and others to the other features of the website ('From the papers', 'From the Times Online', 'More of Our Blogs', etc). It's pretty effective, and can get you round the most important parts of the site with ease. The style of the blogs written by the editor (Sam Coates) is slightly smarter and formal than most blogs, avoiding any 'leet' or instant messenger acronyms, but still feeling like a personal report. There is less of an emphasis on pictures for the blog entries, but this isn't too surprising when you think the blogs are covering actions rather than physical appearances (besides, there's only so much Brown most people can stomach on one page).

As for its competition, the big two would be Nick Robinson's BBC Newslog and The Guardian's Blogs, as I said before both parts of larger media agencies. Interestingly Nick actually writes political columns for The Times, which would suggest a similar political orientation for his blog. The Guardian on the other hand is proudly left-wing, so the posts are pretty conflicting.

Nick's blog has virtually no pictures in the posts, making it look much less user friendly, and suggesting it is designed to inform those in the know rather than to entertain them. It comes across as critcal, but also central - calling up politicians from both sides of the political spectrum. However it is very obviously the 'Making Of' part of the DVD, with regards it just being complimentary to Robinson's already busy timetable reporting on television and writing newspaper articles.

The Guardian on the whole is very well presented and planned, perhaps the best of the lot in this respect. It has multiple journalists posting on the political blog, often meaning more news and news more often. There are about as many photos as the Red Box, although the pages themselves feel more sparsely populated with content, not neccessarily a bad thing. My only issue with The Guardian is that it's posts, indeed it's entire philosophy, is so ball-achingly biased to the left wing that it is impossible to get through more than a few posts before you end up in an incandescent rage. Ah well, I suppose that's what the comment box is for...

I know the content of a blog doesnt really change how good it is as a blog, and any left-wing internet surfers are going to enjoy it a lot more than the predominantly central/right blogs out there...however this is my review and I find their bias unacceptable for a news website...It also gives a nice insight into the irrationality of some of the reporters. It looks nice, but forget it - stick with the others. If you must read a left-wing blog, read Harry's.

There are a few small independant blogs that also warrant being written about in this breakdown, the three mentioned above being my choice (because they all appear on the first page of a Google search for 'political blog').

Starting off with the Guido Fawkes blog, written by Paul Staines and created in late 2004. This is one of the few political blogs I came across designed with the intention of being entertaining instead of purely informative. It is satirical, and presently filled with dozens of cheap attacks at all three UK party leaders, not to mention their parties. The layout is good with the thin reporting column alongside a second colum filled with advertisements relative to the blog (i.e. politicians autobiographies, satirical books and blog-related gadgets like the Sony Reader). If you don't use a blog to get your news, then this is the political blog of choice...in the UK anyway...

I can't really find much to say about Iain Dale's blog. It's been created using blogspot (pro, I would assume), looks nice...but there's nothing to really endear it to any one in any real way...I suppose it is neutral, which is nice...but that's about it. There's a lot of mention of the Lib Dems, also no stranger to being ignored by the general populus...maybe Iain should look a bit closer at who he follows =D

Harry's Place, the last of my mentioned sites, is also one of the only 'democratic-left' blogs I found (i.e. left of centre, but not so far out it slaps you in the face a la Guardian) . It looks professional, aside from it's name (perhaps Harry should consider a more formal name for the site), and covers political news in both the UK and US (from a UK perspective). The site was founded in 2002, and has about 6 authors. The content of the blogs is good, the writing style informal enough to keep the reader involved whilst still informing them of the story. I found myself questioning the fairness of some of the blogs, but as I mentioned before, that shouldn't come into this review of the blogs themselves.

Right, that was boring to write about. Tomorrow - Gossip Blogs.

And a headache.

But first I'll leave you with this gem...

Be careful what you wish for...

See you then.

Blog Breakdown 1 - Gadget Blogs

Right well this has quite easily been the hardest five hours work I've ever done - 300 minutes later this sentence is all I have to show for it! These sites just keep sending my brain off on some massive procrastination tangent - so not helpful. But I guess it's a good thing because if I can't turn away from them, I'm sure they must be sucking in a fair few other recreational browsers.

Gizmodo is the primary site that I'm going to review in this category. Some quick statistics:

• Started out in 2002, as part of the Gawker Media Network.
  
• Created (and edited) by Peter Rojas, before his transition to Engadget in 2004.
• Internet traffic averaging 1.6m unique visits/month (i.e. 1.6m different people visit the site).

Gizmodo is one of the many gadget-orientated blogs that can be found on the web these days. Some take a sharper look at gadgets and consumer electronics specifically, whereas others take a broader look at anything that could be considered new and cool. Gizmodo fits into the latter of these two descriptions, for example presently featuring a post about the technology used by paralympic athletes on the first page.

The layout is fairly standard for a blog site - there's the centre column dedicated to the posts, with a narrower column along the left hand side of the page featuring adverts and contact information. However the website has a good style about it, and the large pictures that precede each blog are a nice touch. The search bar on the top of the page works well for navigating the site - simply type in the name of a brand or product you may be looking for (for example Nokia or iPod), and upon returning the search it will bring up all the posts relevant to you.

As competition goes for the site, there are a few large rivals, along with many who boast smaller hit figures. Public enemy #1 would be Engadet.com, which (as previously mentioned) was created by the original founder of Gizmodo, Peter Rojas. Engadget is owned by Weblogs Inc and Time Warner, which could safely be said constitutes some considerable backing, although big money doesn't neccessarily correlate to high levels of hits when it comes to the internet. Engadget has a different feel to it alongside Gizmodo - the layout definately feels more professional (read 'neater'). There is a more consistent style to the page, however I personally find the Gizmodo site much more captivating to read (not to mention distracting to my studies). It definately has more interesting posts than Engadget, which seems to focus more on new hardware than the larger picture of technology uses. Which makes it a bit like this.

Wired.com has a very long past for an internet site - it started all the way back in 1994. Originally a web magazine owned by Lycos (old!old!old!), it was bought out by Conde Nast Publishing's 'Wired' Magazine in 2006, and has since then become the magazine's website. However it still has it's own content, as well as a large range of blogs. The topics cover several different areas, all with a slightly geek/nerd orientation (cars, military tech, games, technology business, etc.), but to be fair to the other two blogs mentioned here I'm only looking at the Gadget blog in particular. It's pretty similar to Engadget, really - nice, clean style, a slight emphasis towards the products rather than general cool news from the gadget world, so in that respect Gizmodo is still riding in comfortably at #1 for entertainment stakes. For information however the Wired gadget blog is probably top of the list, managing to be both more informing and more interesting than Engadget.

Comparing the amount of hits each of the 3 sites mentioned above recieves, Engadget gets almost the exact same number of hits daily as Gizmodo (maybe the same people are checking both out?). Wired.com has a steeper increase over the last year, recently clocking in over 3m unique visits monthly). I could only find data for the main site, not the specific blog pages, so the numbers looking at the gadget blog probably work out at the same number as those looking at Gizmodo and Engadget now.


There are likely hundreds or even thousands of gadget blogs across the web that also count as competetion for the 3 I've just written about, however they dont get anywhere near the number of views of this trio. That said, there were a few that seemed worth writing about. Here's a quick summary of the top 3:

• BoingBoing - 1.4m unique visits/month. Best competitor to Gizmodo in terms of content with a decent mix of upcoming/new products and technology news. The layout is pretty cool, definately on par with Gizmodo.
  
• Ubergizmo - 200,000 unique visits/month. Entirely dedicated to new/cool products. Somehow it seems to work better than some of its larger competitors - The template style is more interesting, and the reviews/previews are informative without being too boring. If you're looking for the newest consumer gadget news specifically then this is well worth checking out.
  
• TheGadgetBlog - 20,000 unique visits/month. It's a shame that more people don't use this blog, because I really liked it. It follows the style of BoingBoing and Gizmodo, in that it does feature some specific consumer products, but it also has interesting news about larger scale projects or related news, which makes it more of a blog in my opinion (rather than a straight out report of a product).

So there are my opinions on gadget blogs. Personally I think Gizmodo, BoingBoing and TheGadgetBlog are doing it best, and would recommend checking them out. Go on...you've got a spare 5 minutes...

Blog Breakdowns

Over the coming days I'm going to be adding a few blog site reviews up here as part of a module I'm doing at university presently. Read them if you like, ignore them if you dont, I'm not too fussed. I have to do at least one review in three different categories (Science/Tech, Arts/Entertainment and Business/Politics), and I'm sure most of you will know the majority of sites I mention.

Here are the three sites I'm gonna be reviewing:

• Gizmodo


• Perez Hilton


• The Times Online Blogs

So yeah, if you're interested then read away.

If not you'll probably appreciate this instead.

Gone West...

Morning all, I want to start today with a little piece that appeared last night on various news and glamour gossip sites across the web, featuring that bastion of hatred - Mr. Kanye West.

See the video.

Apparently Kanye was a little irritable after his flight (so far, so human), however, upon arriving at LAX International Airport, the paparazzi were a bit too eager for his liking. Not that it really mattered what they filmed, after all the goon was wearing a grey hoodie over his face, and the most exciting thing he was doing was WALKING. Really big news story there Kanye, I'm sure the world's press can't WAIT to see how you look after a long haul flight. Quick, let me call up CNN, this shit is gonna be HUGE.

Yeah right.

No, instead of doing the wise thing and waving the pap off with a few cheesy grins before getting into his chauffeur driven limo home, Kanye decided it would be smarter to attack a couple of the photographers, destroy their equipment and threaten them. And then when these guys called out for the police or security they were mocked by Kanye, proudly shouting out 'Ain't no police man!'

Ah. Error. Considering the DATE he chose to do this, the fool should have realised that actually there ARE police at airports these days...lots of them.

Well they quickly arrested Kanye and his 'bodyguard', who are presently chilling in a Los Angeles jail cell pending a $20,000 bail. Smooth.

Whilst I really dislike the man, I do sympathise a little bit for his cause. We all see how the paparazzi hound anyone who might be considered news (brainless people filming brainless people so more brainless people can read about them), and doubtless occasionally it must be very frustrating. But that is the price of celebrity. This is how it works. You can't just go about attacking people because you dont like what they're doing. Besides, by lashing out, Kanye ensured they had something that got them paid. Ignore them and they get nothing.

A New Dawn, A New Day, The Same Life...

And I'm still feeling as great as ever. That's right, I'm back and I'm keen to cast my 10 cents out at anyone within throwing distance.

'So what's so new that we didn't hear you moan about it 18 months ago?' I hear some (the more committed) of you asking. Well, for me, not much - I'm at university these days, not living in the lap of luxury down under...so all that really equates to is more English people (or not, as the case can be argued), a lot more work (a lot more relative to the NONE I became used to) and just as many late nights and painful mornings.

No, what has changed in the last year and a half is the world I (and I presume, you) live in. How many days has it been since you last saw a news headline and thought 'Yes, absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. Mr Brown/McCain/Putin/Mugabe/Zuckerman, you are a fine demonstration of a man who effortlessly makes the right decisions'?

Exactly.

Now I should add at this point I wont JUST be complaining about daft politicians and business people here - It will essentially be somewhere I can comment on anything I feel is relevant. For example, if there's a neat new piece of Sony or Apple technology fresh on the market, I'll say a few things here. If I happen to find some particularly funny virals doing the rounds, I'll be sure to keep you informed. Essentially, if it appears on my radar, it'll appear here.

And on that note I'm going to bed. Sleep deprivation does horrible things to human beings.

It's gonna be fun to be back...