theplan

AWM - environmental cluster: 18th January 2010, AWM, Preistly...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:58:45 +0000

AWM - environmental cluster:

18th January 2010, AWM, Preistly Wharf, Birmingham UK

Initial meeting with the AWM Environmental Clusters team. We are now working with them to develop some social media solutions to communication needs, and have a student from the MA Social Media placed with the team.

Digital Champion Briefing: 20th November 2009, Faraday Wharf,...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:58:45 +0000

Digital Champion Briefing:

20th November 2009, Faraday Wharf, Birmingham UK

Bit of a cheat this one, as it doesn’t have my name on it, but it was a big day, so I wanted to add it in. This was my visitor pass from my meeting at Digital Birmingham where I was fully briefed on the Digital Champion project. Good times.

Cycle Grounds: Posted via email from grounds’...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:05:25 +0000

Cycle Grounds:

Posted via email from grounds’ posterous

Grounds - the news club for Birmingham

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:18:09 +0000

Some of the recent posts here have been auto-posts from a blog I’m working on called “Grounds”. Grounds is the first completed project from the “Digital Champion” project I’m working on at BCU.

Grounds is a “news club” - we’re trying to build involvement through participation rather than readers. It’s a quirky idea, but it might just work. And we do have badges.

Some of the posts don’t really make sense in the context of this “life stream” blog as they are written as proper bits of news (I’ve deleted the offending pieces) but some of them are interesting enough to stay as little blog posts. Anyway, as I’m constantly making running repairs to this “lifestream” website, I’ve changed my set up so these posts won’t come hear anymore unless I really want them to.

How to read an eBook - they're the future you know

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:48:04 +0000

First, get logged in through the paywall - I used an Athens password, so find a student to help you.

This is what you get. It looks like the book should load in the big empty space, but it doesn’t.

Click on some of the links down the side… oh they download PDFs. Not one per chapter. One per heading. Some of the sections are merely a page long… so that’s 1 PDF per page people.

They all have handy file names so that you can check what you’re reading, look:

If you can work out which page is which, and you have Acrobat Pro, you can combine these into one readable document. Ok, so it’s taken me 10 minutes now to stitch together the acknowledgements. Let’s try Chapter 1…

Here are the headings - click on any heading and the reader fires you over a PDF document.

Here’s the stitch:

Download now or preview on posterous

brogan-trust-ch1.pdf (132 KB)

Ah, as we can see here, clicking on a heading just loads page 1 of that heading. Not useful. This isn’t really happening for me; let’s try the handy “download multiple pages” option instead:

Oh, we’re only allowed 10 pages at a time. Well no worries, I’ll grab a section at a time using this feature. Only the interface doesn’t tell me the page numbers for all of the sections. Right. This is getting tricky now, but I know what to do: just download 1-10, 11-20, etc. and stitch them.

Or not:

Ah, it seems that accessing my book is inappropriate. I might just give up and order another one from Amazon.

Posted via email from Jon’s posterous | Comment »

Huang, Q. (2003) Social Capital in the West and China (Working Paper Series). Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University Business School

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:20:46 +0000

Huang, Q. (2003) Social Capital in the West and China (Working Paper Series). Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University Business School

Research Studentship – Popular music and radio in the digital age

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:41:26 +0000

Research Studentship – Popular music and radio in the digital age

Digital Champions for a Digital Birmingham

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:26:31 +0000

Digital Champions for a Digital Birmingham

Recording calls on iPhone

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:40:41 +0000

I’ve been asking around for a while for a way to record voice calls on my iPhone. I don’t have much call to do this, but there have been a few times when it would be handy it seems obvious that the phone should do this (it makes calls, it has a voice recorder), but it doesn’t. My BCU colleague Paul Bradshaw has also been asking the same thing; he teaches journalism, so his needs for this are greater than mine. The apps that would do this do not work in the UK for reasons that don’t make a whole lot of sense.

Urbanfly on Twitter spotted this little hack to record an iPhone call:

How to record calls on iPhone: 1. Be in call with person
2. Hit the button to add a call (the +)
3. Type in your phone number
4. It will go strait to voicemail
5. Once you here the beep, it will start recording
6. When you hang up the call, you will get a voicemail of your recording

(source: macrumours forum)

Which is OK, but you can’t download a voicemail to a computer for archiving. So here’s another little hack to manually dub your voicemail to your computer.

Android users can do all this much more easily - they should feel free to flame us Apple fan boys in the comments below - but should remember our phones are ++shiny. And if anyone else has answers, let me know.

Posted via email from Jon’s posterous | Comment »

The Lost Quarter

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:14:55 +0000

The Lost Quarter

Wired stands by story after Guardian denies iPhone app paywall plans

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:08:00 +0000

Wired stands by story after Guardian denies iPhone app paywall plans:

Guest post on Online Journalism Blog. I spotted something odd in Wired about the possibility of paywalls being added to The Guardian iPhone app. Then I asked around and it got odder.

Art in Empty Shops

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:56:11 +0000

Here’s an idea that keeps going around and coming back again: making use of empty shops, by turning them into pop-up galleries. The idea is back on the table right now; Birmingham’s Community Arts Team have just closed a call for “an arts led organisation with registered charity status to produce, co-ordinate and programme exhibitions accompanied by a minimum of 50 days participatory activity at five empty shop venues across the city between February 2010 and March 2011.”

The shop venues are likely to be in the City Centre, Erdington, Hodge Hill, Ladywood, and Perry Barr. Erdington had its own pop-up gallery in the summer, which created a vibrant community arts experience. The Erdington pop-up was unfunded, so it will be interesting to see if the grant funding given to this venture enhances the experience.

On our walkabout yesterday we observed a lot of empty space in our local area. If I were to suggest a place within Grounds’ area that could benefit from a cultural lift, it would be John Bright Street: there’s even a photography gallery, ready to go.

Where do you think a community arts space for the city centre could be located?

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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An icy Boxing Day at Sutton Park

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 10:20:11 +0000

An icy Boxing Day at Sutton Park

Blue Moon

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 08:04:00 +0000

Blue Moon

AHRC KTF Symposium

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:52:19 +0000

AHRC KTF Symposium

Today I'm appearing in a Twitter panto. Oh yes I am. #twitpanto

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:40:16 +0000

What are you doing at 3:30pm GMT today? Nothing much I’ll bet. You’ll no doubt be sleeping off a cheeky Christmas pint, or “filing” to pass the last half hour before you break up for Christmas.

Make that last hour at work count, by heading over to Twitpanto where yours truly will be playing Little Jo(h)n in ‘Robin Hood - Men in Twights’.

You don’t need to be on Twitter to watch, just head over to http://twitpanto.birminghamhippodrome.com/ to watch the show unfold. (You’ll need to actually be on Twitter to heckle me or shout “he’s behind you” etc.).

Last year’s show was a sublime piece of interactive social media comedy / art. No seriously, it was. This year’s will be more of the same so expect romance, innuendo (not smut), sword fights and lots of web culture gags. ima let you finish your work. See you at 15:30.

Posted via email from Jon’s posterous | Comment »

Raymond, I'm closing #therestaurant

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:58:00 +0000

Series three of “The Restaurant” closes tonight, and I don’t think the doors of this show will open again.

Initially an interesting “reality” take on the cookery show, this season has been a farce. So much so that I’ve gone from being a fan to being relieved it’s over. I actually thought last week was the finale and I’m gutted there’s another bloody episode to sit through.

So what’s gone wrong?

Firstly some format changes, presumably recession or budget inspired, have cut the show back from two nights to one. As a result there’s not a lot of cooking going on. This is just as well as no one seems to be able to cook this year (an important point which I’ll come back to).

As a result of this the producers have had to make the show in a much more cynical and formatted manner. They know how to cast this show, to make telly from the concept. They have several seasons of research and as a result this season has been about The Restaurant as format. Archetypal characters, iconic moments, codes, conventions and reality cookery as genre.

The real kicker? I’m sure I know who will win. I’m calling it for JJ and James, aka the winkers. Two cocktail waiters who can’t cook. They’ve made it to the final with a restaurant brand based on scotch eggs.

If they win, and there’s another season, I won’t watch.

Raymond, I’m closing your Restaurant.

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Arvidsson, A (2006) 'Quality Singles': internet dating and the work of fantasy. New Media & Society, Vol. 8 (4) pp 671-690.

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:00:30 +0000

Arvidsson, A (2006) 'Quality Singles': internet dating and the work of fantasy. New Media & Society, Vol. 8 (4) pp 671-690.

#11bus DIY

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:40:44 +0000

#11bus DIY:

Listen!

View at audioboo.fm

We work for them

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:12:00 +0000

We work for them