The old ones are the best

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Gary Andrews

Anybody not from Britain looking at the Twitter trending topics today would have probably been baffled to see Mrs Slocombe’s Pussy near the top. Thanks to the British sense of humour, the catchphrase from 70s sitcom Are You Being Served was all over the microblogging site in tribute to the death of comic actress Mollie Sugden [1]. Jonathan Ross was one of those responsible for getting the topic to the top of Twitter charts.

Sure enough, other countries were a bit puzzled by the trend, so much so that both Techcrunch and Mashable wrote stories complaining that Twitter was getting infected with spam again [2]. They were soon put right in the comments.

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Michael Jackson, bent spoons and football

Posted on June 30, 2009 by Gary Andrews

Yes, it really has been a fortnight since the last blog post. Apologies – I’m not neglecting this place, it’s just the starting a new job thing is obviously taking up a fair bit of my time. Plus it’s sunny outside, there were family visits and a day of cricket to be watched as well. None of which make for convenient blogging time.

Anyway, in the meantime Michael Jackson passed away. He was actually, for a brief period of time, a director of Exeter City FC. Along with Darth Vader. I really wish I was making this up, but I’m not. I’ve told the whole bizarre and somewhat depressing tale over at Soccerlens.

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Franchising and football

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Gary Andrews

I find the whole thing fascinating: how the MLS currently operates, why the MK Dons (aka Franchise FC) are so hated. And the rest. So I did me a Soccerlens post on the subject.

The comments are also really interesting and informative, and I inadvertently upset Dagenham fans, which, reading back, is fairly obvious why.

Permanent link to this post (56 words, estimated 13 secs reading time)

NightJacking anonymity

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Gary Andrews

Earlier today, Mr Justice Eady [1] ruled that the author of the NightJack blog could not stay anonymous. This will probably mean nothing to most people, but could be a significant case law ruling when it coming to blogging and, potentially, whistleblowing.

If you’ve never heard of NightJack, he’s a policeman who blogged anonymously and candidly about his job. It was an eye-opener and a great read that made you emphasise with hiss job. The blog won an Orwell Award for the quality of it’s writing.

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Getting to know my community

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Gary Andrews

How quickly times change. When I first started doing work experience and then freelancing for assorted journalistic outlets nearly a decade ago, the only thing the newsroom used the web for on any kind of regular basis was Google.

When I took over editorship of our student paper, we had a website but no content. When I left, we had a different website with the building blocks for content. We also had an editorial blog, hosted on a basic Blogger.com template [1]. This was seen as quite novel at the time.

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Obligatory occasional Ebbsfleet article

Posted on June 9, 2009 by Gary Andrews

Ever since MyFootballClub announced they were taking over Ebbsfleet United, I’ve kept tabs on the situation at Stonebridge Road.

Now that they’ve hit a crunch time in their history, with rival clubs bidding for their star players, I thought it was about time for another Soccerlens piece on them.

Permanent link to this post (50 words, estimated 12 secs reading time)

Moving somewhere

Posted on June 8, 2009 by Gary Andrews

“Yah?”

“Yah. And Clementine knows somebody who can get us on the Mahiki guest list.”

“Yah?”

“Yah.”

Welcome to the neighbourhood.

I have moved. Or, rather, a couple of months ago I moved. This was the first conversation I heard in my new area, spoken by a couple of 17-year-olds on a bus. It is, I think it is safe to say, sufficiently more upmarket than the delights of Tooting, where I was previously residing.

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This is the news and this is why we did it

Posted on June 4, 2009 by Gary Andrews

One of the joys of the web is it opens up the thinking process behind news values decisions to, well, everyone.

Take the Birmingham Mail’s exclusive letter from Gareth Barry to Aston Villa fans, for instance. The Mail didn’t post it up until after lunch, despite it being an exclusive and something, I imagine, that would have sent a fair amount of traffic in their direction.

Like Joanna Geary, I would have assumed it was a bit of a missed opportunity for the paper. But then the editor, Steve Dyson, enters into the comments and explains exactly why they held back.

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End of season elsewhere

Posted on June 4, 2009 by Gary Andrews

So, the final twofootedtackle podcast of the season is now online. It seemed only fitting that we got John Stanton, the guest on our first podcast, back into the studio, and he didn’t disappoint. Among the topics covered were the FA Cup, England Internationals, MLS, Champions League, Gareth Barry, managerial changes and, um, cricket (well, the Ashes are coming up).

We will be doing occasional podcasts over the summer but we’re taking a bit of a break for the time being to let us charge our batteries.

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Predicting reality

Posted on June 1, 2009 by Gary Andrews

Here’s an interesting thing. On Saturday I, along with nearly 20 million others in Britain, was watching Britain’s Got Talent (both for work and pleasure). I also, predictably, was on Twitter, and had several trending and tracking tools – Twitscoop, Twitterfall, etc – open (because I’m a geek and I like tracking the conversation, m’kay).

Once all the acts had performed, it was obvious that Diversity were trending stronger than any other act over Twitter. “If,” I thought, “Twitter is anything to go by, Diversity will win.”

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