Tag: Birmingham UK

Podnosh is based in Birmingham in the UK, so often we write about exciting things that are going on near us.

New Blog and Podcast for Brum and some help please – central wifi venue

It’s odd that one thing I haven’t written about recently is the Birmingham Bloggers Group (possibly re-framing itself as the social media group/cafe). Perhaps because I have so much to say about it I don’t know where to start – breaking the cardinal rule of blogging – which is to just start, stoopid.

We met for the first time last month and meet again next Monday 18th Feb.  First question (for help) is we would like a central venue with free wifi – Digbeth or City Centre – for probably about 15 people (maybe more) from 7 in the evening.  Booze and non booze on tap. Does the Friends of the Earth Cafe have wifi?

Also want to mention a couple of new things since the last meeting.   Mark Steadman should be joining us next week. He’s just launched the New Media Junkie podcast – find it here for the moment – new site to come soon. Mark is using podbean.com for hosting, a new one one me.  I host on my own space (a throw back to 2005 and misplaced ideas of being in control!) , but free hosting is plentiful and very usable.

Kevin Rapley has also created Digikev to write about social media.   Others new to me through the blogging group include Ben Neal,  The Boywonder bloggers,  and Paul Burns.

Well.  I’ve started.

Stroll Brum and mobile blogging.

feet walker in brum courtesy Pete Ashton

Walkit.com now covers Birmingham. Type in your start and finish places and it tells you the best route for walking. It reveals how far, expected time at different walking paces, how many calories you’ll burn depending on walk speed and even how much co2 you’ll save if you don’t drive. My place to Digbeth in 24 fast paced minutes. All it needs is to add return journey time at “drunk stagger” speed and the service will be complete. GREAT SITE.

In Barcelona, at the Mobile World Congress Nokia has unveiled sat-nav for strollers, with plans so sell 35million GPS phones this (y)ear. Maybe useful when you’re lost – but I’m not keen to wander down the street staring at my phone.

One thing Nokia is learning to do are those oh-so web 2.0 thangs – share and play according to Darren Waters on the BBC’s dot.life blog. Ovi is Nokias upgrade of what was once twango.com. It looks to me more like a proprietary user generated content and attention capture site – that thing we used to call a portal. I may be wrong. Darren says Ovi will allow people to upload up to 100 different file types. So an easily opened portal then.

Nokia does offer single button blog and flickr updates from some phones (although no social features on the website promoting them), but I think I’m still more keen on the iPhone var uri = ‘https://impgb.tradedoubler.com/imp?type(inv)g(17088080)a(1265758)’ + new String (Math.random()).substring (2, 11); document.write(‘‘); approach, which just offers you the web as you know it, and hence the freedom to use the web as you will, rather than Nokia will. Judging from the single comment on this entry it remains tied into specific apps.

However I have still to acquire a decent mobile phone and contract end is approaching, so anyone with experience of the N95 or iPhone for social media please let me know what you think.

Picture Pete, Hat Antonio.

Tip top Trav28

trav28 birmingham

I’m enjoying the unravelling social media project that is The Big Picture. I especially like the interest taken in the people behind the pics: art as an expression of who we are rather than an end in itself. Jon Bounds has interviewed trav28 about why he’s taking a photo a day – most of Birmingham – and I’m blogging this to extend his 15 mins to 15mins and 1 sec. How about an audio interview against a slideshow of trav’s pics?

Update: Part way there…

the big picture 2008 10,000