Julian and I went to the cycle show this afternoon. The lovely Corrine let us have a trade ticket, which was nice because the price of getting in is getting a bit steep. I’m constantly amazed that Earl’s Court manage to charge for the stands, charge for trade tickets and then charge the public for entry to a show where they are going in order to spend money. Were this not bad enough, they then gouge everyone on the price of coffee!

I ought to apologise to all the people that I bumped into today. It happens every year that I go; I wander around, wanting to see all the lovely shiny things… and then I keep on getting interrupted by people saying hi. Who I then give the brush-off to, because I want to keep looking at bikes.

Of course it’s nice to see old friends – it’s just that I never get enough time to drool at the bike porn. When you’re five foot ten with bright red hair, I suppose it’s only to be expected that all your mates will be able to pick you out in a crowd and make a bee line for you…

Things I saw that I liked:

• The Raptobike Lowracer recumbent
• Sturmey Archer S3X three speed fixed hub gear
• Lunatic BMX demonstration

Things I saw that I didn’t like:

• A whole shed load of “lifestyle” off-the-shelf fixed gear bikes
• A mockup of the new TFL street cycle hire scheme (‘cos I think it’s doomed to failure)
• Not nearly enough womens’ cycling kit

Oh.  And I managed to eat three untirely unhealthy meals today.  Viz, a fry-up for breakfast, pizza for lunch and a chinese takeaway for dinner after we got home.  I’m supposed to be entered in a 10k race next weekend (that’ll be without the assistance of a bike – I’m only allowed a pair of trainers, apparently).

I’m in so much trouble…

The shiny shiny cannot try to dispel darkness through attack without also denying the “shine factor” in them.  What shines more than a smile or hug when we could really use one?  And who needs a hug more than those in darkened times?  Denial of shine by the shiny shiny is a denial of the source of that shine.  Doing so only leads to nightmares of darkness for the shiny shiny.  Shine has but one choice shine or pretend not to.  But where is darkness in the face of shine anyway?  What can any thought of darkness be in the presence of shine but a memory?

Look for shine and find infinity where shine is.  Where else could it be?  What grows in the evermore but the shine of all Glory?

Flowers bloom together because the light that calls forth their shine is the same.  To say the shiny shiny could stop shining, is to say that the call for beauty could stop calling.  That the reason the birds sing in spring is not so.  The beauty of of flowers is no accident.  Neither is the shine of the shiny shiny.  Everywhere that is, is blessed by it.  Since where is outside of infinity where shine extends forever?

Where is within? When I have gone within, were am I looking?  What is the the state of being I am in when, having gone within is the happening?

(How long does it take to find within?  If within sounds lovely to us and we long for it’s fruits then we must feel ourselves outside of it in some way. True shine must come from within if it be seen at all.  Since where is the shining from if not the heart of the light of shiny shiny ?  Where is within NOT?)

What is shine but a radiance? And what is its path but always straight into infinity? Shine is the radiance of the light in us. Where there is shine there must be light. Where there is shining in another or ourselves, there is shining into infinity.

What is the function of Light in You if not to bless?

Thank you for your shining! Thank you for your blessings!

Light, shine, love … these three are together, since what shines more than love?  What hope is there in darkened storms but the light that love assures us of?  Light, shine, love this is the function and source of the shiny shiny.  Shine is something… the shiny have no choice in because shine is of light.  The shiny can pretend not to shine, but few that know their light are fooled for long.  Shine on shiny shiny!

Shiny Shiny head to toe,

shiny shiny always know.

Shiny shiny star so bright,

shiny shiny through the night

Those with shine … shiny shiny

those in the dark don’t know the star

because those that aren’t, aren’t nor are.

This is one of those rare occasions where I feel I need a disclaimer for a post. And here it is:

Between March 2007 and March 2008 I worked for Shiny Media, briefly as a freelancer and then as the full-time deputy editor of major title Shiny Shiny. At no time did I have any financial or editorial disputes with the company, and I left to challenge myself in a more marketing-orientated role specifically in the charity sector, not because of any problems at Shiny.

I’m not going to link to articles about Shiny’s demise. I understand that there are people who are upset and unpaid – I suspect the folks in charge do not blame them for their anger. But I’m not linking because I left over a year ago and their disputes are none of my business.

The only reason I’m writing about Shiny at all, in fact, is because I’m hoping that if people are looking for dirt they will instead find talent. These are some of the fine people I had the privilege to work with who are talented, hard working and lovely individuals. They would be an asset to any editorial team. So if you’ve come here looking for Shiny mud, try taking away some treasure instead.

Abi Silvester

Abi is, I must admit, a friend of mine from further back than Shiny (although I didn’t know she worked there until after I was offered the job and she didn’t know it was being offered to me – t’Internet’s a small world, folks). She has excellent experience as both an online and print journalist, having worked for alternative fashion publications and turning her hand to her passions at Shiny by writing about green issues on Hippyshopper and all things hand-made on CraftyCrafty. She also contributed to wedding blog Bridalwave - always one of Shiny’s top five sites in stats - ultimately taking the role of editor for the last 8 months, as well as working on a number of fashion sites. Visit her site above or follow her on Twitter.

Isabelle O’Caroll

Fashion queen Iso was a busy bee, editing men’s fashion site Brandish, contributing to and then becoming deputy editor of major Shiny title Catwalk Queen and regularly modelling the looks for the latter! Brilliant at tongue-in-cheek humour and extra helpful if you want to translate anything into French, she was always a pleasure to work with. Click the link above to follow her on Twitter.

Dan Sung

Dan started as an editorial assistant on Tech Digest just as I left, and quickly became editor upon the departure of Kat Hannaford to T3. I kept reading Tech Digest mainly because of his writing, which is highly engaging and amusing. He’s a gift to any blog about tech or football. Check out his Linked In profile by clicking the link above.

I would like to thank ShinyShiny for this great post!

OK, I know you don’t tend to take a microwave with you wherever you go, but there’s no denying an office that’s lacking that mean machine is like an office with no computers- simply unworkable. Sure, you can work off laptops, or go to Pret for lunch, but those options aren’t ever going to be your first choice.

The mo:ben lunchbox is designed to keep your leftovers warm, and contains both insulated walls AND an AC plug. Simply plug in the box and your leftovers will be gently warned up, ready to eat!

Building a blog to make money is something that has only been done by, in my opinion, a very few people successfully, and I am not about to go into a post discussing that as it is done much better here. The technology sector in particular has seen Shiny Shiny, Techcrunch and Engadget to name three really take off into their own segment of the market. As a PR, these three are tier one bloggers who are considered a key part of our online strategy. As a blogger, these are guys (and gals) to aspire to and learn from.

What I want to try and do here is to answer of a few questions that can ultimately help in your quest to find your way to buiilding a blog with a good reputation.

When first putting together a blog, you have to ask yourself some essential questions:

1) Is this going to be a personal or professional blog
2) Do I want people to read it?
3) How will I build my reputation?

1) Is this going to be a personal or professional blog

My good chum and long time Head of Mischief Elliot Pearson, has recently had to answer this question and spent a good amount of time deliberating it. His primary blog, whilst being full of insightful posts, also included his musings on general today day life and web finds. Elliot came to the conclusion that these two types of content can not co-exist. In the end, he split his train of thought into two blogs; a professional one which focuses on music and our digital lives elliotpearson.co.uk, and a personal one which looks at various funnies, pictures and points of view, Pearson’s Eye.

I think that this is a great idea, and that if you can consistently commit to writing material on your professional blog, if you want people to read your personal one, they will.

2) Do I want people to read it?

This is an interesting one. For many bloggers i’d suggest that they write purely for the love of the subject, be that art, music or technology. They’re not too fussed if they have 10 readers or 10,000, because they want to articulate their thoughts on a subject.

For a smaller part of the blogosphere though, readers are the be all and end all. They want to drive traffic to their site to build it’s profile and hopefully get advertisers who are willing to pay top dollar. However, I would argue that it’s no use getting 1000 hits a day if none of them come back ever again. You want to build a community of readers who frequently return to your blog and comment on it. Building that sense of activity will enthuse people and encourage them to return more.

3)How will I build my reputation?

a) Write good content consistently. Whether it’s once a week or every day, if the content is compelling enough, people will return and cite your work in theirs.

b) Promote your blog in e-mail signatures, on Twitter, on your social networking profiles, but don’t spam people. I find that if somebody posts their latest blog update on Twitter every hour, it just becomes noise and they will be swiftly ignored. There is no harm though in pinging Twitter once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once in the evening. The liklihood is that you will be hitting different members of your Twitsphere at those times.

c) Comment on other blogs – not so much so that you’re spamming, again people will just ignore you, but if you genuinely have something to add to an opinion piece, or if you’ve used a proudct that’s been reviewed, leave a couple of lines. If you find yourself writing an essay, write a blog post about it.

d) Link to other blogs in your articles and you will generate traffic, and if they are blogs relevant to your topic, that traffic will turn into an audience. If you mention a key point and you need to source that piece of information, don’t go straight to the research, find a blog post that already contains it and link using the trackback URL which is usually placed at the end of the article. This lets the blogger know you’ve written about them and they at least will probably come and have a look at why you’ve mentioned them. Be careful though to not do this with every single word or sentence in your blog – this is linkbaiting and will do your reputation no good at all!

Now, there are lots more ideas out there, but I think that these are the basics. I’ve followed them and I am beginning to reap very small, but very gratifying rewards!

The Press Gazette included my three reasons for the Dail Mail’s attack on Twitter. A great example of a journlaist scouring the blogosphere and taking it’s opinions to forulate an article. I might have been lucky, but the point is that the content was up. If that was still in my head, it wouldn’t be in the piece – if you get me.

And the peeps at Spinning Around: Seventy Seven Out Loud gave a shout out – it’s always great that another blog links to you, it begins to indicate people are reading your content and taking note, or even if they are reciprocating a link to their site, chances are they’ve had a read of yours regardless.

There is no magic formula, but with a little hard work and dedication, you’l soon start to see your work paying off and other bloggers will recognise your thoughts and theories are adding value to the blogosphere and not just more noise which could potentially distort their writing.

Vodafone's Live Guy

I’ve seen two really good campaign ideas recently around Treasure Hunts.

Find Me

• What is it?  Objects were hidden round London with clues to their location on blogs. Each object contained a letter which spelled out a question. The object locations were plotted, via map markers, to create a communal artwork
• Why? To promote American photojournalist James Nachtwey’s campaign to raise awareness of extremely drug resistant TB
• Results: for a short time it felt like this was all over the web, the hunt was solved in 36 hours, loads of participants = success!

More:

• Official moblog: moblog.net/findme/
• Campaign site: XDRTB.org
• BBC article

Vodafone Live Guy

• What is it?  Work out where Live Guy will be in certain parts of the UK, find him, nab yourself a Dell notebook
• Why? This one ticks a lot of boxes – experiential brand activity, highlighting mobile broadband, mobile web AND location based services (there’s a clever marketing team out there that I want to find!)
• Results: Goes live 14th November. Watch this space but I predict a good ‘un

More:

• Partner site: Shiny Shiny
• Official info: Vodafone Live Guy
• Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/vodafoneliveguy

Hace unos años me pasé una temporada bien larga perdiendo tiempo con una amiga. Del tipo con quien discutes cosas sobre relaciones hombre-mujer y por qué se joden tanto. En una de esas, armé mi calendario calculando sus días especiales/insoportables del mes a manera de experimento para mantener la felicidad o desaparecer en esos tiempos interesantes.

Me vengo a enterar con esto de las maravillas de la interweb que PMSBuddy se maneja por una idea bastante parecida. El servicio aparentemente gratuito busca alertarte cuando tu esposa, novia, madre, hermana, hija, jefa, bodeguera o policía Fénix se acercan al Triángulo de las Bermudas cronológico conocido como síndrome premenstrual. El slogan está simpático: “PMSBuddy.com, Saving relationships, one month at a time”.

Me gusta que es una especie de ayuda silenciosa para no tener que preguntar ni esperar que te comenten algo para lo que en realidad no hay forma de introducir en una conversación. Habría que ver qué tal se porta, tanto para ver si atina las fechas peligrosas como si de verdad sirve de algo estar prevenido o es que uno la acaba fregando más. De momento intenté cargar la aplicación para Facebook, pero sólo da la versión femenina.

Advertencia: no funciona con mujeres de mentiritas ni con tu mano derecha.
(es un chiste demasiado fácil, pero no me lo podía aguantar)

Visto primero en ShinyShiny.