Simon Crisp

Publish button-happy at The Daily Telegraph?

Simon Crisp — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:19:58 +0000

Either the Telewag have come up with an interesting way of using a picture based story without the image rights, or someone hit publish when they weren’t meant to.

Update – the article was later deleted.

NewsLite named a Top 100 Essential Website by The Guardian

Simon Crisp — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:41:17 +0000

My off-beat news site NewsLite has been named as a ‘Top 100 Essential Website‘ by The Guardian newspaper — which is nice.

Launched in January, 2008 it’s my home for funny, odd and off-beat news stories. Recent articles have included a woman who paints with espresso coffee, the boom in popularity of micro-pigs as pets and the world’s largest gummy bear (and to think I used to do ‘real’ news).

It has grown considerably over the past two years and is currently accessed by around 150,000 unique users per month.

Articles from NewsLite are syndicated to dozens of websites including Time Warner, USA Today and Chicago Sun-Times – where they are currently viewed around 800,000 times per day. Selected articles are also syndicated to national UK newspapers including the Telegraph, The Daily Mirror, The Sun and the Daily Mail.

So if you haven’t seen it yet, go have a look. Just don’t expect anything too highbrow.

Pantomime Horse Grand National, why not?

Simon Crisp — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:31:00 +0000

International Kindle: Okay e-book reader, good e-newspaper reader

Simon Crisp — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:39:26 +0000

It’s been a couple of weeks since an intrigued UPS guy delivered my shiny white Kindle “What are these things?” he asked, “I’ve been delivering loads of them all morning.”

When I told him, he instantly lost interest, “So it’s just for reading books” he muttered as he disappeared down the corridor, carrying another two familiar brown Amazon boxes — I couldn’t tell if he’d recognised this meant he wouldn’t be carrying any more heavy books to these addresses.

Okay so first things first. Yes Amazon should have released it in the UK far earlier. Yes it is beginning to look like dated technology and yes they have crippled the ‘international’ version by removing features like the albeit rather crappy web browser (unless you are addicted reading dubious facts).

It’s also annoying buying everything in dollars, especially when you are as mathematically challenged as me and the pound is doing belly flops off the high-diving board.

If that wasn’t enough Amazon have obviously noticed the little ’sucker’ stickers we Brits have on our foreheads and added 30% onto the price of the books they are willing to sell us. By which I mean the measly selection of the ones US customers get to pick from.

While this can be navigated by a proxy server, downloading to your computer and transferring by USB, you will be hard pushed to do that in the magic 60 seconds a certain Mr Bezos keeps going on about.

You might think you can tell where this review is going… but no, I am loving my Kindle.

While I have only bought one book from Amazon, I uploaded 50 classics I have been meaning to read, (easily downloaded from Feedbooks) and anyway, for me the killer feature is getting newspapers delivered to me each morning.

I love newspapers, but I rarely buy them. For years (while working as news editor at NTI) I had every national sat on my desk when I got to work. Since then I have grown to begrudge handing over cash for a paper filled with content which is free online.

But the idea of getting them on the Kindle kindle appealed to me. Each morning I could have a newspaper sat on my bedside table waiting for me to wake up (add a coffee machine and I could marry it). To an extent this is what I got, though annoyingly the international version means newspapers are stripped of pictures.

Either way I have spent more money on newspapers in the past few week than the past 12 months — and as a hack that can’t be a bad thing.

The Printed Blog will no longer be printed

Simon Crisp — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:31:36 +0000

It lasted longer than many thought it would, but it looks like the Printed Blog is no more.. after just 16 issues.

The idea was that the freesheet – which brought together the best of the web – and would be distributed at major urban locations across America with local advertising spots being sold in each region.

When the project began in January The Printed Blog was only handed out in Chicago but that soon grew to include cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Despite being backed by founder Joshua Karp (and several credit cards) he says they were unable to reach the next stage of development.

Speaking on blog.printedblog he said: “16 issues, 80,000 print copies distributed, another 100,000 or so copies downloaded, and countless new friends, fans, and collaborators all around the world later, I may still be nuts, but I have zero regrets.”

Disclosure: Despise claims from The Printed Blog that that brought together the best of the web they also included a number of my articles.

Badda Bing – Surprising amounts of traffic

Simon Crisp — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:40:50 +0000

I have been pleasantly surprised by the new Microsoft search engine Bing – not that I have used it much myself – but it has been bringing me more traffic than I expected.

It is now two weeks since the site was launched and one of my sites (newslite.tv) is now getting almost as much traffic from Bing is the big G.

Obviously this doesn’t mean Bing has surprised everyone and displaced Google as the king of search, but that NewsLite is just performing particularly well, especially on the news side of the search.

That said it will be interesting to see how Bing does in the future, especially if it keeps bringing me traffic.

By me: @ The Printed Blog

Simon Crisp — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:10:15 +0000

Printed Blog – Le Whiff: Inhale a chocolate bar
Printed Blog – Swimming trunks to give men a beach boost
Printed Blog – Walk-in cocktail opens in London

A few of my articles for NewsLite.tv have been used in the latest issue of The Printed Blog. If you don’t know what TPB is I will let them describe it for you.

“The Printed Blog is an independent media outlet that aggregates user-generated content from the Internet and publishes it once a week via print.

“The result is a revolutionary newspaper that reads and functions like a web feed – yet can still be unfolded on the train or spread across the breakfast table, for an uninterrupted, pleasurably tactile read.”

TPB is currently distributed in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

By me: Man writes resignation on cake

Simon Crisp — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:27:59 +0000

Mirror – Man writes resignation with cake icing

When Neil Berrett handed in his resignation he knew it wouldn’t leave a bitter taste in the mouth of his employer … because he did it with cake.

The radiological data analyst had decided to write his resignation letter in icing on a giant one metre by 60cm cake.

Blue icing spelt out his intentions to leave Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, but added that he had enjoyed working there for the past three years.

By me: Lost finger replaced with USB stick

Simon Crisp — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:35:56 +0000

The Times – Any computer at his fingertip
Daily Telegraph – Lost finger replaced with USB drive
The Sun – Fings ain’t what they used to be
Daily Mail – Computer programmer who lost finger in motorcycle crash replaces it with… a USB drive
Mirror – IT expert is first bionic finger man

A computer programmer who lost his ring finger in a motorcycle accident has had it replaced … with a USB drive.

Jerry Jalava has built a special prosthetic finger which contains computer storage for photos, movies and other useful files.

While the prosthetic looks like a normal finger Jerry can peel it back from the ‘nail’ and plug it into the USB slot on his computer.

iPhone News App – USA Today

Simon Crisp — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:52:57 +0000

I can’t stand the USA Today website, greeted by the full page adverts is there anyone out there who sits and waits for the five seconds to pass without clicking Continue Reading?

Thankfully they have a good selection of RSS feeds and with their iPhone app I have got one more way to read their content without ever having to visit the site.

The USA Today iPhone app is a classic example of how to transport content to the Jesus-phone. All of your news sections are there Latest / Money / Sports / Life / Tech / Travel on a slider bar under the logo and a local weather forecast, with the location taken from your phone.

On each article images can be enlarged and there is a handy ‘Share Article’ button which lets you email, text or twitter it to contacts in your phone directory. But there is no integration with the likes of Digg, Yahoo! Buzz or Reddit, all of which are available on the main site.

Buttons in the dock take you to sports results (Not real sports like football and rugby but their us alternatives, so NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL are all their) Weather, Pictures and Snapshots.

Pictures gives a nice tabbed selection of the days Sport, Celeb, Science and Travel images. Photographs appear in a grid and enlarge to fill the screen on a single tap, a further touch bring up a couple of paragraph caption.

Snapshots is a online voting tool of daily polls, results can be seen instantly and filtered by location but they are also turned into funky graphics at the end of the day.

USA Today App – iTunes Link