As Carly and I came in at 12, we kept people up to date with the latest election news via Twitter on an account that we had specifically set up for that day. Twitter was an ideal way for us to be involved with the news day even when were not at uni as we could use our mobile phones to keep the tweets current and up to date with the breaking news.

We were also able to link the Twitter feed to the blog which gave readers another way to interact with the content. As politics can be a subject that many people find confusing, keeping news updates to just 140 characters meant that we could only write about the most important announcements, hence making it easier to understand.

I also wrote a piece about musical talent at Westminster. This piece worked well with part of the TV broadcast regarding creative talent at the university. I was able to include relevant video clips in the piece and link to the relevant MySpace pages of each band, giving readers a wider knowledge of the topic.

Working in a cross media environment made me appreciate how important it is to have a variety of skills when working as journalist. Although I was part of the online team, I realised how important it was to have a knowledge of video and audio and how they can compliment the online platform. I also learnt that all three news platforms are far more effective when they work together. With the blog we were able to take the stories covered on the TV and radio broadcasts and go into more depth and take different angles on the stories.

I found subbing work incredibly time consuming and I definitely did not have the patience to do it. Also, with the time constraints and some people not submitting their work on time, it meant I did not always have enough time to go through and sub as thoroughly as I would have liked.

We wanted to create a website all about popular culture and go against the grain of stereotypes. I think we did well around the theme of popular culture – we had plenty of content under each of our headings (though could have had more about art) and everything we wrote was current and aimed at a young audience. As for eliminating stereotypes which was our mission statement, we could have done more to do this. Certain articles attempted to do this, particularly in the fashion section but we should have tried to focus more on this aspect of the site.

I felt the articles I wrote leant themselves well to the multimedia platform, particularly the piece on unsigned bands. The Google map worked well, allowing people to see where the bands were performing. With hindsight I could have put videos or audio clips with the descriptions, allowing people to actually hear the music.

The Dean Chalkley piece would have worked far better if the picture slideshow had gone on the site. I edited the photographs I had taken at the exhibition in Photoshop and used Fireworks to create a slideshow but as we did not have a proper picture editor, there were problems getting it onto the site.

As a whole, I think the site looks really professional and is easy to navigate. Considering that many people in our group contributed very little, we managed as best we could. There could be more images/video/audio on the site as I feel we did not make enough use of the multi platform element that the internet offers.

I’ve spoken about some of the inspiration behind the project already but here is the video of Sports Illustrated again anyway …

With web 2.0 allowing users to interact with websites on a much greater level than ever before, interactive magazines for the ipad are a step up from this. I wanted to create something that users could interact with that used a variety of platforms – audio, video, images and text.

I also liked the way The Guardian use their chalkboard feature to demonstrate statistics and wanted to include this in my project. Simply stating statistics in a match report can be meaningless, whilst showing them in a visual manner makes them far more relevant.

I felt the chalkboards worked well on my personal project as they highlighted perfectly the improvement of Theo Walcott. Rather than just telling people how he had improved, the chalkboards allowed me to show people how he had impacted the game. The graph from ‘Many Eyes’ that showed the statistics of the whole game also demonstrated the superiority of Arsenal over Burnley in a visual manner.

I felt I managed to use a variety of platforms in the project which was my main aim. There was a mixture of text, video, images and audio making it different to your average match report. If I was to improve the project I would perhaps include a slideshow of images, similar to how football365.com show key images from games.

Perhaps having some audio from fans would have added another dimension to the project. Predictions before the game and how they felt about the result afterwards in vox pop form would give the project more of a fan feel.

The site shows, in real time, what different Tweeters are saying about each specific party.

I don’t think you can have a real idea of what I am talking about until you take a look for yourself.

I have no idea how long this will run for but it is very cool.

And #imnotvotingconservative is currently trending on Twitter – proof if any that the social media generation are generally a left leaning bunch.

The Data Blog was part of my inspiration for my individual project. No it has nothing to do with football but it does present statistics in a different manner – something that I tried to do with my project. The blog often takes statistics that are hard to understand and presents them in a graphic that is accessible to everyone. Even I have learnt about how political parties are planning to cut the deficit – something I thought I would never even begin to understand.

The online platform also allows for readers to interact with the blog, a key aspect of web 2.0. Readers are encouraged to create their own graphics and add them to the Flickr group for example. Evidence that readers are becoming as much part of making and writing the news as journalists themselves are.

For my individual project for the module I naturally chose to write about Arsenal (any excuse) and create an interactive match report of the game against Burnley back in March – back in the days when our season hadn’t fallen apart.

The video above was part of the inspiration for this. With the launch of the ipad, magazines and newspapers are being given a whole new leash of life. The way Sports Illustrated allows readers to interact with content and enjoy video, audio and imagery all on one platform is a far cry from your bog standard match report that you might see online.

Whilst it is impossible for me to recreate something on the same scale as Sports Illustrated, I do want to play around with the idea of using audio and images to tell a story as opposed to just text.

Some guy called Gordon Brown has announced the small matter of a General Election. What has this got to do with the internet and how it is influencing journalism I hear you say? Well …

Much was made of Obama’s rather successful internet campaign in the recent presidential elections across the pond. Using social networking sites such as Facebook and his personal blog, he was able to get information out to a huge number of people very quickly. Perhaps most importantly, this information was reaching an audience that would not necessarily be motivated to pick up a newspaper and read about politics. Obama recognised that young people could be a part in his success and made an effort to reach them.

Are politicians doing the same here? Errr …

Did you know Gordon Brown has his own Youtube channel? No? Neither did I until very recently. Brown’s latest video was uploaded 3 days ago and has 757 views as of right now. Lady Gaga’s telephone video has 26,160,223 views. Slight difference there. Surely if ever there was proof that politicians are not using web 2.0 to its full potential then this it. Youtube is a massive platform that attracts huge amounts of young people to it every day, you would think the clever people at Number 1o would be able to do better than that.

Moving on to Twitter and things are looking up slightly. According to a recent survey, over 100 MPs are tweeting. The Labour party are the biggest tweeters with 65, way behind in second are the Lib Dems with 23 and unsurprisingly the Conservatives came in last with just 16.

Man of the moment Nick Clegg has been discussing recently the importance of getting 18-24 year olds involved in the election – perhaps he, and the rest of the campaigners, need to learn a few lessons from their American counterpart.

Came across this little gem of an article on Mashable (again) which I thought was pretty cool and seriously handy for this particular module.

The first app on the list was by far my favourite. It gives you a ton of HTML codes than can be used when designing your own website, something which could prove to be useful when attempting to use the joy (!) that is Dreamweaver.

There are a whole host of similar apps available to download that have tips and tricks on CSS and Java scripting. Definitely something which could be handy to the beginners amongst us. All this just seems to point towards the fact that any multimedia journalist needs an ipod or an iphone in their lives. I can’t remember what I did before I had mine and i’ve only had it for a few weeks.

Here is the baby …

I love my ipod <3

So I had no idea how to use the thing and Carly had to show me how to put music on it and how to download apps onto it. Sad but true. Naturally the first thing I downloaded was Facebook but I also found this handy little app called ‘Mashable.’

Mashable claims to be ‘the social media guide’ and has regular news updates about the world of er, social media. It isn’t limited to social media however, mobile phones, internet and general entertainment are also listed tabs that contain a whole world of weird and wonderful information.

Some of the most interesting things I have come across on there are Twitter’s ten billionth tweet, the war between Bing and Google and the fact that American Idol contestants aren’t allowed to use their own Facebook or Twitter accounts anymore.

The app is free, which is always nice, and is pretty relevant to this module of the course, so I would recommend downloading it and having a look around the site.

The awards were not live on television so could not be watched as they happened. But, with NME’s Twitter account followers were kept up to date with all the gossip – who won what, who turned up when and with who, who was performing and what was being said.

Instead of having to wait until the following morning or the next issue of NME to arrive on the shelves, Twitter allows those who are interested to know what is happening, as it happens. Whilst the NME awards may not be the most important or serious event, the same methods can be applied to politician’s press conferences and crucial sporting events.

Twitter also allows us to see things, not just hear about them. Through services such as ‘Twitpic’ NME were able to post pictures from the event, allowing followers to gain a more intimate knowledge of what was going on at the event. There was also links to the NME website which was being regularly updated with relevant news, expanding on the 140 character Tweets. The basic and most important details were posted on Twitter and then the website added more colour and information to the tweets.

With the ever growing demand for news – internet sites and 24 hour news channels – Twitter is playing a large and important role in feeding this demand. With the limit of 140 characters, news is easy to read and can be accessed on the go via mobile phones and does not get in the way of any other activities. By this I mean I could have listened to the awards on NME Radio yesterday evening. However, this would have meant I could not have watched the football on the tele and would have had to be in constant earshot of the radio. With Twitter, I can merely refresh the page every so often and the information is always there for me to read – I don’t miss a thing.