Well, here’s what The Guardian itself has to say about Open Platform:

The Open Platform is the suite of services that make it possible for our partners to build applications with the Guardian. We’ve opened up our platform so that everyone can benefit from our journalism, our brand, and the technologies that power guardian.co.uk.

As a start Open Platform offers two services:

1. The Content API is a mechanism for getting Guardian content. You can query our content database for articles and get them back in formats that are geared toward integration with other internet applications.

2. The Data Store is a collection of important and high quality data sets curated by Guardian journalists. You can find useful data here, download it, and integrate it with other internet applications.

I didn’t have much time to check it out yet. But apart from some serious buts the fact that an old media corporation launches an API makes me smile. Check the Open Platform out for yourself.

About a year ago live blogging service CoveritLive launched. If live blogs weren’t popular before late 2007 they sure are now. There always have been live blogs of course – blogs covering Apple Keynotes for example. But thanks to its easy setup and user interface CoveritLive gave live blogging a bang.

At almost every tech, media or web conference in the world a blogger is live blogging. CoverItLive even connects old and new media, Ernst – Jan wrote last summer. And during the terrorist attack in Mumbai two Dutch journalism students used CoveritLive to collect all the news about the bombings. Live blogging is getting serious and therefore it’s time to look at the future.

New tool, old trick

Apart that live blogging is of course live it isn’t anything different from usual blog postings. The bloggers posts text and adds links, photos and videos and the readers can comment.

Still I wonder how the future of live blogging looks like. Some of my thoughts:

• Will news corporations like the BBC or big newspapers like The New York Times use it to cover breaking news like a terrorist attack?
• Or is it already outdated and is live video streaming the future?Why would I want to read a live blog when I can see what is happening because somebody is streaming from a phone or camera?
• And isn’t it just much more comfortable to read a blog posts after the speaker finished his presentation?

It’s in the mix

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying live blogs aren’t of any value. They sure are! I followed lots of Steve Jobs’ Keynotes thanks to live blogs. Live coverage is great when you don’t want to miss a thing.

But they aren’t very usefull when you want to check what happened a day after the conference or when you want to re-read about the Mumbai bombings. For analysis, summaries of a presentation, reports with lots of links and extra information I want just plain and normal postings. And when it gets so interesting that I can’t keep my eyes away from the screen only a live video stream can satisfy me.

Personally I like the mix of blogging, live blogging and video streams. Blog posts to sum up what’s happened and give extra information or analyse the breaking news, a live blog that drops some lines every five minute and a video stream for the ones glued to the screen. That is the future of live blogging for me.

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[Photo by Adam Tinworth]

Of course you’re using a RSS reader to check your feeds. But don’t you just love the feeling of reading a newspaper or magazine? Well, take a look at Hewlett-Packards Tabbloid. This free service converts the latest posts of your favorite blogs into a printable PDF.

Tabbloid is very easy to use. Surf to their website, enter your favorite feeds, your e-mail address and decide when you want to recieve your magazine. Tabbloid compiles the feeds and mails a printable PDF to you.

Personally I love the idea. Reading from paper is much more relaxed than reading from a screen. But I have to admit I wouldn’t use it. Why not? Well, links, embedded video and other dynamic stuff don’t work on print. And that’s to much too give up for me.

[Via Springwise]

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The terrorist attacks in Mumbai are the most popular topic on Twitter since they started. Every second some tweets about the attacks are posted. But according to The Times Indian authorities asked Twitter users to stop tweeting about the attacks for security reasons. Although the newspaper says it can’t confirm the rumour that Indian authorities want Twitter users to stop tweeting, The Times refers to a tweet saying: “Police reckon tweeters giving away strategic info to terrorists via Twitter”. The newspaper doesn’t link to the exact tweet but I think this is the one:

You don’t need to be a big news corporation like CNN or BBC to cover breaking news. Dutch journalism students Loek Essers and Peter van der Ploeg proved that last night. The two used live blogging tool CoverItLive to cover the terrorist attack in India.

Twitter

Loek and Peter started their live blog by adding some breaking news Twitter feeds. They added CNN, BBC and BreakingNewsOn. To enrich the coverage they posted some news themselves and added tweets of Twitter users in Mumbai. Later on the students found out that Indian news channel IBN was the source of most off the coverage news corporations like CNN used. IBN posted photo’s and video’s on their website which Loek and Peter embedded on their live blog.  Photo’s posted on Flickr were shown on the live blog too. 

Dutch newspaper

Journalism students Loek and Peter showed how easy the web and (live) blogging made it to cover breaking news.  And although the two started their live blog as an experiment they got rewarded. Dutch free newspaper De Pers used the live blog on their website.

It’s always painful to read about job cuts at U.S. newspapers. But the news became even more painful when I spotted mashup Paper Cuts. This mashup shows how many layoffs and buyouts U.S. newspapers have to suffer from. According to Paper Cuts more than 13.748 people in the newspaper industry lost their job in 2008. And new layoffs and buyouts are reported almost every week…

Ever had the feeling that you really wanted to crash the party you weren’t allowed at? When I wrote a blogpost about social network MeettheBoss.com I couldn’t let go of that feeling. MeettheBoss.com wants to be an exclusive social network. To become a member of the network you have to be a senior or top executive at a financial firm. So for a freelance journalist like me there is only one option to get in: lying.

"Your registration has been accepted."

Surprisingly lying worked out very well. All I did was fill in the registration pages. I filled in my name, e-mail address and told the site that I was working as a CCO at ABN AMRO. A few minutes later I could check out some parts of the network but still not everything.

Got kicked out eventually

I guessed they would reject me at one point. If they would have looked at my LinkedIn profile they would have known right away that I’m not a CCO. But they probably didn’t do that. One day after my registration I received an e-mail telling that the network was happy to let me know that my registration had been accepted.

How long would it take them to find out I ain’t a CCO? Not too long. My previous blogpost probably caught their eyes because since this morning I can’t login anymore. It looks like they kicked me out after all…

MeettheBoss: could not find your user

The Financial Times just launched the first stage of their redesigned website. The homepage is coloured pinkish just like the newspaper itself and the website is made much more simpler. Other parts of the website aren’t redesigned yet, but that will be done in the future, writes British newspaper The Guardian. But is it just me or does the renewed website really looks and feels kinda like a blog?

Redesigned FT.com