大象传媒

It's but unfortunately it turned into "snot day" for me as I came down with a stinking cold - perhaps my 'dose was blogged up? But the Breakfast team did a grand job of kicking off the day with a list of some great blogs submitted by listeners. Obviously it's hard to pick Five blogs out of the hundreds we've mentioned on pods and blogs so I'll limit myself (mostly) to blog tools for today.

• For organising your reading of blogs
  
• For finding British Blogs Tim Worstalls and
  
• For finding trends in blogland
  
• And lastly in the spirit of blogday I'd like to introduce you to a blog I read and enjoy. It's called the and it's written by someone who lives near me. I don't know him and it's all about how he fell of his bike and how that seemingly quotidian event changed his life.
  

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If the devil has the best tunes Behzad probably has a Persian podcast rights waiver from him. Behzad Bolour produces a : it's a youth programme and it contains music. And like most podcasters Behzad struggles with music licensing, but the difficulty he faces isn't the presence of music podcasting rules in Iran, but their absence.

Because Behzad's podcast originates in the UK he's subject to the available licenses offered by organisations like the Performing Rights Society. Licenses that for many podcasters are prohibitively expensive

Behzad's solution has been to ask the artists featured on his cast to waive their rights. (something many indie music podcasters already do) But obtaining these premissions to podcast hasn't been so easy. He's spent his own money travelling to LA and Tajikistan in persuit of the necessary waivers. And Behzad says the situation is made more difficult because Iran lacks a copyright culture for music. As a result, his requests are often greeted with suspicion by artists who wonder what he's asking for and why.

The lax rules also undermine the attractiveness of music podcasting. Many young Iranians take the music tracks they want straight from the web without paying. This makes it hard from them to see the point of a podcast with some music, but Behzad says, because of their political and religious leaders penchant for long-winded speeches, they aren't big fans of talk only podcasts either.

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On this weeks segment we mentioned the following sites. And advance notice for the those listening to the archive there's some moderately strong language in the item Meet the Bloggers:

• We mentioned a blog that may be by Colonel Qaddafi via the blog
• And the plane diverted because of flushed mp3 player as reported by
• The bombings in Turkey. We had analysis from blogger and author
• Social News and whether people should be paid to submit stories with (which doesn't pay people who submit stories)
• And lastly a lot of daft ideas seem to be attracting publicity on the web. We asked the godfather of the modern publicity stunt to explain more.
• Our report from a geek dinner in New Orleans talking about the problems the city still faces
• A preview of the Radio4 series Meet the Bloggers
• And finally linked to our continuing online discussion about trust and blogs we chatted to the Craig Silverman of

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Just a short note to follow up on a comment left by Nigel. He raises an interesting point about the way that errors in wire stories can permeate through the press and mainstream media. Putting Google news and the excellent website together you can follow mistakes through the press, and . But I wonder if there's a way to use this technology to provide some quantitative analysis.

Heh: and to prove the point I originally slugged this "propOgation of errors"

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Mark Savage has been for a new documentary series on Radio 4. I interviewed him for pods and blogs and his affection for his subjects really shines though. We've spoken to some of the featured bloggers before on pods and blogs of course, but what makes this series different is that he focuses on their personal stories - he told me his approach was to turn up on the doorstep with the tape rolling. Here' Mark's own account of what he tried to achieve:

My mission (which I decided to accept) was to find out about some of the more successful bloggers on the Internet. Were they sad geeks sitting at their computer monitors all day in their underpants? Thankfully not. They turned out to be some of the most articulate, thoughtful and creative people I have met. Some, I think it is fair to say, were definitely bordering on the obsessive, but that is maybe what you have to be in order to keep a blog going day in, day out for months or years on end. I travelled extensively in America from New England to the Mid West and then from Seattle down the West Coast to Los Angeles as well as to Paris and Brussels - not forgetting our own back yard here in London. This was not something that could not be done online. Meeting them face to face, I wondered how their blogs related to their daily lives, what effect they have had on the world around them in cyberspace and in reality. Their answers nearly always surprised me.

Meet the Bloggers, Radio 4, Tuesdays 0930 August 29th 鈥� September 26th September

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In the future, someone said, we'll be famous for 15megabytes. Well that was a few years ago and you probably need to up the numbers to terabytes, but from to students YouTube is churning out more minor celebrities than a Big Brother block party.

But fame is a fickle mistress, and pancake tossing may prove to be just a flash in the pan. Which is why for lasting celebrity one must look elsewhere such as the pleasant discount bookstore we found on Conduit St. in London. We only ducked into to escape the rain, but left hefting a second hand copy of NIgel Rees' A Word in Your Shell-Like: 6000 curious and everyday phrases explained (a snip at 拢4)

It's a bit hit and miss (David Jacobs catchphrase Juke Box Jury) on the cliches it lists but does contain the following entry on the phrase "it's a pile of pants":

" It is said that the precise phrase first became popular in the early 1990's particularly through use by the Radio1 DJ Simon Mayo"

Now that's a kind of immortality you can't get on You Tube. Of course the real issue out of all this is when the press will tire of famous for 15mb stories. Answers on a postcard please (and no I don't know the history of that phrase - it's one of the ones missing from the book)

UPDATE: I should, of course, have added that we will never tire of these stories on pods and blogs and will doubtless be talking about pancakes and YouTube for many months to come

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On Friday I found myself sat wobbling on a bar stool like the late, great(but talking less sense) over at Bush House as part of a panel on podcasting. It was fun in the way only the World Service can be (where else would you find a discussion of music copyright in podcasts in ?). The audience probably knew more about the subject than we did, and there was a great question about presentation styles in podcasts.. Many podcasters adopt a deliberately "indie" feel; making a conscious effort not to ape professional broadcasters and to talk in a natural and unaffected manner. The questioner wanted to know if we, likewise, shouldn't be experimenting with giving 大象传媒 podcasts a "rougher" less polished sound.

As I said at the time: when and if, pods and blogs is ever podcast the 大象传媒 will have jumped with both feet into a whole realm of "unpolish". But usually on radio - to a greater or lesser extent - we try and tidy up all the audio. I remember a wonderful piece from - which very carefully de-ums most of its recordings - about how they edited interviews. They played the finished edit and compared it with original; it was quite a transformation.

Recently I did get a chance to hear how different editing styles can alter a piece I'd done. My report from Podfest was lucky enough to get into the Radio News Pod (download ) The editing was very tight. It's interesting to compare it with the rather ramshackle version on pods and blogs. It does show I think, the difference editing can make to the feel of a piece.

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A fun email from Nigel on the subject of trusting blogs v trusting the mainstream media . I've edited his email a bit..

There has been significant reporting of as people make decisions on whether or not it is a planet (I can see Pluto being really upset by this). One account has been [put out by by a wire service]Their story contains the following line, "Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's." You wonder if Pluto slows down for the corners of the oblong orbit, does it do a handbrake turn, or just maybe there are corner cushions located for it to bounce off. However [the wire service] has written this as oblong rather than elliptical. And so have many many newspapers and the like - I will bet my local paper will have this story in the print edition, probably with no editing at all.

Well Nigel is certainly right that a lot of places have also used the word oblong as a quick search of shows.

But the papers do have some wriggle room thanks to the definition of the word oblong.

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You have to admire a really good publicity stunt. The most bare-faced to my recollection occured when Taco Bell floated a raft in the Pacific and then should any fragment of the hit the floating ad-hoarding. ``Taco Bell is capturing the imagination of millions of people as they eagerly await Mir's return to earth,'' stated the . But it was marketing genius: cost of publicity stunt one raft..result international press (including this)

But the master of the publicity stunt is surely the great : the man who launched such headline grabbing (and entirely fictitious) campaigning organisations as the (slogan "a nude horse is a rude horse"). His exploits are best read about at his doubtless perfectly , but his antics at Superbowl XVII give you a flavour:

During the 1983 Super Bowl game between the Miami Dolphins and the Washington Redskins, Abel snuck a fake official onto the field. He called four plays before being chased down the sideline by a cop.

Abel is still with us and promises something great for 2006 - perhaps he'll turn to the blogs. For just as the web brings with it new forms of "viral"marketing so it brings with it new opportunities for headline grabbing hoaxes and publicity stunts. You can view this inventive history at the excellent

Journalists collude in this process more than we probably should, particularly during the summer dolldrums, mistakenly following the logic that a new website necessarily equals "new news" so that any daft new scheme on the net has the potential to make waves as long as it's the first to do so.

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As ever you can listen to the archive of this week's segment online. This weeks segment featured:

• A discussion of the marketing campaign behind Snakes on a Plane.
  
• Cricket news with . More Cricket blogs over at the TMS blog
  
• The huge and surrounding the extraordinary "free energy" claims of
  
• Physicist Sean Carroll of who had grave doubts about the science behind Steorn's claims
  
• More from Sean on the recent .
  
• A report on Podfest featuring , , Paisley Riot and a smidgin of Goodbye Seargant
  
• Tom Reynolds on trusting blogs
  
• Nir Ofir on

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Politicians in Arizona are engaging with MySpace according to While MySpace has also provided a fertile hunting ground for journalists trying to dig up dirt on the younger relatives of candidates as from California suggests, the same report also sees great potential for MySpace in the political sphere:

MySpace users can join groups of like-minded people, and the numbers can get huge: MySpace Democrats and MySpace Republicans each have nearly 50,000 members

What's the situation here? There's an opportunity for a good bit of citizen journalism on this if anyones interested in taking it on for next weeks programme.

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No, I'm not talking about that great . I'm, of course, talking about the most recent study where we the media try to prove that we're more important than bloggers.

Catching up on my blog reading this morning, Tom over at Random Acts of Reality let me know , and certain issues that he might have in trusting the mainstream media. Note: My friends over at 大象传媒 News actually do read blogs and to name the right Zoe.

Chris and I had a quick chat via e-mail about this study, and he said:

I mean people don't trust "blogs" - which blogs? It's like asking people if they trust "bid up TV" as a news source and then saying that therefore people don't trust TV News

Personally, my view: "Hmmm...I wonder if it's that time of the year when the media are setting their ad rates?"

Seriously, I'm a journalist and a news junkie. There are journalists who I trust, and journalists who frankly I don't trust any farther than I can throw them, which for some of them isn't very far.

Trust blogs? For one, blogs are a technology to me. So, asking me if I trust blogs is sorta like asking me if I trust a dish washing machine. Hold tight for an analogy shift. Now, I trust a dishing washing machine to wash my dishes, but I don't trust it, say, to advise me on my finances. Bloggers. I trust Tom to tell me what it's like to be an ambulance driver in London. But I might not trust Tom to tell me about the Supreme Court of the United States like I trust the folks at to tell me their view about the Supreme Court. (Scotus=Supreme Court of the United States. Get it?) But Tom never advertised himself as an expert on the Supreme Court so it doesn't affect how much trust I have in Tom. Make sense?

At any rate, what do you think? Who can you trust? Who do you trust?

We'll be dropping by a . Unfortunately I won't be there in person enjoying jambalaya, collard greens and cornbread (wow that made me hungry) Instead we'll be doing what we call a "simul-rec" i.e. we talk via phone but record both sides of the conversation as mp3's cutting them together later. It's a year on from Katrina and the city still has many problems. I'll be asking George from and a number of his fellow geeks what citizen journalists can do to help.

But it occurs to me we should be virtually attending events like this in other places. Perhaps we should make a "blog city roundup" a regular feature. If you belong to a bloggers group based in a particular village, town or city and would like to talk about life in your city drop us a note or leave a comment.

UPDATE: Kalypso, one of the attendees at the dinner It's a great piece of citizen journalism; my attempts at film usually have people going "oh that's why you work in radio" and I'm three times Kalypso's age.

UPDATEII George sent us this link to his photos of the

UPDATE III Ran short of time to cut together the two sides of the interview this week so will run next Monday

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The Observer issued it's list of , Time Magazine produced its list of the

Of course lists like this reflect the opinions of the journalists who write them. For an insight into what web users think there are a number of tabulations of the most important/influential blogs based on factors like traffic, number of citations on other blogs and number of links. Blogstreet produces NZ Bear's blog ecosystem is a playful take on the . For a more instant snap-shot and both rank web posts by popularity.

It's the premiere of Samuel L Jackson's high-altitude thriller Friday. Of course given recent events, vipers in the overhead lockers may seem the least of our worries, but something tells me this won't stop an awful lot of people going to see a film that's become a huge internet craze

Snakes on a Plane is to film on the web what the were to music on the net. The movie attracted massive early who thought the name was a hoot; possibly even cooler than ""

As the excellent round-up on wikipedia points out much of the initial buzz about the film came from a blog post by a former S.O.A.P writer, (warning: strong language) The concept quickly snowballed with fake movie tailers, posters, all helping to make the film, at that stage little more than a quirky title, a cult hit.

What differentiates this from other movie marketing campaigns, however, is how quickly the film company, New Line, embraced the blogs reaction; a reaction they encouraged by supplying viral content and engaging with the internet community. As reported on Up All Night in March social networking site Tagworld launched a competition to write music for the films soundtrack. There were even five additional days of filming which the claims "came about because of intense and growing fan interest in the movie," bumping the rating up to an R and including some of the lines from the spoof movie trailers on the net:

..the filmmakers added more gore, more death, more nudity, more snakes and more death scenes. And they shot a scene where Jackson does utter the line that fans have demanded.

Some will greet this clever use of the web with a hiss, others will be pleased that a big media company has seen the positive side of having its content "remixed" by bloggers; much will depend on whether the film lives up to the fans high-flying expectations.

Belated show notes for this weeks pods and blogs segment. I'll keep them brief this week:
- The blog and podcast interview
- Emails from , a clip of the and aviation expert
- The Zahed and Shahed from with perspectives on recent terror alterts from both sides of the Atlantic
- The famed 78 year-old You-Tuber reviewed by
- talking about mobile phone blogging
- Podcaster reports on blog plays at the Edinburgh Fringe
- Andof Nielsen Analytics explains the million dollar podcast
- Later: Robin Hamman interviews (see below)

As ever if there's an item or a story you'd like to hear leave a comment or send an email to upallnight@bbc.co.uk

Ever since coined the term in his 1993 book of the same name, people have been arguing about it. In those early days, some social theorists and academics worried that people who engaged in building communities online would turn their backs on their "real" communities. A prominent and widely publicised research study in the late 90's suggested that online community membership did exactly that: it dragged people away from what the authors felt was more meaninful face to face engagement with the offline communities around them (although it should be noted that the findings were several years later).

The argument about the value, or negative consequences of, online community raged until 2000 when made it into the Business Week top ten business books of the year, convincing a legion of business leaders and consultants that "markets are conversations" and online community was the way to tap into those conversations.

In the same year an email group for online community managers, e-mint, formed and started holding regular meetings in London. has since formalised as the International Association of Online Community Managers and has over 500 members on it's email discussion list. Nowadays, the public perception of online communities is that, well, they're everywhere and just about anyone who is online is a part of at least one online community, whether it's a cc list on an email used by friends to organise a night out, a dating website, a work based project wiki, or a photo sharing site like .

It's at a meeting of e-mint in London where I caught up with Seattle's who is widely recognised as a leading online community expert. I first met Nancy at an online writing in 2000 and again at four years later and wanted to find out how, in her view, the very idea of online community had changed during the ten years she's been involved in the industry. I also wanted to hear her thoughts on how changes in the tools used to build online community, from message board forums and email discussion lists in the past to, more recently, blogs and social networking sites like myspace, had changed the role of the professional online community manager.

You can listen to Robin's interview with Nancy White

UPDATE:We've had to take down the link to the voicemail service because of some technical issues. But you can still email audio to us if you like, though we can't promise to play it.

There are free tools on the net that will let you mix and create complex audio. for example is popular with podcasters and it's free. To get it to us just email the file as an attachment to podsandblogs@bbc.co.uk or use a service like

There's a very good guide to the basics from the World Service programme Outlook. If you have the urge to create complex audio on your PC, thanks to the podcasting boom there are lots of applications out there. There's a long list over at

Tonight is a pioneering gig organised by Phil Coyne of , featuring bands he's played on his podcast. A little anxious about attending because, frankly, I'm too old for this sort of thing and I've reached the stage where it all sounds like noise..bah..humbug. Still if the chaps can stop laughing at my "dad dancing" for five minutes I'm sure there'll be plenty to learn about Britain's thriving indie music podcasting scene.

UPDATE: Had a really great time. Good people, good bands. You can listen to the interviews I did () I think some of them may find their way into the Bitjobs podcast too

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Just listening to Joe D'eon's Fly With Me podcast looking at the . Very interesting stuff. Joe's a working pilot so it's a fresh perspective to hear him interview security experts, and his own stranded sister, about the situation.

is the unlikely new You Tube sensation. Peter's "first try" on You Tube was downloaded over 300,000 times. Well done Peter for giving the lie to the "cult of youth" that bedevils much of the media

that Iran's president has . So far it seems to have only one entry, a long biographical post, but it does allow comments (no word on whether these are pre or post moderated) It's available in Persian, French, English and Arabic. There's also an interactive vote, although the question seems..erm.. a little leading:

Do you think that the US and Israeli intention and goal by attacking Lebanon is pulling the trigger for another word war?

At the time of writing 71% answered "no" Obviously it's early days for the blog, but if it's a success I wonder if we'll see a presidential MySpace page?

I'm going to start regularly posting up the topics and interviews that I'm working on for the coming pods and blogs segment in the hope that we can develop a more collaborative approach to the segment. If you have a suggestion for a story please leave a comment. Here's what we're lining up for the wee small hours of Tuesday:

Terrorism in the UK. How do we avoid "expert-centric" coverage? Is there a different take on the issue that the mainstream media have missed?

Mobile War Reporting: We'll interview Erik Sundelof about how mobile phones can help people blog from dangerous places (see below)

Blogging at the fringe: We counted three plays based around blogs featuring at the Edinburgh Festival. Podcaster was nominated for a Scottish BAFTA for his coverage of the event last year..we'll have a chat to him about the blog inspired performances.

The Million Dollar Podcast: one of the US's leading media and market research companies claims the top podcasters Nielsen Analytic's Larry Gerbrandt will explain all, including why you don't yet see that many podcasters driving Lamborghini's

Nancy White Interview: Robin Hamman speaks to Nancy White a leading expert in

Not everyone can blog particularly if they are in the middle of a combat zone, but mobile phones it seems, span much more of the digital divide than desktop PC's. , is the creation of Eric Sundelof. It's a collection of tools enabling people to report events such as the directly and simply via their mobile phones. Here's an example of the kind of comments people are leaving via text message:

i am getting tired of feeling afraid all the time. The sirenes are becoming like a bad nightmare. I just want it to stop...

You can listen to Kevin's podcast interview with Eric via his other blog (heh) at

screamed the flashing BREAKING NEWS graphics on the tele. You could feel the unease on when he wrote from Boston Logan's airport:

British officials, CNN just said, have "disrupted a plot to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale".
It says they "disrupted" the plot. That's not the same as "stopped".

The Counter Terrorism Blog had a , and as was reported later in the day, this plot was eerily similar, some would say exactly the same, as a 1995 plot to blow up .

Sunny at Pickled Politics has a good roundup of the . From looking at the roundup, British scepticism is alive and well on the blogs.

We're teaming up with the World Service's Outlook programme in a plea for more podcast suggestions that we might feature on both our programmes. We were very pleased to feature on Tuesday on Pods and Blogs and we'd like more of the same. Drop us an email to upallnight@bbc.co.uk if you produce or listen to a podcast you think we should feature (or better still share the love and leave a comment) and we'll have a listen.

If you don't regularly listen to podcasts you really should give it a try. Most people find them via itunes but of course that requires downloading the itunes software which can be hard to do at work. So for some sneaky desktop pod listening for starters you could try browsing , and for local casts You can also search the content of podcasts for specific words and phrases thanks to new services that "listen" to the audio. Try and

UPDATE: Rebecca Myatt Outlooks Interactive producer writes more about what they are doing (see overleaf):

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Sadly not the kind of party where you might pull a cracker or get a free paper hat but some evidence of the increasingly active engagement of Britain's political parties with the blogosphere. The supposed candidates for a new Conservative party logo appeared first on while the Labour Party is holding a competition for (hat tip )

Over the past year we've seen a significant increase in the impact of political blogs in the UK. This is another sign of that. And if you want to follow what's going on in them Alan Connor's list is a good primer.

Well it turned out to be an eventful day/night. Right out the gate a few apologies (something that almost provided a theme for the broadcast in fact). First to a blogger from Syria. We'll air her interview later on the week but tonight we just ran out of time because of some late breaking news. And also to who's interview was a minute or two shorter than planned..largely due to my whittering at the top.

We began with blogger Charles Johnson of . He's been in spearheading a blog campaign that eventually persuaded Reuters to admit that a picture they distributed of bomb damage in Beruit had been doctored. More about that story here

We took a look at whether or not Iraq was in, or heading towards a civil war. It's hard not to be moved by what Iraqi blogger had to say on the subject and the courage he shows in planning to return to Iraq. For a US perspective we were pleased to welcome blogger, former army reserve colonel, novelist and (how's that for a CV!) who was equally eloquent on the subject of where Iraq is and where it needs to go..

Taking a left turn slightly we headed to the couch of . The podcast of a retired academic psychologist David Van Nuys his interviews with an Iraqi listener Mohammed are a fascinating listen as they explored the psychological affect of conflict together.

And the second of the night came from AOL. Tech bloggers discovered the company had accidentally posted the details of some searches on the internet. Not directly identifying customers but a serious lapse nonetheless. Michael Arrington of the blog filled us in on the details.

To Cuba, not in the company of a blogger but someone who I think has a very interesting take on Citizen activism. Mae Liz Orrego works with (if I'm spelling that correctly) Mae, an exile herself living in Sweden, told us what her contacts were saying about Castro's ill-health.

Lastly we visited Israel and Lebanon in the company of two bloggers. told us of the terrible affect of the rocket attacks on people in Israel and whose secoond cousin in the Lebanese army was killed, told us of his personal loss and filled us in on more bad news from Beruit. It is a great tragedy that war divides two such charming and intelligent human beings.

Reuters is in the middle of a "blog storm" over allegations that one of it's photos of bomb damage in Beruit had been doctored. It has now withdrawn the image, and . Robin Hamman has more he also rightly reminds me that we've had our own photo scandals .

I'm not keen on the blogs vs mainstream media analysis; my experience has been that there's plenty of scope for effective "collaborative" journalism. But this latest incident is sure to revive the debate about that relationship. It's a theme of piece in the New Yorker. Part of the last paragraph in particular could almost have been written in reference to the latest row:

Journalism is not in a period of maximal self-confidence right now, and the Internet鈥檚 cheerleaders are practically laboratory specimens of maximal self-confidence. They have got the rhetorical upper hand; traditional journalists answering their challenges often sound either clueless or cowed and apologetic.

What do you think?

Blogs are getting turned into books, there's even a literary prize, the . We've spoken to the judges and to some of the finalists (you can hear our interview with blooker nominated ). But it's the x-rated blogs, often written anonymously, that have really caught the publishers eye. The latest bonk-blook-blockbuster is Girl With a One Track Mind*. The author wished to remain anonymous, not suprising given the content of her blog-book, but she's been outed by a The Sunday Times. The Guardian's has a good post on the subject on his blog, his question: why if you are embarassed about your sexual exploits, blog about them at all?

It's an interesting question: why do people post very personal information on-line. I worry about sets, but people seem happy to put their whole lives in the public domain. At least one person I know has their best man's speech up on the net complete with all sorts of icky stories. Seems to me the whole private-life in the public space is a good subject for a radio segment. Suggestions on who we should talk to and how we should approach it welcome.

* linking to the blog would sadly break at least two 大象传媒 editorial policy rules

Sunday is traditionally the day for political programmes. Not wanting to be left out we asked The 大象传媒's Alan Connor to send us this handy guide to the thriving world of the British Political blogosphere (more on this Monday we hope). The list below is a precis of the at Alan's televisual home The Daily Politics. I should add that Guido, Recess and Iain all podcast, and good listens they are too. Finally I'll mention, in passing, that we once interviewed Guido who was rather pleased with his Television Centre pass made out in his blog name of "Guy Fawkes". Anyway, back to Alan:

"If you want to follow political stories on the blogs, the best thing to do is to look across a good range. Many of them link to each other, and it takes a moment to work out your favourites - do remember to bookmark
(or better still tm">syndicate) them, or you'll forget where to go!

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We hope to have many guest writers from outside the 大象传媒 offer personal views on this blog. Tehran based bloggerwas one of the first bloggers to be featured on the segment and so it seemed fitting, with conflict in Lebanon and nuclear politics looming large over that country, to hear from him first. This post (which I've edited for length, read the whole thing ) is a powerful argument against national stereotypes. It's one of his recurring themes to stress our common humanity. While he's fearful that Iran may become a target in an expanded conflict, he's also optimistic that the blogs can help unite divided people:

"With the cloud of war gradually casting it's shadow eastwards from where it showers Lebanon and Iraq, it is no longer possible to keep my head under the snow pretending the avalanche is not happening. Iran is now under the shadow of an approaching conflict while its people can do very little to stop it. Seems that the "Shiite Crescent" in dream of Iranian Mullas, is finally crossing the "Great Israel from Nile to Euphrates " idea of radical Jews of Jerusalem. The sad part of the story will begin when the tanks start rolling and bombs start falling and the first victims will be just decent human beings who were stereotyped but the opponent media as either "terrorist nation" or "Zionist occupier". We have been hearing such stereotypes over and over again. We are just like a company whose acronyms are so obvious to the employees but so strange to anyone from outside.....

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With all the doom and gloom around the world at the moment you may want to read something that is just plain fun. Among the blogs that cheer me up when news is all getting a bit much are (paws up!) and (uber geek DIY). What are your just for fun favourites? Leave us a link in the comments.

Still keeping a foot on both sides of the Atlantic. At the moment I am holed up in what I call my studio west - the attic floor of an old home in a former fishing village north of Boston. With more lines coming in than your average apartment, it makes these occasional gigs both fascinating and fun. Because of the gift of time zones, I also have more face to face encounters, good for the soul.

My neighbour who is old old enough to belong to what Tom Brokaw called The Greatest Generation began talking unprompted about the Middle East today. What she says is that none of her friends what to talk about it - so afraid are they of its implications. They all talk about World War Three, she said.

Against type, she is a passionate Arabist. To begin with, she said, I supported Israel like everyone else. But they kept on taking from Palestinians and I couldn't stand that. I have a son in the Navy and I worry about him. He is in the Pacific - he did one Middle East tour, and is safe, thank God. But he could go back. It's close to me, you know. And I have a daughter in London and friends in New York and I worry about them facing being blown up alone. Somehow it doesn't seem so bad if you're with someone.

Under the surface, there are many people here who care -- and despair too. And don't talk, on purpose.

On Tuesday's segment I think we'll have to take a look at the story that's front page of

Bloggers too have been writing about the issue of whether or not Iraq is in a civil war. By coincidence my blog reading this morning began with the Baghdad based blogger who wrote that:
"Until now, no Iraqi government official was honest and clear enough to go in public and say 鈥渨e have a civil war in the country鈥� although all indications show that we passed the suitable time for such a sentence. The right sentence a government official should say now is 鈥淗ELP. We cannot stop the civil war in the country.鈥�"

It's part of a much longer post. While bloggers write about the violence in Iraq, they've also been victims of it. Salam links to

But it would be very wrong to suggest that all those who blog about Iraq are pessimistic. From the US we have a blog post from highlighting the latest Brookings containing signs of progress.

The truth is that opinions in the blogs are as diverse and complex as the situation itself and the only thing to do is dive in, read widely and make up your own mind. For a start I'd recommend which lists many blogs from Iraq, but I'd also take a look at to get the perspective of the US troops over there. I might also stop by some of the big American political blogs like and . But there are many more as a search of technorati.com will quickly demonstrate

All of which still leaves the question: how to cover the issue on Tuesday? Suggestions welcome.

For the first time since 1959 Fidel Castro is, termporarily, relinquishing control of Cuba. Naturally the blogosphere responds with a variety of opinions. Here are two very different overviews of what the blogs are saying: Georgia Popperwell at and A.M.Mora Y Leon at .

We'll be looking at the story on Pods and Blogs, but it's hard to find voices within Cuba because of the limited net access and the restrictions on free speech. How should we cover the story given these restrictions? Let us know.

At 3am every Tuesday morning, about two hours before your average starling considers it worth winding up his pipes to greet returning night shift workers, 5 live plays host to the digital world.

Outriders is an hour of radio dedicated to covering the news as it's seen by , and the . It looks at innovation and well, the Outriders in the digital field.

It's our attempt to report the news members of the public are creating, discussing and sharing across the world thanks to the internet. The segment is broadcast nationally in the UK on MW, on FM on many of the 大象传媒 local stations and is available as a podcast.

CONTRIBUTORS

Chris Vallance

Chris is a reporter. He spends most of his time pointing microphones at people and asking "Is there something here that makes a noise?"

Along with Rhod Sharp and Kevin Anderson (who has since left us to become the Guardian's Editor of Blogs) he started the whole Pods and Blogs shebang in 2005, and is therefore partially responsible for failing to come up with a decent name for the segment until Jamillah renamed it in 2008.

He's interested in the way technology changes society and how the web is changing journalism. He doesn't have a TV, likes folk music and once owned an

Jamillah Knowles

Jamillah Knowles is a radio and online journalist at the 大象传媒.

"I love tech and online things generally. I especially love - robots, comic books and baking. In between making pods and blogs and wasting time laughing at , I am intrigued by geographical differences in the way people spend time and describe things online."

"I also manage an epic fail every time I try to resist intriguing gadgets - but I still have not given in to the iPhone - yet. I wish I had time to study at the Singularity University and maybe earn stripes as a proper coder."

"Though the really interesting thing for me is you. That's very cheesy, but its people who make the web incredible and barely a day goes by when I am not astonished by some new effort somewhere online."

"Remember - all your base might not belong to us - but we do like to talk to you about it."

"Email podsandblogs@bbc.co.uk FTW! "

Rhod Sharp

"Rhod Sharp is a journalist who talked himself into being Up All Night after years of night shifts on the foreign desk had evidently weakened his brain."

"He is still there, as far as anyone can tell. He does have a 3G iPhone and uses it for prosaic things like talking to people as well as texting, twitttering, emailing and recording interviews at a pinch. And reading the headlines and listening in unlikely places to Radio 5 live, and so on."

"Apart from referring to myself in the third person, most of my other foibles are a deep dark secret. I have admitted to Jamillah that I still own a pair of army surplus tank commander headphones which I used on my first outing as a foreign reporter, and a Tandy TRS 100 which still has the nicest, most tactile, computer keyboard ever made. I have a 1.1 fondness for beautifully constructed emails and aspire to a Zenlike calm when reading disagreeable texts which never, ever, come from listeners to P&B"

We want you to be part of this. The segment needs your ideas and your suggestions for stories, guests and approaches to topics. If you've found a good blog, a great podcast or have an interesting story to tell leave a comment on the blog or send an email to podsandblogs@bbc.co.uk, or reach us on or join our facebook group And you don't have to pull an all-nighter to take part; you can listen online any time of day thanks to our podcast and online streaming audio archive.

It's hard not to be struck by the power of the writing in the blog of our first guest as he describes the peculiarity of life as normal in a Beruit bar, on the 17th day of the bombing:

"The bartenders were decorated with "No War" stickers and handed them out to the patrons. A group of foreign expats walked in halfway through the evening. This would have been normal 2 weeks ago, but now everyone turned around and stared. TV crew? Relief workers? 10 minutes later they were already in conversation with a group of Lebanese singles, and you hardly noticed they were there anymore"

is an award winning professional reporter. But his efforts to document a year of conflict around the world for Yahoo on shows how news on the web can transform journalism. Seeing his reports from one conflict after another collated in one place has a powerful impact on the reader that's very different from the 5 minute instant hit in a TV bulletin.

Many have called the conflict in Lebanon a proxy war and Iran is certainly one of those nations with a stake in the conflict. Manchester based Iranian blogger Shahram of gave us a sense of how Iranians around the world viewed the war. In the blogs at least there's a great diversity of opinion about the actions of the current Iranian regime, Israel and Hizbollah

Away from the conflict in Lebanon NYU journalism professor spoke to Rhod about his new project bringing together citizen journalist and professional media in

Chelsea visit Los Angeles and Nikki of the LA based soccer podcast told us how the footy stars were received in Hollywood.

Lastly blogger Robin Hamman of and the 大象传媒 reported from the launch party for a new Web 2.0 company . Poor old Robin had to spend the hottest day of the year on the 34th floor of the BT Tower at the glitzy media launch. Oh the humanity.

At 2AM every Tuesday morning, about 3 hours before your average starling considers it worth winding up his pipes to greet returning night shift workers, Five Live plays host to a unique radio experiment. Pods and blogs is an hour of radio dedicated to covering the news as it's seen by , and the . It's our attempt to report the news members of the public are creating, discussing and sharing across the world thanks to the internet. The segment is broadcast nationally in the UK on MW, on FM on many of the 大象传媒 local stations and is available as a podcast. It began in 2005 with Rhod Sharp the host of Up All Night, Kevin Anderson (who has since left us to become the Guardian's Editor of Blogs) and Chris Vallance who also produces the segment. We also enjoy regular contributions from the bloggers behind the Britblog Roundup.

We want you to be part of this. The segment needs your ideas and your suggestions for stories, guests and approaches to topics. If you've found a good blog, a great podcast or have an interesting story to tell leave a comment on the blog or send an email to podsandblogs@bbc.co.uk, or reach us on or join our facebook group And you don't have to pull an all-nighter to take part; you can listen online any time of day thanks to our podcast and online streaming audio archive.