Norgdom

We celebrate Christmas in our house and although not everyone does, I thought I would take the chance to thank everyone for their great support for PerthNorg - it being the festive season and all
It’s traditionally a quiet news period, but don’t forget to drop in and make your views known her at the norg.

Wishing you all the best this festive season …

It’s so silly, but it’s very funny. Go on Elf yourself - here’s mine.

Unfortunately it’s not for me. But I have managed to convert a good friend of mine over from the dark side. I know we have a few Windows-inclined supporters here on the norg, but I’m a Mac girl all the way.

Now the challenge is to get in and out of the Mac shop without becoming to tempted myself. As I’ve mentioned before I am in need of an upgrade :(, but unless they have a two for one deal on I’ll be coming home empty-handed.

Every now and then I have a look in at digg - a user-generated news site that creates links to articles that are dugg by its community of users (called diggers).

Recently, there has been some debate as to whether some of their top diggers are paid by PR firms to digg their stories - it gets thousands of hits a day - so this generates great traffic for links that make it on to its homepage.

Now as far as I know these are just rumours put out by the likes of their competition ie. Netscape.
But it did come to mind when I saw this story titled “You have never seen an MP3 player like this” and opened the digg comments. If this was the work of a PR company - you could say it backfired. DISCALIMER: not saying it is!
I particularly like this comment:

looks like a pregnant iPod. Maybe it’ll give birth to a shuffle.

Nothing makes you feel more special than being invited to an exclusive party, not that I’ve EVER been invited to one
So being on the scouta private beta list is as close to it as I will ever get and the good news is you can drop scouta a line and register your interest to.

scouta is a new site being launched by a friend Richard Giles and his business partner Graeme Sutherland. Some of you might know Richard from PerthNorg as Rich - he’s one of the great Cit J photographers that contribute to the site.
While Rich is not telling anyone what scouta is just yet, if you sign up you’ll be one of the first to know (and possibly use). You can also stay tuned through the scouta blog.

It’s exciting watching someone else go through the motions of launching a new site and it reminds me of the rollercoaster of emotions that go with it.

So far it “looks” fantastic, well the little sign up page anyway, and I’m positive they’ll have a great ride.
It’s great to see something like this coming out of Perth (Graeme used to live in here as well) and I’m sure scouta could put us on the map.

So go sign up … and see you round the norg.

Most of the mainstream media have been calling for user contributions for a while in their bid to stay relevant.

But it seems that they just can’t shake their old media ways.

News.com.au asked its readers to send in their pictures of the ongoing bush fires raging across three States (that was on their last count - the fires in WA didn’t rate a mention.)

This is how they ask:

WE want you to send us your photos of the bushfires in Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales.

Email your pictures to photos@news.com.au

Requirements:

All files should not exceed 1Mb in file size. Images should preferably be in jpeg format.

The picture should have a full caption with the photographer’s name, address and contact details.

And then in a real role reversal, they tell you the terms and conditions which you are supplying them with the photos, which includes such things as:

5. You acknowledge that News may use all intellectual property rights in your content throughout the world, in perpetuity, without restriction and without making payment to you, including publication of that material in hard copy publications or in electronic media, using your content in advertising and promotional material for News and permitting others to do any of these, including when News and others receive payment for this.
6. You waive all moral rights in your content and consent to anything which News (or any person permitted to do so by News) may do in relation to your content which would otherwise be in breach of your moral rights. This includes that News may use your content without attributing you as the source of your content.

I noticed I was not the only one who thought, they were lacking in manners. Over at Barista they ask:

Do they think we want to put: “Once News Ltd put my picture on their website” on our tombstones?

Thought I’d point out that anything submitted to PerthNorg remains yours and yours only

Hope to see round the norg …

I never get round to this blog as often as I like, but that comes with being bad at self-discipline. I’m considering making a New Year’s resolution to blog here at least once a day, but then I have a fear of not living up to that commitment. So I’m considering it
I had to conquer those fears of failure when I set up PerthNorg - I realised that any failure would be public as well as very personal. But so far I have no regrets. That’s not to say I think I have succeeded in what I have set out to do - far from it, but there are times when I sit back and read the Norg and I think to myself, just for a little moment, “this is what it’s about.”

There are the more frequent times, when I think this could all be a hell of a lot better. And many people tell me that to. That’s OK, as long as we don’t give up aiming for the bigger picture.

We are currently in the final stages of adding the Phase II features I keeping referring to - yes, development has taken a little longer than we anticipated, but hopefully it will be worth it.

I hope to have them up and running in the next week, well because there’s never enough to do around Christmas is there?

That said, I hope to see you round the Norg …

Well it has been a rather stressful few days. You would have all noticed that PerthNorg, has been experiencing some problems.

This was the result of a malicious attack on PerthNorg, by an attacker who caused an overflow on our server and sent it into meltdown. It was a sustained attack that took some time to resolve, not helped by the company that formerly looked after our server.

We are just in the process of ironing out the last few glitches and I will have more to report then. I am aware the time stamp is out at the moment, but we should have that fixed quickly.
I take the attack very seriously and feel that is as much an attack on everyone who contributes to the site as well as me. Currently I am in disscussions with the Federal Police to identify the person or persons responsible.

At the same time, when my head has cleared :), I’m hoping we can get back on our feet better and stronger. It happened at a time when we were really hitting our stride, but I’m determined to get right back up again. Out traffic has been gowing between 50 to 70 per cent every week so we are on the up thanks to all of you.

I’ll have more to say on this, but right now I’m headed out for a good time with friends.

Thanks to everyone and I hope to see you all around the norg …

BBC News 24 has launched a news program based entirely on user-generated material.

Your News will feature stories, features and video proving most popular with viewers on TV and the internet.

You can read about it here.

It sounds like a great idea and it will be interesting to see where it goes. The BBC has been a great innovator in the area of enncouraging user-participation and this it taking it to a new level.

If only the ABC could get their act together here, it would be great.