Norgdom

We are aware that emails are not being sent out to users who are registering or trying to retrieve their password. We are working on it and should have it working shortly.

If you would like us to alert you when we have it fixed, email us at admin@norg.com.au and we will contact you as soon as it is fixed.

Sorry, about this folks ….

It’s been a busy couple of months working on the new look and design for the norg. And while the new site looks great, we spent a lot of time improving the user-interface and news experience for our users.

We’ve tried to simplify everything from sign up, to voting and editing your stories - so let us know what we have got right and what we still need to work on.

When you file a story now your votes are recorded automatically, and when you vote you should notice the votes increase straight away.

A big thanks to Myles Eftos for all his work.

Hope to see you round the Norg.

Just to let you know that we have fixed a voting glitch that happened after we upgraded our servers that caused voting not to be halved after 24 hours.

It has meant some stories have been stuck at the top for a longer period, but this should rectify in the next day.

Thanks to everyone who pointed it out. Let me know if you notice any other issues
Cheers and hope to read you round the norg.

Could a piece written on the Norg ever compete for a Walkley?

Well I think so, and I was more than happy to sign a Walkley entry form for WA blogger and Cit J Liz Murray who wrote some compelling articles for PerthNorg on Aboriginal deaths in custody.

As Liz put it, “I thought I’d push some boundaries & am entering the deaths in custody story & photos for the Walkley”.

It’s not an issue that receives a lot of mainstream press coverage and Liz took it upon herself to highlight the issue and she got a great response.
You can read Liz’s original pieces  here and here.

Good luck Liz, we’re all behind you!

On Thursday night I’ve been invited to be a guest speaker at the Walkley Media Forum.

I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion on The War of Attrition: Influence and Diversity. It’s hard to keep up with who owns what in Australian Media at the moment with a new deal announced just about every day, so I’m looking forward to thrashing out where the future of Australian media is headed.
For those interested in attending the details are:
6.30pm Thursday August 23
The Ernst & Young Building
11 Mounts Bay Road
Perth WA 6000

Entry: FREE − drinks & food provided
Others joining me on the panel will be:

• Gary Adshead, Snr Reporter Channel 7
• Danielle Benda, ABC Radio
• Martin Turner, Community Newspaper Group

RSVP to the Alliance at 1300 656 513 or email melissa.mcallister@alliance.org.au

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMbLoUlLYYk

www.podcamp.info is running a competition to bring Podcamp to the Australian city with the most votes. So far we’ve managed to stay ahead of other Australian cities. But with the competition closing this Friday, we wanted to save a few votes until the last days in order to claim the title as the new media capital of Australia.

So, it’s up to the Cit Js and readers of PerthNorg to bring us over the line.

Go here to stake your claim on behalf of Perth.

Content should be free.
That’s why it’s significant that The New York Times is rumoured to stop charging readers for online access to its Op-Ed columnists and other content including archives.
There’s nothing I find more frustrating than following a link to a paid subscriber story and it’s not just The New York Times that is guilty.
The largest offender in Australia is the Australian Financial Review.

It’s hard to know what may have pushed The New York Times to make the change, but maybe they realised that they were damaging their own web readership and a number of theories have been floated including that their own online subscriptions were in decline.
My personal opinion is that as news consumers we either pay for content or we put up with ads. As I’m a strong believer that content should be free, I’m happy to put up with ads as the trade-off.

It’s an important point for publishers with the headline today in the Financial Times that online advertising will overtake US newspapers by 2011.
It’s a scary time for traditional media stalwarts, but it’s good to see they are waking up to the industry they are now playing in.

I suppose the fear that moving content online could mean people stop buying their paper, becomes a little mute if people are not buying it anyway.

Give people what they want and you will be rewarded in the long term.

Here’s what CNet has to say on the issue, and as always Scott Karp has some interesting observations as well:

The new economics of media make charging for content nearly impossible because there is always someone else producing similar content for free — even if the free content isn’t “as good as” the paid content by some meaningful metric, it doesn’t matter because there’s so much content of at least proximate quality that the paid content provider has virtually no pricing power.

UPDATE: Argh! Just realised the Financial Times is another offender, hit on online this story after reading its piece on line advertising.

I feel like a bad mother, but yesterday was PerthNorg’s first birthday. I only realised this morning in a meeting when someone asked me how long ago we launched.

I’ve never been good remembering with dates
It has been an amazing year- the best thing for me personally has been the opportunity to meet so many brilliant people. I’m not an overly sentimental person and I’m not prone to one of those  “looking back over the year” posts. Right now I’m happy where we are, but even more excited about where we are going.

And by “we” I mean all of us. Long live Cit Js

Just a quick post to let you know about some of the changes we have been making around the site to try and improve the user experience for you. Most of the changes we have made have been requests by you, our loyal Cit Js, so keep the feedback coming.
First off we have added a WYSWYG editor to the comments. The biggest advantage of this is that it now makes it easier for people to add links to stories. If you highlight the word you want linked, a little pop up box will show up and it is there that you add the URL (the web address in your browser bar) for the page you want to link to. Just a note that the URL should always include the http://
Thanks to Busybee for the suggestion.

Note: There are a couple of browser issues with this feature if you are using Safari.

We have also added a recent comments box in the right-hand column of the front page. This way you can track which stories are being commented on around PerthNorg. We have some improvements to make on this, but hopefully you will find it useful.

If you want to see what stories the comments relate to, just put your cursor over the comment and a the story heading should pop up.

Thanks to Em and Ianspence for the suggestion and sorry that it took so long to get it to you.

We now also have a page where you can read all the top stories across all categories and not just those in the news, sport, entertainment, business, lifestyle and technology. The left-hand column on story pages now reflects this and you can also click through to a full page of all the stories if you hit the heading or More Stories link.

Thanks to Cit J JordanBrock for the suggestion.

Next up is Just In also has a page of it’s own. This way you can have a look over the Just In stories, rather than just the last few that have been added by our Cit Js.

You can get here through the frontpage by hitting the heading of the Just In.

Thanks to Cit J Teddlesruss for the suggestion.

Other minor changes include the Blogs have now been added to the navigation bar, and you can acess the blogs through a drop down menu there. Thanks to Abstract Gourmet for the suggestion and keep those great posts coming. I blame you for my inability to give up caffeine.

There have been a few other tweaks around the place but that covers the major things.

Let me know what you think and keep the comments coming. Read you round the norg.

The West Australian Web Awards are on again and this year we have been nominated as a finalist in the online news category. Congratulations to everyone who has been nominated.

Here is a list of the finalists:

STUDENT

Adventures of the SunSmart Kid Educational Game: Patryk Pawlowski, Marius Storm, Adam Richings and Martin Malek
Risbec Design and Drafting: Daniel Roffman, Alex MacRae, Moe Aung, Keith Atkinson, and Andrew Ellis
Veronica’s Assisin’s Official website: Tim Paul (who by thw way was also the designer on PerthNorg)

PERSONAL

Bloggy Hell: Myles Eftos
Here Yesterday: Ray Stone
Man with no Blog: Gary Barber

SMALL BUSINESS (1-5 employees)

Carola Kinasha: Freckle Creative
f22 photography: Sumo Group
Ken Drake Photographic: Clever Starfish

MEDIUM BUSINESS (6-30 employees)

Bam Creative: Bam Creative
Furniture Options: Spoon Media & Angela Bonfato Creative
Partnership Financial Services: Sumo Group

CORPORATE 31+ EMPLOYERS

Fleetcare: Sumo Group
Plan B Financial Services: Sumo Group
Satterley Property Group Redesign: Sumo Group

E-COMMERCE

MLC 100: The Globe Advertising and Design, Spin Technologies
Moments of Color Design: Moments of Color Design Studio
PADC Creative Hub: Sumo Group

FLASH

Discoverers Welcome: Market United
Risbec Design and Drafting: Daniel Roffman, Alex MacRae, Moe Aung, Keith Atkinson, and Andrew Ellis
Synergy SmartWays Energy Calculator: Market United

GOVERNMENT

2007 State Of The Environment Report: Freckle Creative
John Curtin College of the Arts: Freckle Creative
Marine Life of the Dampier Archipelago: Bam Creative

NOT FOR PROFIT

Black Swan Theatre Company: Sumo Group
Soil Quality: Spin Technologies
UWA Perth International Arts Festival 2007: Block Branding and Clever Starfish with PerthWeb

ONLINE ADVERTISING

BankWest Instant Saver Photogallery: Market United
Open Offices Australia: Addictive Media
Scratch N Win Campaign: Loaded Studios

ONLINE MEDIA

GAYinWA.com.au: GAYinWA.com.au
Highgrade Publishing: itomic
Perth Norg: Freckle Creative

ONLINE APPLICATION

88 Miles: Mad Pilot Productions
PADC Creative Hub: Sumo Group
World Brain Book: Sumo Group