Dilpazier Aslam

I guess you really do learn a new thing everyday...

Dilpazier Aslam was a Guardian trainee journalist who wrote an opinionated article following the 7/7 bombing.
However, the Guardian did not inform readers that he was infact a member of the political party Hizb ut-Tahrir which is an international non-sectarian sunni islamist political party whose goal is to esablish a caliphate to unify the muslim world.

After this was discovered he he lost his posistion with the newspaper, due to the information provided to the paper by bloggers.

Dilpazier told Alan Rushbridger (The Guardian's editor) that he was not willling to leave Hizb ut-Tahrir, he suggested that there was a gulf between younger British Muslims and main stream British society, aswell as the older generation of Muslims. He claimed that his generation were not prepared to suffer in silence but are 'sassy' and willing to 'Rock the boat'.

I love the blog page "pizza hut team member"

The Pizza hut team member blog page is so funny. The thing I like about it most is the fact that it is full of anecdotes. The blogger writes in first person and uses an anecodote on each blog they post which makes it seem as though you are actually a 'pizza hut team member' yourself.
The blogger also has names for all of their regular customers so each time he refers to a nick-name you immediately know who their talking about and the other incidents that also happened with them before, which in turn highlights how you have unconsciously become so involved with the blogs.
The blogger gets lots of comments so its extremely obvious that I am not the only one who likes this blog page.
The blogger also adds speech in each of the new posts, "this lady then said. 'this pizza's cold'... " which again adds to the humour to all of the blogs posted.
It's also extremely funny because I love pizza hut and go there so it would be funny to know what they think about me as a customer!

Why I added a comment

I decided to comment on a celebrity blog page my reasons for this is because my blog page is also based on celebrities, therefore I feel that if I comment on a simialar blog page and form a relationship with that blogger then it will help me in the long run. For example they can add me as one of their favourites, which will mean that their loyal vistors would also look at my blog, inturn increasing my traffic.

Comparing 5 different news articles online...

The different newspaper online websites I looked at included, The Sun, The Times, The Guardian, The BBC and The Independent.

All three different websites approached the playstation 3 story extremely differently. The BBC had a more official approach, it was extremely formal and was much more 'newsy' with alot of statistics and evidence. The entire story took a much more serious approach purely concentrating on the dangers of selling the computer so late at night in London, aswell as the cost. Although the story did appear on the first page of the web page it was relatively small and not extremely eye catching and so therefore did not draw as much attention as The Times web page.
On The Times web page the article appears at the top of the page which immediately draws attention to the reader, it has a large picture and a bold healine that reads, 'At last playstation 3!'. The Times takes a much more fun and entertaining approach to the story. Once you click onto the main story you are taken onto a seperate page which breaks the the story into 8 different subs stories , whci in turn allows you to choose which angle of the story you would like to look at. This in turn emphasis the inportance of the story, having so much to look at on just one story and making sure it stand out to the reader highlights how important the story to the webpage, as compared to the other web pages The Times seemed to show more dedication to the story. Also The Times was the only web page that also included a downloaded video of how the playstation 3 works, again providing the readers with more information and evidence about the game console, aswell as giving it a more fun and enjoyable approach.
The Independent approached the story extremely different to all the other webpages, while the other web pages had wrote it as hard news The Independent done a feature piece on it. Again this helps engage the reader in a differnt sense. Unlike the others , this specific srticle included alot more questions, being a feature it was also much more direct and engaging for the reader, allowng them to become more involved within the article. However, simialar to The Guardian the article didnt seem to be that important, in The Independant the article was the 12th article down on then front page highlighting the fact that it clearly is not that important compared to the other articles that appear on the page. Also similar to The BBC, The Independent focused more on the negative side of the matter not the entertaining side, as did The Times.
The Guardian didn't look at the story on playstation 3 in as much depth as the other 4 webpages. The article was much shorter and much more difficult to find. Again it looked more iof a negative approach to the matter. Although the article was the 29th one down on the homepage, it did have a picture, which although was extremely small, it did inturn grab my attention and make it slightly more easier to identify compared to the others alongside it.
Lastly The Sun was extremely similar to The Times in the way inwhich it approached the story. The article was much more light hearted and had a more friendly tone. It also included much more comments compared to the others and much more pictures, which again made it more attractive and more easier to read. The article is the 5th article down on the homepage with an image which again helps the article attract the reader immediately.
Overall, it is extremely evident that all the different news online websites approach the playstation 3 story differently, mainly because the other news stories are seen as more important than others.

Google news (my personalized version)

I did happen to find the google news website of some use. The idea of being able to decide on what I feel is important news and what I would like to know or read more about works extremely well with google news.
As soon as I log onto the sight I am able to read updated news on topics that I have set out to be top stories, therefore those specific subjects/topics that I have marked as interesting to me are put at the top of the page and are therefore read first. Thanks to this I am able to cut straight to the point and gather information that I want, without having to browse around or type things into search engines. Overall, I must say that I extremely liked google news, itk is extremely good for personal/individual use and will be using it in future.

The elderly and the internet!

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus - and when it comes to computers, this theory certainly appears to hold true. A new survey published today by Age Concern and Barclays reveals that men aged 55+ mostly use the internet for pursuing hobbies and finding information (78%) while women in this age group use it more as an alternative to the telephone for chatting with friends and family here and abroad (86%).

• According to Age Concern 44% of over 50's have no access to a computer.
• 89% of over 60's have never used the internet.
  
• 83% surf on a regular basis according to a survey by BTopenworld.
• 35% say it has offered them a wider circle of friends after retirement.
  
• According to NAO 17% of over 65's have logged on the the internet, compared with 94% of 16-24 year olds.
• By 2025 23 million adults could be missing out on what the internet has to offer.Anecdotes:
  

1. The 75-year-old would only be allowed to sign the forms for the Carphone Warehouse's TalkTalk phone and broadband package if she was accompanied by a younger member of her family who could explain the small print to her.

2. "I love playing poker and bingo online with people all over the world. I find websites are a great way to meet new friends. My grandchildren call me 'cybergran'!" said Bradford surfer, Elizabeth Sheridan, 73.

Group blog evaluation (LDNY)

Although I feel that our group blog was an extremely unique and intresting idea, I believe that we limited ourselves by having such a restricted target audience. By deciding to only target 25-40 year old buisness travellers, frequently travelling to and from New York and London I believe that we prevented ourselves form adding variety to our blogs.
Had we chosen a much wider target audience I beleive that many of us including myself would have found more to right about and most of all would have found it much more easier as we could relate to our blogs more effectively. For example as young students I feel that we don't have a clear and defined understanding of what 25-40 year olds like.

A way in which I feel we could have overcome this problem was to have carried out reseach before we started blogging that way we could have gained an understanding of what it is our target audeince would want to know and read about.
I think that the name of our blog worked well, I believe it clearly reinforced what our blog was about. However, I do feel we could have defined this much more on our blog by providing a brief description on what our blog was about.

The style of writing within each blog I feel worked extremely weel, each blog had a similar tone and style to it which i believe all in all made our blog work well. They were all easy to read and understand and our use of pictures helped grab attention and successfully linked with the writing.

I do feel as though we could have designed our blog much better although it all flowed well and the use of colour and font, remained consistent throughout, I think we could have chosen a better template and used more colours that brought our page out and added to the sophistcated theme that is carried out throughout each blog. We were trying to target a specific target audience which happens to be 25-40 buisness travellers therefore we could have chosen colours that linked well with them for example black and silver, as both colours are more sophisticated and stylish, which inturn reflects the target audience.

I also feel as though our layout could have been slightly more easier, as we were all blogging everyday, one New York and the other London the page was a bit too busy and there was no clear differentiation between the two.

In relation to my own post i feel as though I could have made each a bit more unique. In some cases I felt as though i was repeating myself within each blog.
Having chosen to do clubs I felt as though all I was talking about was the music and atmosphere and so on , rather than including my own opinion.
However, this is alot to do with the fact that many of the places I wrote about were places i had never been, therefore I had to rely on other people's view of the club on the internet and then incorporate it within my blog. Although this was not much so for my London posts it did seem to effect my NYC posts. As I live in London I found it much easier to talk about clubs there, this is because i have experienced the atmosphere within clubs there.

Something I feel I need to improve and focus on for next time is my spelling and grammer, as I often make silly mistakes, due to me not properly proof reading.

Overall, I think that our blog worked extremely well and I beleive that we all fulfilled our criteria well and worked very well as a group.