Are location apps useful for journalists?

Posted: August 23rd, 2010 | Author: Ed Walker | Filed under: Journalism, tools, web | Tags: , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

foursquare buttons

Foursquare. Gowalla. And now Facebook Places (although at the moment this is only available if you’re an American). Location apps for mobile phones seem to be the ‘in-thing’ on the web at the moment but is there any use to journalists in them?

Twitter clearly has a use as it can help us to find out where news is breaking, connect with contacts and promote our content. The same goes for Facebook, although that seems most useful for building communities around your fan pages of your media brand.

I recently tried out Foursquare for two months and could find absolutely no use for it. It was buggy and didn’t seem to get on with my laptop. I checked in at a few places and became the mayor of my local swimming pool (yay!) and synced up my account with my Twitter. However, I found it annoying. I often forgot to check in at places or when I checked in I had absolutely nothing interesting to say. Likewise I tried out the screen where my friends were checking-in. Cool. But again no use. Read the rest of this entry »

Fed up with how your website looks on a mobile? Add a wordpress mobile plug-in

Posted: September 26th, 2009 | Author: Ed Walker | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

mobile-web-wordpressplugin-

Ever been fed up with how your website/blog displays on a mobile? I looked at friends iPhones and thought it was a bit clunky to read the actual content. If you’re using WordPress there’s a plug-in called WordPress Mobile Edition that slims down your site and makes it easy for users to read the content and navigate to pages. After all, that’s why they are there right?

It’s a three step install and works straight away, detecting visitors who access your site from a mobile. There’s a screenshot of the Carrington theme above if you want to see what your site will look like if accessed from a mobile phone.

I’ve installed it across this blog, Blog Preston and Mencap Liverpool if you want to get your phone out and see it in action.