This is not a transaction.... I blogged the other week about The Lichfield Blog’s print debut in the Birmingham Mail with an article I wrote about Fuse Festival. It sparked a nice few comments and I thought they warranted a second blog post to clear one thing up. The printing of that article was not one side of a transaction,...

The day my hyperlocal blog post was publ... Plenty of people will be skeptical about this bit of news but boy am I excited. I’d love to hear if this has happened before or not, but so far it’s the first time that I’m aware of, and I’m chuffed it’s me. If you pick up a copy of the Birmingham Mail today you will see,...

Two men spent 24 hours taking over 2,000... Every year in Lichfield there is an event in Beacon Park called Fuse Festival. It’s an arts festival, with three tents hosting a various mix of music, performance and workshops. 2010 was it’s 10th year in Beacon Park and just like we did last year, Nick and I went down to cover it for The...

More House of Commons exposure for The L... Whilst discussing his vision for local TV during a House of Commons debate on the future of local media [& video], Secretary of State for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries Ed Vaizey mentioned The Lichfield Blog and it’s efforts in the local media landscape. In response to...

Content creators are the ones moving jou... A while ago I spoke at the news:rewired conference organised by Journalism.co.uk about The Lichfield Blog and hyperlocal in general. The panel I was on got around to the whole ‘citizen journalist’ debate and who is or isn’t a journalist. I made the point (one I feel strongly about)...

Local media predictions for 2010... Hah, look at me giving my predictions for local media. What the hell do I know about local media?! Anyway, at news:rewired Heather Christie jumped on me (metaphorically, not physically – that would have been weird) and asked me my local media predicitons for 2010, along with panel-mates Sarah Hartley...

New hyperlocal Wordpress plugin: Opening... I received a tweet the other day from the wonderful Andy Mabbett. It read; http://opening-times.co.uk/ is very #hyperlocal oriented. They’re on Twitter: @opening_times / @willperrin @getgood (widget, @philipjohn ?) So I toddled over to the Opening Times web site and had a gander, found some XML...

OpenAustralia plugin for Wordpress... I’m delighted that after my release last week of my TheyWorkForYou.com plugin for Wordpress, Henare Degan has created an adaptation which provides the same functionality but using OpenAustralia, an Australian version of TheyWorkForyou.com. You can download the plugin from Henare’s github,...

GroupsNearYou.com Wordpress plugin... This is the last one this week, I promise. For Talk About Local I have just developed a Wordpress plugin using the GroupsNearYou.com site. The plugin creates a simple widget which shows the groups in your area, based on a postcode that you provide. I made a demo video and wrote instructions on how to...

WriteToThem.com Wordpress plugin... As if the TheyWorkForYou.com plugin wasn’t enough I’ve also created a plugin for WriteToThem.com as well! The plugin adds a new widget which your blog readers can use to get in touch with their politicians from councillors to MEPs. There’s a demo video and instructions on how to set...