At 00:56am on the 27th of February 2008 a tremor measuring 4.7 was reported on the east cost of England (map). As yet there no reports of damage.

Don’t worry we are fine all here at Weeno Media and only slight tremors were felt here in London. What is interesting here is the speed and channels through which the news was reported. Here is a run down of the how the news was reported to me.

00:56AM - I felt slight tremors and noticed my desk shake slightly.

00:57AM Twitter users also report felling the shaking and tremors around the UK

00:59AM @breakingnewson reports the first mentions of the earthquake on twitter

01:00AM Robin Blandford relays the news to me via Google talk

01:02AM Video conversation reports appear on Seesmic but no footage.

01:10AM User reports appear on Jaiku

01:18AM First reports appear on Sky News.com

01:21AM First reports appear on news.BBC.co.uk

01:39AM First reports appear on UK.Reuters.com

As you can see Twitter is becoming an amazing source for breaking news online and beats any of the traitional media by over 20 minutes. Another example of this was they the story of Pakistans Government block on youtube that was badly implemented and took it down for the whole world. This was first picked up on by Twitter users and reported on by Darren Clark editor of the BBC Technology News website via the news he got from Twitter

So is 2008 the year of the citizen journalist or just the citizen breaking news journalist? I would say for breaking news yes but everyone still turns to the traditional media sources to get the full story once things have settled down.

What do you think?

UPDATE:

An interesting update is this video which appeared on youtube about an hour after the tremor. It is from MBC news on Metaverse TV which is a TV station that operates inside the virtual world Second Life.

The Irish blogosphere has been buzzing with the talk of SEO and linkbaiting lately…

Eoghan has been saying that SEO is a load of crap while at the same time a lot of people are calling his posts nothing but linkbait, which is a popular SEO technique. Eoghan’s post has also inspired a thread on the Irish webmaster forum, where some of the Irish Heavyweights in SEO have their say.

Then today Damien and Donncha pull up Glengarriff Lodge for more linkbaiting. Glengarriff Lodge want you to write a post about them with the term “Luxury Self Catering” linking back to them as part of a competition they are running.

So what does all this mean, well for one, SEO is a hotly debated topic right now and with Google making more and more changes to their algorithm and their penalties for breaking the rules, this is likely to continue. As to whether Eoghan is right about SEO or linkbaiting is a good technique, only one group really have the answer.

I would take a middle of the road approach, I don’t mean sit on the fence, more don’t do it to the extreme. Eoghan would have been better off if he had said basic-on-page SEO is crap, and it is now, it should be done by your developer at build time. These are things like unique titles, meta descriptions and headers for your pages and proper use of header tags and semantic coding. But if your website was built five or ten years ago when no one would have known of these things and Google was still a small player in search or if you are operating in a ultra-competitive niche, then you might need an SEO professional. Also, had Glengarriff Lodge gone about their competition a little cleverer and not forced their anchor text on to people then they might have gotten away with it too.

As with many things in life, what it all comes down to is that it is okay in moderation. If you get too many links too fast, Google will penalise you. If you use the same anchor text over and over again, Google will penalise you. If you stuff your pages with keywords, Google will penalise you. What you need is to strike a natural balance and Google will reward you and never forget “good content is king”.

The shortlists for the Blog Awards 2008 have finally been announced. We are sponsoring the Best Pop Culture Blog so we thought we would give you the rundown on who is nominated for it with descriptions more or less straight from the horses’ mouth.

• DZ-015 by Rick O’Shea
  • This originally was the blog of his radio show on RTE 2FM. Over time it has grown into a load of nonsense that runs through his head and takes his interest at random hours and in random order.
• Fustar
  • Fústar prefers not to reveal his secret identity…choosing instead to wallow in the invigorating anonymity offered by the ‘blogosphere’.
• Daddy or Chips?
  • This is written by Enda and is a blog of delightful mp3s of music he wants to share. It is done purely in the spirit of enthusiasm about the music and his desire to introduce it to other people.
• UnaRocks
  • Written by Una, who does various things in the Irish media, including writing news and arts and features for The Sunday Tribune, talking about the Internet on RTE’s TTV on Tuesdays and also on Phantom FM on Wednesdays. It has been suggested that her middle name should be ‘Danger Bay’.
• Dante and the Lobster
  • By Medbh, it is an attempt to insert her voice and musings on politics, books, films, and to record events surrounding her emigration to Canada.
• The Chancer
  • Described by many as the replacement to Blogorrah, The Chancer is written by Derek O’Connor, Blogorrah’s former editor and many of Blogorrah’s past contributers also contribute to it.
• Frank Fearless Free
  • An old man who arrives on the blog, sick and nearly blind. He only remains until the day he dies of a heart attack one afternoon as he is walking down a path. Old Knudsen is a true storyteller, as everyone longs to be. He spins tales all day long that make him into a wandering, heroic figure, heavy with exaggeration and contempt of many. He is a mythic character whose life has become its own legend, because of his ability to tell stories about his own life .
• Ego Eccentric
  • Is a blog about music, ramblings, movies and more ramblings. It is written by Clockwork Rob, Evil Bob and ctrl/alt/delete
• Why, That’s Delightful!
  • A blog by Graham Linehan and his thoughts on pop culture in Ireland. He is a famous Irish writer and has written for Father Ted, Big Train, Coogan’s Run, Brass Eye and  Black Books. He also wrote and directed The IT Crowd (one of my favourite shows).
• Rapture Ponies
  • Is a blog about just some stuff in general, in the news, pop culture, tunes, pics and whatever is handy around the place to the girl from Galway who writes it.

(If anyone wants their description changed just let me know)

Some of Ireland’s finest and brightest webmasters, SEOers, SEMers, designers and developers are getting together next weekend for a meetup with people flying in from all over Europe. I will be there as will most of the guys over on the Irish Webmaster Forum where Gavin Doolan kicked the idea off. Hopefully this can become a regular event. The event is kindly sponsored by Blacknight and is FREE and open to all. So if you have an interest or a career in the web in Ireland drop down to us to see what’s going on. If you are coming down let us know by leaving comment here or over on Irish Webmaster Forum or join our Facebook event.

The details of the event are:

Date: Saturday February the 9th.
Time: 7.30PM till late.
Venue: Harbour Master, Mayor Street, IFSC, Dublin 1. (Map)

Some of the people registered to come are:

• Allistar from Logon
• Cormac Moylan
• Dave Davis from Redfly Marketing
• Eoghan McCabe from Contrast
• Gavin from Ireland SEO & Marketing
• Gavin Doolan
• James Larkin from Forbairt Media
• Ken Stanley
• Louie from Eire Web Design
• Mark Walsh
• Michael Flanagan
• Michael Wall
• Richard Hearne from Redcardinal

As Dave said, hopefully we can get some of the ladies in Ireland down as well as some PR people would be nice too.