It was 20 years ago today...

Can't let it pass without comment - I've worked for the same media company - emap - for 20 years. It's official.
I passed this landmark on Sunday, December 2. This marked 20 years since I've been on the official payroll.
Actually, I started a little earlier on my training course.

20 years ago I was a trainee local newspaper journalist. We used type-writers. We made carbon copies of everything we typed. We faxed in copy from field offices. We corrected by XXXXXXing out or ripping out and throwing away. We joined unions. We drank together. We printed in the same building we wrote. We owned the printing press. We had a huge physical archive - two librarians.

We had defined roles. Photographers frowned if we took a snap. We took those pics in black and white. We called into the office from payphones. We did research by looking in books or ringing and asking a human being - usually one as fallable as we were. We answered all the questions we raised.

We subbed using emms and picas. We had 'headline counts'. We sized (and cropped) pictures with mystical wheels. We layed out pages on paper. We printed all the news that fit.
We edited. We controlled the horizontal, we controlled the vertical...

20 years ago today.

Imagine 20 years ahead.

Just a quick plug....

As the latest issue of the online magazine I'm involved with, Disposable Media, is now available for download. It's a special for the launch of the new Nintendo console, hence the change to Disposable Wiidia for one issue only...

Post-Christmas posting

I decided not to make a lot of predictions for 2007... I have, however, finally tied myself to a new broadband ISP for the new year, meaning I can finally end the internet drought at home. For the record I've picked Zen Broadband, due to their near flawless reputation, and so far, it's been pretty impressive, with payment status, activation status etc all emailed to me within minutes and hours of signing up online...


In other news, Burger King has seen a huge success in the U.S. with a range of three Xbox 360 games, selling for $3.99. Microsoft has claimed sales of over 2 million copies (report here). Given the reports of middling sales for the 360, it's particularly impressive, and shows the value of targetting your consumers effectively. A marketing blogger from Second Life-based firm Crayon points out the difference in effectiveness this camapaign, and a previous effort to attract boy band fans... It's pretty obvious which group are more likely to consume the most burgers.


And lastly, I've now been asked to become Online Editor of free online publication Disposable Media. It's a PDF download, created a by a group of people who have only ever corresponded via a forum and MSN Messenger, and it's been listed in Web User magazine as one of the top 150 free downloads, so it must be doing something right. I'm going to be creating the new website for the title, so it'll be interesting to see if I can stick to my Web 2.0 principles....but in the meantime, there are five cracking issues avaivable, plus a Nintendo Wii special imminent, at www.disposablemedia.co.uk