Created in Birmingham voted Best UK Blog in 2008 Weblog Awards

With 15,656 votes cast in the 2008 Weblog Awards, 40.1% (6,281) voted for Created in Birmingham as the UK’s Best Blog. CiB is a weblog about the creative community in Birmingham.

Congratulations Birmingham!

Beautiful Christmas Blog

Mon Beau Sapin has been added to the International Blogs listed below in the right-hand column.

It features christmas cards done in comic form and has been produced to support the French Red Cross and you can donate here (the site should automatically translate from French to English using Google Translate).

Even if you are not French speaking you will enjoy the design and beauty of this Blog!

Belfast young people lend their voice to blog!

Lend Your Voice is one of those truly remarkable blogs that you discover during your internet browsing treks that makes you forget what you were looking for in the first place!  But this blog written by and featuring young people’s thoughts, views and experiences was well worth the break in journey.

Lend Your Voice has been established ‘to let every young person from Northern Ireland express their ideas and opinions, whatever their background.’

Despite being Belfast based, the Blog attracts posts from young people from all over the UK (and possibly internationally – still reading!). It has obviously engaged with schools for blogging news and poetry projects. It also benefits from the support of Youth News agency Headliners.

This Blog is surely an inspirational use of Blogging…. so are there any inspired Fylde Coast readers out there who would care to inspire such a venture locally!?

WordPress in power!

BCN sister site ICT & Communication earlier today posted a piece about the development of the UK Parliamentary web services through customising WordPress.

Listing other well known WordPress users would probably take some time, however, our buddies at Parliament Labs have listed these examples of public servises that use WP.

Blogging and making money

Problogger is the US based blog dedicated to making blogging pay.

Problogger is not only a fantastic resource for those seeking to monetise their blog but is also packed full of useful tips,advice and guidance. There is a special page aimed at ‘beginners’ – which takes some reading!

Of course the site is also full of those people that want you to ’sign-up’ and help finance their blogging ventures naturally! But that aside, it really is a useful source of information.

Drop off a comment if you have something useful on Problogger that you might wish to share.

Other useful blogging tips are found on another US site: The Simple Dollar. Again – plenty of reading material!

Global Voices

Global Voices is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School. It is a research think-tank focused on the subjects that the mainstream media may tend to ignore. It has set out with the grandiose objective to provide a respected guide through the maze that is the Blogosphere. Have they been successful? This is something for you to investigate and make your own conclusions.

However, what is impressive about Global Voices, is their special programmes that they have established.

An Advocacy programme helps people speak out in places where their voices are censored online. This programme involves promoting a serious of tools and guides for speaking out in more repressive societies.

One such Guide is Blog for a Cause! It is divided into five sections:

1. Frequently asked questions about what blog advocacy is
2. The 5 key elements of any successful advocacy blog
3. The 4 steps to creating an advocacy blog
4. How to make your blog a vibrant community of active volunteers
5. Tips to help blog activists stay safe online

An Outreach programme called Rising Voices to enable help marginalized communities use citizen media to be heard.
Global Voices is also translated into more than a dozen languages by volunteer translators all over the world, who have formed the Lingua project.

Global Voices  seeks active involvement from supporting Bloggers.

The final word goes to the project organisers:

One of reasons we’re so excited about Global Voices is that it helps journalists find new voices to incorporate into stories. If you can help us reach out to journalists, it helps them find the folks we’re featuring on the site — and helps make the case that blogs are useful and often reliable sources of information.

‘Change’ Blog – don’t switch off on politics?

Simon Renwick’s Change Blog is a ‘political’ one. The mere mention of ‘politics’  might be enough for some people to click their psychological ‘off-buttons’. However, in this case don’t!

In the fine tradition of blogging Simon gives us an up-to-date and valuable commentary on events happening both locally (in his part of rural Fylde) and nationally. As a frequently updated Blog then we can read Simon’s thoughts and notes as things are happening. This might seem a trivial observation – but in actual fact this distinguishes blogging and bloggers in many ways; it’s about creating and leading public comment rather than simply waiting for ‘public reaction’ and responding to that.

Also, as blogger who happens to be a local Fylde Councillor then Simon is accountable in a manner that many of his contempories are not.

Politicians seemed to have earned the the cynicism of many (particularly younger) people in the UK. People have lost trust that any real change can be brought about by politicians. Yet through an effective use of social media – like Blogging – we have seen Barack Obama mobilise similar cynical people in the USA into active agents for change. People who are willing to queue for hours in order to cast their votes! While Blogging has not created that situation – a good, believeable message helps – it did help the new President Elect to engage with people in new ways.

Simon – readers of Blogging Blackpool might not always agree with the blue party right-ward leaning views expressed, but hopefully will continue to follow Change. Keep up the good blogging!

Note: Any Fylde Coast red, yellow or green party bloggers out there wanting to redress the balance?

Featured Blog – Digiphotology – “Work of Art!”

There are Blogs on every subject and issue imaginable. However my favourites are those that you remember for a long time afterwards.

One such Fylde Coast Blog is Digiphotology. Creator Alistair Parker has produced a photo-blog that is simply and literally a work of art! Alistair explains his concept on his ‘about’ page:

Why Digiphotology?

I chose the name Photology for my main website because it described, at least in part, my photographic philosophy of endeavouring to capture the nature and phenomena of light. The camera often captures images which can not be seen in any other way, for example the movement of water, the effect of wind on grass or leaves. Camera lenses may soften or distort an image. It is this visual phenomena that I try to capture and use creatively in some of my images. Digiphotology is a corruption which I feel is appropriate for a site which is now entirely digital in conception.

I would normally do a screenshot of a website to give readers an idea of what a website looks like – but I don’t want to do Digiphotology a dis-service by showing the photos in a setting other than that intended. However if you hover your mouse over the Blog link, then SnapShots will spring into play and you will get a glimpse of what is to come when you visit the site. And please do – set your screen to full size, click, browse and enjoy!

First in a series looking at the Blogs featured on Blogging Blackpool.

Blackpool Bloggers lead….London Bloggers follow!

Blogging Blackpool is an attempt to bring together Bloggers in the town and encourage interaction between them. Now London looks set to follow suit led by the Guardian, as this post at journalism.co.uk shows:

One of the Guardian’s newest bloggers, writer Dave Hill, is to use the platform to promote, and interact with, other external blogs.

“Blogging offers the chance to fill the void,” London blogger Dave Hill writes at his new Guardian.co.uk home. In an attempt to nourish connections with other bloggers, he’s asking for people to send him their favourite London blogs.

Prior to this blog he blogged at London Mayor & More, and his other blogs Clapton Pond and Big Britain are still active.

Dave’s three blogs mentioned above are definitely worth looking at as fine examples of the blogging genre.

We wish London well in taking the Blackpool road!!

Join the Blackpool Blogging ‘Feed’

Are you a Blackpool

based Blogger?

If so then add yourself to the ‘Feed Cluster’ which can then be used to promote Blackpool bloggers much more effectively! The feed can be e-mailed, added to other websites and used to encourage people to visit your Blog.

The Feed will display the latest post from each Blog (see top right).

You can use the feed yourself by clicking on the RSS or Atom logos. The Atom feed was chosen for the feed in the right hand column of this site.

You can request to be included/removed from the feed very easily.

The feed is available at http://blogggingblackpool.feedcluster.com/