This week, we've noticed that London's media seems to be diversifying into sundry formats. And not only that - the different organs are all bitching about one another. Time for us to wade in...
The Times launched a snazzy local web presence last week called 'Cool in your Code'. The site presents polished video snippets about culture and property in your part of London. Assuming, that is, you live in Hoxton or Marylebone, as they've only just got going. Sadly, the site is all cool, no content and not even by postcode. Diamond Geezer sums things up nicely, but the harshest criticism comes from the Friday Cities community. One of the Cool in your Code presenters asked their opinions of his oh-so-stylish new site. We're going to stick our necks out and guess that he wasn't beaming with pride at the response:
I think mostly I wanted to stab everyone involved:- Iainaitch
I look forward with great interest to the Willesden Junction, Forest Gate and Colliers Wood episodes:- Rhodri
It’s somwhere between a media student’s degree project and something someone who wants to be Chris Morris, but fails, might do.:- ELWisty
So, not the best of receptions. At least they've adopted a silhouette of the London skyline as their logo - always a sign of quality.
While all that was going on, Annie Mole found the Evening Standard still determindly prefixing themselves with a 'sub-' when it comes to checking sources. They broke the news that Transport Commissioner Peter Hendy has his own Myspace page and "has been spending evenings, weekends - and even part of his working day - in the chatroom with teenagers." The Standard quote a TfL spokesperson as confirming the site is genuine. Unusual, then, that it now carries the warning 'This is a SPOOF myspace account. Purely based on our Love for Mr Hendy'. Has anyone ever made a spoof Standard MySpace account? Some fun to be had there, we think.
But Old and New Media need not always clash. Giles Lane of Proboscis (the people behind the London fridge magnets we featured last year) likes talking about London using tactile objects rather than flash internet sites. He's repurposed the work of photobloggers The Way We See It to creates a pyramid of picture cubes, as three-dimensional story-telling devices. He calls it The Way We May See It. We call it 'The Way To Spend A Whole Weekend Grinning Like A Tomfool'. The website that inspired him, meanwhile, visits Artillery Passage - coincidentally the location of our back passage of the week. What a tangled web we weave.
Image taken from Onionbagblog.
