• Blogger arrested for filming council meeting

    As if it wasn’t bad enough that the Police arrest hobbyists for taking photos of public events they’re now arresting bloggers for filming council meetings. While my request to film council meetings in Lichfield was met with no resistance it seems some councillors seem to be living in an entirely different reality. I’ll be writing…

  • Comment on Journalists: We know we care, but do our readers?

    On occasion I post a comment somewhere I’d like to keep hold of. So here’s my comment on a post by David Higgerson talking about something I said at news:rewired. Blimey, I really need to stop ranting at news rewired! If only because I end up wanting to explain myself. You’ve done that for me…

  • The Lichfield Blog Twitter account – can you help?

    The Lichfield Blog Twitter account – can you help?

    If you’re reading this you’re probably aware that The Lichfield Blog‘s Twitter account was the subject of unauthorised access and de-activation this week. We’ve been through the process to retrieve it as Twitter suggests we could still get it back. However, that’s not a certainty and I won’t hold my breath. It seems we’re popular…

  • Comment on Why Bloggers Shouldn’t Work For Free

    I just commented on a blog post by one of The Lichfield Blog’s excellent contributors, Annette Rubery. She talks about the closure of Guardian Local and the attitude of the Guardian towards contributions. I wanted to make sure you, my readers, saw my comment, so here it is; This is something I think about a…

  • Add a shortlink to the end of your WordPress posts

    Once again, that Andy Mabbett has given me the reason to knock out a quick WordPress plugin. This one prints out a “Shortlink for this post” link (see screenshot) to the end of all your posts. It uses WordPress’ built in shortlink feature which doesn’t always produce very short URLs so you’ll want to use…

  • Schedule Selected Content for WordPress: Perfect for live events!

    Yet another excellent plugin from the folks at WPMU DEV* This allows you to specify certain portions of a post or page to be hidden until a certain time. Just like you can schedule posts to be published at a certain time, you can use this plugin to schedule content at a particular time. Here’s…

  • Response to comments by Paul Court about The Lichfield Blog

    In response to Paul Court’s comments about The Lichfield Blog. “Your clunky ad package” Why do you say that? It works nicely for us and none of the many advertisers we’ve had have complained. Far from it in fact. “which seems designed to share information with advertisers you probably don’t want them to know” Such…

  • Panopticlick says I’m 1 in 1,479,031 and I’m glad!

    Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,479,031 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.5 bits of identifying information. via panopticlick.eff.org Wow, that’s very unique! I’m really chuffed. Now ad services can monitor what I look at online and serve up ads that…

  • Birmingham Police live-tweet raid

    via storify.com