TimesOnline: Beijing internet cafe users must have photo taken

All visitors to internet cafes in Beijing will be required to have their photographs taken, the Chinese government has decided. By mid-December all internet cafes in the main 14 city districts must install cameras to record the identities of their web surfers, who must be 18 or over. Full story...

Tags: Beijing, Chinese government, internet cafes, TimesOnline, web surfers

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Times creates Google Calendar for news agenda

Tom Whitwell, communities editor for TimesOnline, dropped me a line to say he and intern John McGovern have created a Google Calendar diarising all of the title’s news agendas.

The calendar merges events published in the Times Agenda covering world affairs, business, arts and sport - all colour-coded.

Data from other news sections will be added and if you’ve already got a personal Google calendar you can add dates from the agenda to your own.

Tags: google, TimesOnline, Tom Whitwell

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Mirror’s video partnership with Roo ‘a bloody mess’ claims former site editor

UPDATE: take our poll on whether or not video journalism can save the newspaper

The Mirror’s partnership with Roo Media to deliver more video content on its site has been described as ‘a bloody mess’ by former site editor Steve Purcell.

His comments, which form part of Neil Thurman and Ben Lupton’s academic report into multimedia storytelling by British news websites, were made last year - shortly after a video player supported by Roo’s technology was introduced to the site.

“The promises that were made by [our content partner, Roo Media] didn’t materialize…. It was a bloody mess, relying on American led stuff,” Purcell told the report, which questioned leading editors on newsroom convergence, video and audio content, multimedia training and the potential for advertising within digital content.

An additional interview with Anne Spackman, editor of TimesOnline, highlighted similar concerns over the launch of video with Roo on the site.

“We didn’t have a sense of ownership of the player… When those early deals were done nobody knew what people would want to watch on a site like ours…”

Part of the problem, said Spackman, was that providers did not understand what video content would work well alongside a text story on the site.

Tags: Anne Spackman, Ben Lupton, Digital video, Neil Thurman, Roo, Roo Media, Steve Purcell, TimesOnline, video content

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