The Times newspaper's website updated last week. It was an absolute dog's breakfast on the first day, but the intended lime-green multimedia environment later emerged. One of the website's special new features is an online audio/video section entitled Cool In Your Code. This is a web TV extravaganza in which three energetic young presenters travel around London, postcode by postcode, reporting back on what they find. "We've walked the streets, toured the bars and poked our noses into the homes of London's most vibrant districts to find the places which make the capital special." This is most definitely not The Times of old. But the newspaper must be very proud of Cool In Your Code because they're promoting it with special adverts on tube trains. So I wondered what they'd made of my postcode, E3, and I thought I'd check it out.
Ah, Cool In Your Code hasn't got to E3 yet. Nor have they reached W8, SE1, NW1 or even W1. So far they've only covered Hoxton, which is sort-of N1-ish, and absolutely nowhere else. Great start, guys. We'll have to make do with Hoxton then. There are three Hoxtonesque video snippets to choose from - one on property (ie estate agents), one on culture (ie art and shopping) and one on nightlife (ie bars and restaurants). If you click carefully enough, one of them might even load (I had no luck in Firefox and had to start up Internet Explorer instead). Look, moving pictures! The future, alas, is not text-driven.
The three Cool In Your Code presenters could be straight out of Saturday morning TV, and they're really really keen to show us everything that this postcode has to offer. Well, just the tiny area around Hoxton Square, because that's where the only Cool in Hoxton seems to be. Each broadcast is flash, hip and snappy, with a nagging jazz soundtrack underneath. Let's whizz round a gallery and meet some artists, let's chat to a chef working in a restaurant kitchen, and let's ask a nightclub owner what makes his nightclub so great. Everything is dynamic, everything is "vibrant" and everything is upbeat. Presumably this is because the film crew had to seek permission from the owner of each establishment they entered, and therefore there are no negative comments about anything whatsoever. Yes, this is really just a lot of hyped-up PR disguised as editorial, and more fool us for watching it.
And where is Cool In Your Code going next? The site lists a few teaser previews to whet your appetite: Marylebone W1 (home to "London's most fabulous kitchen emporia"), Borough SE1 ("a cornucopia of delight") and Crouch End N8 ("crossroads of culture"). At least they're breaking out of Zone 1 predictability with that last location, but I think it could be a long time before the cheesy threesome come to see what Cricklewood, Thamesmead or Bow have to offer. Not enough boutiques, bars and property investment opportunities, I suspect. And what do the millions of Times readers living outside London make of all this, I wonder. Will there ever be a Cool in Your Code for Bootle L20, or Scunthorpe DN15, or Stornoway HS1? I think not.
So Cool In Your Code isn't cool, and it isn't in your postcode. Apart from that, it's perfectly named. But if you're an aspirational Londoner with money to burn and time to kill, then it might be right up your street. Just as soon as they reach Chelsea SW10, that is.
As every serious blogger knows, the key objective behind regular blogging is the acquisition of wealth. It may be cool to earn the respect and adoration of one's online peers, but at the end of the day it's the financial rewards which make blogging worthwhile. So today, with the need to monetize always uppermost, I'm going to be asking myself the crucial question "What's my blog's Mission Statement?". I'm sure you'll all learn something profitable from my expert analysis and perceptive musings. And then I hope you'll all link to today's post on your own blogs, and Digg it so that my thoughts are broadcast to the global audience they so clearly deserve.
A Mission Statement, as we all know, is a summary description of an entity's purpose. All businesses have a mission statement, and employees always find them to be motivating and inspirational. So why doesn't your blog have one? Without a Mission Statement your blog will surely continue to blunder blindly down some online cul-de-sac, unfocused and unable to meet key financial targets. What every professional blog requires is a single brief statement of intent, preferably scribbled on a Post-It note and affixed to the edge of a computer screen where it can't be overlooked. You know it makes sense.
I'm certainly keen to climb aboard the brand-marketing bandwagon myself, because this can only help to facilitate value-added empowerment through the accumulation of high-yield click-through ad-wealth. But there'll be no meaningless buzzwords in my Mission Statement, oh no. Here's my first attempt at generating a succinct summary to describe why my blog exists.
"The diamond geezer mission is to enjoy writing stuff about life in London and other places and things, and to publish my views and opinions."
It's a good first effort, but there's no mention of money. I mean, come on, it's surely the sole reason for any blog's existence, and it needs to be at the heart of any core statement of intent. Let's try again.
"The diamond geezer mission is to enjoy writing stuff about life in London and other places and things, to publish my views and opinions, and to make lots of money."
That's better, but it's still all a bit sprawling and unfocused. The opening phrase needs tightening up to concentrate on just one key area. To make it big in the blogosphere, only a narrow topic focus is permissible. I need to write only about London, and to abandon everything else I currently waffle on about. How otherwise will first-time visitors instantly understand my blog's intrinsic professional focus?
"The diamond geezer mission is to enjoy writing stuff about life in London, to publish my views and opinions, and to make lots of money."
But whether or not I enjoy writing about London should be totally irrelevant. What really matters is that my readers keep coming back for more, like greedy text-whores, because every pageload is a potential ad click. Audience is everything, so the publication of quality linkbait is essential.
"The diamond geezer mission is to write entertaining stuff about life in London, to publish my views and opinions, and to make lots of money."
As yet I've not mentioned one of my key blog characteristics, namely that I publish daily. My regular and predictable posting format means that customers can make diamond geezer part of their regular surfing routine. Make it a habit, keep them hooked.
"The diamond geezer mission is to write entertaining stuff about life in London, to publish my views and opinions every day, and to make lots of money."
Nearly there, but it needs to be snappier. Why waste several words on an important concept if that idea could be summarised in one or two? Shorter means more memorable, and my blog's Mission Statement needs to be simple enough to be at the heart of everything I write. Like so.
"My views on life in London: Entertaining, Exploiting, Every day."
That's great. See how the core values of my blog are now summarised in three alliterative keywords - the 3 Es. One last tidy-up should do it.
"life viewed from London E3"
Perfect. Now all I need do is publish my new Mission Statement somewhere prominent - say at the top of my sidebar - and every visitor will know exactly what I stand for. Why don't you follow suit?
The ShippingForecast issued by the Met Office covers 31 different sea areas. Below are picture clues to the names of 24 of them. How many can you identify? (Answers in the comments box)
There are more than ten thousand events altogether in the Visit London What's On database. Using a special online search form, it's supposed to be possible to refine this list to select only events meeting certain criteria. As we discovered yesterday, searching by date is bloody useless. But several other database searches are even worse...
1) You searched for all events with car parking for 10 Feb 2007 onwards. We're sorry, but there are no results for your search.
2) You searched for all events with wheelchair access for 10 Feb 2007 onwards. We're sorry, but there are no results for your search.
3) You searched for all events with a hearing loop for 10 Feb 2007 onwards. We're sorry, but there are no results for your search.
So, according to the Visit London website, not one single event in our capital city is accessible to the physically disabled or the hearing impaired. This is clearly untrue. The search engine has been set up to search for these categories, but NOT ONE event has been tagged as accessible. If I were one of Visit London's paying advertisers operating a disabled-friendly venue, I'd be livid.
5) You searched for all free events for 10 Feb 2007 onwards. We're sorry, but there are no results for your search.
And again. Thousands of the ten thousand events in the Visit London database charge nothing for entry, but NOT ONE has been tagged as 'free'. So if you search for free events, not one shows up. This is gobsmackingly lazy programming and website design.
6) How about searching by location? Still not great. You can't search for events within a certain radius of somewhere - it's all or nothing. If the location you enter doesn't appear in the event's address, Visit London won't find it. Ask for events in E3, for example, and you get 40... but ask for events in Bow and you get nothing. It's all a bit old school.
8) At the other end of the scale, several events in the database are listed ridiculously far into the future. The Elmbridge Museum in Weybridge is launching a special Olympics exhibition on 16 February next year. Book now for next year's Lord Mayor's Firework Display on 9 November 2008 (quick, before your diary fills up). The late night Ceremony of Keys at the Tower of London apparently continues until 31 December 2010 (but not beyond, for some reason). Most forward-looking of all, we're told that Brazilian musician Seu Jorge is playing the Roundhouse in Camden on 12 November 2012. That's got to be data-entry incompetence, surely? On the Visit London website, it almost certainly is.
Shipping Forecast quiz
