This is devastating. Absolutely devastating.
Teletext has been going 17 years and Ceefax from 1974 but has been losing money and its demise puts around 70 jobs at risk. January is goodbye to telextext, 2012 is goodbye to Ceefax?
But at least Teletextholidays will continue...
The BBC's Ceefax will be fazed out around digital switchover time and moved to the red button interactive service.
I guess this shows how much me and a Uni colleague were/are out of date. We championed it as a news source when no-one else did in our uni days. We thought it was around the future not just the past but alas, how wrong we were.
I mean, all you needed to do was switch on your TV, press text and away you went - to news, sport, entertainment, tv listings and so much more.
I am going to go and have a look at the have your say bit to see what people have to say after posting this. But you can only e-mail and text responses.
Everyone else seems to be going down memory lane so here I go...
...I always used to have teletext football scores flashing up whenever footy or even cricket was on. I sometimes even pressed hold to see how far the numbers got round before the next goal was updated! (sad I know)
Many a time I have spent a good half hour looking at the sport, entertainment and news stories on Ceefax - without needing to start up my pc and choose from the plethora of sites available.
And no-one has asked what is going to happen to such things as Question Time on BBC One where you could see people's opinions on Ceefax?! I guess it will be on the red "freaking" button.
The news broke about a week ago and plenty of people have had something to say about it but not much we can do apart from sit back and enjoy it while it's still here, unless someone bails it out.
Step by step online is taking over the world mmwmwwhhhaaa. All we need now is VictoriaPolice to join twitter and post updates on how their operations are going....oh.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Australia in the News.
I have noticed how, while being away from my little town in the UK you really do have to make a concious effort to stay in touch with news and events back home unless it is Michael Jackson's death which 7 News had an extended 1-hour bulletin for last night.
For example, Michael Schumacher being outed as the Stig (or not) and Michael Owen signing for Manchester United?!
Of course with the digital media we now have it is so much easier - today for example, in my lunchtime I have been job searching back in the UK (not much going I'm afraid...) and visiting websites such as Press Gazette, The Guardian, Google News, BBC News and so on to try and keep track of what is going on back on the other side of the world.
Surprisingly a lot of Aussie-related stories popped up. I haven't done this nearly as often enough as I should so am unaware if it is common or not but I suppose with the World Wide Web it is. By searching UK-based websites I was (rather stupidly) believing that I would just be looking at UK content - with the mainstream exceptions of course - but I haven't caught up with this global conglomeration thing yet. Just because Australia is nearly a day's flight away it is about a minute away on the web.
There is the debate about Uluru (Ayers Rock) , a lovely story (albeit, not the worst idea ever either) about Bundanoon = an Aussie town banning water bottles , fire warnings being available on Facebook and Twitter and other social networking sites (and why the hell not the way the world is going, or has already gone?) Although it will be very weird with one minute JournoJoe tweeting/facebooking something mudane and then JournoJoe has just received a fire warning to flee!
I could keep the examples going for a while but let's not. The basic point is that I am naive, whether in the UK or Australia I will always be able to access the news and continue to sparadically blog from the other side of the world at an instant...this internet is a wonderful thing right?
For example, Michael Schumacher being outed as the Stig (or not) and Michael Owen signing for Manchester United?!
Of course with the digital media we now have it is so much easier - today for example, in my lunchtime I have been job searching back in the UK (not much going I'm afraid...) and visiting websites such as Press Gazette, The Guardian, Google News, BBC News and so on to try and keep track of what is going on back on the other side of the world.
Surprisingly a lot of Aussie-related stories popped up. I haven't done this nearly as often enough as I should so am unaware if it is common or not but I suppose with the World Wide Web it is. By searching UK-based websites I was (rather stupidly) believing that I would just be looking at UK content - with the mainstream exceptions of course - but I haven't caught up with this global conglomeration thing yet. Just because Australia is nearly a day's flight away it is about a minute away on the web.
There is the debate about Uluru (Ayers Rock) , a lovely story (albeit, not the worst idea ever either) about Bundanoon = an Aussie town banning water bottles , fire warnings being available on Facebook and Twitter and other social networking sites (and why the hell not the way the world is going, or has already gone?) Although it will be very weird with one minute JournoJoe tweeting/facebooking something mudane and then JournoJoe has just received a fire warning to flee!
I could keep the examples going for a while but let's not. The basic point is that I am naive, whether in the UK or Australia I will always be able to access the news and continue to sparadically blog from the other side of the world at an instant...this internet is a wonderful thing right?
Thursday, July 02, 2009
"Aussie soccer club sign foreign national"
Thursday June 11 saw me turn out at a training session for a local soccer (English footy) team at training. Plenty of people had said I should give it a go and although it has taken like four months I am glad I have.
I have played two games for them at the moment - a 4-1 loss were I was voted BOG (Best on Ground) and a 3-0 defeat were I conceded a penalty, which was saved! At half-time in both games we were only 1-0 down.
On the serious stuff, I helped cover the Knox Journal for two weeks while the actual journo for the paper was away on holiday which including me covering a council meeting, albeit a very short one - again adding to the experiences.
It has already led to another front page, the Journal have been so good to me I will not be able to thank them enough when I do go home.
And something that really interested me was the front page of the Herald Sun in, a national newspaper here, running a front page photo of the dead body of Des Moran. I am not familiar with the whole story (read here from ABC News) but here is an opinion from young and grumpy.com that reflects what quite a few people said about the photo. Now I have done Ethics at university and I'm pretty sure that an attempt to put this photo on the front page would have been greated with certain distaste.
We follow the PCC code and surely 3) Privacy but definetly 5) Intrusion into grief or shock have been breached? It may have been in the public interest to know that he was shot dead in broad daylight but for a pic of his dead body, I am skeptical.
Again, my knowledge of the Australian media watchdog is very limited but there must be some guidlines for newspapers and does this photo not push the boundary?
It seems Des "Tuppence" Moran was a bit of a gangster and it seems his family have been involved in mobster business - again something which I know very little about so research it yourself ;)
My main gripe is putting a photo of anyone's dead body on the front page, I mean it's a little graphic isn't it? And what does it really achieve - it didn't happen when Michael Jackson died and splashes of so many other people die - they get a mugshot pic not one of them lying flat out dead on the ground. I have a lot to learn about the media here...
I have played two games for them at the moment - a 4-1 loss were I was voted BOG (Best on Ground) and a 3-0 defeat were I conceded a penalty, which was saved! At half-time in both games we were only 1-0 down.
On the serious stuff, I helped cover the Knox Journal for two weeks while the actual journo for the paper was away on holiday which including me covering a council meeting, albeit a very short one - again adding to the experiences.
It has already led to another front page, the Journal have been so good to me I will not be able to thank them enough when I do go home.
And something that really interested me was the front page of the Herald Sun in, a national newspaper here, running a front page photo of the dead body of Des Moran. I am not familiar with the whole story (read here from ABC News) but here is an opinion from young and grumpy.com that reflects what quite a few people said about the photo. Now I have done Ethics at university and I'm pretty sure that an attempt to put this photo on the front page would have been greated with certain distaste.
We follow the PCC code and surely 3) Privacy but definetly 5) Intrusion into grief or shock have been breached? It may have been in the public interest to know that he was shot dead in broad daylight but for a pic of his dead body, I am skeptical.
Again, my knowledge of the Australian media watchdog is very limited but there must be some guidlines for newspapers and does this photo not push the boundary?
It seems Des "Tuppence" Moran was a bit of a gangster and it seems his family have been involved in mobster business - again something which I know very little about so research it yourself ;)
My main gripe is putting a photo of anyone's dead body on the front page, I mean it's a little graphic isn't it? And what does it really achieve - it didn't happen when Michael Jackson died and splashes of so many other people die - they get a mugshot pic not one of them lying flat out dead on the ground. I have a lot to learn about the media here...
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