Darren Straight's Blog

Research released today shows that people are turning to online platforms and services to record and share their digital photographs and avoid them slipping into the digital abyss.

The online survey, commissioned by Blurb and carried out by YouGov, found that 44 per cent of respondents share their digital photographs using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.  The emergence of social media has given rise to a generation of people who are sharing information about all aspects of their lives online, posting photographs of everything from the mundane through to nights out on the town, holidays, and significant life moments like weddings. This trend is particularly prominent amongst 18 to 24 year olds, where 83 per cent share their images on social media websites, while only 19 per cent of people aged over 55 do the same.

“Images have become the new vocabulary, and it’s interesting to see how people are documenting their lives online in this way,” commented Eileen Gittins, founder and CEO of Blurb.

The survey also found that there is a growing trend for people to use creative online services to transform photos into real, personalised products, to keep, share, and give as gifts.  Almost half of those surveyed (44 per cent) stated that they would prefer to make a hard copy photography book from their snaps. In contrast, online photo albums proved the least popular choice for people looking to share their digital photos; only five per cent of respondents said they would prefer to create an online photo album using a web-based service such as Flickr.

“I’ve said many times that you can’t gift a website – the beauty of print is that it’s tangible; it’s real,” said Eileen Gittins. “Books are more than repositories for images, they tell stories with a beginning, middle and end. And even if the story is told through images, it still reads.  We know from our own research that gift-giving and memory-keeping are the top two reasons why our consumer customers make Blurb books.”

Head over to Blurb.com to see what it’s all about – it’s really quite good. It’s great that I can import from places like wordpress.com and flickr.com, it’s just a shame that I can’t import from RSS Feeds as I would have quite a few uses for it straight away!!

Keep on meaning to post this, thanks to my Girlfreind Emily for finding it!

HP Fan Trips has announce the limited availability of tickets for a steam train journey in the carriages used for the Hogwarts Express in the filming of the Harry Potter movies. These tickets will be sold on a first-come, first-serve basis. The cost is $145 US (approx. 79 GBP) per ticket.

On July 18, the train will depart from Paddington Court Station in London in the morning for travel to Oxford in the carriages used for the Hogwarts Express in the filming of the Harry Potter movies. (Exact departure time TBD.) Clients purchasing a train only ticket (as opposed to the HP FAN TRIP) will be given a map of filming locations that they can use for a self guided walking tour of Oxford. While in Oxford they can take in pubs, shops, and the sights of Oxford. They will be given a time to return back to the Train Station in Oxford to Board the train for the journey back to London and Paddington Court Station. Return time will be in the late afternoon (exact time TBD.)

TIMING – the Journey to Oxford will be approx 2 hours and the return will be 1 hour

Infants less than 2 years – free
2 years to 7 years – 50%
Over 7 years full price.

For more info about this hogwarts express train journey tomorrow, click here!

Just the other day I finished reading “Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the way Businesses Talk with Customers” by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.

And I would like to compliment them both for writing such a great book.

I haven’t been properly blogging for very long now and this blog will only be a year old on the 11th of June 2006 (my birthday) so I still have a lot to learn about blogging.

But by reading Naked Conversations I now know more than I ever knew about blogging and how its inner centre works, I have now came to realise that there’s so much more to blogging than what some people think!

So even if you don’t blog for a business like me, then I would still like to highly recommend Naked Conversations to you, because it’s pack full of useful information!

And to prove it, here’s an extract of Naked Conversations, this first part of this actual extract in question has actually got me thinking about maybe wrtitng the book on the history of the blogosphere, as I did a quick search and there dosent seem to be one yet!

And to prove it, here’s an extract of Naked Conversations, the first part of this actual extract We hope someone writes book on the history of the blogosphere. Interesting people and amazing coincidences dominate this story. has actually got me thinking about maybe writing that so called book on the history of the blogosphere, as I’ve done a quick search and there doesn’t seem to be one yet, I say yet because knowing my luck somebody’s probably going to start working on one to beat me too it, anyway here’s the extract, enjoy:

Bloggin’s Six Pillars

We hope someone writes book on the history of the blogosphere. Interesting people and amazing coincidences dominate this story. This is not the focus of Naked Conversations, which instead attempts to tell businesspeople why they should blog.
 
There are six key differences between blogging and any other communications channel. You can find any of them elsewhere. These are the Six Pillars of Blogging:
 
1.Publishable.Anyone can publish a blog.You can do it cheaply and post often. Each posting is instantly available worldwide.
 
2.Findable. Through search engines, people will find blogs by subject, by author, or both. The more you post, the more findable you become.
 
3.Social. The blogosphere is one big conversation. Interesting topical conversations move from site to site, linking to each other. Through blogs, people with shared interests build relationships unrestricted by geographic borders.
 
4.Viral. Information often spreads faster through blogs than via a newsservice. No form of viral marketing matches the speed and efficiency of a blog.
 
5.Syndicatable. By clicking on an icon, you can get free “home delivery” of RSS- enabled blogs into your e-mail software. RSS lets you know when a blog you subscribe to is updated, saving you search time. This process is considerably more efficient than the last- generation method of visiting one page of one web site at a time looking for changes.
 
6.Linkable. Because each blog can link to all others, every blogger has access to the tens of millions of people who visit the blogosphere every day.
 
You can find each of these elements elsewhere. None is, in itself, all that remarkable. But in final assembly, they are the benefits of the most powerful two-way Internet communications tool so far developed.

“from Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, published by John Wiley & Sons Inc. Copyright 2006 Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, used by permission of the publisher.”