Ghosts of the Past – cool site using historical photos

December 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

It’s always nice to discover a cool new site, and even better when it turns out to be made by someone I know. Andy Reedman, of Milk Media and an attendee of DPiP meetups has created a great site, Ghosts of the Past, which I’ve only just discovered.

Like many great ideas, it’s also pretty simple. Take an overhead photo of an area, and then juxtapose that with a historical one, which switches when the image is rolled over.

Ghosts of the Past

The Ghosts of the Past website.

It’s a diverting way to spend some time, and as someone interested in history, it’s also potentially pretty useful. I know Andy would appreciate any contributions in terms of suggestions/content for future posts, so if you happen to know of anything, he’d appreciate it (@andyreedy on Twitter). So seeing as work is winding down, why not take a look?

Obviously I can’t help but tinker, so the things I’d change asap would be to look at ways to embed the images onto other sites, possibly add more historical references and context either as new content or pulled in from elsewhere, and maybe introduce some merchandise or similar. I’ll settle for trying to supply him with images of motoracing circuits.

Filed Under: New launches Tagged With: , , , ,

Geek curry night in Peterborough…

March 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The belated arrangements for the fourth meetup for ‘Digital People in Peterborough‘ have now been announced, and in a change from the pub format, it’s going to be a curry night…

I’m still surprised that something I’d mentioned in passing to my good friend @pjeedai and virtual acquintance (at the time) @joffff has turned into a regular meetup which sees 20+ digital people get together for drinks, food and chatting. All from just deciding a time and a place and seeing if people would turn up.

And it’s continuing to grow. We’re getting a reasonable amount of people checking out the site regularly, more and more people are registering and posting in the forum, the Facebook page has got 34 Likes so far, and the Twitter account has 25 followers.

That might be small if you’re used to reading case studies of global brands and millions spent in marketing, but as a group which met for the first time 5 months ago, and which has come together from nothing, I’m pretty amazed. And particularly as it’s revealed how many talented and skilled people are in the area – as a result, it’s led to the founding of digital design and development company Jodanma, of which I’m a co-founder, for example.

With the ease of communication and organisation, if you’ve ever wondered about starting a community around a cause, shared hobby, idea, dream etc, there really is no excuse not to give it a go. Maybe it’ll become massive in terms of size, or value. And maybe it’ll take a bit of time and work. But there’s no excuse for not giving it a try and finding out who else is interested…

 

Filed Under: community, Crowdsourcing, Digital Culture, social networks Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

3rd Digital People in Peterborough meetup – Thursday, Feb 3…

January 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

It’s always a bit of a wrench when you take a break from something over Christmas and New Year, and then have re-ignite everything in January. That’s one reason I didn’t take much of a break from working with clients or on my own site, but due to everyone having personal and work commitments, we took a bit of a break with Digital People in Peterborough.

But now it’s back, and the next pub meetup is February 3, 2011, at 7.30pm in the Beehive Pub in Peterborough. Not only that, but the website has got a great new design, the new forums are up and running, there’s a DPiP Facebook page, and also a Twitter account to remind you when events are happening.

And you can see more details on DPiP #3 and RSVP on the forum (or on Facebook).

So there you go – I’m really looking forward to it, and it’ll be interesting to see if changing the date/venue encourages a few more of you in the Peterborough and surrounding area to come along!

Filed Under: DPiP, events Tagged With: , , , , ,

December – an opportunity for great work?

December 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Dominated by Christmas, the month of December often seems like a chance to relax a little, and churn out some blog posts looking either back at the past year, or making a few predictions for the next. And while I’m probably going to end up writing some variations on those themes, I also have a much better plan for December this year.

I’m going to be working harder than ever to take advantage of the fact some people will be easing off. Whilst I know a lot of great companies and individuals will be working as hard as they do for the rest of the year, if even 5% of the rest take a bit of a break, I need to be making the most of that opportunity!

TheWayoftheWeb:

In terms of freelancing and consultancy, I’ve got a small and growing number of clients, which is great news. But to make it truly sustainable I need to increase that number, so the fact that many companies will be looking to improve their content and digital marketing for 2011 is a great opportunity.

On that note, this blog will be more focused going forwards. I’ve had some very nice offers to contribute to some very good sites, and I’ve struggled to find topics which I didn’t already cover. But with my concentration on content creation and marketing for my own business, it makes sense to funnel some of my writing on the media, journalism and publishing onto some more relevant sites…

Personal Projects:

  • OnlineRaceDriver.com: In under 12 months, the site has done really well with sustained growth in terms of content contributors and traffic. But the difference between a nice little blog and a publishing business comes down to the business model, which is something I want to prove can work for smaller sites.
  • 140Char: I started 140Char almost 3 years ago now, and although it’s been great fun, the time and effort to run it hasn’t evolved into something which makes a good enough return. For the last month or two it’s been mainly dormant while I look at whether it continues with some big changes, transfers to new ownership, or the content gets archived on a free host for the time being.
  • DPiP: The first two Peterborough meet-ups have gone well, and I’ve been talking to a couple of people about how we can involve DPiP into something which offers more educational and business opportunities alongside the social side of meeting local digital people for drinks. Most of that should be in place for the next meetup in January.
  • 1-2 new projects: At the moment, I’ve probably got just enough time and space for one, possibly two, of the new projects and ideas I’m been discussing with a couple of people. In the next week or so it should be clear which is the best business proposition, and I should be able to start talking about what is going on.

So a pretty busy time. As ever, client projects come first, with OnlineRaceDriver remaining as an example of building a site and business with great content and some of the digital and social marketing techniques available for very little financial investment (time is another matter!). DPiP is very much something which will grow with the involvement of everyone that has expressed an interest, and I’m pretty confident one of the new projects will soon evolve into a productive business interest.

Of course, I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t make time for friends and family over the holiday period – especially as someone with a young family to indulge and spoil this year. But all the time I can be building a future for my family, that’s what I’ll be putting first this year!!!

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Dan Thornton Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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