Recently I wrote about the closure of free video-hosting services at both AOL and Brightcove. I suggested that no free hosting service can be relied on to be around forever, or even a year from now in the current economic crisis.

Today the Daily Telegraph reports that social networking sites, such as Facebook, face a ‘data cost crisis’, as advertising revenue declines from a position that wasn’t exactly lucrative in the first place.

Research by the consultants Deloitte suggests that the cost of storing electronic data ‘has soared to more than $100m (£68m) a year for larger sites, as users increasingly want to upload memory-hungry photos and videos’.

Since 2004 Manchester has had two Caribbean Carnivals. The one in July that has run for decades is now ignored by Manchester City Council. Go to the Council information centre and they will actually deny that there are two Caribbean Carnivals in Manchester each year.

(more…)

The Manchester Pride website reports that Operation Fundraiser will be ‘will be hanging up its buckets’ this year.

(more…)

Fifteen years ago, when I earned part of my living as a freelance photographer, the going rate for a cover shot on one of the small magazines that I worked for was £200. The magazine sold 12,000 copies each month and that payment gave the publisher the right to publish the image one time only.

(more…)