g7uk » future

How will Manchester fare if there’s a recession?

GS — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:58:11 +0000

Walking around Ancoats recently I noticed how many of the buildings (many old cotton mills) are still empty. Some are semi-derelict, in other cases the shell has been tarted up a little, but not much done inside. It’s hard to know how many apartments in the converted and newly-built blocks are occupied. If it hasn’t been possible to ‘regenerate’ this area completely during the property boom of the last few years the question is: will it ever happen now?

Manchester’s Odeon cinema subjected to a damaging ‘systematic and methodical’ assault to prevent preservation

GS — Sat, 19 May 2007 16:18:37 +0000

Manchester’s former Odeon cinema, on Oxford Street, has been subjected to a ‘systematic and methodical’ assault to prevent it being preserved, according to the man who tried to save it.

Photographer loses image library in fire — how safe is your audio and visual data?

GS — Wed, 16 May 2007 09:59:53 +0000

As a photographer myself, I broke out into a cold sweat reading how this poor man lost most of his image library in the Lever Street fire. Equipment can be replaced but unique transparencies, negatives and digital images can’t be.

Guardian, Lonely Planet, Hewlett Packard ‘photographic opportunity’

GS — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 16:40:09 +0000

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.

Free wifi wireless hotspots in Manchester

GS — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:53:14 +0000

A useful map of places that offer free wifi in Manchester city centre.

There’s talk of free wireless internet across the whole of Greater Manchester by next summer. Which will be great if they can do it.

It would totally change the way that I work, that’s for sure. Though I wonder if restricting it to 256k would be a huge mistake.

Such a low speed would rule out watching almost any kind of streaming web video and everyone seems to reckon that the future of the web lies with… video.

Manchester Pride exaggerates Parade crowd figures by 500%

GS — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 23:37:53 +0000

250,000 do not watch the Parade as the organisers claim. The true figure is ‘tens of thousands’ and here is the proof.

Timeslip

GS — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 00:10:26 +0000

In 1970, Britain was suffering power cuts across the country, caused by industrial action. The days and times of the cuts varied each week. I remember having to do my homework by candlelight.

How submitting your video content to the BBC could cost you money

GS — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 21:57:42 +0000

Quality content and creativity are valuable things. If you need proof, just look at the millions of pounds that businesses earn from back catalogues of music, films, TV shows and news footage.

The BBC, public participation and ‘user generated’ content

GS — Wed, 03 May 2006 21:21:00 +0000

How serious is the BBC about public participation and user-generated content? Not very serious, I would say…

The BBC has always looked on the public as material to be used in its programmes and now it looks on photographs and videos that come from that public as material to be used in its programmes. So not much change…

The old joke is that the official BBC tie has small checks (cheques). But, for many people these days, the BBC means no cheques…

My experience, as a former magazine writer/photographer and now web developer, is that the Corporation is always on the look out for free content. I’m tired of producers and researchers asking to use my photographs for free. There’s never any money. With a remit to encourage creativity and promote culture in Britain, the BBC is the last organisation that should be doing this.

Then there’s the raw deal that independent TV production companies have experienced over the years… If this is the BBC’s attitude to fellow professionals, then pardon me for being just a little bit cynical about the Beeb’s enthusiasm for material from the public.

READ THE SMALL PRINT

Before you supply any photos or videos, as a member of the public, read the terms. You’re giving the BBC:

‘a royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to publish and otherwise use the material in any way that we want, and in any media worldwide. This may include the transmission of the material by our overseas partners’

In the case of video, it says they may not even be able to credit you. Wonderful — no payment and not even a name-check either. Isn’t there some European law that entitles everyone to be identified as the author of his or her work?

I hope the public will wake up to this soon. I believe that the companies that deal unfairly now will pay later once people get over the novelty of seeing their video on screen and realise that they have been ‘used’.

It really pays to keep people happy these days. The video blogger or photographer who has a good experience of providing footage to a company, may continue to do so for years to come. But leave someone with a bad taste in their mouth and there will be no more material from that source in the future.

Guess which of these is the best business model?

UPDATE: LoadedPun has the story of a video blogger who helped CNN make a report for TV but then was told he would have to pay $1000 if he wanted to include the final video on his blog. In fact, so far, he hasn’t even been able to see the report!

Maybe this guy will think twice before getting involved with CNN again? Piss off enough videobloggers, who then tell everyone else, and soon no one will want to work with CNN. It seems that yet another big media company hasn’t quite woken up to the way things are changing?

130-year-old cast-iron bridge removed on Canal Street

GS — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 13:16:13 +0000

Until about a month ago there was a 130-year-old cast-iron bridge across the canal at the junction of Sackville Street and Canal Street, in the gay village. Now it has been removed and replaced by a concrete replica.

I took these photographs on Sunday, but I held off posting about this until I had checked the facts. But yes it’s true. It has all gone and what you see now, in the pictures shown here, is moulded concrete that will be painted.

The really pathetic thing is that they have screwed the original makers plate onto the concrete.

The existing bridge didn’t meet traffic regulations. Heaven forbid that they might stop enormous buses hurtling along this street and route them another way, so the original bridge could have been preserved. Far easier to destroy another part of Manchester’s heritage…

People may think ‘it’s only a bridge’. The trouble is, bits here and there disappear and, before you know it, an area has lost everything that made it ‘special’ in the first place.

I know Manchester has to be a working city. But we’re told that, in the future, Britain will have to rely on its cultural heritage to compete with emerging nations such as China and India. The trouble is, we’re throwing our cultural heritage down the drain through neglect and unsympathetic development.

In Manchester, the planners seem to have no overall picture in their heads. Everything is turning into an ugly ‘mish-mash’.