the local newspapers of the future
I have completed the initial phase of my plan to build local news sites for the inner city suburbs of Fitzroy and North Fitzroy, Carlton and North Carlton, Brunswick and East Brunswick and Collingwood...
View ArticleFormula 1 Management and the Australian Grand Prix Corporation censor...
Update 27 April 2009: I won this case – read the full story here. The flaccid corporate pricks at the Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGPC) and / or Formula 1 Management (FOM) have forced Youtube to...
View ArticleMelbourne Leader lies about me and breaches my copyright
Update 17 April 2009: the Press Council has acknowledged receipt of my complaint about the Melbourne Leader and is investigating. Update 16 April 2009: I’m working on a complaint to submit to the...
View ArticleI fought Formula 1 Management and I won
I am pleased to report that I have won my copyright dispute with Formula 1 Management (FOM) over the copyright and intellectual property rights to spectator videos made at the 2009 Australian Formula 1...
View ArticleI fought News Ltd and I won
The Australian Press Council has promptly investigated the complaint I lodged about the actions of the Melbourne Leader in reporting a factual error about me and failing to attribute a photograph...
View Articlebreakfast bagel at Alimentari on Brunswick St
On a recent Sunday I met a woman called Susan at Alimentari. I needed breakfast as I had just got up, but for her it was time to work. She’s a journalism student at RMIT and we met so she could...
View Articlebig in Poland
Once my videos of the 2009 Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix were reinstated by Youtube, they gained about 1,000 views each. That”s good considering they were offline when people would have been most...
View ArticleFOI on food hygiene in the City of Yarra
I find it ridiculous in the age of radical transparency being brought forth by the ubiquity of online information that data paid for and owned by citizens is kept from citizens by out of touch...
View ArticleFitzroyalty vs City of Yarra – food hygiene FOI battle round one
And so it begins. I wrote last Thursday about making an FOI application to the City of Yarra to release information about cafe and restaurant food hygiene inspections. I posted the snail mail...
View ArticleFitzroyalty vs City of Yarra – food hygiene FOI battle round two
On Thursday 4 June 2009 I received a response from the City of Yarra about my food hygiene FOI. They have given me a spreadsheet of inspection data but have removed all of the business names, making it...
View Articlefood hygiene in Fitzroy – preliminary findings
On Friday I reported that I received some data as a result of my food hygiene in Fitzroy FOI request to the City of Yarra council. The spreadsheet they sent me contains 1096 lines of data about...
View ArticleThree Thousand and other social media parasites
On Tuesday I posted a review of the new Fitzroy cafe called Felice’s. By Thursday morning Three Thousand had stolen a photo from my post, paraphrased my text and published their own story by editor...
View ArticleFitzroyalty vs City of Yarra – food hygiene FOI battle round three
In my previous installment of this series about freeing information about food hygiene standards in Fitzroy from the secretive and out of touch City of Yarra council, I hypothesised that my appeal...
View Articleanother content theft public relations failure case study
I ate at Solarino restaurant in the city earlier this year and posted a review about it. Recently my hosting service has been saying that Fitzroyalty was causing excessive load on their servers. In...
View Articlea beginner’s guide to blogging ethics and strategy
A reader named Rebecca emailed me and suggested I write a post on ethics in blogging, social media and citizen journalism. As I’ve ranted about aspects of this for some time I thought it was a most...
View ArticleFitzroyalty vs City of Yarra – food hygiene FOI battle round four
On 30 June 2009 I received a phone call from a woman in the office of the Victorian Ombudsman acknowledging receipt of my complaint letter about the City of Yarra’s refusal to release food hygiene...
View Article10 local news sites in inner city Melbourne
During 2009 I have been building what I think is now the largest collaborative blogging project in Australia. I’m really excited to have published a series of 10 local news sites for inner city...
View Articleanother Melbourne content thief
Update 16 July 2009: Jessi has emailed me to apologise and I have responded thanking her and accepting her apology. I’m getting bored with chasing down all the people who steal my content. Melbourne...
View Articleadvice on starting a blog or website
I’ve been publishing Fitzroyalty for over three years now and have been writing for, editing and publishing websites for universities, government departments and businesses since 1997. In this time I...
View ArticleFitzroyalty on the curriculum
I’ve been surprised and pleased to find that some publishing and media students have been interested in analysing Fitzroyalty as an example of citizen journalism and hyperlocal media. In May 2009 I was...
View Articlethe power of personality in social media engagement
I am regularly criticised by readers like Betty and Louisa being overly critical or confrontational in my attitude and opinions. Some readers don’t like my ideas, though usually they have not bothered...
View Articlethe City of Yarra’s new customer service guarantee
On 29 July the City of Yarra published a press release explaining its new customer service guarantee. It contains many new promises relating to improved service delivery to Yarra residents. Apart from...
View ArticleFitzroyalty vs City of Yarra – food hygiene FOI battle round five
A lot has happened in the last month in relation to my battle to get the City of Yarra to release the information it gathers about food hygiene inspections in Fitzroy to the public. I think I’ve done...
View ArticleVictorian local and state governments cannot be trusted on food hygiene
Update 21 September 2009: reading the 2009 annual report (1.35mb PDF) of the Victorian Ombudsman is fascinating. Consider this statement in relation to this post: Parliament gives government agencies...
View Articlewhy am I surrounded by frickin’ idiots? Fitzroyalty vs City of Yarra – food...
In my last post of this series documenting my attempts to get the City of Yarra to release the information it gathers about food hygiene inspections in Fitzroy into the public domain, I suggested that...
View Articlea formula for hyperlocal success
Fitzroyalty is a hyperlocal site that focuses on a small and well defined geographical area – the inner city suburb of Fitzroy in Melbourne Australia. A majority of the content I publish is about...
View Articleimitation is not the sincerest form of flattery
I am curious about the future of media and am exploring this by participating in it, by publishing a hyperlocal news sites and involving myself in online communities. I’ve tried to create something new...
View Articleif you want your comment published, make it worth reading
I recently received this messge via Facespace: I’ve notice that you only publish responses to your articles in your Fitzroyalty blogs that agree with your opinion. Being someone who did take an...
View Articlemy anonymous internet stalker is a coward and a criminal
I am being stalked by someone anonymously on the internet. They regularly post insulting and offensive comments to Fitzroyalty (which I don’t publish). Someone is also writing posts on the...
View Articledon’t feed the dinosaurs
I got a call yesterday from a freelance journalist. He’s working to place a short piece in the Age arts section, and wanted to include about 80 words on Fitzroyalty and a suitable image. He called me...
View ArticleI like to SEO
I preface this post by saying I’m genuinely not trying to promote myself. I’m just using Fitzroyalty as an example. Hold that bile and invective. Today’s website insight is about search engine...
View Articleon the use of the term ‘Fitzroyalty’
When I arrived in Melbourne and began living in North Fitzroy, I encountered the verbal colloquialism ‘Fitzroyalty’. As an example of street slang, the term had no obvious origins or legal status. At...
View Articlespace cadet syndrome
Sigh. I try to do a useful thing by discussing what appears to be an interesting topic related to social media and the marketing of local events, and I am disliked for it. My recent post about the use...
View Articleon being non-commercial in a commercial world
I get asked questions related to the business status of Fitzroyalty a lot. Why doesn’t it have advertising? Why don’t I register a .com domain name? Why don’t I behave more like an entrepreneur? How...
View Articlekeep your stupidity to yourself
OMG, WTF and LOL. I am overdosing on interactions with stupid people at the moment. Two in one day yesterday necessitated some venting. First I got an email from ‘Clarence’ from a marketing agency...
View ArticleHot house media and events – fuck off you moronic PR goons
I get a lot of junk email. Apart from the spam I get many irrelevant press releases and invites from advertising, marketing and public relations agencies. They obviously employ some ignorant person to...
View Articlea measure of success
In August 2010 I have achieved some significant numbers with Fitzroyalty. I’m publishing this information not to promote myself but to show the progress that can be achieved if you are serious about...
View ArticleCity of Yarra publishes new website, forgets to add new features
In May 2009 I wrote about some of the problems with the City of Yarra website. In June I wrote to them and volunteered some ideas about how they could improve their website and their communications. In...
View Articlewhat is an advertorial blog post worth?
A year ago I wrote about the ethics of publishing sponsored reviews, and I have been watching developments closely since then. Following up from my recent post when bloggers sell out audiences stop...
View ArticleFitzroyalty 2010 – the year in review
2010 may appear in hindsight to be the year that Fitzroyalty became more than a hobby for me: it became more like a mission. In looking back over the stories I have published and the events that have...
View ArticleFitzroyalty at 5
I’ve been writing Fitzroyalty for 5 years now (it started in May 2006) and last night it passed over 2 million pageviews. Almost all of this traffic has come in the last 2 years. It took me some time...
View Articletell me where to go – experimenting with a new poll plugin
Since I began the monthly ‘tell me where to go’ poll I have been using a Flash based poll plugin as, at the time, it was the only one I could find that worked as documented. Apart from embedding a web...
View Articlea break in transmission
Apologies for the lack of content over the weekend. I’ve kept up the twice a day publishing schedule for over two years now, but I’ve run out of content and enthusiasm. Changes in my working and...
View ArticleStencil cafe, Fitzroyalty, libel, fraud, bribery and the ethics of hyperlocal...
If this is some kind of performance art, I’m starting to tire of it. I got home from work today and read my emails. A reader had emailed me this photo. I’m speechless. Whoever created it is, I allege,...
View Articlecorrespondence with a moron
This comment was recently posted on Fitzroyalty in relation to this post about art deco architecture in Bondi: beaut photos… hope you dont mind if we use em to promote Bondi Beach Art Deco… have a look...
View Articlea criminal dummy spit
Fitzroyalty is sometimes deliberately confrontational and does not shy away from direct and uncompromising discussions about topical local issues. This inevitably causes conflict, and Fitzroyalty is a...
View Articlethe Australian Federal Police says threatening to make a denial of service...
Three weeks ago I wrote about an implied denial of service threat I received from a belligerent moron who failed to convince me that taggers are not morons. I followed the advice I received and...
View ArticleTripadvisor ignores Australian copyright owners
Yesterday I happened to be browsing Beechworth listings on Tripadvisor when I saw a photo that looked familiar. The photo used on the Green Shed restaurant page is one I took in 2012 and published in...
View Articlepreparing for the future of web publishing
You may have noticed some changes to the design and information architecture of Fitzroyalty. I have been busy preparing the site for the future. The site has used a responsive Wordpress theme for over...
View ArticleFitzroyalty is now location aware
I wrote only a few days ago that my 5 year dream to make Fitzroyalty a location aware site was still unrealised. This initiated a Twitter conversation with fellow blogger and WordPress enthusiast Phil...
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