The subscription system and metered paywall technology that we redeveloped for heraldscotland.com in August 2013 has been shortlisted in The Drum’s Online Media Awards. We’re up for the Best Commercial Innovation award alongside just one other shortlisted submission: adnostic from Dennis Publishing. Winners will be announced on June 11 at the awards ceremony in LondonContinue reading “HeraldScotland 'Paywall 2.0' shortlisted for another prestigious award”
Author Archives: Grant
Mobile hackathon: Or turning a Pringles tube into an arcade game between Glasgow and London
I’ve always fancied the idea of taking part in a Hackathon, but I never seem to be in the right place at the right time. This morning I’m heading from Glasgow to London on the Virgin Pendolino – a trip that takes 4hrs 32mins. I was prepared in advance for this meeting (a rare event)Continue reading “Mobile hackathon: Or turning a Pringles tube into an arcade game between Glasgow and London”
Scottish Newspaper Society: Opportunities in the digital age
Yesterday I took part in the inaugural Scottish Newspaper Society conference. It was an honour to be asked to speak at such a prestigious event, sharing the lectern with Lord Black, Alex Salmond and Ellis Watson among other distinguished speakers. I was asked to talk about opportunities for Scottish newspapers in the digital age. MyContinue reading “Scottish Newspaper Society: Opportunities in the digital age”
The Scottish Newspaper Society Conference
I’ve been asked to speak at the Scottish Newspaper Society Conference next week, an event that precedes the annual Scottish Press Awards at the Radisson Blu in Glasgow. My session is on the topic of “Opportunities in the digital age”, and I’ll be presenting alongside Professor Philip Schlesinger, Academic Director of the Centre for CulturalContinue reading “The Scottish Newspaper Society Conference”
Inspiring the next generation of journalists
This week I had the pleasure of presenting at FutureNews 2014, a three-day event that brought together over 120 aspiring journalists from around the Commonwealth. I was asked to present a session on Tuesday on the subject of Social Media for journalists. I shared the hour-long session with David Milne from STV, with my partContinue reading “Inspiring the next generation of journalists”
My Indyref Personality Test for HeraldScotland
Once a fortnight my dev team at Herald & Times do an Editorial Wednesday – a day devoted to bespoke development on our news sites. The hands-on design/dev work usually sits with members of my team, but due to staff holidays I was working solo this week. We didn’t have anything urgent on the editorialContinue reading “My Indyref Personality Test for HeraldScotland”
How to demo a web widget on a third party site without having access to their code
The inspiration for this blog post came from a question on StackOverflow titled “Overlay one iframe on top of another, scroll them together“. The question was very specific and, to the best of my knowledge, impossible to achieve directly. However, the requirement underpinning the question was interesting: How could you demonstrate a web widget onContinue reading “How to demo a web widget on a third party site without having access to their code”
Happy 25th birthday, www
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web… or rather 25 years since it was first proposed by Tim Berners-Lee. It took another five years for the first graphical web browser, Mosaic, to emerge, which was right around the time that I first got a modem and dialled up… to Compuserve. I wasContinue reading “Happy 25th birthday, www”
New Scotland's Homes site officially launches on Monday!
Last September we decided at the Herald & Times that we need a site to accompany some of our print supplements. In the past s1 filled that role with the sites s1jobs and s1homes that I helped built back in the early 2000’s. But with s1 no longer part of the Herald & Times GroupContinue reading “New Scotland's Homes site officially launches on Monday!”
We're shortlisted (twice) for Scottish Press Innovation of the Year
The finalists for the Scottish Press Awards were announced earlier today… and two of the projects I worked on have been shortlisted for Innovation of the Year. First up is Paywall 2.0, the new metered paywall system my team developed for HeraldScotland which saw subscription rates increase massively in 2013. Our work on this systemContinue reading “We're shortlisted (twice) for Scottish Press Innovation of the Year”
Grant Gibson 