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It's all over except the diets. Did you have fun...?

more animals

I want to build a list of the best of 2008 across all the blogs. Nominate your favourite posts,the most significant posts and the oddest posts by leaving the post's URL (as opposed tot he blog home page link) in a comment in the next few days. That's all you have to do.

Tell me what made 2008 for you.

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You know what time it is when Thanet Star starts with the Christmas animal images. Have a good one.

Have you tried the Fix Our Car Park special? It can be used to nag the council about the reduction of the cost of town centre parking in line with the new rate of VAT.

When you have tried it out why not let us know how you got on. Cheers.

Kent TV, it's KCCs extraordinarily expensive Vlog (Video blog) with a custom flash player, but is it actually any good. Tony clearly has an opinion but what about the rest of us?

In short is it the Huffington Post of Kent Communications or the Pownce of video?

Culture Note for newer blog fans: The world of blogging can be divided into pre Huffington and post Huffington because it completely redefined what was possible whereas pownce is has been shut down by new owners Six Apart for being massively unpopular and a massive cost drain.

Kent TV has going for it £1.4 million in backing and has had "one million visitors" that's a cost per person of £1.40. While this is not unreasonable that's not exactly value for money when you consider Google sells traffic in the form of the AdWords program for as little as 1p a click (after you convert from dollars). Assuming that they are not counting hits but something crude but more indicative (say video stream requests given videos auto play the moment I allow flash to be enabled) at an unspecified audience quality I could supply that same level of traffic for around 0.75 million

It has provided 1,400 giving an average cost of £714.29 per video. A straw poll of videos shows the length to fall between 4.5 and 12 minutes with the average being about 7. That means that each video cost £100 a minute to make meaning if they were feature length they would cost around £90,000 each. Yet what value are each of these videos?

And here is another question - they make massive assumptions about the technical ability of the browsers, computers and users of the site. They assume that I am too stupid to pick the optimum quality level for my bandwidth, that my browser and every one else's uses JavaScript and that I have flash installed and up to date.

If that one was a bit on the geeky side what about this. Kent TV is there is create discussion but a debate in a media to which we the people are not invited. We are expected to listen only but not contribute. The blogging revolution, the Web 2.0 culture, the rise of social media has been about breaking old one way communication methods and making them two way. But by locking out opposing discussion they are saying "you are too dumb to contribute" we the old media are in control.

Frankly I don't much care for that. If the world would go back to that way of playing then China Gate, the Sericol leak and a number of other vital stories would never have seen the light of day. Instead we can ask the hard questions and expect to get answers. Kent TV is, in my opinion, an attempt to jump on a band wagon that is not so well understood with unclear aims beyond taking control of an unoccupied niche.

YouTube make no such assumptions and offer me the fastest version they have and know that I'll pick Hi Def if I care to use it. YouTube trust me to paste a flash embed segment of code into my own blog but KentTV expect me to allow them to run JavaScript from their site on mine. Just so you know if Kent TV is ever significantly compromised the crackers will be able to run cross site scripting attacks on every single site with KentTV code. What's more my site is not good enough to get the highest quality version - I have to make do with the external only edition which they don't use internally.

In short Kent TV appears to reinvent the wheel and has not done the best job possible. Where it a start up it would be laughed at by the big boys. Consider that only recently has Kent TV with it's million pound budget over taken Thanet Star's alexa rank (an indicator of the rate of visitation) and only then by a negligible 50,000 places in the world ranking of sites with 19.2% of it's traffic coming from outside the UK (compared to our 14%).

That has both of us beating TDC's website by the way.

Do you recall that niche I spoke of just moments ago. That Local TV niche. It would be a simple mater for a group with substantially less money to do better than Kent TV with little more than a digital video camera and some passion for their home area. Thanet springs to mind as having that passion and that group identity.

It falls once more to us to take the lead in social and online media and show the world that we the people control the news and do not stand for hijacked or personal agendas. We will communicate and we will have answers.

Something new for Thanet blogs. Guest posting.

A guest post is where one blogger writes a post but for someone else's blog. This might sound like an odd idea at first. Yet it is to the benefit of both writers and the readers.

The readers get a change of pace and to find out about a reader that they might not read otherwise. The guest writer get's to address someone else's audience while pointing back to their own work (most often in a short bio at the end). This can often let the guest writer talk about a topic that does not fit their own blog.

The blog owner benefits by having a post written by someone else.

I've been thinking about engaging in this practice and was wondering if anyone was interested in guest blogging at the Thanet Star? The offer is open to all regardless of party or the past exchange of words (with the exception of Sandy Ezekiel whom I just plain don't like).

Given that 95% (or there about) of Thanet Bloggers are BlogSpot users and Thanet Star is not this has been the cause of a few conflicts of ease of use vs ease of control.

Hopefully this is not one such case. Using your Google account (that you have signed into Blogger with) or any OpenID (or even a yahoo id) you can nominally "join" Thanet Star. This is much like "following" on blogger although a number of advanced options should be available due to the advanced geekery of the Google crew.

If you have added yourself and I've not got a link going to your blog feel free to message me and prompt me.

The blog author of Thanet Observer recently asked Where might one obtain "A Mole"? It seems every other blogger has one, and I feel quite left out.

This is a good question. Why do some blogs in Thanet appear to have their finger on the pulse with secret informants, TV and YouTube interviews and citations in the newspapers. What makes some bloggers more attractive when it comes time to leak that all important photograph of a councillor with his pants down?

I could have called this post "Get Your Mole Here" but I wanted to communicate fully what it is I'm going to be talking about. We are talking about the ability to break the news first. To be one of the "go to" blogs for what is fresh and happening in the area.

I will attempt to be as in depth as is possible as we look at how you can rise to fame as a source of news in Thanet. How you, like Michael Child, Tony Flaig and many others can make Thanet's leaders shiver with fear.

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» Continue Reading: Do You Want To Break the News in Thanet?