Real time comments

Real time comments have been in circulation in the blogosphere for nigh on two years now. Whereas traditional blog comments favoured one-to-one exchanges within the confines of a particular blog or website, real time comments tap into the broader conversations that take place across multiple social media sites – Twitter and Facebook being the two main platofrms here. For anyone running a WordPress powered blog, there are a number of ‘out of the box’ plugins when it comes to real time comment systems. Disqus is by far the more mature of the pack, followed by the relatively new Echo System and the WordPress-developed Intense Debate.

I chose to go with Disqus for a few reasons. One, it’s free. Two, the system has had more development time than its competitors and as a user you are therefore less of a guinea pig for the R&D team. Three, Disqus is simple and intuitive and the WordPress plugin is straight forward to install.

So what are the advantages of this new comment system for LTB users? Comments work very much the same as before. However you can now post comments by signing in via Twitter, Facebook or OpenID. You can also choose the order and layout of comments. Below the main comment stream, you’ll find a separate ‘Reactions’ stream that charts all social media responses to the particular item of content from across the Web. So all conversations, links and mentions are channeled into one place.

London Theatre Blog Advertising

On the right-hand sidebar, just below the contributor list, you’ll notice a new ad space. This is paid ad space open to anyone interested in reaching a theatre and performing arts focused audience. The only rules for potential advertisers is that the company, website or brand your represent must be related to theatre and performance. This is contextual ad space and only ads relevant to site content will be considered for inclusion. If you’re interested in placing an ad, please get in touch here. Thanks for your interest.

Theatre in Pictures

Current readers of LTB will be familiar with the ‘audio visual’ section of the site which houses audio, video and photo content. However, I’d like to draw your attention to an ongoing LTB sister project, devoted to the exploration of theatre and performance in graphic form: Theatre in Pictures.

Theatre in Pictures started off as a small collection of photos and has grown into an increasingly popular project that presents high quality photographs covering a range of theatre topics from around the world. The project is by no means restricted to covering performers on stage. All aspects of theatre are considered and all photographic media are supported. The following themes will give you a sense of the areas already covered on the site: space, architecture, costume, design, light, audience, rehearsals, masks, movement, festivals, transport, posters, history.

The project welcomes open submissions from photographers worldwide. If you are interested in contributing a series of images, please get in touch via the submission page. Details of dimensions and general guidelines for submission are included there. Please also get in touch with any queries or suggestions you may have via the contact page.

All Kindle content is accessed either on a one-off or continual subscription basis. Subscription costs for blogs and online papers are very low and part of the charge goes towards wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet, part goes to Amazon LTD as an admin charge and the final part goes to the content publisher. In LTB’s case any short term revenue derived from Kindle subscriptions will contribute to the maintenance costs and development of the site. The most important factor in LTB’s support of Kindle is the distrubtion of its content to a wider audience.

Kindle is still only available in the US, but an increase in user popularity and strong interest from newspapers worldwide, means that it’s simple a matter of time before a unit appears in the UK. So LTB is keen to get a head start by supporting its content on the device ahead of European distribution.

It sparked controversy in its UK and US tours telling the story of the young American peace activist who opposed the US-backed Israeli military occpuation of the Gaza Strip. You can watch a brief interview here in which Rachel Corrie talks about her experience in Gaza shortly before her death on March 14th 2003. Also, see this section of ‘The Killing Zone‘ produced for the Channel 4 program Dispatches.

Encyclopedia Britannica recently opened part of its database to the public through Britannica Webshare (soon to be in use on LTB).

The Old Bailey updated its transcript archive in what is now a formidable resource for historians, writers and anyone with an interest in the UK legal system.

The Times newspaper recently launched its digital archive covering 2 centuries of news! The Internet may still be a child, but day by day it is maturing.

Phil Fox is founder and artistic director of Outside Edge Theatre Company, read his London Theatre Blog article Drugs and Theatre Go Together.

Last week was one such moment. I’m proud to say (and I’m blowing my own trumpet in doing so) that London Theatre Blog was featured as “blog of the week” on the UK edition of Times Online Newspaper. I’d like to take this moment of cheer to thank visitors to London Theatre Blog for their ongoing support.