Has anyone else spotted the new (or fairly new) notice on the BBC News website?

With phone cameras getting better, broadcasting over mobile getting easier and more outlets than ever for us to publish our day to day lives, citizen journalism is challenging the old school thinking that big media gets the news first.

Scoble used Twitter to report on the earthquakes in China, receiving instant updates from those affected locally, and the BBC seem to post any ol’ rubbish they get sent, like this pile up of cars in a Belfast Co-Op car park. (Slow news day, guys?)

You can publish from Glastonbury to show your mates on Qik.com quite how muddy you’re getting this weekend (not to curse the weather forecast or anything!), Twitter that Yahoo!’s just fired you or grab shots of a public protest and upload them instantly to Flickr - it’s become so incredibly easy.

But it’s easy to get carried away in the heat of the moment and put yourself at risk, which is why sites like the BBC cover their ass by reminding us not to do anything (too) stupid for the sake of That Great Shot.

What’s the worst situation you’ve put yourself in for the sake of a video or photo of something newsworthy or really funny?

Within Taptu, we have a type of page that we call a ‘Content Summary’; they’re the useful little pages containing snippets of information for every search result. These pages make us different - they make it easier for users to get mobile search results in a digestible, clear format.

How does it work? Once the user has selected a result, we take them to the content summary page. We do this rather than linking directly to the source site - which is what happens with most desktop search engines.

The content summary offers key information and content for the chosen result. Sure, it goes against common wisdom that “less pages is better”, but this means that users can stay within Taptu if they wish - they can defer (or avoid) navigating off to a poorly composed mobile internet page or a transcoded page. This creates a better user experience by avoiding additional navigation and scrolling of pages.

What issues have we considered in our ‘Content Summary’ design? Some of them are discussed below with a ‘Song’ result.

Last night, Sir Alan Sugar picked his Apprentice (no spoilers for those who haven’t seen it yet!) and here at Taptu, we think we may have found ours. Or at least we’ve found a new wacky person to join the team!

Dear Taptu.com team,

I have read your email regarding your search for translators and can tell you one thing: this is your lucky day! You have just found the most awesome prospective employee under the sun.

In order to avoid beating about the bush I will list a few reasons explaining why you should choose me:

1. I am such an amazing person. You’d love to meet me personally.
2. My English is more than fluent.
3. Polish is my first language. I personally believe anyone who knows Polish should be worshiped.
4. I am concentrating on my Modern and Medieval Languages degree atm, specializing in German and Russian. The last text we had to prepare in our translation class included sentences like “Sir Cathart’s eyes bulged out of his head” or “The college is swarming with bloody poofters”. This task definitely made me stronger.
5. I’m a loser and when I’m not translating, I sit in my room with the curtains drawn and browse the Internet.
6. Being a loser does not prevent me from being a fantastic team worker.
7. Even though I don’t have a degree in Computer Sciences, I have an older brother who does. He has taught me everything a blonde should know about computers. References available on request.
8. I have a laptop and I want it to marry me.
9. I am a poor, underprivileged student, living on baked beans. I need this money!! Otherwise I’ll starve!
10. I strongly oppose what’s happening in Tibet at the moment.

I hope I have managed to persuade you I’m the right person for the job and look forward to hearing from you.

Yours truly and sincerely,
K.

Seriously, how could we not invite her for an interview?

So it’s happened. Saint Jobs announced the Second Coming of his child, the Holy iPhone.

Like Ben, I sat in front of my MacBook watching MacRumors, TUAW and Cali Lewis liveblog and report on the Keynote. Unlike Brian, I wasn’t mad (or privileged) enough to attend the Keynote at the Moscone Center, in SF.

Keynotes are a bit like circus acts. The event is rehearsed to the second, we all watch and wait with bated breath for the grandiose final scene, wondering whether anyone’s going to fall flat on their face along the way. While the keynote was light on substance, the short of it is the new iPhone hardware includes 3G, GPS, and there are a number of software changes - MobileMe particularly appeals to me.

However, the biggest change isn’t in the physical device. It’s all in the perception. Last time around, Apple was looking for early adopters, geeks and IWOOTs* to test-run their product in a giant, live usability testing session. Now that they’ve been able to watch us use the device, it’s time to reach out to the normobs with lower upfront costs. While the tariffs are still in the upper end of the scale, unlimited data makes it completely worthwhile.

As an existing user, I’m grateful that under O2’s reign I’m not given the “brand new customers only” treatment. I can upgrade without getting stung for breaking my contract. All first generation owners shedding their skin in prep for the Second Coming means there’ll be a number of orphaned first-generation iPhones floating around. Mine, for example, will most likely find a new home with my father-in-law, Roy. I’m curious to see what the trickle-down impact of giving second hand iPhones to unlikely buyers like Roy will have on the profile of future buyers.

I think Apple will continue to own marginal marketshare, because the iPhone remains too expensive, too complex and too closed for most, but it’s about to take a significant leap ahead. Are you jumping with me? Or kicking back and shaking your head at the fangirl* that I am?

[* Def. IWOOT: "I want one of those", otherwise known as saddos like me who can't resist the latest gadget, even at exorbitant prices.]
[* A fangirl who began supporting Apple back in 1986 when it definitely wasn't cool to own a Mac, I must add!]

Just like when you’re writing software, a trend is nearly always “90% there” - We always expect next year to be bigger, for the grass to be greener, and we wouldn’t recognise it if it stared us in the face. In the same way, everyone is waiting with bated breath for “the year of the mobile” to arrive, as obvious as the pizza delivery ringing the doorbell.

However, on Monday night, Marek Pawlowski, who was on the Mobile Monday panel on Mobile Media and Marketing, made a refreshing observation in saying it IS the year of mobile and that it’s been the year of mobile for some time now. While it isn’t at the center of most people’s world, the mobile phone is an essential tool for most. We would have been a couple of panelists short if it hadn’t been for Google Maps on their phones, and Helen wouldn’t have been able to share her every thought on Twitter that day had it not been for the mobile web.

Later on, Simon Maddox mentioned a recent survey in which Brits were asked to say which of television, computer or mobile phone they’d be able to live without: Mobile phones consistently came out as the one electronic no one wanted to go without.

If we’d rather get our left arm chopped off than lose that lifeline to friends, business and the rest of the world, I suppose Marek’s statement is right!

For more soundbites from the latest Mobile Monday, check out what James Cooper and Ben Matthews have had to say. They’ve clearly taken better notes than I have! And many thanks to Dan, Alex and Jo for organising yet another great event.

With a week left to go until the Being-Digital conference in London, I can announce that the winner of the Favourite Gadget competition and the free ticket to the event is James Whatley, an active mobile geek in London.

The winner was selected completely fairly by Jack, my big fuzzy ginger cat, who stuck his head in the hat full of paper and pulled one out for me to see. (And then proceeded to eat all the papers that were left in the hat…)

Congratulations and we hope you enjoy the conference!

If you didn’t participate in the competition, thinking your boss may be hard to convince when it comes to attending events, here are a few reasons you can fling his/her way to (hopefully) show them the importance of letting you out of your shackles every so often.