Shiny Media

Last week those wise old sages at the Daily Mirror put together a list of the 50 coolest websites in the world, and we are pleased to note that smack in the middle is our very own Tech Digest. You can read the full list here.

Purely coincidentally (I think) Time Magazine produced its list last week too and alas no Shiny blogs made the cut (Bayraider was there last year). Instead they gave the gong to a no mark site called YouTube!? Must check it out some time.

Muchos gracias to The Daily Telegraph for including Shoewawa in its round-up of the web's best fashion blogs last weekend (19th August). The site was described as 'slick and professional, a cross between a teen magazine and Imelda Marcos's to-do list'. Praise indeed, I think. Editor Gemma and all round Shiny staff supremo ('one of the few people who actually make a living from blogging') was so chuffed this morning she could hardly get her head through the door, especially as the article said she was 22 (she celebrated her 23rd birthday a couple of weeks back). Not sure how many Telegraph readers are blog readers, but thanks all the same. Much appreciated.

It is mentally busy here at Shiny Towers largely because half the staff have cleared off on holiday. So rather than the usual weekly rant here's a list of a few things that are getting us all a quiver.

1 Vox - Love it, love it, love it. There will be reviews of the new Six Apart blogging meets social networking software on this site and other places in the Shiny network soon. Suffice to say that invitations to trial the beta version of the service are rarer than entertaining Channel Four progarmmes here at the mo.

2 Windows Live Writer - Alright so I know that there are plenty of other apps that enable you to blog from your desktop without always having to log on all the freaking time. But the WL writer is a cinch to use and I like the facility that enables you to add maps with a click or two, (which might explain the aerial shot of Shiny's London  HQ below.)

3 Fanpop - This is by far the coolest social networking site we have seen. You choose your passion - everything from TV programmes through to sports or shopping, then hang out with fellow obsessives while getting instant updates on news, YouTube vids etc about your passions. Katie discovered the Veronica Mars section two days ago and hasn't been seen since.

4 Ask - Yep, I am talking the search engine site you used to use before Google came along. The US version of Ask is blinding now with a powerful search engine accompanied by loads of whizzy features. I especially like the Goggles feature which give you a snippet of a page when you hover over the link and the cool maps section which can show you how to get from one place to another and offer you turn by turn instructions. The maps section doesn't cover the UK yet but should be coming soon.

5 Nokia N93 - Alright, so I know it is  a beast of handset, but I am totally smitten. The video quality is fantastic, the three mega pixel camera takes top snaps and the way the screen flips round to create a mini laptop style device is genius and ace for web surfing and watching video. It is going back soon and it'll break my heart to see it go.

6 YouTube - Any place which houses Dandy Warhols videos as well as snippets from cult movies like Valley of the Dolls is obviously incredibly cool. But you knew that already.. What you might not know is that Shiny has had the number one spot for its One Minute Video Reviews four times in the last two weeks. Susi, Gemma and Katie now rival Ashlee Simpson and Linda Lohan as the top lust object for mid western US teenage boys.

7 Football - Sod the the World Cup. The Premiership is back. Arsenal have a fab new stadium and Shiny has the best Premiership football blog in the world.

Shiny Media launches TechReviews.tv (www.techreviews.tv) a new type of gadgets reviews website

The UK’s leading new media company Shiny Media has reinvented the gadgets review website with the launch of its latest blog TechReviews.tv ‘

This is the first gadget site to major on video reviews of products,’ says Shiny Media’s creative director, Ashley Norris. ‘For the first time readers, or maybe we should call them viewers, can get a really close look at gadgets like mobiles and MP3 players.’ ‘They will be able to see the way a mobile phone screen twists round, examine the tiny buttons on a music player or see quite how daft a pair of earphones looks when they are being worn.’

Already a hit on Shiny Media's Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny websites the video reviews are also among the most popular technology videos on the video hosting YouTube website. At the time of writing Shiny Media has two of the Top 10 most viewed Science and Technology videos on the site this week.

The site also has traditional style text reviews of products and will feature regular product round ups.

'Shiny recognises that TechReviews isn’t the only great source of reviews online,‘ says editorial director Katie Lee, ‘so each day the site will find out what bloggers and other reviewers around the web are saying about a particular product.’

‘Plus, through the comments section readers can add their own thoughts about products, making this a truly interactive reviews site. After all, while TechReviews may be among the first to publish a review of a product, its opinions aren't necessarily always the last word.’

About Shiny Media

Shiny Media has four of the fastest growing tech websites in the UK in Tech Digest, Shiny Shiny, HDTVUK and Propellerhead. The sites together deliver more than 600,000 unique users each month.

In a poll among PRs for UK trade paper PR Week, Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny were voted as two of the four most influential gadget websites in the UK alongside the BBC and The Sun’s Gizmo.

In an interview for the Financial Times, Sky’s CEO James Murdoch cited HDTVUK as his favourite online read.

Shiny Media facts and figures

* The UK’s first and largest commercial weblog publishing company

* Attracts 1.6 million unique visitors a month to its network of 24 blogs.

* Shiny Media’s blogs have been featured in newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic including; The Guardian, USA Today, International Herald Tribune, The Sun, Daily Mirror, Vogue, Elle, Time Magazine and the Financial Times.

For more information about the new blog or Shiny Media contact Ashley Norris here.

Here at Shiny we are obviously huge fans of both MySpace and YouTube. You can find our content all over both sites. Yet while it was obvious to all of us that MySpace was going to be huge the minute that bands got a sniff of it, the speed in which YouTube has established itself has taken everyone, including us, by surprise.

The big debate now in the Shiny office is quite what impact YouTube is going to have on what the office pensioners refer to as the ‘music scene.’ Or as Katie so eloquently put it the other day, ‘It is so over for bands on MySpace now - YouTube is so where it’s at.’

The other day I spent an hour or so looking for some British gadget blogs. This was kind of inspired by the odd break in posting (it went dark, as the Americans say, for two weeks) on the otherwise excellent GadgetSpy. Sure there's Red Ferret, Gizmodo (UK version) and the big publishing companies have their own titles, but there wasn't as many as I'd expected, and certainly a lot less than there was this time last year.

Anyhow save me from spending more hours on Technorati and let know about yours. We need more UK blogs to link to on our titles.