Shiny Media

A couple of years back the British blogosphere basically revolved around a couple of technology journalists ranting about source codes and operating systems. Glad to say that it is now a much more diverse place. For evidence check out the finalists of the Best of British Blog awards being run by Ask.co.uk (cheers for the ads guys) in collaboration with Metro (it is a regional newspaper, apparently). Shiny has done reasonably well scoring three nominations for surprise, surprise, our three biggest blogs; TechDigest, Shiny Shiny and Catwalk Queen. There are a few of our mates in there too, notably Shiny affiliated site Hecklerspray, the wonderful footy site Arseblog, ace cricket blog Corridor and top fashionista StyleBubble.

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.

...one of ours. Yep, James Murdoch, CEO of Sky, son of Rupert and the man many media watchers see as heir apparent of the News International empire recently told the FT that his fave online read is www.hdtvuk.tv

Clearly a man with taste

The article is here - but you'll need a subscription to view it.

Do you read blogs? Which are your personal favourites?

Patrick Phillips, New York

JM: Yes. Like nearly everyone else I use the internet for a lot of things. I love the immediacy and speed - but I also see so much untapped potential for building communities and increasing interaction with great entertainment, both user- generated and more "traditional" content. In terms of blogs, HDTVUK.tv's fast updates and threads are creating a real buzz about high definition TV.

Thanks to the FT for quoting Shiny Media in a piece about 'brands entering the blogosphere'. As you know it's something we've had experience of thanks to support from the likes of Dyson, Sony and Telewest who have all been so kind to give us sponsorship over the last year or so (big Christmas cards with kisses are in the post to you guys). In the feature Shiny Media is referred to as a network 'responsible for 15 blogs on subjects as diverse as celebrity shoes and Coronation Street, the television soap opera.' (Just in case FT readers don't know what Coronation Street is - I mean it's only been going since 1960). It then goes on to quote Chris Price, Shiny's Commercial Director, who says that potential advertisers are drawn to the 'blogs network which attracts more than 1.5 million page impressions a month' because they want to be perceived as 'hipper and more forward-thinking.' Click on the scan above for the full story.

A big thankyou to the ladies and gents of Vogue who have named Hippyshopper as number 92 in the 2005 Vogue List. That's, ahem, above Jamie Oliver, who comes in at 100. In the magazine's own words, the List is the 'definitive top 100: the trends, the people, the places' and Hippy 'caters to the needs of those of us wannabe hippies who can't quite sever our consumerist ties.' It's in the December issue of the mag; you can see the page by clicking on the pic on the right.

Couple of nice little plugs for Shoewawa. Our shoe-tastic blog was listed in the UK mag In Style as one of the top five blogs on the web, while it was named the New York Times as one of the two most influential fashion blogs in the world.

Blah, Blah, blah, yawn yawn yawn. Katie has once again been mouthing off about girls and gadgets this time to The Observer which is using the women and technology story as lead feature for its just launched bandwagon jumping cutting-edge Technology Magazine.

There's a picture of her looking suitably glam surrounded by her favourite electronic goodies. And she got to meet the wonderfully talented and incredibly skinny Polly Vernon.

When Dixons broke the news that women are spending more money every year on technology than they do on makeup our own Katie was on hand to offer her expert views. These are, of course, based on supposition, guesswork and anecdotal evidence from her female friends and acquaintances. Still, if they keep asking her, she'll keep telling them what she thinks. There's nothing quite so intoxicating on being asked to provide opinions on behalf of your entire gender.

She also supplied them with a rundown of her current favourite female-friendly gadgets. You can read the article with those insightful quotes here: Sun Online

Not sure how we let this one slip by unmentioned, but Hippyshopper got a nice mention in the Indy a few weeks back. That's what we like to see. Apparently, if you want to know about "in vogue" ethical consumerism, Hippyshopper is the site to visit.

Blimey Charlie! Time magazine, apparently it is big bananas in the USA, has just published its top 50 coolest websites in the world, and guess what, Bayraider made the cut. In fact it picked up on about sixteen blogs, which I suppose makes us in the top sixteen blogs in the world (eat your heart out Shoewawa!). We're in with some real heavyweights too including Boing Boing and Lifehacker So cheers to whoever picked the list. We won't tell many people, honest.

We've all been working so hard on the blogs and more new launches (more about those soon) that we haven't even had chance to brag about our latest bit of publicity. This time it's in the August weekly London-listings guide, Time Out, and we're glad to report that they love us - oh yes they really do.  Not only is Shiny Media described as a 'breath of fresh air', the blogs are 'enjoyable, reliable, cutting edge, news sites.' The piece also refers to our advertising 'coups', including "dynamic ads for the Ball, the latest Dyson vacuum cleaner, and staging off-the-wall awards with Telewest." And we didn't even have to pay them any money for saying such nice things. Oh, and ta very much to our design agency 300 Million for bigging us up in its new blog. 

Yes we've been in the news once again. Viewers who switched on to CNN throughout yesterday (21/4/05) were treated to regular glimpses of Europe’s leading consumer electronics weblog, TechDigest.tv. TechDigest.tv was one of the main sites to be highlighted in a feature on CNN’s Global Office about the growing trend of advertising on blogs. The Shiny Media blog, which regularly garners 10,000 page impressions a day, was recently chosen by Dyson to run a series of advertisements for the company’s latest ball vacuum cleaner. Talking about the deal between Shiny Media and Dyson the CNN reporter commented: “It’s been touted as the first major ad campaign to be launched on a UK blog.” One of the revolutionary adverts featured on CNN’s programme showed how visitors to TechDigest.tv could play a game of ‘pong’ across the screen using the bat and ball provided. Dyson also chose TechDigest.tv’s sister site, ShinyShiny.tv to run the ad campaign. The two Shiny Media sites were the only blogs used by Dyson to promote its latest vacuum cleaner. The programme which referred to blogs as the ‘fastest growing sector of the Internet’, highlighted how many leading ‘blue chip’ companies are now turning to blogs to run their advertising campaigns.

Few Brits know more about blogging than The Guardian’s own resident Blogologist, Jane Perrone. So cheers to Jane for making Hippyshopper The Guardian Newsblog’s site of the day and saying…

'It's too soon to call Shiny Media a nanopublishing empire. But the launch of its ethical consumer blog Hippyshopper - is proof that where Gawker and Weblogs Inc lead, UK blogs will follow.'

Here in Shiny Towers we are all still very excited about this review of Shoewawa in the Financial Times last week. After all it is not often that words like 'amazing, talented and intelligent' are used in our presence. The writer, one Jonathan Margolis concludes; 'Shoewawa is a brilliantly researched, well-written and intelligent site.' We really couldn't agree more. Thanks Hannah for the cutting.

It is not often we get see analysts notes round here, but this one came through a link to Shiny Shiny. Good to see that in a write up of the ten most important blogs on the web, alongside the usual suspects (Gizmodo, Engadget etc), is our very own gadgets for girls site, which is the only non-US site to be listed. The writer adds that ‘Katie Lee knows what girls like in consumer tech,’ and that ‘Shiny Media should be attracting huge VC investment shortly.’ Allright so one of those things isn’t true, but it is nice to be the only girl rubbing shoulders with the tech blog big boys.

The first week in January traditionally means just one thing - the world's number one gadget fest CES in Las Vegas. This year Tech Digest scribes managed to overcome craps addiction, a Cheap Trick reunion gig and the excitement of the new monorail to report from the show.

As well as countless, stories on Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny we also made the Daily Mirror and had stories in The Guardian and ERT.

Keeping up with Shoewawa’s press coverage would almost be a full time job were it not for those ever-so-clever uber geeks at Technorati. Last time we looked our infamous shoe blog had been featured in the Express on Sunday, Independent on Sunday, Web User, Seattle Times, Eircom as well as numerous top blogs. Shoey also got its very own page in The Sun in January, but sadly there’s no link as the paper pulls its stories after a week.

If you want a quote about women and gadgets the form these days appears to be ring Shiny Media's very own rentagob Katie Lee. Crystal Palace's answer to Dorothy Parker has been mouthing off (or rather that should be dispensing pearls of wisdom) to anyone and everyone recently including Stuff, Elle UK and (check this) the New York Times. You can find more details about this and Katie's non Shiny Media life here.

After a flurry of publicity in UK newspapers it is great to see that Americans are also waking up to Shoewawa. On Monday USA Today made our shoe blog its site of the day, while on Thursday Yahoo also signposted to Shoey causing a mad dash of Manolo-Blahnik obsessed punters to the site.

We had high hopes that we might get some press coverage for our awards, but never thought for moment we’d make both the Daily Mirror and The Sun. Ok, so The Sun only gave a us sentence in the main paper, but they more than made up for it with a fantastic piece on Britain’s chaviest gadget on the web. Sadly it isn't up there any more so you'll have to take our word for it. You can however see it reproduced here. It has been quite a week.

It has been another great week for Shoewawa with page impressions shooting up all the time and some very positive coverage. According to The Guardian the site is must for Carrie Bradshaw the next time her elegant fingers alight upon her Apple Powerbook. We were also delighted to get a wink of approval from quite possibly the coolest man in the whole blogosphere, Josh Rubin.

Shoewawa, our fab new shoe blog, got its first celebrity endorsement today. Well sort of for Carol Vorderman personally singled it out as the 'website of the day' in her techy section in The Daily Mirror.

Carol said 'Shoewawa is fun and sassy with essential info on High Street copies of the latest designer numbers, celeb gazing plus every Friday is eBay watch for bargains.'

We love Carol and we think her bit of the Daily Mirror is the best section of the whole paper.

Shoewawa also got the thumbs up this week from those doyens of the Digerati at New Media Age.

More coverage of Tech Digest this time in Mobile Enterprise a UK-based telecommunications business mag. Cheers for the plug guys. We thought we only wrote about comedy gadgets though.

Shoewawa got its first thumbs up on Wednesday when it made Site of the Day in The Guardian’s blog section. Hate to think what Editor Gemma's phone bill was like for that day...

Media tarts? Us? Ok so we'll come clean. You might have seen or heard a member of the Shiny team on Monday as we were all over the media wittering on about a rather silly story about the supposed death of the VCR.

Editorial Director, Katie Lee donned her favourite shirt to wow the afternoon team on ITV News, while Creative Director, Ashley 'great face for radio' Norris, was on BBC Five Live arguing that you can still believe that vinyl sounds better than CD and not be a Luddite.

You can also check out a story about the Dixons fracas in the Guardian.

Well this month anyway!

The UK edition of the fash mag has a feature all about gadgets for girls and Shiny Media's Editorial Director, Katie Lee once again gave her twopennyworth.

'I might as well pack up and go home now,' said the brains behind Shiny Shiny. 'I have achieved everything I wanted to in life.'

Check it out for Vogue's suggestions of the best products out there for the ladies, including the iPod mini, the BlackBerry, and Apple's Powerbook laptop.

Move over Jon Ronson and tell Alexander Chancellor the news - this week's Guardian Weekend magazine been over-run by the Shiny Media team.

Shiny Shiny Editor Katie Lee cherry-picks the coolest and most colourful gadgets, Games Digest mainman Simon Munk puts a videogame virgin through her paces, occasional TD and Shiny contributor Caramel Quin attempts to prove that not all gadgets are an environmental disaster waiting to happen and TD's digital janitor Ashley Norris checks out retro gadgets, most of which he probably remembers from the first time they launched.

The gadget supplement also features a couple of up and coming tech writers in Zoe Williams and Mil Millington, who we might just let grace these pages one day provided they can match our peerless editorial standards. The supplement looks even better in print as The Guardian spent the equivalent a Premiership player's weekly Cocaine allowance on photography too. We are off to buy about 100 copies now.