Following hot on the heels of our latest Club Pies launches, our Scrumbag relaunch and Who Ate All The Pies' spiffing new redesign, Shiny Media today announces the launch of its blog dedicated to women's football - Kickster.tv.

With the women's World Cup just days away, Kickster will bring you all the latest news in the lead-up to the tournament, plus expert match reports as the cup progresses. After that it'll be back to the domestic season - which was dominated last year by Arsenal Ladies, giving poor fans of the male Gunners something to cheer in an otherwise trophy-free season.

Edited by Carrie Dunn, who has been writing for our cricket site The Googly for some time while also making contributions to The Times, The Guardian and thelondonpaper, Kickster aims to show that women's football can be every bit as exciting as its male counterpart. Carrie is ably assisted by Georgina Turner, winner of the 2005 "New Online Journalist of the Year" award, who has written for FourFourTwo magazine and also contributes to The Guardian.

With professional women's soccer slated to relaunch Stateside in 2009, plus next year's Olympics to look forward to, there's plenty to indicate that women's football is set to continue the growth which has seen it become one of the most popular sports among women in the US.

Stick with Kickster for all the best coverage!

Shiny launches the Shiny US blog network with Shiny Style and Shiny Gloss.

Are we bonkers? A couple of weeks back I told someone that we were on the verge of launching a blog network in the US. They told me that I was trying to sell ice to the Eskimos. Mmm.

Over the past few decades many Brits have tried to crack America. Some like Simon Cowell have charmed our transatlantic cousins with his high buttoned trousers and snarling sarcasm. Others like Oasis, Ainsley Harriot and have been back in Blighty with their tails between their legs.

So is Shiny stupid having a crack at the US? Well we are actually already in the Cowell camp stateside as many of our blogs boast strong and devoted US readerships. None more so than our fashion blogs Catwalk Queen, Shoewawa and The Bag Lady all of which featured in a top ten fashion blogs read by American survey conducted by FashionIq. Needless to say they are well clear of any potential rivals in the UK.

Britain in July was a pretty miserable place. Rubbish weather, Biblical style floods, and nothing else on the TV other than the never-ceasing freak show that is Big Brother.

Fortunately it is now August, the sun is back (for a few weeks anyhow), and best of all the new football season kicks off this weekend. Never one to miss a bandwagon Shiny is celebrating 2007-2008 with the launch of no fewer than five new football blogs. Actually we do have a little form in this area. Our World cup blog Who ate all the Bratwurst was a huge hit last summer and its bastard premiership offspring, Who ate all the Pies has gone from zero readers to over 300,000 in less than a year.

So we are now expanding our Pies range by adding blogs for the big four football teams, Arsenal (arsenalpies. tv) Manchester United (manunitedpies.tv), Chelsea (chelseapies.tv), Liverpool (liverpoolpies.tv) oh and come other north London chancers  too (spurspies.tv). All the blogs stick to our winning Pies template of incisive opinion, quirky stories, the best of YouTube and, err, WAG profiles. They will also be updated between 10-5 timers per day, so each time you check back there will be some news snippet, mini rant or video to check out.

They are also the first blogs to feature our brand new Shiny template which, as I hope you’ll discover, makes it much easier to find your way round our sites. There are going to be a few additions to the design over the coming month including a video player and some interesting community elements. But that’s for later. For now rejoice in the fact that from here on in Saturday afternoon trips to Ikea are totally off limits. Football is back and if you are a fan of the big four (cough), big five, then it is time to chomp on our new pies.

Ashley

Some psychologist recently worked out that the most miserable day of the year is sometime towards the end of January. He is of course very wrong. For myself and probably quite a chunk of the UK population I imagine that last Thursday May 24th will go down as the bleakest 24 hours of the year.

For on that day the Champions League final, the last big game of the season, was history and a long football-free summer stretched out ahead. What made it even worse was the knowledge that the new Big Brother series was just six days away.

Of course it is very fashionable to slag Big Brother off at the beginning and then to catch the odd episode in week three before becoming completely addicted by week five. Trust me though, I will be anywhere but in front of a TV set between 9-10 each evening for the next 13 weeks. For those who don't quite share my jaundiced views Shiny has launched availableforpanto.com, our take on reality television which will feature Joseph, Grease, X-Factor, Love Island (if we have to) and more. For the moment though the blog is very focused on the TV freak show that is Big Brother. It is also the first Shiny blog to be sponsored from launch, with the investment coming from Virgin Games.

For those like me who want to escape the TV freakshows, there's Shiny new travel blog - lostweekend.tv. 'Trip Advisor meets mid 90s Loaded' is how we are billing it, and yes it is more about short footy trips, stag weekends and European music festivals than romantic breaks. Lost Weekend is currently running a competition with the first prize being an all expenses paid trip to see David Beckham's debut for the LA Galaxy.

We have two other new launches. Kerching.tv is Shiny's first foray into the world of personal finance. Edited by Paul Sorene of anorak.co.uk fame, the blog will offer an authoritative but slightly quirky take on mortgages, shopping and investing. Finally Shiny has unveiled mychemicaltoilet.com, which rounds up all the latest news on the ever-growing number of European music festivals.

We've been so busy making lots of shiny new blogs recently that we haven't stopped to update devotees of the official Shiny Media blog (of which I'm sure there are many). Those of you who already read and enjoy the more female focused sites in the Shiny stable should love these latest launches.

 

Dollymix is the combined ladythoughts of our enormous female blogging team, with all the many and varied opinions they have to offer. If you like women's magazines but can't stand that all-knowing editorial voice, or if you like a spot of feisty feminism but don't want to leave your sense of humour in the coat check, Dollymix is ready to welcome you into the fold.

Crafty Crafty. Crochet, knitting, sewing, clever things to do with paper and all manner of other hobbies are explored in this lovingly crafted site. Making things is very popular right now and if you fancy taking some scissors to an old t-shirt, re-covering your sofa, or making yourself a nice hat, this is the blog for you. 

Here at Shiny Media we are delighted to announce that in association with River Island we have launched Graduate Fashion Week Live - the official blog for this year's GFW. Graduate Fashion Week began in 1991 and is the premiere event for showcasing the very best in fashion talent that the UK has to offer. It has helped to launch the careers of such famous designers as John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney. The event is being held at Battersea Park from June 3rd - June 7th and the best bit is that it's completely open to the public! That's right, anyone can attend without having to resort to the line "but don't you know who I am?"

Twitter - passing fad or the future for messaging on the web and phones? Well we don't know either. We do know though that Twitter is fantastically addictive, so we have launched Twitterati, a baby blog devoted to Twittering. Stu Dredge and his team will be keeping you up to speed with the many new and varied applications for Twitter, picking up on some of its odd uses and interviewing the people who are using the service to do creative things. Twitter users can also keep tabs on the blog via its Twitter feed - twitter.com/twitterati

Over the past few years we have dipped our toe in the gaming blogosphere with Games Digest and Wii Wii. Emboldened by success with those titles, especially the Wii blog, we are set to jump right in with a whole slew of games titles. We actually launched our PS3 blog pspsps.tv (geddit?) a few weeks back and it has been going really well hitting figures way beyond our expectations. It has now been joined by an Xbox blog Xboxer.tv and there will be at least three or four more Shiny games blogs before the month is out. We also have a Shiny Games YouTube channel with Shiny’s very own Mark Kermode, Simon Munk, loving or dissing the new releases.

There are some folk round here who reckon that the only gadget launch that really matters this year is, you guessed it, the Apple iPhone. So we have decided to give them their own blog. Over at iPhonic, Apple die-hard Andy Merrett will be waxing lyrical about Apple’s forthcoming phone.

He'll be

* Highlighting its killer features (and, in the interest of fair play, its odd weakness)
* Focusing on its technology
* Gauging how much impact it will have on the mobile phone world on both sides of the Atlantic
* Checking out all the rumours and gossip
* Making predictions as to where Apple will take the iPhone

iPhonic will also keeps tabs on the iPhone’s rival handsets (Nokia N95, LG Prada etc) and also the mobile services that are set to take on iTunes. All this and more on iPhonic

Shiny Media launches Techscape.tv

The UK’s biggest blogging network unveils its latest technology blog.

TechScape is Shiny Media’s sideways look at the wonderful world of the web, or web 2.0 to be precise, from a UK perspective. It isn’t all about UK start ups, and it isn’t just reviews of social networking sites either.

Instead TechScape will bring you

• Interviews with the main movers in the UK’s web 2.0 world
• Reviews of the key new web 2.0 projects
• Daily round ups and comment on the big stories
• An examination of how brands are engaging with the new generation of websites

Most important of all we’ll be tracking the journey all those amazing innovative web 2.0 sites (YouTube, My Space and many others) make from the PC to the mobile phone.

All this plus a dollop of traditional Shiny Media tomfoolery.

Techscape is edited by Stuart Dredge, who has been writing about both the web and mobile phones for many years now. He’s ably supported by Andy Merrett, Dep Ed of Techdigest.tv and owner of the innovative Blue Fish Network and Shiny’s CEO and mobile phone-aholic Ashley Norris.

About Shiny Media * The UK’s first and largest commercial weblog publishing company * Attracts 2.8 million unique visitors a month to its network of 22 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.