Iain Dale has just finished his latest book, Guide to Political Blogging in the UK (buy here, or download here). It’s a good read, with contributions from Francis Maude (Tory Chairman), Adam Boulton (Sky’s political editor), David Milliband (uber-loyal Blairite minister), and the political editor of the Daily Mail to name but a few. As well as being released to the general public, it’s also going to be distributed at the party conferences to raise awareness of blogs amongst politicians.

In one section of the guide, Iain rates the Top 100 Non-Aligned Political Blogs. As you’d expect, Guido quite rightly claims the number one spot. More surprisingly, I’ve somehow parked up at number 29.

Just to put that in context, ex-politician and author Jeffrey Archer is at 68, the Daily Mail’s star columnist Melanie Phillips is at 69, and The Times’ David Aaronovitch is at 80. I’m at 29. That’s five places down from the BBC’s Political Editor, Nick Robinson. How the heck did that happen?

As if that wasn’t enough, I feature at number 69 in the overall list of political blogs. The 69th best political blog in the country. I think that’s pretty impressive for a medical student with zero political experience writing on a blog where a high proportion of the posts are not remotely related to politics.

So thank you, Iain, for your support. 🙂

This isn’t the most riveting of posts, but I consider it to be quite important – even if, on days like these, I really wish I had a suitably qualified Grauniad-style independent editor to refer things to!

First of all, lawyers from The National Lottery have been in touch to insist that I remove their copyrighted logo from a post from a couple of months ago. I think I was probably on the right side of the law, having published in a reporting context something which was (or so it appeared) presented by The National Lottery. Their lawyers argue that the banner was a fake, and defamatory to their client. Unfortunately, I neglected to keep details of the original site to refer them to in order to confirm that the banner wasn’t faked, and so I complied with their request and removed the logo from the server, and replaced it with a description.

Next up, an ethical question from an independent party relating to my HP Support Blog: Why had I chosen to name individuals providing service, when my complaints were specifically with those individuals. That’s a fair comment, and there’s probably a potential for libel if the tone of the post is considered defamatory to the identified individual, so I’ve removed all references to names. That has meant editing a couple of comments, including one by an anonymous party, which I’m not overly comfortable in doing. However, I’ve clearly marked the changes in the comments, and pinged all of the edited posts. They are: Friday’s update, Monday’s update, Tuesday’s update, One week on, Day 13, and Day 14. The comments in question are here and here. For further clarification, I have also published this post on the HP Support Blog.

Finally, this post. Is it disrespectful and unfair? I think not. I have form on the issue of discussing religion: Witness this and this. I do not consider it part of my aim on this blog to protect religion, and certinaly not be protect one above another. Instead, I aim to be even-handed, and actually reflect my own views (this is, after all, a personal blog). If that means criticising actions of religious leaders that I find unacceptable, I shall do it, just as I would criticise the actions of any other community leaders. I’m not omnipotent, and hence can’t report every evil or every good performed by every relgious person – but I do blog the ones which catch my eye. Therefore, the post stands unedited.

As ever, you can complain about posts either publically via the commenting system, or privately via one of several methods: Email me, SMS or MMS “simon” followed by your message to 60300, leave me a voicemail on 0845 638 1916, or fax me on 0845 638 1918. Charges of phone calls and text messages appear along with full details of all contact methods in the site guide.

For some reason, Akismet isn’t keeping up with the spam comments on the blog today, and after deleting several hundred comments, they’re still coming in. Perhaps it’s related to an update Akismet performed last night? Either way, because of this, I’ve temporarily disabled commenting on the whole blog. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to take such drastic action, and I hope to restore service within the next few hours.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

Edit: It’s all sorted again now. See the comments for details (it was the Akismet update that did it…)

I’ve just changed the provider for the site merchandise. This is good news, as it means I have a whole new range for you to browse – and it’s much better than the old one (just so long as you’re a fan of navy blue…)! There are more products than before, the prices start lower than before (from just £6.99!), delivery is cheaper, and orders should arrive much faster. And, on top of all that, you can now view all of the products right here on the site, on the new merchandise page.

Now there really is no excuse not to support your favourite blog by snapping up some great products at improved prices. No, fashion is not an excuse (but if you prefer, you can always donate…).

I’m sorry for any problems you’ve been experiencing with the site over the last couple of days – some are my fault, some aren’t!

You may notice that some of the YouTube videos on the site are buggy, and don’t always seem to be appearing – particularly this one and this one.  I’ll be perfectly honest, and say I have no idea why that’s happening.  Parts of the YouTube site have been down for maintenance today, so I don’t know if it’s related to that.  If any kind reader knows, feel free to comment.

That brings us nicely to the second point – there was some disruption to the site tonight whilst I tweaked the way comments look, primarily because I personally found it frustrating to have to look down to the bottom of a comment to see the author before reading it.  So now the author’s name and website are featured prominently at the top, making them look something like mini-posts all of their own. Oh, and for added clarity throughout the site, external links in posts are now marked with this icon: .

In more positive news, last month was the first in which I attracted more than a quarter of a million hits, representing a 13% increase over the next-best month in the site’s history, and a 101% increase on the same month last year, despite a 48% decrease in the number of posts.

Thanks for sticking with me.  If you notice any other niggles, get in touch in the usual ways – email simon@sjhoward.co.uk, text ‘simon’ and your message to 60300 (or give me a laugh by sending a picture or video message to the same number – just remember to start the text portion with ‘simon’), leave me a voicemail on 0845 638 1916 or fax me on 0845 639 1918.  Charges for all of these services are detailed here.  All of these details are now in the sidebar for easy reference, too 🙂

The sjhoward.co.uk toolbar, for Internet Explorer and Firefox, has just undergone a radical makeover… it’s now pretty much a news junkie’s dream!

The feature list, with some of the changes highlighted:

• Improved: Instant access to sjhoward.co.uk from any site on the web, including full search functionality and built-in access to the latest posts
• Improved: Search from anywhere on the web with Google, Yahoo, MSN, Technorati, Wikipedia, and more!
• New: Live built-in headlines from more than fifteen of the top UK news sites, updating throughout the day
• New: Live links to hundreds of the latest news videos direct from the BBC and Reuters, constantly updated to give you easy access to the very latest content
• Improved: Links to more than twenty of the most important news sites on the web – with the list growing all the time
• New: The weather forecast for wherever you are throughout the world, always conveniently displayed
• New: An email checker to let you know when new messages are waiting – works with Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, and any service with POP3 access
• Privacy protector blocks pop-ups and clears history, cookies, and browser cache on request
• Fully customisable: You choose which components to display, and even add your own!
• Free automatic updates of new features as they become available
• Now available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox

The toolbar is provided completely free of charge. It comes with no spyware or viruses, does not open pop-ups or hijack your searches, and no personal information is required to use the software. This is the fourth version of the sjhoward.co.uk toolbar, which first appeared way back on simonhoward.co.uk as a browser modification, followed shortly by a customised version of Internet Explorer. This was later replaced by an EffectiveBrand toolbar, of which this latest release is the second version.

Current users will be automatically updated (indeed, should already have been automatically updated). New users can download the toolbar here, or get more information here.

A couple of site updates have happened over the last few days. Firstly, the Javascript error IE users were reporting has been fixed. It wasn’t really an error as such, so much as something IE wanted to moan about. Switch!

Secondly, I’ve finally got round to embedding audio files rather than merely linking to them. This is something that’s been bugging me ever since I’ve used (albeit third-party) embedded videos. Now, posts which rely on audio (like this one or this one) now have an embedded audio player, which is fairly self-explanatory (press the play button!)

I’ve uploaded more work, particularly here, which I hope will be of some use to someone at some point.

There was half an hour or so of downtime a couple of days ago when I, quite literally, pressed the wrong button, and zapped much of the site’s template into oblivion. Thank goodness for Google Desktop‘s caching feature! If that didn’t exist, neither would much of the site right now…

WordPress 2.0.4 is currently in the final stages of Beta testing, so I anticipate upgrading shortly. As usual with platform alterations, an announcement will be posted on the blog.

Other than that, everything’s running pretty tickety-boo at the moment. Woohoo!

Update – I’m now on WordPress 2.0.4 – the update was released about three hours after I posted this, and was installed within 9 hours of release.

This site has been sjhoward.co.uk for a long time – almost three years, in fact – and was simonhoward.co.uk for four years before that. But in all this time, whilst the site’s name has not included ‘www’, the default URI has done. From today, that has changed.

The site is now truly sjhoward.co.uk, with www.sjhoward.co.uk being deprecated. The latter URI will work, but will now redirect to the former automatically. This change is mainly for cosmetic reasons – it brings the site’s name better in line with it’s URL – though there is also a technical argument for the change as well.

All subdomains remain the same; election.sjhoward.co.uk still accesses stuff from Election 2005, tsunami.sjhoward.co.uk still accesses the posts about the 2004 Tsunami, and mobile.sjhoward.co.uk still gets you to the mobile version of the site.

It’s not the most significant change in the history of the world, but it’s probably worth noting.

Back in December, I posted a relatively controversial missive about poor service from an online retailer. Yet I noted that I probably wouldn’t have posted the material had it not been for the fact that the particular retailer was a major advertiser on the site.

At the same time, I claim to have a policy of advertising not influencing editorial. In this case, it clearly has. Is this a big issue? Well, not really. So some random blogger breaks some nominal policy he’s set for himself. Who cares? I do.

I decreed this policy in order to emphasize the fact that my reviews are impartial. I do not give good reviews merely to boost sales and hence site revenue (though sometimes that happens), and I do not give bad reviews merely to court controversy and gain readership (though sometimes that happens too). But should I also not be impartial when it comes to criticising sites which happen to advertise here?

Logically, I probably should. Yet I feel bad doing so. Despite the separation between advertising and editorial, particularly with the old-style vetted banner ads, I felt that featuring on the site was an implicit sign of approval, and hence felt the need to point out my bad experience. Had the retailer not advertised on here, the post would almost certainly not have been published.

The problem is reduced with the introduction of AdSense, over which I have little direct control. It’s difficult now for anybody to claim implicit approval. But, of course, I still use ads from (amongst others) Amazon when reviewing products. Does this implicit recommendation take away from my status as an impartial commentator? Again, it’s hard to say. After all, I’m not reviewing the service as such, and, indeed, most of the products reviewed and featuring Amazon adverts were not actually bought from there, so perhaps that situation is a little different. I don’t know.

Advertising on this site is a relatively new phenomenon. It’s only been consistently present for about six months now, though it was present on and off for periods throughout the site’s history. Clearly, the easiest way to remain impartial is not to have advertising on the site at all. But that’s by far the hardest way on my pocket, and probably isn’t sustainable in the long term.

Of course, I’m not the only one this affects. There’s the famous case of the Sunday Times editorial enthusiastically preaching about the wonders of modern cars, and the marvellous things they can do for people – lucky, since car manufacturers support most of the Sunday newspaper market through extensive advertising.

There appears to be no perfect solution. So can advertising and editorial ever truly work together, apart?

The site is now happily running on WordPress 2.0.3, just 23 hours after its release. The whole process was made much easier thanks to Mark Jaquith’s Changed Files ZIP – so thanks, Mark! Why WordPress doesn’t offer something like this itself, I really don’t understand!