Hot topics for the week ending August 31 2010

Top 10 people topics

• Sabina Eriksson
• Carl Fisher
• marcwilson
• Arnold Bennett
• Jon Walters
• Clayton Wood
• Dave Kitson
• Luke Richardson
• Andrew Smith
• Martyn Birks

Top 10 organisations

• Staffordshire Police
• Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service
• Stoke-on-Trent City Council
• Stoke-on-Trent CrownCourt
• Hall Business and Language College
• North Staffordshire Magistrates’ Court
• Staffordshire County Council
• Leeks Westwood College
• Tesco
• Ormiston Sir Stanley Matthews Academy

Top 10 places

• Newcastle
• TK Maxx’s Warehouse
• Stoke-on-Trent
• Portsmouth
• Leek
• Stoke City
• The Art Bay Gallery
• Blythe Bridge
• Clayton Hall
• Alsager

Hot topics for the week between August 2 2010 and August 9 2010

Top 10 people topics

• Ayda Field
• Tammy Lawson
• Mike Newton
• Edward Smith
• James Mcnally
• Paul Cope
• Tom Macartney
• Clarice Cliff
• Louise Byatt
• Clinton Reid

Top 10 organisations

• YouTube
• Staffordshire Police
• Stoke-on-Trent City Council
• Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court
• Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service
• Donna Louise Children’s Hospice Trust
• North Staffordshire Magistrates Court
• University Hospital of North Staffordshire
• North Staffordshire Regeneration Partnership
• Yamaha

Top 10 places

• Leek
• University Hospital
• Newcastle
• Stoke City
• Stoke-on-Trent
• Alsager
• Meir
• Port Vale
• Douglas Macmillan Hospice
• New Florence Pub

If you’re a regular visitor you may notice a change in the way that we’re presenting coverage of Stoke City, Port Vale and Crewe Alexandra.

From Monday, readers will not have to leave www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk to catch up on the latest news, views and information about your favourite club.

Instead each club has its own dedicated section with sections devoted to news, match reports, fixtures, tables, squad statistics and everything that you would  expect from the site.

The aim is to provide the same level of coverage that readers expect about Stoke City, Port Vale and Crewe Alexandra, but to bring it all under one site.

To recognise the importance of football, links to the clubs can be found from every page in www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk.

And this is the start, not the end of the development of what’s available. We plan to introduce pictures, bloggers and anything else that readers want to see.

Would you like to see a daily poll question about your club? Let us know.

Do you want a place to debate the finer points of the performance of your team, players or manager? Let me know.

The Sentinel wants to provide you with the best coverage of your club so let us know what you think of the changes, and what you would like to see next.

ANYONE wanting to know more about how to build websites or promote their community using the internet is urged to head out into Stoke town next week.

Stoke-on-Trent Social Media Surgery is to stage its second event on Monday night to show what can be done and what experts are out there locally.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve never signed up to Facebook or can’t tell their ASP from your AJAX.

The idea is to gather people of varying levels of experience and experience to learn and share in a friendly environment.

I didn’t attend the first session, which was held at The Greyhound in Penkhull, although reports suggest it was a friendly affair with 15 people passing on and sharing their knowledge.

From my own perspective, it’s great to see an increasing number of groups being set up to encourage people to learn and share their experiences of working on the web.

Over the past three years, I’ve gone from business journalist with an interest in technology to someone looking to use the tools of the internet to help people tell their stories in these changing times.

I’ve done a bit of video, a bit of programming and a bit of social media, but I’d still like to learn more from the experts. And I’d like to help people promote what they do.

The event will be staged at the Shop-Stoke building near to the former Spode works in Church Street.

It starts at 7pm and runs until 10pm.

For more information go to http://sotsms.wordpress.com/

The power of Twitter in escalating off-the-cuff comments into public spats has been demonstrated by a councillor who has given some interesting advice to the people of Stoke-on-Trent.

Ashley Howells, the Conservative councillor for Loggerheads and Whitmore, has become the latest person to fall foul of the social media after responding to a comment about Prime Minister David Cameron.

Mark Porter, a father-of-three from Stoke-on-Trent, had written to urge Mr Cameron to visit the city to explain why the city seemed to bear the brunts of cuts.

To which Mr Howells responded: “Not in the junk food fuelled calorie intake of the lazy stoke underclass! Look at obesity. Work slim down stop whinging’”

It could well be a comment written in the heat of the moment rather than cold contemplation, but it’s clearly caused a small storm of anger among people in the city who regard the comments as condescending and ill-informed.

UPDATE: Ashley Howells has since posted a statement explaining his comments.

He said: “I am extremely sorry that I made a personal response on Twitter which has been misinterpreted and then sadly misrepresented on the ‘pits n pots’ website. My comments were in response to reading a highly political anti-Coalition Government comment about public expenditure cuts.

“I would say that there is indeed an obesity problem together with a benefits dependency and worklessness problem amongst a minority in Stoke on Trent and North Staffs which all Councils and politicians of all shades are trying hard to rectify.”

Read the full story on Pits and Pots

What do you think?

A key lesson to any successful blog is to stick to what you know about.

Burslem-based freelance designer and artist Mark Brereton has combined his love for Stoke-on-Trent and artistic culture to create a blog called urban twist.

He hopes it will provide a personal look about the cultural heart of the city, and tie into other web-based projects he has been involved with.

These include his blurb online creative network,  which was set up in 2008 to allow artists to network and share information over the internet, and now has more than 500 people signed up and contributing to forums.

He also maintains a portfolio site as well as an active contributor to the CulturingStuff forum, which also promotes the art and music of Stoke-on-Trent.

As part of the celebrations to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the federation of Stoke-on-Trent, Mark will be interviewing 100 artists to get their feedback on the celebrations.

Mark admits that it can be tricky balancing his workload with the blog, and said it was important to stick to topics that he was interested in. That said, he recognised the potential power of a blog to raise people’s awareness about specific subjects.

He said:  It can be very time consuming, blogs can look dated very quickly if they are not kept up to date, if you’re not blogging about something you don’t love then it will become a chore not a pleasure.

“I think it’s very important and a very powerful way to get your message or view across to a very large audience, other than those on your doorstep.

“I’ve written things on my commercial blog and people have called me up within minutes to ask about something. Overall I think it’s a very useful tool to share what a place or person is doing or about.”

And what advice does he give to someone who’s thinking of putting together a hyperlocal blog? Just do it.

He said: “Just get out there and give it a go. Once you get into the swing of things it is very enjoyable and rewarding.”

Do you have a blog that you want to publicise? Click this link and fill in the form.

PEOPLE who have difficulty reading can now get policing news read to them as part of a website revamp by Staffordshire Police.
The force has introduced BrowseAloud to convert all text to a high-quality human-sounding voice to enable those with dysexia, learning difficulties or other visual impairments to get news.

The service is download by clicking the BrowseAloud logo on the Staffordshire Police website.

Hot topics for the week between July 8 2010 and July 15 2010

Top 10 people topics

• Israr Ellahi
• Dominic Cork
• David Boden
• Paul Glenn
• Stafford Crown Court
• Joe Ledley
• Mark Whitehurst
• Thomas Buckett
• Liam Lawrence
• Anthony Malbon

Top 10 organisations

• Staffordshire Police
• Stoke-on-Trent City Council
• Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court
• United Utilities
• Stoke-on-Trent College
• Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service
• North Staffordshire Magistrates Court
• Haywood Hospital
• University Hospital of North Staffordshire
• Severn Trent

Top 10 places

• Leek
• Stoke City
• Newcastle
• University Hospital of North Staffordshire
• Alsager
• Abbey Hulton
• Meir
• Stoke-on-Trent
• Haywood Engineering College
• Broughton Hall

Hot topics for the week between July 2 2010 and July 9 2010

Top 10 people topics

• Israr Ellahi
• Mark Whitehurst
• Jade Beech
• John Caudwell
• Joe Ledley
• Sarah Robinson
• Mark Hardern
• James Clarke
• Alan Dodd
• Anna Richardson

Top 10 organisations

• Staffordshire Police
• Stoke-on-Trent City Council
• Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court
• University Hospital of North Staffordshire
• Staffordshire County Council
• Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service
• Stoke-on-Trent College
• North Staffordshire Magistrates’ Court
• Donna Louise Childrens Hospice Trust
• United Utilities

Top 10 places

• Newcastle
• Leek
• Haywood Engineering College
• Stoke-on-Trent
• Stoke City
• Alsager
• University Hospital of North Staffordshire
• Douglas Macmillan Hospice
• Meir
• Alton Towers

It’s Friday, so here’s another picture from the team at @whereinstoke. You can win a swish car sticker if you can identify where it was taken…

Submit your answer in the comment below, through Twitter at @whereinstoke or click this link