Ben Hamilton is a student from the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham. He studies journalism and I study public relations. As close friends we frequently discuss media matters privately but have decided to pin our opinions to the public door of this blog. The combination of our viewpoints strikes a match for thought but I will let you cast the final stone.   AudioPlayer.embed("pod_audio_1",... 

As an ode to the late Christopher Hitchens I have decided to write an article concerning my opinion of religion at this festive time of the year. Between 2005 – 2008 I used to write frequently on the subject of religion, partly because it stimulated debate. Bertrand Russell’s lecture in 1927 entitled “Why I am not a Christian” immediately evoked debate in a society who had just endured the... 

Each year we ritually ponder upon our own frailties and answer with a New Year’s Resolution. In 2012 I am going to slow down. To slow down brings connotations of a great writer bathing in self-gratification of his own success as if to say, “Enough is enough. Today I have achieved everything that I would have hoped for in life and the rewards have been generous in return.” This New Year’s resolution... 

Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin whilst studying at Stanford University. The company’s mission statement was, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Google has been said to actively inspire creativity within their employees which has resulted in many other Google Projects to appear over the years. The most influential of... 

Popular writer, journalist and public speaker, Christopher Hitchens, died yesterday at the age of 62 at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was being treated by Francis Collins, an American physician and genealogist, for oesophageal cancer which he was diagnosed with in June 2010. In a memoriam published by Vanity Fair it was noted he died in the presence of friends. Throughout... 

Thousands of iPhone 4S owners are experiencing “invalid sim” errors. Users report that after a few hours of their devices being switched on an error message appears showing “invalid sim” which results in the phone dropping their phone signal. The only temporary fix is to switch the iPhone 4S off and on again. Over 71,000 people have viewed the ‘Sim Card Failure No Sim with iPhone 4S Anyone... 

Guess what? Social media isn’t new anymore. We all know how to use the tools and I still stand by my blog post from June that social media ‘experts’ are not qualified to do their role. The shift into 2012 will see more organisations seek to have their social media strategies merged into the wider marketing mix. Online communication channels have proved in 2011 to hold the integrity of a brand. Last... 

Each day I read a variety of different blogs and the three listed below are my favourites. We should all take the below authors as examples to improve our own blogging and spend time appreciating the work they produce. Perhaps follow their blogs online and leave them a comment.   Nightmare Pixel Kyle Mullan tells stories designed to provoke, push social boundaries and to enchant readers down a path... 

In the same way that newspapers have been warned that they should adapt or die, the PR industry shares the same fate. In a recent podcast I touched upon the subject of news gathering, how style and context must adjust to the media channel a user is accessing. The task of a PR professional is to ensure that one press release can maintain an identical narrative across all communication channels – in... 

A social internet revolution is happening right now but it’s not the usual diet of Facebook or Twitter. This revolution is concerned with an internet user’s privacy rights. On the 26th October the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced to the House of Representatives in America as a bill to, “promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of... 

Founded in 1942 by Quakers and Social Activists Oxfam was once known as the Oxford Committee for famine relief. Today it is an international confederation working within 98 different countries providing humanitarian efforts and running programmes focus on providing communities with necessities such as food, water, education and fair trade. Thanks to one of our lecturers at the University of Gloucestershire... 

Yesterday evening Jeremy Clarkson began trending worldwide on Twitter due to comments he made during an interview on BBC’s One Show. The Top Gear presenter when asked about public sector strikes responded, “I’d have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families”. His remark caused an immediate on-air apology caused allegedly by thousands of complaints...