Free or not?

Looks like Chris 'Free' Anderson might have got it wrong. As he wrote in the WSJ at the weekend, you can't give everything away.

(This coming shortly before he publishes a book called 'Free', about how all content should be free. It will be interesting to see if he charges for the book or not...)

Ryan Air's Latest Charge

Now, it seems, Ryan Air are charging for hand baggage.

Whatever next? Charging people for sitting down?

(Actually, hang on, isn't that called 'an aeroplane ticket?').

Facebook

From Twitter In Your Pocket to Facebook In Your Pocket in one full swoop...

Studying our latest web traffic figures, Facebook is now one of our biggest referring sites, bringing inyourpocket.com a great deal of traffic. And to think that for sometime we didn't get what Facebook was about.

Personally, it's a pain. Used professionally, we're getting to like it.

Twittering Celebrities

The Times publishes a fair random list today of the top 50 Twittering celebrities. All very well, we like Twittering ourselves, but we do have a question...

It's all very well Lance Armstrong telling us about his weekend with a houseful of kids, but if Ordinary Joe was to try and carry on the conversation at an airport, in a bar, restaurant etc., how keen would Lance be to get all close up and personal then?

Not very, we think. Armstrong may have more than 53,000 'followers,' but what if they all turn up at Alpe d'Huez in July?

Besides, how long will these celebrities keep it up? Can we expect Armstrong to be Twittering as he climbs the Alps?

"Valverde's looking strong, hope he doesn't attack..."

Cornwall: Like Wales, next to England.

Having seen Belfast In Your Pocket reap the dividends of the Northern Ireland peace process, battle now rages between our Berlin editor and a Cornish nationalist over the exact location of Cornwall.

Who'd have believed that writing about a meat pie could cause such a fuss...

Eastern Europe is not about to explode...

Fair enough, there were a few street protests last week in and around the Pocket Empire. Riga, Sofia and Vilnius all saw colourful scenes as malcontents revolted against various belt-tightening measures.

However, for the Guardian to suggest (as it did at the weekend) that much of Europe is headed for a 'spring of discontent' is just appalling journalism. As one Pocketeer put it yesterday "there will be more public order arrests in Britain this year than in Romania."

Strangest of all was how - after predicting social unrest all over Eastern Europe - the Guardian then went on to suggest Brits take their holidays there this year. "Jurmala, Latvia - the largest resort city in the Baltics - has a 33km beach, is perfect for children, and the proximity to the shops and cafes on pedestrianised Jomas Street means there's plenty to keep teens occupied too."

Shurley shome mishtake?

The Death of Print?

They wished.

Two recent articles in the press about the never-ending Print vs. Web battle grabbed our attention over the holidays. The first told the sad story of the death of jpg magazine.

Now, while we doubt not the fact that there are tough times ahead in print, we do still find it annoying when web-only journos do down print. As the article claims:

"8020 Media was founded upon the belief that a print magazine publisher could be viable if it stripped out most of the costs and created a community of readers to help in its production. Perhaps the flaw was in sticking to a print magazine as its final product. In reality, the print magazine was nothing but an artifact of the Website and the community that created it."

Now, as any fule kno the reason it created such a big community was because photographers wanted to see their work... in print.

The other side of the coin is this article about cuts in web-only output at major US magazine publishers.

Both articles are more than interesting and raise far many more questions than answers.