OF ALL the skills that every journalist needs, the one I think is most important is something that you’ve probably never heard of. It’s called ‘news sense’.

Every journalist at The Sentinel will have spent a number of years learning the basic skills needed to gather and report news.

This includes learning how to interview a person, how to use shorthand for accurate note-taking and then how to write down those facts in a coherent manner. We also have to learn the laws of libel and copyright, as well as learn the basics of government, both at local and Parliamentary level.

But that counts for nothing without news sense, that skill of being able to identify what a good story is, knowing what is important, interesting, what has colour and life for our readers.

I mention this because at a time when people can use the internet to read every council report or neighbourhood police newsletter, it’s often the journalists at The Sentinel that remain among the first to pick up a throwaway line in a report which becomes a major news story, and becomes the trigger for a protest or petition.

More importantly, for me at least, there’s Twitter and the other social media for breaking news.

As I’ve said before, I sent out a reporter to investigate two updates on Twitter from a chap who posted about a fire and a gas leak on Regent Road in Hanley. It turned out to be the first reports of the attempted mosque bombing.

But as more people locally join Twitter, it can be increasingly difficult to keep a track on what’s happening. Finding a decent story tip from Twitter can be like trying to catch a single droplet of water in a firehose.

Given we now track 1,900 people and organisations across North Staffordshire, how do we, and indeed anyone, find a news story in the mass of updates?

How to tackle the issue of information and update overload is a hot topic for many industries, and web developers are working to create tools to sift out the gold nuggets.

One of the easiest is to use Twitter itself. It provides the ability to assign the people and organisations you follow into lists, so they can be categorised easily.

I have lists for emergency services, politicians, cultural groups, simply so I can keep abreast of what’s important to each group.

That’s great, up to a point. But even so, it can be easy to miss updates.

That’s why developers are creating products such as Bottlenose and Banjo to help fill in the gaps.

Banjo is one of a whole so-called ‘social discovery’ apps being created that allow people to find out about other people close to where they are, right now.

I went to Cheadle on a Saturday a couple of weeks ago to get my hair cut. While I’m waiting in the queue, I’m looking at Banjo and find out that town and district councillor Stephen Ellis had just bought some oatcakes.

A trivial example? Perhaps, but it could also provide great dividends for journalists covering an event or incident to seek out contacts.

Of course, the application sifts out information based on people you know. What about identifying trends worth following up for stories?

Last week, train services between Stoke-on-Trent and Birmingham were disrupted for several hours after a man was found injured at Penkridge.

I would have missed the update using my current systems, simply because there were too few updates for me to pick up on the news within a firehose of the accounts I follow.

But Bottlenose is just the latest – and certainly most sophisticated – application that tries to make sense of that firehose of updates and turn it into something useful, and more importantly from a business point of view, actionable.

It allows registered users to import their Facebook and Twitter profiles and display them graphically, instead of a list.

Crucially, the developers have created a sophisticated algorithm which presents the most interesting information in a web of links based on your followers, interests and preferred topics.

Within 15 minutes of setting up, Bottlenose’s filtered web view provided an overview of the most popular topics, which can then be tweaked by the user.

The highlighted link to ‘Penkridge’ allowed me to find out enough to post a brief update about the problems, as well as updates for alternative routes and other information.

Ultimately, all the tools in the world won’t make a story happen. It takes the news sense of the journalists to take a simple tip-off and turn it into front page news.

IT’S not what you know, it’s who you know. Cliche? Maybe, but it’s a truism that’s helped define my career as a journalist and the force behind the internet’s change in every aspect of life in North Staffordshire.

Don’t believe me? Five years ago, the world wide web was a great tool for information.

Now the tools of web 2.0 are making creating and sharing pictures, videos and stories as simple as making a cup of tea.

In the same way that six years ago I asked financial experts such as Geoffrey Snow to help me unravel the arcane accounts of Waterford Wedgwood, I’m now asking trusted contacts on Twitter and Facebook to verify dozens of potential stories.

Remember the foiled attack on Hanley Regent Road mosque, which made the front page of The Sentinel in December last year? First tip-offs came through Twitter.

What about the fire at the Poundstretcher building in Newcastle?

More than 200 readers posted quotes and pictures of the blaze within four hours.

In certain circumstances, it even allows a journalist to commentate outside their field of expertise.

I’m no fan of football – I understand the offside rule, but don’t ask me to explain it – but the power of the web and the kindness of contributors, has allowed me to provide real-time commentaries of Stoke City’s foray into Europe.

Take three class examples from the Potters’ clash against FC Thun in Switzerland:

“To say the first five minutes here has been uneventful, would be like saying Tony Pulis likes wearing hats.”

“Gol! Thun’s manager is brilliant. He’s looks like an extra from Emmerdale.”

“Not convinced we’ll finish with a full team – the ref has more cards than Clinton’s.”

Or what about this comment which for me summed up the maelstrom of rumour on the last day of the transfer window:

“I’m such a pessimist when it comes to Stoke. However, it’s clear that no-one, no matter how ‘In The Know’ they claim to be, knows anything.”

These comments, with the exception of the first by a trained journalist, were made by the public.

But they helped paint a picture of the beautiful world far better than I would.

Of course, every comment made is subject to the bias and potential misdirection ever made by a contact; but that’s the job of a journalist to filter.

The internet has allowed a new generation of creative geniuses to make their mark and forge career paths never before possible.

Five years ago, I started to trawl internet sites such as YouTube and find one video a week that I thought was good enough to promote on www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk

Now I can find a good video every other day.

Some teenagers I saw then who cut their teeth in video are now forging careers in the world of web video.

For example, Martyn Lomax behind the infamous, and irreverent, mockumentary Stoke-on-Trent – Wish You Weren’t Here is a first class honours graduate who set up a corporate video business.

Similarly, Star Wars and martial arts fanatic Toby Dale has spent the past four years creating some of the funniest videos I’ve seen on the web.

The Eccleshall-based animator’s early content might not have always met the guidelines of The Sentinel, but his talent recently won him an £18,000 prize in a competition to find the best film-makers on YouTube and I wouldn’t be surprised if you see both Toby and Martyn’s names in lights in years to come.

You might argue that the success of these individuals are destroying my fundamental case of contacts over talent as I suggested in the intro. But it’s still true.

It’s a fair point that it’s never been easier for anyone to publish their own pictures, write their own articles or create their own videos.

But just because someone can post a video of their puppy chewing its dog tag – I have – doesn’t mean that everyone wants to watch it.

The 80:20 rule – the idea that 20 per cent of all products will generate 80 per cent of sales, or views – still applies, but it won’t necessarily be pundits from established media who decide what is a hit or a miss.

Instead, it’s going to be a whole series of new voices who will help to shape the face of the society in North Staffordshire, particularly on a creative level.

And I can’t wait to keep my place on the web to see them.

David Elks is digital publisher of The Sentinel’s website, www.thisis staffordshire.co.uk

WHEN I was growing up as a small boy in the late 1970s, the word troll referred to two things designed to either appeal to young children or to scare them into behaving themselves. And they weren’t real.

The first was a type of plastic figurine with shock rainbow-coloured hair that sold in the shedload in the days before Star Wars. The second was usually an evil, but slow-witted cave dweller who suffered at the hands of a goodie character in nursery stories.

In the same way that PC has come more to refer to political correctness than a policeman, the internet community has adopted the word to describe an all-too real character found on most websites where the public can communicate and comment.

A troll is someone who posts deliberately provocative and offensive comments on messageboards, forums and news sites with the sole intention of causing arguments, upset and anger among other users.

And they’ve been a constant bugbear since reader comments were introduced to stories on www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk in late 1996.

The idea of reader comments was, and is, simple. To a greater or lesser extent, all newspapers and other media are driven by the wants of their individual readerships.

So to have a tool that allows an editor or reporter instant feedback while allowing readers to add further information or provide tip-offs to move a running story on is a no-brainer.

We’ve tweaked the system several times to make it harder for trolls to thrive, but they continue to post on the site.

So what, you might say? Sticks and stones and all that…

Not only can it be hurtful and offensive, but too many trolls on a website can deter other users from making contributions.

On a community website where people have become sensitised to troll-like behaviour, new users can find themselves accused of ‘trolling’ for a relatively innocuous comment. Consequently, everyone becomes more aggressive. At its worst, you can go to prison for trolling.

Last week, Sean Duffy became only the second person in the UK to be jailed for ‘trolling’ after using Facebook to mock the death of 16-year-old Hayley Bates, from Biddulph, in a crash on the A500 in September 2010.

Duffy set up a Facebook page entitled Hayley Smash Nissan, where he doctored pictures of the Stoke-on-Trent College student, crossing out her eyes and posting a caption "used car for sale" and "one useless owner".

Of course, this is an extreme case but the range of comments on www.thisisstafford shire.co.uk demonstrate varying levels of tolerance to someone going out just to ‘stir things up’.

There is now a grounds-well in the social internet towards preventing anonymity and instead forcing people to become accountable for their words on the web.

Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to force individuals to sign up with their real identity when he created Facebook has been instrumental to its success. That’s both in terms of getting people to sign up and limiting trolls; although determined individuals continue to abuse the system.

But I don’t believe a total ban on anonymity on the internet is a good idea. Yes, it would improve accountability and transparency and could have gone some way to some individuals using fake Twitter and Facebook accounts to stir up potential trouble during the summer’s riots.

What about legitimate uses of not revealing your real identity, such as whistleblowers or those who use a pseudonym for the purposes of genuine strong, but fair criticism?

In the same way, that anonymity has spawned the troll on the web, a lack of it can force debate to dry up.

Earlier this year, the U.S. tech website TechCrunch carried out an experiment in which readers who wanted to comment had to do so by logging in with their Facebook ID.

At a stroke, the number of snarky, sarcastic and nasty, comments dropped, although the overall level of comments also fell.

However, the editors noticed that often many comments being left were often sycophantic and uncritical, something which is as bad as a sour messageboard.

The developers behind www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk are trying to strike that balance between robust debate and transparency.

Last year, a system of house rules was introduced which set down exactly what readers can and cannot say. If you don’t like what someone has said, you can report it as the breach of the house rules and it can be removed.

Since the relaunch of www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk in June, we’ve allowed readers to create their own profiles, although the vast majority choose not to fill in all the profile details.

They can post their own articles and pictures, as well as starting their own discussions online.

In time it is likely that regular readers and posters will be able to earn trusted status to give the best new writers and photographers a chance to be heard, while filtering out the trolls.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council already posts regular news, as well as readers to post pictures from events such as last week’s Tour of Britain event in North Staffordshire.

Ultimately, no one system is ever going to squash the irritation caused by people who get kicks out of posting offensive material on the web to upset others. 

But, perhaps the systems that are being introduced will help ensure the worst trolls are those found in fairytales and not Facebook.

David Elks is digital publisher of www.thisis staffordshire.co.uk

IF there’s one thing that I get asked about more than anything in my job, it’s: ‘How do I get involved in Twitter?’

I have been to three social functions in recent weeks and at each one, I have got talking to someone who for whatever reason is interested in finding out how to use the social media service.

One was a senior accountant based at Festival Park who was fascinated by the way start-up businesses locally use the service to network and generate orders.

Another businessman was interested in the marketing potential of the service to promote a niche product.

And finally, I met a nurse at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire at The Sentinel’s recent Our Heroes awards who just wanted to understand what all the fuss was about.

“You see Twitter in the news all the time, with celebrities posting updates. I understand Facebook, but I don’t get all the @ and RT bits. What’s the best way to learn?”

As I’ve said before, Twitter has transformed my working life and allowed me to meet and keep in touch with lots of people who otherwise I would never have come across.

That said, I’ve always been keen to try out new technology. Twenty years ago, I remember being ribbed at university for booking time on the computers so I could reply to electronic-mail sent by other friends elsewhere in the country.

Now, it’s hard to imagine anyone who doesn’t have an email account that they check every day.

But as with any new technology there is a learning curve.

One of the best ways to find out more is to sign up and see what other people are doing.

Here’s five accounts that provide good examples of how to use Twitter:

@thisisstaffs – or the main account providing updates from www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk. I’m a little biased here, but we try to provide a daily bulletin highlighting the most popular articles of the day, as well as updates on any breaking news throughout the day. Readers can also pass on stories and tip-offs through this account.

@asmir1 – Asmir Begovic. With 12,000 followers, the Stoke City goalkeeper is arguably the region’s most influential tweeter, but he also provides a textbook example of how to use the social media service. He posts updates about training as well as more personal details which give insights into the life of a professional footballer.

The Bosnian international also regularly takes time to converse with fans. For example, he has held Q&A sessions inviting Potters’ fans to quiz him, and he and his wife encouraged Twitter followers to name their new puppy.

@staffspolice – Staffordshire Police. This is one of a number of Twitter accounts which the force uses to issue statements as well as crime prevention information to followers.

The account recorded a spike in followers after it was used by the public to get updates about potential trouble during the summer riots.

@HAtraffic_wmids – Highways Agency. A useful account for anyone who has to travel around the West Midlands, and provides updates on accidents, potential congestion as well as estimates of when problems should be resolved.

@brown_and_green – Brown and Green, Trentham Gardens. The West Midlands Deli of the Year 2011 provides a great example of how a niche retailer can use social media to promote the business. There’s regular information about offers and incentives, as well as strong conversation with customers.

As I say, these accounts provide just a small taste of the people and organisations on Twitter.

Back in Christmas last year, I created a list of 150 useful accounts for people in North Staffordshire.

(Who are the most influential Twitterers in Stoke-on-Trent?)

I included sections for councils and politicians, emergency services, religious groups, community groups and businesses.

I’m now planning to regularly update that list so that it provides the most useful source of accounts for people living in and around North Staffordshire.

I’ve also created a comprehensive series of Twitter lists with more than 1,800 local accounts so that I can keep track of possible news stories.

You can see the lists at http://www.twitter.com/david_elks. If you think there’s an account I have missed, please send me the details. You can do this by email (david.elks@thesentinel.co.uk) or via Twitter @david_elks.

David Elks is digital publisher www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk

BRACE yourself: today’s a big day in the tech world. After months of speculation and rumours, Apple will reveal the latest version of its iPhone smartphone.

I would imagine that thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people across North Staffordshire, many with only a slight interest in technology, will be tracking the news to see what the widely-predicted iPhone5 and iPhone 4S look like.

A total of 128 million iPhones have been sold worldwide since the initial launch by the Californian tech giant in 2007, with each generation of the product selling substantially more than its older counterparts.

Indeed, the company is now the highest valued business in the world, having surpassed oil giant Exxon Mobile back in August.

And that’s all because the company, steered until recently by co-founder Steve Jobs, has turned a utility product, a mobile phone, into a sexy and desirable status symbol.

Of course, that’s all very nice you might say. But what’s it got to do with North Staffordshire or www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk?

I was on the website last month reading some of the criticism of Stoke-on-Trent City Council after it announced the new £350 million shopping centre for Hanley would be called City Sentral.

The broad thrust of the thread from readers was this it was another branding blunder.

Quite apart from the fact that the city council didn’t choose the name of the centre, that was developer Realis Estates, I’m not sure it’s right or fair to suggest that the authority should be responsible for coming up with the big idea to transform Stoke-on-Trent.

In these times of austerity, people should be thinking about solving the small problems rather than relying on a game-changing strategy from Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

Let’s take some examples of small ideas in North Staffordshire which have transformed lives and created jobs.

In the 1950s, agricultural engineer Joseph Bamford noticed that while tractors were commonplace, the actual job of loading and unloading material was still largely a manual task.

“What if I add a loading bucket on to the back of the tractor and use pneumatics to raise and lower it?,” he might have thought.

That idea, as well as the engineering ability to make it happen, spawned the backhoe loader, the workhorse of most construction sites.

Sixty years on JCB, on the back of that first idea, is now the world’s third largest construction machinery manufacturer, employing 8,000 people across four continents, including 4,000 in Staffordshire.

But if you look at its product range, there are dozens of types of products, all specifically designed to do a certain job, but also faster, at less cost and while improving safety.

I imagine it’s all down the constant question by designers: what small steps can we do to make our products better?  Is there a problem that our customers need us to solve?

Indeed such is the quality of JCB’s design teams in identifying and solve these problems, it’s not surprising that Jonathan Ive, the Apple architect behind the iPod and iPhone, made a special visit to meet them a couple of years ago to share ideas.

It’s not just in traditional manufacturing where one idea has led to phenomenal growth

Online gaming giant, and Stoke-on-Trent’s largest private sector employer, bet365, has gone from nothing 10 years ago to an operation employing 1,500 people on Festival Park and handling sports bets worth £4.5 billion a year, according to its latest accounts.

You only have to turn the TV on during any major football sporting event to know how big the firm is.

But at the heart of this success was Denise Coates who had been involved in running a small chain of booking shops set up by her father Peter Coates.

Now gambling is one of the oldest professions and its system of odds is fairly well defined.

The technical genius was being able to express these well-defined parameters and create a software system that could handle potentially millions of bets being placed in a short space of time. Compare with maybe thousands of bets taken across the existing shops on Grand National Day.

It’s little wonder that the firm now invests more than £60 million a year in IT infrastructure, making sure that the business can offer ever-more bewildering betting options.

But at the heart was just a question: ‘How could we put our business online, based on our expertise?’

Which brings us back to Apple and the launch of the latest generation of the iPhone.

If you look at the sales figures for the iPhone, you’ll see revenues didn’t really start to take off until the launch of the second-generation iPhone3G

Why? The first iPhone was slick, but it wasn’t until the 3G that the App Store arrived. With it, users could suddenly download apps not created by Apple, while third-party developers could write apps that solved problems.

It was innovation, but it was only a small question, that started with the words ‘What if?’

OF COURSE, it’s all right asking questions if you can’t answer the question yourself. That’s where social media comes in.

There are thousands of people in North Staffordshire who can help with a problem, as long as you ask.

Here’s an example. I wanted to create a list of the 150 most useful people on Twitter in North Staffordshire based on my lists.

To do it by hand would have taken 12 hours. So I put out an appeal for help, and developer Scott Wilcox created a small script that did the job in two minutes.

It’s true: as my teachers once said when I was school: ‘If you get stuck, just ask’.

David Elks is digital publisher of The Sentinel’s website, www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk

TUNSTALL Chamber of Trade is asking for review of the licence for Tunstall Mini Mart in a bid to cut down on the number of drunks hanging around in shop doorways and urinating in the telephone box.

They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words, and this photograph, captured the problem of drinkers on the streets in broad daylight in The Sentinel yesterday.

Stories like this can come from many sources. Often, a reporter will see something and suggest it to the news editor, or they might get a tip-off. It might even be flagged in a council report.

The basis of this story and problems of on-street drinking in Tunstall came initially from a picture posted on community website run by Matt Burke called www.mytunstall.co.uk.

For me, this site and other so-called hyperlocal sites like it have become an invaluable source of possible community news in the same way newsletters and library noticeboards were when I was a cub reporter.

However, in the past couple of months three high-profile websites serving North Staffordshire have either closed, or significantly scaled back their operations.

In August, one of the most prominent figures in the development of hyperlocal news, Tony Walley, announced he was stepping back from the Pits ‘n Pots political website which he co-founded with Mike Rawlins.

That news came shortly after the Longton South site run by Mark Ellam announced it was closing down.

Spool back just over two years ago and there were 16 active sites run by volunteers providing community news. Now there are nine, and falling.

So does this signal the death of hyperlocal? Of course not. It’s just that innovation on web happens so fast that even today’s leading-edge tech can be consigned to the dustbin within two or three years.

The primary driver behind the so-called hyperlocal scene and citizen journalism was the advent of simple-to-use tools and websites that allowed users to add their own comments, articles, pictures and even videos (dubbed web 2.0).

But tools are nothing without a cause, and it was the threat to close Trentham High School in late 2007 that galvanised Tony Walley, a school governor at Longton High School, to create the original Pits ‘n Pots blog.

From that start, the co-founders created a full-blown political website for Stoke-on-Trent devoted to reporting on the politics, and the politicians, of the city.

They streamed live updates from the public using Twitter to capture some of the drama – and confusion – of the Hanley EDL Rally in January 2010.

So why are these sites falling down? Three reasons; lack of time; lack of money; and the development of new, even simpler-to-use platforms such as Facebook.

As a journalist looking in, I’ve always been constantly surprised by how much time volunteers devote to these sites.

For example, Tony Walley is the managing director of a steel stockholders employing 35 people in Talke.

He rang me shortly after he made the decision and admitted he’d lost enthusiasm for writing three stories a day while trying to juggle work and a growing passion for radio and music.

Probably the most influential factor on the hyperlocal scene has been the rise of social sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

The common path for any blogger was to create a site with strong pictures and articles with which to create a passionate community of supporters. That could take weeks, months or even years with more obscure subject topics.

With Facebook, that’s all changed. Within minutes, a user with an account can create a ‘Page’, and invite their friends to take part.

Given the power of Facebook, it’s not surprising to note that a tribute page set up for schoolgirl Courtney Holdcroft pulled in more than 4,000 followers in less 12 hours after she was knocked down by a bus outside school.

Does that mean that hyperlocal is dead? Not really.

It is true that the idea of updating a site regularly can be hard work, and might not be an option for everyone.

Examples such as MyTunstall demonstrate what is possible with a small, passionate community of contributors who care about where they live.

And the idea that people can use the internet to express themselves and to raise support (or opposition) to a cause has never been stronger.

Two Facebook groups called Let’s Debate and Talk Stoke are forums which have taken off massively in recent weeks with Stoke-on-Trent contributors debating fiercely about a wide variety of topics.

However, the core strength of Facebook is also its key weakness. With more than 750 million followers, there’s no bigger site to get your message across. The problem is that there are so many pages, topics and threads that it can be difficult to find what you’re looking for.

Which is where www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk comes in.

The new site now allows individuals and organisations to post their own articles, picture galleries and discussion topics.

In the past fortnight, the Douglas Macmillan Hospice, community station 6townsradio and Breath City Church have all used the site promote events and initiatives.

We’ve also had pictures about charity coffee mornings and school events.

It might only be a picture, but it helps tell a great story.

David Elks is digital publisher of The Sentinel’s website, www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk

YOU CAN tell when you’ve reached middle age when the conversations you have with your friends are about buying a new home to get kids a better standard of a education.

A couple of my friends are currently thinking about moving house with the specific aim of moving to somewhere where their children are eligible to go a decent school – that is, decent according to league table results.

Which got me thinking: I know where the best schools are in the county – how easy would it be to locate the highest (and lowest) priced houses within a three-mile radius?

The Land Registry website provides a search tool that allows users to find a record of most property transactions based on postcode.

House prices around Endon High School

Note: The blue pointer represents the St Joseph’s College

With a simple script it’s possible to pass every postcode within the radius to the site and then store the results in a database.

I’ve then averaged the prices for every street where there has been a transaction around Endon High School and also for St Joseph’s College and plotted them on a map (which you can find on The Sentinel website, www.thesentinel.co.uk.

I’ve also included a list of the top 10 most expensive and cheapest streets within a three-mile radius of the schools.

As with everything there are some caveats to be aware of.

I’ve not adjusted prices for inflation, which would certainly impact values on historical transactions – some of which date back to 1995.

The averaging process also risks inflating the value of sales in some streets in which a few properties were sold considerably more than the majority.

Notwithstanding those provisos, the map results provide some fascinating insights, particularly for those people who live in either of these areas – and those potentially looking at these schools for their offspring.

The first thing is the evidence of broad clustering in prices across neighbouring streets.

House prices around Endon High School

Note: The red pointer in the centre of Endon represents the high school

By plotting points with a particular colour depending within defined ranges, it’s possible to identify areas in which prices settle around a certain level – although there are variances.

For instance, it’s interesting to note how the prices in and around Endon are broadly higher than in say Ash Bank.

That said, it’s also possible to identify where major or busy roads are, simply because house prices drop off. It’s not unsurprising, given that most people would prefer not to live next to a busy thoroughfare, but the patterns would be obvious even to someone not acquainted with the area.

Another question you might want to know the answer to is: how do property values around these schools hold up against other areas of the county.

To visualise this, I’ve plotted the monthly average price of houses in Endon since 1995 and compared its value against the Land Registry’s Staffordshire index over time.

Both plots highlight the property boom which the UK experienced from 1995 and then the sharp contraction after the credit crunch over 2007/8 led to a sharp contraction in the property market.

Intuitively, you might expect values to compare favourably to the county index, given that parents might be willing to pay a premium for settling children within the three-mile radius over which children catch a free school bus.

But it doesn’t appear to be the case.

Indeed, the index for prices within the three-mile radius appears to be markedly lower, even when resetting the index at 2002 when Staffordshire’s property market demonstrated a sharp rise.

So what’s going on?

To be honest, I’m not sure.

I’ve not been able to poll enough data to be able to establish whether there is a link between the sluggish price performance of houses near to schools, or whether it might be down to other factors I’ve not considered.

And my assumption about parents wanting to live within three miles of a school is particularly shaky, given that St Joseph’s doesn’t operate a catchment area, and that mums and dads might happily travel another couple of miles away to balance a good school with living in a nice, affordable, house.

But even so, the ability to map and then explore information presents fresh ways for making decisions about the way we choose to live our lives.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

LOVE your balls. There, now I’ve got your attention. Apologies for the ballsy intro, but it’s true to say that men don’t really talk about health issues or potential problems with their bits, such as testicular cancer.

I don’t think it’s just machismo, certainly not in my case. We either like to think ourselves as invincible or at least ‘man’ enough to cope with any problem that comes our way.

Around 2,000 men in the UK are diagnosed with testicular cancer each year and while survival rates are relatively high compared to other cancers, it’s still a killer if not diagnosed at an early stage.

Most people will have heard about the survival stories of jockey Bob Champion or elite cyclist Lance Armstrong, but I think there’s still an attitude among men that ‘it will never happen to me’ (I base this opinion on the fact we rarely talk about it, rather than concrete facts).

It might not, but it’s important to make those regular checks down below, just in case.

Of course, it’s easy for me to say, but as with all health habits, it can be difficult to remember without regular prompting.

And it’s true that while there are regular well-supported campaigns for breast cancer based on women talking about their experiences, it’s less true of men.

Which is why social media services such as Twitter can play such a strong role in promoting awareness in issues that people would otherwise not talk about.

Next month, dozens of men will stop using the razor and grow a moustache for the annual Movember campaign to promote awareness in men’s health.

For example, Shane Rankin will be shirking the daily shave to make sure that men take the time to ‘check their balls’ on a regular basis.

The 36-year-old telecoms consultant, and Stoke City fan, from Lightwood survived the disease and admits that he’s a ‘one-balled (TC) Stoke fan called Shane!’ on the profile to his account (@s3tok).

You can also visit his Movember page here.

He’s a vocal campaigner, and a great person to follow about all things Stoke-on-Trent, but not the only one.

Port Vale fan Mark Porter (@marksporter) survived the disease back in 1998 and now is a fervent campaigner for the @checkemlads Twitter account, which provides both support to cancer sufferers and promotes awareness among men to check themselves regularly.

“It was horrible because I wasn’t able to talk to other people about my problems back then,” he said, “It wasn’t easy to find other people locally who were going through the same situation as I was.

“Now there’s a much better support network for blokes to be able to talk about what they’re going through.”

Social sites such as Twitter also provide opportunities that would have never existed in the recent past.

Biddulph-based entrepreneur Mark Cooper (@coopes64) had been a passionate Stoke City and golfing fan, although he had few opportunities to speak to his idols, let alone meet them.

Twitter changed all that.

He went from a bit of banter with ex-Port Vale player Mark Bright to playing regular rounds golf with the star through to riding 200+ miles on a prostate cancer charity bike ride with Kriss Akabusi.

“Yeah, it is a bit of cheek,” he said, “but if you come across as sincere, honest and genuinely interested then it’s surprising what you can get.”

He’s also been touched by cancer, with his father being diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus earlier this year.

The thing is, I’m lucky. My family don’t appear to have genes susceptible to cancer, and, fingers crossed, there have not been any indicators which suggest I’ll suffer the disease.

But, I don’t know that for certain. I’m glad that there are ‘one-balled’ wonders like Shane Rankin and survivors like Mark Porter who sing out about the importance of checking. Just in case.

Love your balls? Rude question, maybe. But don’t you owe it to your family and friends to make sure?

SLOWLY but surely, the website www.thisistaffordshire.co.uk is starting to become a place for readers to post their own news stories and pictures.

St Margaret’s Church in Wolstanton hosted delegates from Japan to celebrate Dr Henry Faulds, a fingerprinting pioneer who died in the parish.

Trentham Monkey Forest also agreed to post pictures posted by visitors of the macaques at the centre.

Do you have a story to post? Why not go to www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk and tell us your tale?

I’VE long been fascinated with the idea of the wisdom of the crowds, and particularly the passionate fans at Stoke City.

It’s been interesting over the past five years as a journalist online to read the opinions of those who comment on the site about the club, the actions of the manager or his team from the comfort of the armchair.

This made me think. Could the collective intelligence of this group of supporters be used to either predict the outcomes of a club – or at least tell it from a different perspective?

So as an experiment in trying to learn more about this data gubbins, I collected and stored every tweet about Stoke City from the start of September until the end of the season.

I can’t say every tweet as there may be updates which don’t refer to the club either as my scraping tools searched the social media site every day for updates using the keyword SCFC, and filtering out references to Swansea and other non-football acronyms.

Even so, there were something like 140,000 updates to go through – an enormous body of conversations, insights and a fair amount of random babbling.

But as a senior architect of our websites, Evan Morgan, said to me last week: “Babbling is unstructured data. Structured or unstructured it can still contain gems.”

The trick, then, is how to methodically create structure to find insight.

The best way to do that, I’ve found as a journalist, is simply to ask a question.

The one that seems pertinent, given the upheaval at the club last week, was to ask at what point did it appear inevitable that Tony Pulis would have to go?

Let’s be straight about this. The power to fire Mr Pulis would sit with the Coates family and there’s no way to discern – without public disclosure – when they decided.

But is there a way to work out when even the die-hard fans were asking for a change in manager, and perhaps when the board might have started to take notice?

I thought I would have a go.

I then pulled out every tweet which mentioned the manager’s surname and then plotted them over time.

It turns out that over the season, there was a slight but steady increase in the number of times Mr Pulis was mentioned every day, along with eight days on which there were substantial spikes in him being referred to.

The highest peaks were obvious. May 21 was the day of his departure, the following day being further reaction.

Similarly, Stoke’s 3-1 defeat to Aston Villa on April 6 was likely to spark uproar, given the – albeit slight – risk of relegation.

The rest were largely the result of comments made at pre-match press conferences – specifically within a four-week period around November last year when they lost away to Norwich, drew with Sunderland away and beat QPR.

So far, so interesting. But was there a tipping point at which it was obvious when Tony Pulis would go?

That’s where sentiment analysis should be able to help.

The idea is to be able to use statistical techniques to essentially measure the positivity/negativity of any statement.

Unfortunately, while it’s possible to show that there was a shift between the overall positive support for Mr Pulis, as opposed to the background of people who have always opposed his style, the main trigger for his departure in the eyes of fans appears to be the Villa game.

Admittedly, I’m merely scratching the surface of what’s possible. It’s one thing to describe something, quite another to take the model of what’s happened and try to make predictions of the future.

My next task: given what fans are saying, who should be the next manager?

David Elks is aggregation co-ordinator and data journalist for Local World.

T HERE’S a saying that empty vessels make the most noise – and that’s certainly true on the internet.

Ever since it became clear about the impact that the worldwide web could transform our lives, there have been those seeking to exploit a potential commercial opportunity.

Not only are they a new problem to deal with, they often drown out some of the best talents on the web.

Anyone who uses the internet or email even on the rarest occasion will be aware of spammers and self-proclaimed ‘gurus’.

Spammers – dubbed after the Monty Python sketch in which every meal is served with the well-known meat product – carpet-bomb email, Facebook and Twitter accounts with links in a bid to capture sales.

You might think it’s a waste of time and wonder why they do it. After all, you always send them straight to the recycle bin.

But given the cost of sending emails is so low, it’s perhaps not that unsurprising to realise that a decent spam operation can turn a profit on just one response in a million.

Spam is bad. But then there are the ‘gurus’.

The long-lost descendant of the snake oil salesman, these self-proclaimed experts flog products and services billed to raise the profile of individuals and companies – even though they often fail to live up to expectation.

First they targeted the market for so-called search engine optimisation.

Just to explain, for those who don’t know, the search engines such as Google and Bing which help us to navigate our way through the 14 billion web pages are based on complex computer-based systems.

If you want to know when the shops open on the Trentham Garden estates on Sunday, you might type in the phrase “Trentham Gardens opening hours on Sunday”.

The key to Google’s success as the world’s best search engine is ensuring that the most relevant pages appear first in its ranking.

To do this, Google uses an ever-changing algorithm to rank websites and decide which pages are the best to display for any given query.

The fact that around 80 per cent of all visitors click on just the top three results has generated a swarm of experts who claim they can promote websites to these key positions.

Of course, most of these claims are bunkum. Ultimately Google and other search engines are looking for web pages which meet what users want and will filter out anything where the material has been tweaked or ‘gamed’ to give it a better profile than it ought to have.

Similarly, there’s a raft of self-proclaimed gurus who claim they can raise your profile on Twitter, Facebook or whatever social media site you care to mention.

The truth is that while there are good tips which can help you attract more people to your site, ultimately the ranking your site/profile achieves is down to the quality of the content – pictures, words, videos, whatever – you provide.

OF COURSE, there are people I consider to be high-ranking in North Staffordshire’s digital community.

Among them is Carl Plant, a chap who grew up on the deprived estates of Bentilee and who has now worked on a series of projects designed to get people online as well as encouraging people on the web to contribute.

He’s not one of the internet’s most vocal talents, yet one of his brainchilds has reached its fifth birthday on Thursday this week.

bITjAM started out as an experiment to encourage artists across North Staffordshire to create and collaborate in digital music and visuals.

It has a regular venue at The Rigger in Newcastle and has brought together 200 individuals and groups in jam sessions which have been screened across Europe.

Carl, a qualified nurse, spent his youth learning to code by copying code from a mammoth-sized book and punching it into an Amstrad computer.

Now he combines his love of technology and caring for people in projects spanning working with IBM, Maverick TV – the company behind Embarrassing Bodies – and Warwick University.

He’s also a Trustee of B arts, a group devoted to projects across North Staffordshire, and spends most of his spare time involved in projects to help groups and communities to get online.

At the same time, he’s also developing his skills by using data within the NHS to provide useful information about health trends across the city.

He’s just one of many prime examples of digital champions working across the region to get people connected and sharing information across Stoke-on-Trent.

Carl Plant may not have the loudest voice, but he’s one of a growing group of digital champions who are helping to draw people online and shape Stoke-on-Trent’s digital future.

David Elks is digital publisher of The Sentinel’s website, www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk