Weekend reading: Five great posts I’ve read this week

1. Twitter drops “what are you doing” in favour of  “What’s happening?” < < < Mashable

Those who seek to dismiss Twitter often resort to the argument that “it’s full of people saying what they had for breakfast.” And until now, Twitter using the prompt “what are you doing” on its homepage has played to that claim. Those who use it know it has changed massively from that – and now Twitter is changing to reflect that.

2. 30 tools for online journalists < < < Robin Brown

Online editor Robin Brown has come up with an inspired list of the essential tools online journalists should be using

3. Don’t save journalism, save honest communication < < < Digidave

I don’t agree with the headline (no surprise there,) but this is a thought-provoking piece about where journalism – in the form of honest communication – needs to go in the future

4. What if news organisations did block Google? < < < Almighty Link

Everyone’s talking about it, and most people are assuming that News International will blink rather than deliver on its threat to pull out of Google. But what if all the big companies did? That’s where this post comes in.

5. Guardian polls dating back to 1984 < < < Guardian Data Blog

It’s been a big week for data this week, with the Government’s announcement on its overall plan for making information more freely available. Lots, rightly, written about that, but I wanted to flag up the Guardian’s Data Blog, which makes brilliant reading every week – and is releasing quite a lot of data itself too.