UK blog network Shiny Media has officially announced that it will no longer be regularly updating its Who Ate All the Pies English football blog, and is actively looking for a buyer.

Several of Shiny’s other sports blogs have been retired over the past year, with the main reasons being the difficulty of monetizing them, when compared to Shiny’s core technology- and fashion-related sites, and various administrative strains. read more

Apologies to my US friends peeking over from above a turkey-laden table, but here’s some more indulgence for us Brits.

Shiny Media has launched a second competition in association with LG, this time offering two lucky people a six-month video blogging internship.

If presenting is your thing, then simply shoot some footage of you at your best. If you prefer video editing, no problem. Take some of the supplied raw footage and turn it into a masterpiece.

You’ve got about three weeks or so to submit something, with the competition closing on 14th December.

The two lucky winners will receive training by top talent in video blogging, the opportunity to contribute to videos that are watched by a daily audience of thousands, an all expenses paid trip to Barcelona to cover the 3GSM World Congress next year, a blog on which you can share your experiences, and a new LG Viewty phone.

Unfortunately, it’s only open to those in the UK (you’ll be working at Shiny HQ in London). For much more information about the competition, visit the official competition web site: LG Video Media Talent Award, or visit the YouTube channel to view the videos and vote.

Disclosure: Andy writes for several of Shiny Media’s blogs

Over the past couple of months, Shiny Media has been rolling out a new, slick design across a number of its technology, fashion, and sports sites.

They all now feature slick new headers, cleaner layout, and more prominent access to the most popular stories, email and RSS feed subscriptions. In addition, the sites feel a lot more “connected” together, with header links to other sites in the same subject area, drop-down menus to different channels, plus the latest headlines from selected blogs across the whole network at the bottom of each page.

In addition, the technology sites (Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny being the largest) now prominently feature Shiny’s self-hosted video player, offering up “Shiny Tech TV”, a collection of tech and gadget reviews, previews, live product launches, and opinion.

(Disclosure: Andy writes for several of Shiny Media’s technology sites)

London-based Shiny Media has announced the launch of a US-based fashion-focused blog network, kicking off with two blogs — Shiny Style, about fashion, and Shiny Gloss, about makeup — and coinciding with New York Fashion Week, which starts today.

Though it may seem strange for a British blog network to target its sites specifically at a US audience, Shiny’s CEO, Ashley Norris, explains that a couple of their existing fashion blogs already have a strong following in North America.

“Brits launching US-only blogs might sound as daft as trying to sell ice to the Eskimos. However, our existing London based blogs — Catwalk Queen and Shoewawa — are already in the top ten fashion blogs read by Americans [source], so we do have a good track record across the pond.”

Shiny Media already has a number of talented American writers. Shiny US’s Editorial Director, Andrea Thatcher, explained: “Shiny Style and Shiny Gloss will keep all that’s great about Catwalk Queen and Shoewawa like the quirky stories, videos and focus on affordable fashion, but the blogs will written by Americans for Americans, and will major on what’s hot in US fashion stores.”

Shiny Media plans to roll out up to ten fashion blogs in the US over the coming months. Run from the East Coast, freelance bloggers will be sought from all major US conurbations.

[Andy Merrett writes for several of Shiny Media's technology blogs]

UK-based Shiny Media has launched four new blogs, all with a strong British flavour and usual blend of news, opinion, and humour (spot the Brit reporting this news and ‘misspelling’ two words!)

Available for Panto is Shiny’s take on the now global phenomenon of reality television. It focuses particularly on the current crop of UK fly-on-the-wall and popularity contest shows, including Any Dream Will Do (BBC’s search for a new ‘Joseph’ in the West End musical), X Factor, and Big Brother.

It’s the first Shiny blog to be sponsored from launch by a major company - in this case, Virgin Games.

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Since Shiny Media’s $4.5m funding just under three months ago, they’ve pushed ahead with launching more niche web sites.

One of the latest is Dollymix.tv, which they describe as “an intelligent women’s online magazine for the blogging generation”.

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The Oscars of the gadget world, the Shiny Awards 2007, hosted in London last night by Shiny Media, and attended by many high profile British journalists and bloggers, saw LG’s mobile phones clean up with two wins and a runner-up spot.

Shiny Media also teamed up with European blog networks Blogo.it (Italy), Weblogs SL (Spain), Creative Weblogging (Germany), and Journal du Geek (France), asking their readers to vote on the best European gadget.

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