Kevin: Ryan Thornburg has a pretty gloomy take on a recent survey of online journalists. "I think the survey we did here at UNC does a much better job showing us the future of news… which is bright if you dream of a future of inexperienced, homogeneous copyeditors shuffling text around a Web page." Frankly, the industry would have more experience if they hadn't shut down so many online divisions in a bout of schadenfreude after the dot.com crash. I have more than a decade of experience in online journalism, but only because I was one of the few to survive the post dot.com crash decimation of online news departments by executive editors who believed – quite wrongly – that the crash vindicated their belief that the internet is a fad. The lack of experience is the industry's fault. The mass cull of digital journalists in 2000-2001 now means a crippling lack of digital experience for the industry.

Kevin: "Surfing the net at work for pleasure actually increases our concentration levels and helps make a more productive workforce, according to a new University of Melbourne study."

Kevin: A simple wizard to create a map based on location data in a Google Spreadsheet.

Kevin: Christkian Spanring has a great how-to showing how to use Google Docs (in this case spreadsheets), Yahoo Pipes and Google Maps to create a simple map-based mash-up. Mashups are now getting to the point of being doable by those with limited technical skill, not saying that Christian has limited skills. That comment is more directed to cut-and-paste coding journalists like myself.

Kevin: The Guardian API tracks the use of swear words (well, a cross section of profane terms) used on the Guardian in the last decade. Way to go Tom Hume for an intriguing use of Guardian API.

Kevin: The Knight Citizen News Network has a great directory of free and low-cost digital tools for journalists and citizens.

Kevin: Steve Buttry has a great list of links to Twitter resources for journalists including primers on how to use Twitter, journalists and editors on Twitter and other resources.

Kevin: Steve Buttry gives a great set of tips to editors who want to lead their newsrooms into the Twitterverse. I think journalists are increasingly realising that they should use Twitter to monitor their beat, but I think it is less well appreciated how much traffic Twitter can drive to your site. Even less well appreciated is how this can connect journalists with their colleagues and more important communities around their content.