No, I don’t mean they look like trolls - though one or two certainly fit the bill - but I was considering the article in the Sunday Herald about columnists and online responses and it reminded me of something I had considered a while ago: is there much difference between trolls and a columnist?

Trolls write to get a reaction our of people (see the comments by one person at the end of this article about Bob Crampsey), they’ll put forward some nonsense regardless of context in the hopes of people getting upset or flaming back at them. It’s different from putting forward a reasoned argument - or what you think is a reasoned argument - in that there’s normally no or little factual evidence to their opinion.

And to an extent, that’s what some columnists do. Put forward a point of view, sometimes push it to an extreme, get a reaction out of people. Some people realise they are having their buttons pushed and some don’t.

In an age where a lot of the news is deemed similar, a good columnist can be worth their weight in gold as their viewpoint will have people coming back. The likes of Iain Bell, Richard Littlejohn and Jeremy Clarkson are always worth a read. You may not agree with them, but they’re never dull. And I suppose that’s the difference. A good columnist does actually state a case and argue it - which makes them stand out from trolls.

Sadly, that does mean, quite a few of the UK press coumnists are little more than trolls because let’s be honest, there are some really duff ones out there. Jimmy Breslin has nothing to worry about.

Just saw this on the AllMediaScotland newly-launched Tweet Service - apparently Charles McGhee has departed from The Herald, leaving the paper without an editor the week before the Glasgow East byelection.

More news as I hear it…no doubt some people will be sad at this, while some will be rejoicing. What isn’t known as of yet is why he left.

UPDATE
UPDATE: Hold the Front Page has tweeted and put up more info on this page, complete with statement.

UPDATE 2: The Guardian has weighed in, again with the suggestion that McGhee left because of the ongoing cuts, which may or may not be the case, but it seems strange to me that he leaves right after the last round of redundancies (which I hear saw some staff rejected, despite their pleas to leave) unless he was told that there was going to be another round of cuts right away.

Well, the new iPhone is out (let’s be honest, we don’t need hyperlinks for this one) and while the 3G and unlimited data plans will make it a winner for most, there’s a couple of other add-ons available via the Apps Store (via iTunes as with all things Apple) that make it an improvement on what has gone before for media types (and, as far as I know, most of these work on the original iPhone).

There appears to be at least three voice recorders - ranging in price from 99p to £6 - which is such a basic omission I really don’t know why Apple left it out. The only questions remaining are what audio format they use (and quality), if they sync over to your mac/PC for editing and if they also record phone calls as well as chats.

There also appears to be a form of file manager, which goes a long way to address the concerns of those who moan that they can’t use their iPods/iPod Touches as a storage device. Again, there’s a couple of questions involved in how it works, but again, it’s an improvement on something Apple inexplicably removed from these iPods.

The NY Times has also managed to bring out a nice iPod-friendly version of its paper, which begs the question of why no paper from the UK thought about doing the same. Given the size of the code, I can’t imagine it was a programming nightmare to do and it would have been nice bragging. (and yes I know a few online editors think that the size of the screen means most people will surf about. I think for a year or two yet, it might be nice to have mobile only versions).

The one thing that surprises me by not being there is a version of MS Office. I really thought MS would have had something in there for kick off in a friendly style format.

For me though, it’s still a no-buy for a few reasons:

1) My N-95 has a built in video camera and 5M camera. The ‘JesusPhone’ doesn’t. Now the video may not be HD quality, but it’s decent and there are a lot of impromptu times in my life where I need a video camera and regardless of what some people say, you just can’t always lug about another piece of kit.

2) Why would I go from a decent 5M to a decent 2M camera? That makes no sense at all. This is the one area of the iPhone where you can tell it was designed for the US market and not abroad because everyone on this side of the world left 2M cameras behind ages ago. Heck in Asia they are on to 8M.

3) Stuck on an Orange 18 month contract (1 year to go). Even if I wasn’t I probably wouldn’t for the above reasons, but as I’m going to go into a rant about this lot soon, let me just say that anyone who isn’t an Orange customer: you lucky gits. There has never been a company so awkward and hellish to deal with as a customer.

(and for those of you sick of the iPhone, The Register has a list of competitor phones here.)