iBooks are interactive books designed to work exclusively on Apple iPad tablets*. The ‘Mayoral Medal Heroes 2012′ iBook by The Lincolnite is free to download from the iBookstore.

• Download it from here.

The free iBook features interviews and photos with all the winners of the awards, along with a photo gallery and video from the event. The iBook was created by Stonebow Media with media contributions from Chris Curtiss from OTB Media and the City of Lincoln Council.

Daniel Ionescu, Director at Stonebow Media and Managing Editor at The Lincolnite, told Journalism.co.uk: “This iBook marks our first venture in the iBoookstore, and we commissioned special content for it, including interviews, photographs and videos.

“As a digital native publication, we are seeing a constant increase in readers for our iPad and iPhone applications in the App Store, and the Mayoral Medal Heroes iBook is an extension of our presence on mobile devices.”

Former Mayor of Lincoln, Councillor Kathleen Brothwell, said: “It was an honour to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of our community members through the Mayoral Medals, and I’m pleased that their unique stories are now able to be shared with more people – I hope they will find it an interesting and inspirational read!”

Caroline Ashman, Senior Communications Officer at the City of Lincoln Council, said: “It’s exciting to see one of our newest local media organisations embracing new technologies and taking local stories to a wider audience using iBooks. The Lincolnitehas always used technology to its advantage, and I hope this will be the first of many produced by the team.”

*This book is available for download on your iPad with iBooks 2 or on your computer with iTunes. To read this book, you must be using an iPad with iBooks 2.

As we celebrate The Lincolnite’s 2nd birthday on May 17, we couldn’t have received a better birthday present.

The Lincolnite, now with more than 50,000 monthly unique readers, has been nominated in the Best Local/Regional News Site category in the Online Media Awards 2012.

The Lincolnite is up against some big names in the industry, such as the Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo and the Belfast Telegraph, to name a few.

To be shortlisted alongside established news organisations is a huge achievement for Stonebow Media.

We thank all our partners, collaborators, friends and readers for their continued support in the past two years.

You can read more about the awards and categories on Hold The Front Page and Journalism.co.uk.

Business Lincolnshire, a new project managed by Lincolnshire County Council, aims to support Lincolnshire businesses by helping them source information on finances, employment, growth strategy, supplier information, training and more. This wide variety of information is supported by a weekly good-news round-up from across the county.

Stonebow Media is now working with Lincolnshire County Council over the next twelve months to deliver this weekly news round-up, featuring success stories of firms from throughout Lincolnshire. The contract for this work was secured by Stonebow Media following a competitive pitching process.

“I am delighted Business Lincolnshire chose Stonebow Media to provide its business news content. We have great connections with a variety of companies throughout the county, and combined with our experience of copy writing, it makes us the perfect match for the project. We hope to work very closely with the team at Business Lincolnshire in the future.” said Elizabeth Fish, Director of Stonebow Media.

Business Lincolnshire – Your link to local business information

Stonebow Media is at LincUpLive today (Friday, September 9) bringing you live updates, pictures and reactions.

LincUpLive is a digital media conference taking place at The Showroom, on Lincoln’s Tritton Road.

The promo for the first Leaders Live session

The Lincolnite will hold a live Q&A session with the leader of the City of Lincoln Council on Monday, August 15, the first initiative of this kind in Lincolnshire.

We are currently polling our readers on questions for the council leader, Ric Metcalfe. The questions have already started pouring in through Facebook, Twitter, and a special form on the site, and will be answered live by Mr Metcalfe throughout August 15.

The live Q&A session will start at 9.30am, and readers will be able to ask follow-up questions to the council leader’s answers through social media channels. The questions and answers will be displayed in the style of a live blog on The Lincolnite, which will be publishing on the day from the offices of the City of Lincoln Council.

Daniel Ionescu, Managing Editor at The Lincolnite, said: “You always read about hyperlocal initiatives being looked down upon by local authorities, but this is fortunately not our experience. We secured a day-long live Q&A session with the City Council leader, and the online exclusive will be a first for Mr Metcalfe as well.

“Users of our iPhone and Android mobile apps will also be able to follow the session throughout the day, and they can even submit questions from within the app. This is the first of our Leaders Live initiative, and we will be looking to get on board more local leaders under this project.”

Chris Dunbar, Communications Manager at the City of Lincoln Council, said: “We’re really looking forward to taking part in the live Q&A with The Lincolnite.  It’s an interesting way to give local people the chance to talk directly to the leader of the council and have a two-way conversation.

“Social media is a growing tool for local authorities to reach a wide audience and we find Twitter particularly useful. Lincoln has a very active community on Twitter, and we use it regularly to speak to local people, businesses, partner organisations and opinion formers in the city.”

Councillor Ric Metcalfe, Leader of the City of Lincoln Council, said: “Having been a councillor in Lincoln for almost thirty years, I have seen communication methods change dramatically. I’m very excited about the Q&A – it sits directly in line with our priority of being a fit for purpose council, as it means I’ll be directly accountable to the people asking questions. I had some Twitter training recently and sent my first tweets. I’ve got to say, I find it absolutely fascinating – and a bit scary!”

Last year Stonebow Media launched its first application for both the iPhone and iPod Touch. The Lincolnite application, which was the first mobile news application to serve the Lincoln area, has now surpassed 1,000 downloads.

The free application currently averages between 20 and 40 new downloads per week, which has been driven by promotion online and via QR codes in print advertisements.

The Lincolnite app, which is still the only dedicated Lincoln news app available for the iPhone, offers users access to daily news, exclusive pictures and event information wherever they are. The application also enables our readers to engage in citizen journalism by allowing them to submit geo-targeted news tips and pictures.

Following the success of the iPhone application Stonebow Media has released more free apps for other platforms including the Android Market and the Nokia Ovi Store. Other applications, including one for the iPad are in the pipeline.

Daniel Ionescu, Managing Editor of The Lincolnite said the following regarding the success of The Lincolnite for iPhone:

“We are aware that more and more people are using their smartphones to read the news wherever and whenever the news breaks — and that’s where we want to be. Our smartphone apps enable us to connect with people at any time.”

Due to this growth in the mobile space, The Lincolnite has now introduced mobile advertising to their range of applications, which they believe will allow local businesses access to a savvy and growing section of customers.

The Lincolnite for iPhone can be downloaded for free from the App Store.

May 17, 2011 marks exactly one year since Stonebow Media’s hyperlocal news and events website The Lincolnite opened its digital doors. If you’re not familiar with The Lincolnite, here’s a brief history lesson outlining the reasons behind its creation and what we aim to deliver:

• Established by three University of Lincoln graduates with experience in Journalism and Web Design;
• Created to fill a clear gap in local news reporting (Nearly all local news sources are county-wide, we decided to dedicate the site’s output to just a city-wide output);
• A focus on clear, concise and timely reporting;
• Committed to engaging with our audience through social media;
• Simple website design;
• Multi-platform access.

Now you know a little about how the site came to be, we want to take the opportunity to look back at what the last year has brought us.

Our very first story was a humble report on the city’s annual sausage festival, however those of you with a keen eye for detail may notice that this first story went live not on launch day but over two weeks before we opened our doors (April 26, 2010). Why I hear you ask? Well, ahead of the site’s launch we decided to fill the site with a selection of stories — so come launch day the website wasn’t empty and readers had some content to click around and engage with.

When we did finally launch on Monday, May 17th, 2010 our first news day featured a selection of stories. These included an update on a then-recent diamond robbery, how a woman was fined £200 for not cleaning up after her pet dog, word on Ellie Goulding coming to the Engine Shed and even an interview with Scottish folk band The Proclaimers.

By the end of the first day The Lincolnite had seen just over 100 visitors, by the end of the first week over 500 local people had stopped by and when the first month online came to a close over 2,500 visitors had come to read all things Lincoln. Now, one year on, we deliver content to around 30,000 readers per month.

Since launch we were keen to make the best use of social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook. In one year we have gained over 1,100 Twitter followers and more than 1,200 fans on Facebook. That’s an average of six people per day clicking follow or like and choosing to engage with our relatively-young brand.

By offering news updates in a quick, transparent and concise fashion we believe our growing audience has really engaged with what we have to offer and respects our voice.

Here’s a brief run-down of what we have achieved over the past twelve months:

• Published over 1,100 news articles from nearly 20 contributors;
• More than 1,200 Facebook fans;
• Over 1,100 Twitter followers;
• Launched dedicated Events section;
• Introduced the first Lincoln-based news mobile app for iPhone (now with over 850 users);
• Also introduced a mobile application for Google’s Android mobile platform.

A big thank you goes to all our partners, contributors, sources and most importantly readers — a cliché it may be but without you we wouldn’t be where we are today.

With one year now behind us we are very excited for the year ahead.

Last year (2010) we introduced our very first mobile application; The Lincolnite for iPhone. Since the November launch our free local news and events application has seen hundreds of downloads, with as many people using the application every single day.

With the success of our iPhone application well under way, our savvy readers were calling for our content to be available on other mobile platforms, with the large majority asking for an Android application. With this in mind we set to work on delivering an application for those using Google’s increasingly popular mobile operating system.

In March we proudly introduced The Lincolnite for Android. Our second mobile application, currently in beta, is also free and offers much of the same content as our iPhone application, including the ability to:

• Read the latest headlines and share them with your friends on Twitter and Facebook or via email;
• Browse through our photo galleries from the events and news we cover;
• View current weather conditions and a 7-day forecast (data supplied by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute).

You can find out more about The Lincolnite for Android here, and as ever we would love to read any feedback you have on the application so we can improve things going forward.

Enjoy the app!

We are pleased to announce our collaboration with Lincolnshire County Council’s (LCC) revamped online project called OnLincolnshire.

OnLincolnshire aims to help push for better broadband for rural communities and businesses in Lincolnshire, bridging the “digital divide”.

They also provide support for those who may not be too familiar with the internet.

Where does Stonebow Media come in?

We will be providing OnLincolnshire with various broadband-related content, such as topical weekly news updates and digests. We also manage their electronic newsletter.

Companies also involved in the project alongside us will be 360e web consultants, who are working on static content for the site and RE:Media, who designed and are maintaining the website.

The new and improved OnLincolnshire website will launch in March 2011.

Richard Hardesty, Projects Team Leader for the County Council, said: “Stonebow Media where chosen to provide weekly up to date broadband news content to OnLincolnshire.

“This was because of their professional background, proven ability to deliver and flexible, yet competitive, approach to this work.

“Stonebow Media have worked closely with the OnLincolnshire team during the development on the new website, and we are delighted with the content they have provided in advance of user testing.”

We’re happy to announce the immediate availability in the Apple iOS App Store of version 1.1 of The Lincolnite application for iPhone and iPod touch, as of January 13 2010.

There are currently over 400 users of The Lincolnite iPhone app.

The new app adds screen rotation capabilities, so users can flip the phone horizontally and read stories and view photos in the built-in gallery (as pictured above).

Readability improvements include larger text sizes and better text and image formatting, as well as faster refresh and loading times for stories in the Headlines tab.

Also new in version 1.1 of The Lincolnite app, users can find current and 7-day weather forecast information for the Lincoln area. Several bugs have also been fixed across the app.

The app works with iPhone 3G, 3GS and iPhone 4 models, using iOS 4.x.

Here are the changes at a glance:

New in version 1.1:

• Current weather conditions and 7-day forecast (data supplied by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute);
• Landscape mode: read the news in any way that you want;
• In-app and loading speed improvements, various bug fixes;

Also in version 1.1:

• Read the latest headlines and share them with your friends on Twitter and Facebook or via email;
• Check up on traffic updates throughout Lincolnshire (data supplied by BBC Lincolnshire);
• Browse through our photo galleries from the events and news we cover;
• Tip us: send in your photos and reports when news happens around you.

Note: To receive severe weather warnings and other important messages from The Lincolnite app, please make sure you enable push notifications the first time you open the app.