IMPORTANT UPDATE: We've moved the code over to Tax News as that is the most appropriate place for it to exist. The notes that follow remain relevant to the experiment. Apologies if anyone gets confused.
The above piece of code allows me to establish a 'presence' for covering any event. In this case it is the upcoming budget. I'll be punching the 'go' button at 8.30am GMT.
The plan is to aggregate commentary from different news sources along with Twitter commentary that bears the #budget09 or #budget2009 tags.
The code allows anyone to post comments along the way though they are moderated. If you're following the action then this could be something you'd find useful.
More to the point, if you are attending an event or even watching something virtually, CoverItLive allows you to reach out to others - perhaps your clients or co-workers and provide them with a means to disseminate, critique or discuss events as they unfold.
As with many things this is an experiment in the new forms of media that are available to us. I've used CiL before to great effect in reaching out to as many as 30,000 people so I know it is an effective mechanism. Anyhoo, if it's good enough for Channel 4 then it's good enough for me !!
Give it a shot, let me know what you think, try it for yourself. If you want the embed code then shoot me a line at dahowlett [at] gmail.com and I'll answer immediately. All you need do is grab the code I send and paste it into any web page.