BEN HAMMERSLEY

'Ben Hammersley' (born April 3, 1976, in Leicester, England) is a British journalist, broadcaster, and photographer, currently based in Florence, Italy.
Currently a reporter for the BBC, he previously worked as the first Internet reporter for ''The Times'', where he was shortlisted for one of the British Press Awards, and as a reporter for The Guardian.
During his early career, he specialised in technology journalism. Hammersley often reported from dangerous countries. He worked in Iran and Afghanistan. After travelling undercover to interview the Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, Hammersley moved toward war correspondence and foreign reporting.

Contents

Multimedia reporting and broadcasting

Writing, Speaking, and Technology

Athletics

Biography

Bibliography

External links

Multimedia reporting and broadcasting

In 2006, Hammersley was embedded with both British and American troops in Afghanistan, shooting video for ''The Guardian'' as as multimedia reporter for Guardian Unlimited. In 2007 he travelled to Beirut to photograph Hezbollah.
In June 2007, Hammersley was the reporter in an experiment in multimedia journalism for the BBC. Reporting from Turkey in the run-up to the general elections there, he reported for BBC World and the BBC World Service, while also placing behind the scenes video online.
In August 2007, he was reporting for the BBC World Service from Mindanao in the Philippines, notably staying with the Philippine marines on the island of Basilan as they searched for members of Abu Sayyaf.

Writing, Speaking, and Technology

Hammersley is the author of technical books and programmers' guides, notably with O'Reilly Media. He has been influential in the RSS community, writing the first book on the subject. Other books have covered Blogging and the inner workings of Gmail. Between 2004 and 2006, he built and maintained the weblogs of ''The Guardian'', including ''Comment is free''. He is attributed with the first warchalking in the wild, on a street corner in Kensington, London in June 2002.
Hammersley also regularly contributes to congresses and conferences, such as the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention and the Global Investigative Journalism Conference. He is a member of the advisory council of the Open Rights Group.
He coined the term ''podcasting'', in an article for ''The Guardian''. It was later the New Oxford American Dictionary word of the year for 2005.
Hammersley also built, and currently runs, the website for the Serpentine Gallery in London.

Athletics

Hammersley is an ultramarathon runner. Having completed the Marathon des sables, and the 100km del Passatore he is now coached by Jason Koop of Chris Carmichael's Carmichael Training Systems.

Biography

Ben Hammersley is the eldest of three children and was educated at Loughborough Grammar School, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, which he dropped out of after a year to be a producer at Associated Press Television News.

Bibliography

★ Hammersley, Ben (2003) ''Content Syndication with RSS'', O'Reilly Media (ISBN 0-596-00383-8).

★ As contributor, (2004) ''Spidering Hacks'', O'Reilly Media (ISBN 0-596-05777-6)

★ Hammersley, Ben (2005) ''Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom'', O'Reilly Media (ISBN 0-596-00881-3).

★ Hammersley, Ben (2005) ''Hacking Gmail'', John Wiley & Sons. (ISBN 0-7645-9611-X)

★ As co-author (2005) ''Hacking Movable Type'', Wiley

★ As co-author (2005) ''RSS and Atom Hacks'', O'Reilly Media

★ Hammersley, Ben (2007) ''Octet'', Weidenfeld & Nicolson

External links

★ Ben Hammersley

★ ''The Guardian'' newspaper

★ Hammersley photojournalism