PM Harper by Toronto Star’s Joanna Smith

Just minutes ago, Canadian Prime Minister Stephan Harper’s Consverative government was voted to be in contempt of Parliment.

The Toronto Star and The National Post are both offering live coverage of the House of Commons non-confidence showdown in Ottawa using ScribbleLive.  As the House voted 156-145, marking the government in contempt of Parliament, both papers’ captured the energy in the room by pulling in posts from various reporters on the scene and posting photos of the throngs surrounding Harper as he prepares for his initial comments. Trying to follow the #cdnpoli hashtag on Twitter brings back tons of uninteresting tweets. The Post and the Star cut through the chaff and bring out the best insights:

From CBC reporter Kady O’Malley:

“I don’t really understand why the PM keeps referring to the budget in the present tense. Oh, there, he just switched to the past. #hw”

And TVO reporter Steve Paikin:

“Papers go flying in the air. House adjourned. This parl is done. #cdnpoli”

And from Toronto Star reporter Joanna Smith:

“Harper turned & left after saying he would take questions after visiting GG tomorrow. Much yelling, someone shouted “He’s gone!” #cdnpoli”

You can almost hear the collective rush of reporters racing to get the news out. Anyone watching live knew the results instantly.

By Dana Lacey

The Independent’s live coverage tops Google search results

To stand out amongst the massive outpouring of content about the UK’s release of the 2011 Budget, the Independent cut the middleman and covered Chancellor George Osborne’s budget speech live. Reporters quoted the speech, adding photos and links to stats and documents. Some posts were straight facts: “The personal income tax allowance will go up by £1000”, posted Independent reporter Jack Riley. The live coverage also pulled in comments from readers (“We’re all doomed”, said one, “[Liberal Democrat leader Nick] Clegg looks uncomfortable” said another.)

For their efforts, The Independent’s live coverage ranked it high in Google’s Top Stories results during and in the hours following the speech (see image).

How’d they do it? The Independent uses ScribbleLive’s white label technology.

The technology allows ScribbleLive generates indexable HTML pages that are rapidly updated, which means Google’s bots will return again and again and push your search ranking up: Search engines consider frequently-updated news sites more authoritative then its slow-to-update competitors.

Where other live blogging and curation tools are invisible to Google, Scribble’s white label pages blend seamlessly into the look and feel of an organization’s site. Take The Independent’s live coverage page: the navigation menus, widgets and advertising remain in place around the live content. By the end of the Chancellor’s speech, it had filled six pages with content: and that’s before the online news teams have their first stories up.