links for 2008-02-12

Nik with the lowdown on some of the changes behind-the-scenes of The Guardian re-launch, including a lot of migrating articles by hand. "Since we're changing our IA it takes an informed human being to convert an older page into its newer format".

"Back in the days when 7" singles were the only means of getting new songs, the extra songs that artists included with the main track were called 'b-sides'". It breaks my old skool vinyl heart that this has to be explained...

David Codrea, 'co-founder, GunTruths and Citizens of America' reads a story about Walthamstow and grasps very hard on the wrong end of the stick. Hope he grasps which end of a gun to use a bit better than he grasps British culture about guns.

Sugarenia finds the YouTube interface slightly quirky.

"Ask the random small business owner about it. Ask friends and family. Then, ask an SEO about it. I'm willing to bet that the only person to know about nofollow is involved in SEO". Slightly paranoid suggestion that use of nofollow puts you on the radar.

Excellent description of how to sneakily re-shape a page so you only show web 2.0 features for sites and services that the user has already visited. Or do evil things based on the info if your are a black hat.

"An Israeli town is suing Google for slander, because its map service shows the town built on the ruins of an Arab village. A spokesman said Google Earth reflects what people contribute, not what Google believes is accurate."

"Matt Cutts lent his blog to the Google Images team so they could debunk a rumor that Google censored images of Egypt footballer Mohammad Aboutrika showing a 'Sympathize With Gaza' T-shirt. No censoring, says Google, just a problem with stale images".

"Headlines with keywords, people and places matter. Headlines have to have substance on the Web. Search engines and Web users don’t care how clever you are". Too true. The majority of Sun headlines in the Chipwrapper RSS feed leave me totally clueless.