links for 2009-01-31
by Martin Belam, 31 January 2009
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"Yesterday's assertions [are] barely backed up by the facts. Chelsea have only been awarded one penalty at home all season – against Portsmouth – but so, too, have United, Arsenal and Liverpool. Indeed, Chelsea have not conceded a league spot-kick since new year's day, 2008. Furthermore, the Carling Opta statistics indicate that opponents are shown on average two yellow cards per match at Stamford Bridge, which is actually more than opponents receive at Old Trafford (1.8) and Anfield (1.45)". Not that any journalist, as ever, appeared prepared to say this to the face of one of the 'Big 4' managers during a press conference for fear of the consequences.
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"Journalists clinging to notions of narrow job descriptions and who still hold dear many of the old ways of doing things for print are unlikely to be among those offered jobs in the downsized digital newsroom. To win one of these jobs, extreme flexibility and the love of learning and a challenge will be qualities that hiring managers will seek. I suspect that may make this digital newsroom younger than today's print newsrooms". [via Jon Slattery]
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"As you’ll notice from the comment below - the BBC now have taken control of the ‘BBC’ username. It’s great to see the BBC and Twitter acting quickly to resolve this issue. Let this be a lesson to other businesses and organisations - ‘own’ your brands on social networks or there may be trouble ahead". I notice that when the Daily Mail shut down their mischievous cybersquatter, everyone called Twitter and the Mail spoilsports. I haven't seen a similar reaction here.
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Seetha Kumar explains about the BBC's expanded web mothballing policy, and makes extensive reference to a survey of the oldest content on the BBC site that I published on currybetdotnet in 2005.
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The whole she-bang, as broadcast this morning on BBC Radio 2, in one nifty CD and DVD box-set for £20, only available direct from the band's website. Neat idea.
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"Telegraph Media Group is in the early stages of developing an e-commerce project to place links to sites like Amazon.co.uk alongside Telegraph.co.uk stories". The early stages? Affiliate marketing on the web has been around for over a decade...
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"Once you know what the Higgs Boson is then your work is done on that subject, there is no one who can tell you you've missed the symbolism or there are levels of irony you've failed to appreciate...Almost every newspaper in the world has an arts section, but none has one for maths". And, as I pointed out yesterday, even when there is some maths coverage, most UK papers online don't have a "Science" top level category to stick it in.
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"If you do not write for a website, sign up to Twitter as soon as possible. The discipline of writing meaningful messages in 140 characters will improve the brevity and directness of your writing". Spending a year trying to write concise description of websites in 25 words for the old Yahoo! directory worked wonders as well!
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Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who gave the 'Black power' protest at the 1968 Olympics, got together for Obama's inauguration after years of not talking to each other.
Re: The BBC and Daily Mail Twitter channels - the difference is that the Daily Mail one was quite clearly a parody from the very start (as you could tell by the OTT description and the obviously sarcastic Tweets), while the fake "BBC" did not mention anywhere that it was not an official BBC feed (it described itself as "updates from the BBC website" and used the same language as the BBC's properties). In fact until this episode came up I thought it was an official feed. Twitter's terms of services permit parody but do not permit outright impersonation, and that's where most of the rancour came from.