links for 2009-02-04

Oh, LabourList have decided the best way to get attention for their blogging initiative is to pick a fight with Iain Dale.

Malcolm analyses the site links that Google assigns to newspaper football sections to prove their "anti Man Utd" stance.

"The problem with newspapers and Google is that newspapers–unlike Google–do a horrible job of selling Web ads. Trapped in a world of dumb banners and too slow to embrace smarter, higher-value ad types like contextual ads, geo-targeting, etc., newspaper sites simply aren't maximizing the revenue from all traffic sources, including Google."

Still *the* blog for spotting people and companies near the music biz being total arses, Simon at XRRF has this: "Dairy Crest has hailed an 85 per cent rise in its spreadables business on a leap in its butter sales thanks to John Lydon, also known as Johnny Rotten, the lead singer of the Sex Pistols...The company also announced cuts in prices paid to farmers on both liquid milk and cheese contracts of 1.75p per litre and 1p per litre respectively."

If you take Blatter at his word that the joint bids are non-starters, then you have to fancy that UEFA will bag one of the slots, so it is going to be England or Russia. Then you'd think Australia would be in a strong position for 2022. Very political though, since now they've jumped into the Asia, Australia, Qatar, Japan, Indonesia and South Korea are all bidding from the same Confederation.

"In the past day or so, I have spotted at least four somewhat major bugs with Google’s various products. They include Google sending dozens of unwanted SMS messages to thousands of users, Google’s safe filter not working properly, Google News using an unusually large font size and Google Docs has a major spam issue as well. Besides for all of these issues, don’t forget about the huge malware issue with Google over the weekend."

"The last time a snowfall this heavy hit London in 1991 when the World Wide Web was only one year old. Think how our response to media and events has changed in that time. We automatically turn to texts or emails to tell our family and friends. We use the Internet to allow us to work at home. We expect instant information and updates Online. And we turned to the online news media to to share that experience. Surely, that has always been a central function for journalism, it is just that now we can do it with, as well as for, the people."

“A Virginia-based blogger is fighting a subpoena that seeks the identities of everyone who viewed an online article he wrote about a defamation lawsuit”. I've seen this episode of Boston Legal - it is simply an intimidate and delay tactic....

"Giorgos Papandreaou, leader of Greece’s opposition in parliament was tear gassed during a speech in the Greek port of Pireaus this morning. Papandreau, head of the PASOK party was addressing protesting farmers from Crete when riot police fired tear gas into the crowds following clashes between a small group of protesters and the police."