links for 2009-05-28

"You might have noticed that at the end of February we made the first significant changes to the guardian.co.uk site search service for some time. I thought it might be interesting to blog about some of the work that went on behind-the-scenes to get this new version developed, but first of all I wanted to address some of the feedback that we have been receiving". My Inside guardian.co.uk blog debut.

Great set of advice, some of which has me hurtling towards the bits of Photoshop I never ever, ever, ever touch.

As ever, utterly in awe not just of the finished output from Max, but the time he puts into literally "showing his working"

Interesting experiment in doing a live chat Q&A type thing on the BBC's message boards about moderation.

"Autoplay is a bad idea not just for accessibility but for usability and general sanity while browsing. This article will explain what the problems are, where to find backup for arguments and what you can do if autoplay is a must have."

"And yet when I sat at my desk in Atlanta and Googled for the latest news on Obama and Guantanamo Bay, up came links and snippets of stories produced by the Kansas City Star, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Miami Herald and other news organisations. I didn't pay for the stories. And, for the most part, neither did Google. You wouldn't expect General Motors to give away its cars to Toyota". A brilliant analogy only slightly marred by the fact that you didn't physically get the Kansas City Star, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Miami Herald did you? If we could get from A to B with the 'idea' of a car then I suspect that General Motor's main business plan - selling cars - would be in a similar state of affairs...

"Well you know what? I'm over it. In fact, I have a new rule: If you want to hand-wring about the state of the news industry on my time, you also need to have some interesting ideas about the future. Because if you don't - if you want to blog, tweet or podcast away about doomy, gloomy End of Days-type scenarios, then frankly I'm not interested any more. You see, you're not giving me anything new to think about - you're retreading old ground and you're boring me."