links for 2009-08-05
by Martin Belam, 5 August 2009
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Ken's Hack Day Robot now has a Twitter presence.
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"Telegraph.co.uk is mapping data speeds achieved on O2's network. If you would like to take part in the survey and add your test results to our map, please email us here."
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"Sometimes asking the simplest of questions changes everything. The other day I was talking with a designer about a home page redesign they were working on. They were talking about the aesthetics of the design, how the current version looked like junk and they wanted to make it beautiful. A worthy goal, to be sure. The world needs more beauty. But then I asked: 'what metric do you hope to improve with the redesign?' In other words, what specific change in the world are you addressing with this design? What isn’t happening right now that should be happening?"
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"One of the first aerial surveys of London has been uncovered in a family photograph album. The images, taken during the First World War, are thought to be the first such pictures taken of the capital".
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Flickr group for photos from last week's Guardian Hack Day
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With this set of posts, Vadim Lavrusik reminds me that I am overdue to do a series re-visiting UK local newspaper websites looking at how their video offerings have no doubt positively blossomed in the last 6 months after the BBC Trust ruled out the production of more local online video to disrupt this thriving market sector.
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Phew. Malcolm has been playing with the Twitter API. For a second I thought he had collated the 300+ biographies by hand!
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I usually am 99.9% in agreement with MediaWatchWatch on such things, but I must disagree here. If you think that reading the generously translated words on the page and having them sung by thousands of non-Muslim-pumped-up-football-fans at a match are the same, then you probably think that sectarian chants in Scottish football are just fine and embody a bit of light-hearted banter too. I don't.
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"Guess who opposed the test? A team that hasn't won anything for years and yet didn't pass over the opportunity to demonstrate once more a lack of spirit of fair play. Just for the record, the Scuderia Ferrari had given its approval to let Alguersuari test, but it seems even in this instance someone decided to stick to the precise wording of the regulations". That, to me, says it all about Ferrari. An official statement that drips with arrogance and puts into words their belief that regulations should only apply to them when it suits them.
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This story is also known as "Two-thirds of 16-24 year olds still happy to pay for music online"
"For a second I thought he had collated the 300+ biographies by hand!".
The idea's not so laughable. When I first counted the followers of the 130+ newspaper accounts I did it by hand ...
And even with the Twitter API I was using a google spreadsheet to pull in the data and they are limited to 50 imports. So I had to do 7 spreadsheets to get 307 bios. And then I had to copy all them into one spreadsheet. Only the copy button kept not working in google docs.
And having done all that, the original list was updated so I've got to go back and do it all again. I'm sure someone at Guardian hack day could have done it much better ...