Recent posts in my Greece Category
January 20, 2010
Etz-Hayyim Synagogue in Chania attacked twice by arsonists
The Etz-Hayyim Synagogue in Chania, which serves as a monument to the fate of the Jewish community on Crete at the hands of the Nazis during the Second World War, has been attacked by arsonists twice in the space of a couple of weeks.
November 16, 2009
Olympic Memory Marathon: Part 3 - My Olympic memory
On November 7th I took part in the Olympic Memory Marathon, a video project by artist Simon Pope capturing 104 Londoners talking about their experience of the Olympics, whilst he walked the length of a marathon through the streets of the boroughs hosting the 2012 games. These are the memories that I related to him. I've never been lucky enough to go to an Olympics, but I have visited several of the stadiums where the games have been held....
April 29, 2009
"Maps and legends" - The Macedonia naming dispute on currybetdotnet
Just after I left Greece last year I published a series of three posts exploring the issue of Greece's relationship with her northern neighbour, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The first was a fable set in the future, putting forward a vague parallel situation that might resonate with UK readers - "The Former Scottish Constituency of Northumbria". The second and third posts looked at maps - a Greek political map where FYROM was nameless, and a German school-children's map...
April 17, 2009
Tracing pictures of Chania's Germaniko Pouli German War Memorial
Our old house in Chania was almost next door to a 1940s era war memorial to the Nazi parachute regiments that invaded the island during the Second World War. The Battle for Crete was a bloody one, with the Germans initially suffering heavy losses in their airborne assault, followed by several years of local resistance and accompanying brutal reprisals. Until the early 2000s this monument, erected during the war, stood mostly intact. The swastika held in the talons of the...
December 6, 2008
My kri-kri photo joins the ARKive
I was recently approached by the ARKive project for permission to use one of my Flickr photos. ARKive is run by British based charity Wildscreen, and the aim is to preserve a multi-media record of the planet's endangered species before they become extinct. Low resolution copies are available for free on the ARKive website, and high resolution copies are kept securely offline to preserve the collection. "Like the wildlife they depict, the images of these rare species are themselves endangered,...
October 27, 2008
ERT re-design takes a cue from the BBC
Just as I was leaving Greece, state broadcaster ΕΡΤ relaunched their news website. The design follows a new set of visual graphics on the three state-owned TV channels, and makes some significant improvements on the previous design. The news site now much more closely resembles a blog, and, according to the metadata on the pages, it is being powered by Joomla. All stories are clearly date-stamped with permalinks. There is also a very prominent calendar for navigation via date, which...
A (dead) lemon tree of our own
I know from the subscription and visitor numbers that only a fraction of regular currybetdotnet readers also read my other blog - 'A lemon tree of our own' which my wife and I co-wrote about setting up home in Chania, Crete. I thought, therefore, it was worth cross-posting and clarifying that we have now permanently moved back to the UK from Greece. Why move back? Well, I was spending increasing amounts of time away from Crete in order to work...
October 26, 2008
A German child's eye view of FYROM: Mazedonien
Over the last couple of days I've been writing about the dispute between Greece and what is officially known as 'The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia'. It is a battle that Greece has struggled to make understood outside of the Balkans, to the extent that apart from official bodies of international law and sporting relations, the majority of people simply refer to FYROM as Macedonia. This was typified by a children's map I saw in a shop window on my...
October 25, 2008
A Greek political map of Europe is also a map of the Greek political mindset
Yesterday I published a little fable - "The Former Scottish Constituency of Northumbria"- intended to make the Macedonian name dispute between Greece and FYROM intelligible to anyone who understands the geography of the UK, but not of the Balkans. It is very interesting to consider how much of our world view is shaped by maps and geographical labels, and a look at a Greek map of the world can be very telling. One of the places I went to watch...
October 24, 2008
"The Former Scottish Constituency of Northumbria"
The year is 2058. It is 12 years since the Scottish Civil War ended. Scotland finally achieved independence from England in the 2020s, but the newly founded Republic of Scotland was short-lived. Initially a handful of the northernmost islands seceded from the Republic in disputes over their level of funding and self-sufficiency. Then, old Sectarian fault-lines, political wrangles between the party power-bases of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and an ideological split over whether the new Republic should retain close ties with...
October 16, 2008
A storm in the Ionian for the BBC and The Guardian
I got back from a round-trip to Amsterdam, London and Gelsenkirchen to pick up a copy of my local Greek newspaper and find a media storm surrounding the BBC and The Guardian over their reporting of Corfu. Reports appeared in the UK media about some members of the community on Corfu wanting a measure of independence from the political elite in Athens, who are perceived to be growing rich on the back of Corfu's tax payments, and giving little in...
October 3, 2008
Take-away facts and quotes from the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam - Part 4
Over the last three days I've been blogging my take-away facts and quotes from the 2008 EuroIA Summit in Amsterdam. On Saturday morning I was giving my own talk on how to take the 'Ooh' out of Google and get site search right for news. Here is my final installment of commentary on the conference. "Documenting Mobile 2.0 IA" by Scott Weiss "Now you understand why the animated chart is so helpful, you wouldn't want to do this before...
September 10, 2008
So far so good...no bing-bang at the LHC according to ERT
I know that the Large Hadron Collider has suddenly made physics exciting and sexy again, but it looks like in their rush to publish the translations of today's news, ΕΡΤ skipped over the subs desk. It's actually the prospect of the "big ban" further down the article that worries me more - just how big is this ban, and what will it encompass?...
September 3, 2008
Mac users very unwelcome at the Google Chrome download party
The blogosphere is awash with early reviews of Google's Chrome browser, but, as a Mac user, I've been struggling to get hold of it - and not just because the Mac version is still under development. Initially, Google detected that I am in Greece, and so presented me a Greek welcome page for the Chrome download - full marks there for product localisation at launch. However, once I switched to English I found that Google had also detected I was...
August 27, 2008
Greek TV station Head of News receives death threats from blogger
You might recall that one of my regular moans about Greece is the lack of infrastructure and interest in the Internet. Although web usage has gone up from when I first arrived in the country, I still can't get broadband to my front door, and the Internet rarely makes the news. Occasionally there will be a bit a bit of police brutality or censorship by the Government/judiciary*, but pretty much the Internet stays off the news radar. [*delete as appropriate]...
August 20, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: Athens 2004
Before and during the course of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing I've been writing a series of posts looking at the complicated history of politics, protest and dissent that have surrounded the modern Games since they were first held in Athens in 1896. On that occasion they were marked by an overt display of national pride by the hosts, and a protest run by Stamata Revithi who wanted women to be allowed to partake in the event. Athens...
August 7, 2008
'F' for 'Former', 'R' for 'Republic' or 'M' for 'the M word'?
There will be one piece of Olympic politics and protocol closely observed from the spiritual home of the Games during tomorrow's opening ceremony in Beijing - whereabouts in the parade of athletes those representing Skopje will feature. Politics have featured in the athlete's entrance several times over the course of the history of the Games. Most recently, in 2000, the significant event was the way that the athletes from divided Korea marched. Although their separated nations are still technically...
August 1, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: Athens 1896
The selection of Beijing and The People's Republic of China to host the 2008 Olympics was always a controversial choice, which has thrown a sometimes unwelcome spotlight on the country. China's record on Internet censorship, human rights, the death penalty and the environment have all been questioned by the Western media as they cover the build-up to the games, and the torch relay, intended to be a celebration of the spirit of the games, was instead a focal point...
July 14, 2008
This Dopplr duck wants to travel by sea!
According to Dopplr, I have the velocity of a duck. I suspect that might go up a bit as I've got some more globe-trotting coming up in the next few weeks. What should I aim for? A goose? A peacock? As well as the animal-velocity meter and public profiles, Dopplr recently introduced a feature to calculate (for fun) your carbon footprint based on the amount of traveling you register with the site. That also means you have to let them...
July 2, 2008
.cc not .cy for the TRNC
I spotted this poster on the Underground the other night, and I was quite intrigued - no, not because of the lady in the bikini - but because of the domain name being used to promote tourism in 'North Cyprus'. Of course, one man's 'North Cyprus' is another man's 'Turkish Republic of North Cyprus', which is another man's 'Turkish occupied Κύπρος'. Whichever way you look at it, the TRNC does not have an internationally recognised TLD for the Internet, although...
June 19, 2008
Euro 2008: The websites - League table
Euro 2008 is now down to just 8 teams, but over the last two weeks of matches I've been surveying the websites of the original 16 finalists. There weren't any major surprises there. It seems that the larger and more prosperous nations had the best websites - and the big three of Germany, France and Italy seemed to be dominating in the online world in the way they have so often done in the past on the football field....
June 18, 2008
Euro 2008: The websites - Russia & Greece
As the Euro 2008 group stages have progressed, I've been reviewing the websites belonging to the Football Associations of the nations taking part. With today being the last day of group games it is the turn of Group D, and Russia take on Sweden tonight, whilst my old stomping ground Salzburg hosts eliminated Greece against quarter-final bound Spain. Russia and Greece are in the spotlight for my final Euro 2008 site reviews, two languages that stretch my ability to...
May 25, 2008
Measuring the interactivity of the Greek press online
"The development of a solid, interactive online journalistic culture is hindered by journalists who view themselves as the mediators between the authorities and the public. Journalists see themselves gatekeepers, filtering what is newsworthy and what isn't. Such responsibilities provide to some prestige and status. Different levels of interactivity undermine the 'we write, you read dogma' of modern journalism" No, not the manifesto of Andrew Keen's mythical newstopia, but part of the conclusion of a fascinating piece of work published by...
April 22, 2008
1906 Athens 'Intercalated' Olympic Games anniversary
The fact that the modern summer Olympics have generally been run in late summer means that there is a cluster of Olympic anniversaries in August. However, today is the 102nd anniversary of the opening of the 1906 games being held in Athens. These games are remarkable because they are no longer counted as 'official'. Athens held the first modern Olympics in 1896, and also wanted to host the 1900 edition. Paris was offered this honour instead, but by way of...
February 19, 2008
My Flickr photos from Torcello, Salzburg and Frangokastello on the web
Every now and again I like to write a little run-down of sites that have been using my Creative Commons Licensed photographs from Flickr. With all the moving around Europe I've done since I left the UK in 2005, it isn't much of a surprise to see that the three photographs I've recently been asked about are from three different countries. The About Archaeology site has used one of my shots of the exterior of the Santa Maria Assunta in...
February 8, 2008
From Athens, Georgia, to Athens, Greece - Democratic primary goes global
It may have been Super Tuesday that caught the world's press attention this week, but today the U.S. Election preliminaries switch from Athens, Georgia to Athens, Greece. The Democratic Party are holding their first 'global' primary for ex-pats and U.S. citizens serving overseas, and voting in Greece starts today. Although U.S. citizens can vote in the primary of the state they were last registered as resident in, some states have an electoral process, like the Iowa caucus, which requires the...
January 29, 2008
Greece cosies up to Microsoft
Bill Gates was in Athens yesterday, meeting Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis. They were no doubt discussing the fact that a few days earlier the Greek Parliament ratified an agreement between the Greek State and Microsoft. Well, when I say the Greek Parliament ratified it, what I meant was that the Νέα Δημοκρατία party ratified it. All the opposition MPs universally opposed the deal - one even went as far as to call it 'colonial', whilst others claimed it was...
January 26, 2008
Some very British reporting of the Chania court case
For much of this week, my adopted hometown of Chania has been the focus of some of the British press pack. They've been here following the trial of John Hogan for the death of his son last year in Ierapetra. Some of the coverage has been ripe with cultural ignorance. Germaine Greer, for example, writes a textbook feminist interpretation of the trial - well, I suppose that is her job - that fails to take into account any local Greek...
January 23, 2008
Greece admits defeat against Olympic phone-tapping spies
It sometimes seems that, rather like the funding mechanisms of the British Labour Party, politics in Greece simply lurches from one scandalous crisis to the next. Before Zahopoulos there were the accusations by the government that the opposition party was deliberately starting the devastating summer forest fires, and before that there was the bond sales saga. Way back when I first arrived in Greece, it was the Vodafone phone-tapping issue that was top of the scandal agenda. Whilst the Zahopoulos...
January 20, 2008
The ripples of the Zahopoulos scandal reach The Times
I mentioned last week the Zahopoulos scandal - or Maximougate as people keep calling it here. There have been fresh developments in Greece daily. Last weekend a Sunday paper published some still images from the sex DVD that allegedly features the Culture Mininstry official Christos Zahopoulus, who tried to commit suicide before Christmas. Now, the two owners of the paper in question - Proto Thema - have fallen out over allegations that one of them was promised that, if the...
January 14, 2008
Greece lets Athens Olympics domain names lapse
Whilst I was poking around the English language Greek news sites for information on the Zahopoulos case, another news item caught my eye in Kathimerini. 'Games website lost for a pittance' explains that: "Internet users wishing to find information on the Athens 2004 Olympic Games are no longer able to access its official website after the government failed to renew the rights to the domain name. A 29.30-euro fee required by site owners to renew domain name ownership rights every...
Protection of journalist sources at the centre of the Zahopoulos affair in Greece
'The Zahopoulos Affair', despite sounding like a Tintin book, is the current scandal-du-jour enveloping the Kostas Karamanlis government here in Greece. It has developed into an interesting battleground over journalistic ethics and the protection of sources. Just before Christmas, Greek Culture Ministry General Secretary Christos Zahopoulos resigned and then attempted to kill himself. It was, his colleagues claimed, as a result of a blackmail attempt against him. There were allegations of a sex video, and an investigation was started into...
December 10, 2007
Voting for your American Idol in Greece
One of the causes of the recent ITV premium phone line vote scandals was the re-showing of programmes on their +1 chaanel without giving the viewer information that the competition had closed. There doesn't seem to be any similar pressure over here in Greece. At the moment, on Sunday nights the ΣΚΑΙ channel is showing "American Idol". After each contestant sings, Greek television shows the presenter giving viewers the instructions on how to vote. Not only doesn't Greek TV indicate...
December 6, 2007
Return of 'A lemon tree of our own'
Long-term readers will know that when I left the UK, my wife and I published a travelogue on Yahoo!'s extraordinarily awkward 360° service. Once we arrived in Crete we switched to the far more user friendly Typepad, and started 'A lemon tree of our own', which chronicled our attempts to settle into life in Greece. Later that transmographied into 'Some Edelweiss of our own' when we moved to Salzburg for 6 months. This year, once the sunset went down on...
December 5, 2007
It is so hard to be a Depeche Mode completist these days
It used to be so easy to be a Depeche Mode completist. In 1981, their first single, 'Dreaming Of Me', was only available as a 7". After that everything came as 7" and 12", with the occasional limited edition 12" remix or special format. The full excess of UK chart multi-formatting peaked in 1990 with 'Enjoy The Silence', which came on 3 different 12" singles, 3 corresponding CD singles, a 7" and a cassette. Record companies eventually realised that they...
November 26, 2007
Watching the FIFA World Cup draw in Greece and online
You couldn't exactly say you got a flavour of South Africa from the TV coverage on ΝΕΤ of Sunday's FIFA World Cup draw. The hosts put on a vibrant show I'm sure, but in Greece our hour-and-a-half long programme mostly consisted of clips of Greece's Euro2008 qualifying campaign, and studio experts talking over silent coverage of whatever was happening in Durban. Although I understand it wasn't much better in the UK, with coverage shunted off to the red button of...
November 23, 2007
Not qualifying for Euro2008 - as it happened in Greece
I already had one Euro2008 slap in the face when UEFA didn't grant me any tickets to return to Salzburg to watch a couple of games staged in a place where, this time last year, I was living. And then there was the Croatia game. The comedy of errors here in Crete was nowhere near as bad as Scott Carson's competitive debut, but I thought I should share. According to the Athens News, Greek channel ΝΕΤ were showing the...
September 27, 2007
Take-away facts and quotes from the Euro IA Summit in Barcelona - Day 2
At the weekend I was in Barcelona for the Euro IA summit, and so, whilst trying not to blog my every move for a change, I thought I would post my key take-away facts and quotes from the conference. I covered day one yesterday. Stanisław Skórka I started the second day of the conference listening to Stanisław Skórka talking about the bridge between the librarian and information architect professions. I don't envy any of the speakers having to present in...
September 17, 2007
Apple iPhone hits Greece ahead of the O2 deal in the UK
Everyone might be waiting for tomorrow with baited breath as Apple finally announce that the iPhone will be available in the UK, but Greece has got there first. Yep, apparently mum is already no longer the word in Heraklion (just a couple of hours down the road from where I live) and in Volos Sugarenia has blogged a Greek advert for the iPhone from their local store - at an eye-watering €749. Meanwhile, jimeh has a picture uploaded to Flickr...
September 14, 2007
Heraklion airport doesn't quite live up to the BA online check-in promise
I'm back in the UK for work for the majority of September and October, with a trip to Barcelona for the Euro IA summit and a brief sojourn back to Crete for a last summer "Hurrah!" sandwiched in the middle. As a result, I shall certainly be racking up my carbon emissions with a variety of airlines. The first flight was with British Airways lask week, on a route I've not flown before - Heraklion to London Gatwick. Heraklion is...
September 10, 2007
Greek police beat up a photo blogger
I was saddened to find out over the weekend that Greek police have beaten up a blogger in Thessaloniki for taking photographs. Teacher Dude received a dislocated shoulder in the assault. He's one of those people that I've never meet in real life, but who, thanks to their blogging, I count as one of my friends in Greece. He was taking photographs - as he does so excellently - of a demonstration in Thessaloniki, when the police objected to him...
June 28, 2007
Free public wifi in the Lasithi region in Crete. Well, almost
Regular readers will know that I have been highly critical of the internet infrastructure provision here in Crete. Although the island has broadband the local phone network where we live isn't of sufficient quality to get ADSL, so at home we are stuck in the netherworld of dial-up. There has been quite a bit of to and fro in the letters page of the Athens News in the last few weeks between various would-be customers and OTE. OTE stress again...
June 8, 2007
I love my Flickr photos being on We Love Crete
I love my new home in Crete. Anastasi & Apostoli love it too - so much so that these members of the Greek diaspora have made a site about it - "We Love Crete". They also obviously love my photography of Chania on Flickr. They've used two of my Creative Commons licensed pictures on the site on their page about Chania....
Athens News apology for racism due in the shops today. Again.
Two of the web sites I love visiting daily are about mistakes. The Daily WTF offers "daily posts of user-submitted examples of bad code and software design". Meanwhile Regret The Error rounds up the funniest corrections and retractions published in newspapers around the globe. And, as the saying goes, if we don't learn from our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. The Athens News is the only English language Greek-based newspaper we get in Crete, and we rely upon...
May 28, 2007
Madeleine McCann and Alex Meschisvili - a culture contrast
The disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal hasn't made the TV news bulletins or English language press here in Greece, but as I still follow a lot of what goes on in the media in the UK, I have seen the acres of coverage devoted to the story at the other end of the continent. One trend that seems to be emerging in these high profile media scrum "Diana moments" in recent years is the intimate involvement of suspects or...
May 18, 2007
6.5% have "Fast internet" in Greece - but not me
I wrote earlier this week about Greece and the take-up of the internet and gaming amongst the younger generation here. Their use of the internet is a marked contrast to the rest of Greek society, which has the lowest internet usage amongst the 25 countries of the EU. I had to laugh at this story from state broadcaster ERT this week - "Digital Greece with Fast Internet" As per data presented by the Minister of Economy and Finance George Alogoskoufis...
May 16, 2007
Games and Social Networking driving more young Greeks to use the internet?
I merited a brief mention in this post on the UrbanGreeks blog about internet activity in Greece - "Internet: The Nerdy Kid That Nobody Wants to Play With". I get quoted about my ordeal trying to get even a basic phone-line from OTE, the state monopoly provider here. "My experience of trying to get a connection set up here didn't do much to counter theory [that OTE are a major bottleneck to internet access]. Once the paperwork is done it...
May 7, 2007
Today's burning question: "What will the weather be like on the UK's Bank Holiday?"
I've set off today for a 10-day road trip around Crete, to explore the eastern half of the island which I have been calling home for a year, but haven't really explored yet. Thanks to the joy of scheduled publishing and the ./tools/run-periodic-tasks cron job, you shouldn't see any interuption to my blogging on currybetdotnet - although it does mean that the spelling mistakes I only ever seem to pick up after publication will be sitting there live for a...
April 27, 2007
"This Is Not My Country" blogger outed by racists and nationalists in Greece
The furore around the unpleasant things written about A-list blogger Kathy Sierra sparked a well-intentioned but ultimately misguided attempt by the great and the good of blogging to frame a code of ethics for the online world. The inevitable failure of this initiative stems from the fact that regardless of how many sheriff badges you can stick on your blog, the kind of people who don't want to play by the normal rules of social interchange are going to ignore...
April 5, 2007
Will virtual representations of sporting events become part of the online rights economy?
Having been in Austria at the start of the tournament, and in Greece for the conclusion, neither of which are renowned for their love of the game, following the Cricket World Cup has been somewhat problematic. The BBC's Test Match Special podcast is available to me, but sadly the live commentary is firmly locked behind the BBC's GeoIP firewall. So I've been casting my eye around the rest of the web for coverage. Like the BBC, the Guardian has been...
March 9, 2007
BBC News linking to the TRNC "government" in Cyprus related stories
The BBC has been reporting today on the demolition of one of the barriers along the Green Line in Nicosia, Europe's last remaining divided capital. I was interested to note that in their related internet links section on the story they choose to link to not just the legitimate sites of the EU, Greece, Turkey and the island's Greek Cypriot government, but also to the website of the TRNC "government" in the Northern part of the island. Internationally, of...
March 8, 2007
Turkish YouTube ban unleashes the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast within
Yesterday the internet was buzzing with the news that a judicial decision in Turkey had blocked access to YouTube for users in that country. Most people looked at it as part of an ongoing narrative of states trying to control what could be published on the internet, but I found the whole Greece / Turkey subtext of the story to be the most interesting part. It seems that the offending videos on YouTube were user-generated content made by Greeks...
December 19, 2006
More reaction to Arsenal's move to ban all national flags from their stadium
The furore over the 'Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' flag at Arsenal's Emirates stadium has been going on for a couple of months now, not that you would know that from the BBC's pathetic news story covering this weekend's announcement by the club that all national flags and nationalists flags are to be banned from the stadium. The piece simply trots out the official Arsenal line that "The move comes after some fans have been upset at the waving of...
December 18, 2006
Arsenal forced to ban all national flags over Cypriot dispute
I wrote at the beginning of the month about the dispute at Arsenal caused by the repeated flying of the unrecognised 'Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' flag by Mete Ahmed within their new Emirates stadium. At the time, Arsenal had considered that since it was not specifically against the law to fly the flag within the UK, they would be taking no action over it. However, pressure from the Greek Cypriot community appears to have swayed the clubs opinion. In...
December 1, 2006
Cypriot flag dispute at Arsenal
The relationship between Greece and the rest of the EU on one side, and Turkey on the other side, has been getting a lot of attention this week due to their inability to reach an agreement over Cyprus. Since the turmoil caused in 1974 by first the Greek backed coup on the island, followed by the Turkish invasion, relations have still not been normalised over thirty years later. Only Turkey recognises the northern part of the island as a nation...
November 17, 2006
Media coverage of a shocking sex attack in Greece
One story that hasn't been making me homesick for Greece has been a terrible tale that has emerged there of the gang-rape of a 16 year old schoolgirl by her classmates. It is alleged that four boys took it in turns to rape the girl in the school toilets. As far as I am aware only one British newspaper has reported on it, but the more that emerges of the story in the Greek press and on blogs, the more...
November 7, 2006
Where did hosting the IGF leave Greece on the internet?
It has been a few days to allow the dust to settle following the IGF meeting in Athens. I was pleased to see the case of Antonis Tsipropoulos and blogme.gr being referenced in the BBC News coverage of the IGF, and that Kieren McCarthy also ensured it was referenced in the meeting itself. The Greek minister, acting as chairman, was less than happy about the Greek blogger arrest being brought up, and I'm pleased to say I am completely to...
October 27, 2006
Blog censorship in Greece ahead of the IGF forum in Athens
Some disturbing news from Greek bloggers has emerged this week. In Greece of 2006 we have the first sue against a site that (through rss) published some satirical posts (from a blog) about a famous person. You see, in my country WE ARE NOT FREE. The owner of the site was handcuffed and driven to prison for one night and now he is free until the day he testifies in court. His computer with all his work was taken away...
September 21, 2006
Erratic search quality on Google Earth
Last week I was saying unkind things about the Yahoo! Maps coverage within their Flickr geotagging application. I try and be even-handed wherever possible, so I thought this week I'd gripe about Google Earth. I find the application really easy to use, and the quality of the images of the places where I've looked at has generally been excellent, but I find the search facility painful - particularly when I'm looking for places in Crete. The search algorithm is very...
July 21, 2006
Greek Universities against the use of the internet
One of the biggest stories here in Greece at the moment is the government's proposed reform of tertiary education. They are proposing that private investment in universities be allowed for the first-time, and that a raft of other changes are made to bring education in Greece in line with EU legislation. The reforms are also aimed at addressing some curious situations that arise in the Greek education system. There is no time limit to finishing a degree in Greece, and...