April 2004 Archives
April 25, 2004
Eurostars
The latest voting output I've had a hand in on bbc.co.uk went live yesterday. Eurostars is a chance to vote for the best European footballer of all time, as part of the build up to Euro2004. Radio Five Live will be counting down the outcome of the vote in a special programme before the final of the tournament itself. In truth, I didn't have a huge amount of input - except to complain about the failure to include Antonín...
April 24, 2004
Human Intervention in Search at BBCi
Infonortics have put up a whole host of the presentations that were made in Den Haag at the Search Engine Meeting, including mine: Human Intervention in Search at BBCi [PDF File]. Sadly they have converted it to a PDF file, and it consequently doesn't have any notes, and I've used nearly all of the slides before in a different context - but you can still have a look at the pictures and make up your own talk to go...
April 20, 2004
Search Engine Meeting in Den Haag
I've spent the last couple of days in Den Haag in the Netherlands, at the Infonortics "Search Engine Meeting". Whilst it isn't what I currently do at the BBC, a presentation proposal I submitted some time ago was accepted, which I gave today. The meeting was sponsored / co-hosted by the European Patent Office, and we had a reception at their offices last night. A few things that struck me: Business taking Search more seriously Now the big players...
April 16, 2004
Congestion Charging Expansion consultation
Until the 23rd of April 2004 TFL are running a consultation exercise about the proposed expansion of the Congestion Charge into West London. Until then you can read the proposal, and offer your comments. I'd love to think we could have a sensible public debate about transport in London, but we appear to be dealing with one motor lobby powered voice as the dominant press outlet. If I could just point out what TFL has been forced to issue...
April 14, 2004
The truth about Becks and her and The Evening Standard
I had a free Evening Standard thrust into my hand outside Holborn tonight as part of a mobile phone advertising promotion. Thankfully they didn't let the fact that the paper was being given away for nothing this evening affect their editorial quality: "Ms Loos, whose facial expressions in the interview are reminiscent of those used by Princess Diana during her interview with Martin Bashir" Brilliant! An astonishing journalistic insight on the part of Paul Sims in his front page...
April 7, 2004
Images on Kinja
Like everybody else I know on the internet I have been having a poke around with Kinja. I don't have much of an opinion on the throwing-kinja-shapes-social-networking-share-a-thon thing that seems to have got others excited, but I am interested in the way they are handling the icons for each blog / site / feed after reading their FAQ page. To make scanning easier on the eye, Kinja runs an icon -- a small picture byline -- by each item....
April 4, 2004
Jonny Live? Jonny Die? You Decide!
As soon as one vote I've worked on finishes, the next begins. Tonight on BBC3 was the last episode in the current (and fourth) series of sitcom Two Pints Of Lagar And A Packet Of Crisps. The series finished on a cliff-hanger, and you the viewer get to decide whether the character of Jonny should live or die. I should think Ralf Little who plays the character may have more than a passing interest in the outcome. You can...
April 2, 2004
Gmail backlash?
Two interesting takes on yesterday's Gmail announcement from Google. One take is that it was a bit of a cock-up on their PR departments part to release such a key business announcement on April 1st, which led to discussions on Slashdot, Webmasterworld and elsewhere on whether this was actually an April Fool that had got out of hand. More significantly, the way that Google intends to serve ads alongside incoming mail is coming under criticism, as noted in this...
April 1, 2004
A positive Internet story? Gmail cometh
In a turnaround for the UK press, a story about the Internet has made the front page of the Evening Standard - the beta launch of Google's Gmail - and it isn't couched in negative terms!...