January 2008 Archives
January 31, 2008
IA Summit bloggers
The programme for the 2008 IA Summit features 100 people either talking, hosting workshops or presenting posters. I was interested to see how many of those have blogs, and thought it might help shape my opinions as to which sessions I shall be attending at the conference. Having done the legwork to trawl through the list looking for bloggers, I also thought it might be nice to share. I found 37 participants with personal blogs that looked active. I've...
24/7 TV news websites: Part 16 - "Most Popular"
One of the user interaction elements I've been fascinated with over the years has been in the ways that people illustrate the activity that is taking place on their site. A visit to a website is often undertaken alone, in the sterile environment of using a computer. Visiting a site that lets you know that other people read this, or that people emailed this to a friend, or that popular searches are x, y and z, gives a site a...
January 30, 2008
Google blocks access to the Biased BBC blog via search
UPDATE - Blogger appears to be serving the site from www.biased-bbc.blogspot.com now, after an interuption of at least 18 hours or so here in Greece - so move along now, nothing to see here... This one probably needs filing under "D'oh! The humanity", but at the moment on Google, if you search for Biased BBC, the top result leads you to a blank page on the Blogspot domain rather than the blog itself. I noticed it after I made...
24/7 TV news websites: Part 15 - Lateral and related navigation II
As part of my look at the websites of 8 24/7 TV news channels, I've been reviewing the types of related and lateral navigation they use. Yesterday I looked at Al Jazeera, the BBC, CNN and Euronews. Today it is the turn of the other 4 sites in my survey - France 24, ITN, Russia Today and Sky News. I haven't done an exhaustive survey of all the variations and permutations available on each site. Instead, I took a screengrab...
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...
24/7 TV news websites: Part 14 - Lateral and related navigation I
In the previous post in my ever-lengthier look at the websites of 24/7 TV news channels, I examined some of the types of global navigation that the sites had in common. Today I wanted to start looking at the ways that users are encouraged to move between stories. In general the dominant types of page on a news site are the 'story page', and the 'index page' which carries links through to various 'story pages', usually arranged into a hierarchy...
January 28, 2008
IA for tiny stuff: Exploring widgets and gadgets at the 2008 IA Summit in Miami
If you've been following my travel plans via Dopplr (and if you aren't, you are very welcome to) you'll have noticed that a few weeks ago I added a trip to Miami in April. With the publication of the conference programme at the weekend, I'm very excited to be able to confirm that I am going to be speaking at the 2008 IA Summit. I will be presenting "IA for tiny stuff: Exploring widgets and gadgets". You can find the...
24/7 TV news websites: Part 13 - Global navigation and classification
I've been doing a series of articles looking at the websites of some of Europe's leading 24/7 English language TV news channels. This week I wanted to concentrate on some of the ways that the sites handle navigation issues. For a start we should note that all of the sites use nearly exactly the same type of global navigation structures. Links to stories are grouped into clusters by either the geographical locations of stories (e.g. UK, Middle East), or by...
January 27, 2008
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell on the web
"I do not read novels - I am happy to say that I have never read one - but I understand that they enjoy a certain popularity among the more frivolous classes of society. Young ladies; married ladies; old maids; thoughtless young persons of both sexes; gamblers, profligates and libertines; servants who, whether by accident or design, have acquired an education beyond their station: these are the idle creatures who may be found at any hour of the night or...
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 25, 2008
FAQ you! ACAP doesn't do 'attribution' for critics
A couple of months back I wrote a post - ACAP - flawed and broken from the start? - about the launch of a new standard for controlling the indexing of web material by search engines. I wanted to pick up on it again for a couple of reasons. The first is to point out that I have updated the original article with a correction. In the course of it I claimed that the ACAP file generation tools didn't work...
January 24, 2008
24/7 TV news websites: Part 12 - Search III
Over the last couple of days I've been specifically looking at the search features on the web sites offered by the Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Euronews, France 24, ITN, Russia Today and Sky News sites. Or, in the case of Euronews, not looking at them. I've put together a feature comparison chart of what I saw, but before getting to that, I wanted to look at some general trends I noticed. Search box placement is nearly uniform All of the...
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...
Metro solves the mystery of Heath Ledger's death
Perhaps they needed to spend a little longer thinking about how the stories worked together on the front page this morning?...
24/7 TV news websites: Part 11 - Search II
Over the last couple of weeks I've been writing about the websites belonging to a group of 8 24/7 news channels that broadcast in English in Europe. In the last part I began an overview of the search facilities offered online by each site - starting with Al Jazeera, the BBC, CNN and the non-existent search facility of Euronews. Today I wanted to look at search across France 24, ITN, Russia Today and Sky News. France 24 France 24...
January 22, 2008
Pearson profits all round
I note from the Business section of The Guardian today that it has been an excellent year for educational publisher Pearson. Financial Times publisher Pearson has predicted that a record year for its education arm will mean its full-year results could beat the City's expectations. The home of Penguin books and the world's biggest education materials business said it is expecting another year of record profits for 2007. Pearson said its dominant textbooks and examinations arm has "continued to perform...
24/7 TV news websites: Part 10 - Search
Having individually reviewed the websites of 8 24/7 news channels that broadcast in Europe to identify their Web 2.0 type features, I wanted to look specifically at the way they handle a very Web 1.0 piece of functionality - search. Al Jazeera Al Jazeera is the only site I looked at with a search service that does not have a search box on the homepage, or in the templates of story pages. Instead, the user has to select a text...
January 21, 2008
24/7 TV news websites: Part 9 - Sky News
Two weeks ago, when I started this series of posts looking at the Web 2.0 features of 24/7 news websites, I intended to look at 8 news providers - based on the fact that they are widely available in the English language in Europe. So far I've examined the sites belonging to Al Jazeera, the BBC, CNN, Euronews, France 24, ITN and Russia Today. In this review I want to look at Sky News. One thing I noted about Sky...
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 19, 2008
Never mind the MacBook Air hype - it's happy 25th birthday to the Apple Lisa
Over the last few days I've steadfastly avoided writing about the blogging and twittering hype around Macworld. This is not especially because I'm an Apple naysayer, but I'm certainly not a fanatic. I think Apple make some very good products with some gorgeous packaging, but I also think they enjoy an incredible 'brand halo' which allows them to get away relatively uncriticised for quite major flaws like battery life and replacement issues, and over-charging UK customers on iTunes. [1] One...
January 18, 2008
24/7 TV news websites: Part 8 - Russia Today
Over the last week or so I've been reviewing the Web 2.0 credentials of the websites of the 24/7 news channels most widely available in English in Europe. Some of them, like the BBC, CNN, France 24 and ITN have several features which echo the most recent developments on the internet. Others, like Al Jazeera and Euronews are much more static old-fashioned affairs. Today I wanted to look at the English language version of the Russia Today site. The site...
January 17, 2008
24/7 TV news websites: Part 7 - ITN
Over the last few days I've been looking at I've the websites of Europe and the UK's English language 24/7 news channels, exploring the Web 2.0 features they offer. So far I've looked at Al Jazeera, the BBC, CNN, Euronews and France 24. Today I wanted to turn my attentions to the ITN website. Without a parent channel, which was closed in December 2005, and with minimal branding these days on ITV for their productions, their site has little to...
January 16, 2008
Mark Thompson survives online Telegraph grilling
BBC Director-General Mark Thompson did an online question and answer session with The Telegraph newspaper yesterday. I can't, off the top of my head, think of a more potentially hostile environment for him, except perhaps the bits of the BBC in White City and Bristol that used to make Factual programming. Actually, those BBC staff appeared to be joining in the debate anyway - this proposed question caught my eye: "Why is the BBC clinging onto minority channels such as...
24/7 TV news websites: Part 6 - France 24
I've been reviewing the websites of Europe's leading English language 24/7 news channels, looking for the kinds of Web 2.0 features like blogging, social bookmarking, and RSS feeds that they offer. So far I've looked at Al Jazeera, the BBC, CNN and Euronews. Today I'm turning my attention to France 24. This state-funded station opened in 2006, and is intended to provide a French antidote to the perception that the news agenda is dominated by the priorities of the UK...
January 15, 2008
Now the Daily Express RSS feeds are in Latin
There is something very wrong with the RSS feeds from the Daily Express - and I don't just mean that the constant focus on Diana makes it look like they are ten years out-of-date. I've already written about how I had to pull the Express content from the Chipwrapper sports feed, as the stories in it still have Sam Allardyce at Newcastle, and Fabio Capello denying links with Liverpool - December 5th was the last time the feed updated. I've...
24/7 TV news websites: Part 5 - Euronews
Last week I started a series of posts looking at the websites of Europe's leading 24/7 TV news channels in the English language. Having looked at Al Jazeera, the BBC and CNN, this week I wanted to start with Euronews. Euronews is a partially EU-funded station owned by a conglomerate of 19 broadcasters across Europe. The Euronews website comes in 7 languages - English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian. RSS feeds Euronews does publish RSS feeds, and 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...
January 13, 2008
The worst flag icons in the world...ever!
For reasons that will shortly become clear, I've been scouting around the internet for a set of small graphics to represent European flags. Of course I could make them myself, but I've no doubt somebody has already done that for me, and if I've learnt one thing from bad Perl scripting over the years, it is to look for prior art and shortcuts. What I won't be using, is this set of flag favicons from ClickFire. Note: since we used...
January 12, 2008
Google DMCA complaint follow-up
I rather suspected that when I issued a DMCA complaint to Google over the 3 websites systematically ripping off the content of currybetdotnet on the Blogger platform that it wasn't going to be a simple process. Yesterday I hit the first hurdle with the initial response I received from Google. It was very nice and legal and polite and everything, but I'd made a mistake with the process. "We have received your DMCA complaint regarding <snip>.blogspot.com, <snip>.blogspot.com and <snip>.blogspot.com dated...
January 11, 2008
24/7 TV news websites: Part 4 - CNN
This week I have started a series of posts looking at the Web 2.0 features of 24/7 TV news websites. I started with the English edition of the Al Jazeera site, and the BBC News site. I'd like to finish this week's posts with a look at CNN. CNN is very proud to have been the first 24 hour news network to migrate onto the web, launching their site in August of what now seems the pre-historic era of 1995....
January 10, 2008
24/7 TV news websites: Part 3 - BBC
I'm doing a series of posts looking at the Web 2.0 aspects of the websites run by the 24/7 TV news channels that are widely available in Europe and particularly in the UK. Yesterday I started with a look at the English language edition of the Al Jazeera site, today I want to turn my attention to the BBC. The first thing to note is that, speaking from experience, within the BBC it all makes perfect sense, but the branding...
January 9, 2008
The wit and wisdom of the Daily Express reader
I noticed late last night via the wonder of Firefox's Live Bookmarks and the Chipwrapper Headlines RSS feed that the Daily Express was leading online with the story 'MAGISTRATE PUNISHED IN VEIL ROW'. It told the story of a public servant who walked out of his job without explanation, causing a trial to be re-scheduled, which wasted taxpayers money. You'd normally think the Express would be complaining about that, but since he did it in the face of the UK's...
24/7 TV news websites: Part 2 - Al Jazeera
The English language version of Al Jazeera was launched towards the close of 2006, as one of a flurry of recent new 24 hour news services that includes 2005's Russia Today, 2006's France 24, and the BBC's forthcoming Arabic TV service. The website side of the operations did not have a smooth launch. It took a few weeks until it was available regularly enough for me to be able to review it at the time, and I'm given to understand...
January 8, 2008
24/7 TV news websites: Part 1 - Introduction
There has been a massive shift in the distribution methods of the media in the last twenty-five years. First of all cable and satellite delivery of television, coupled with deregulation, vastly increased the amount of spectrum available, allowing commercial news networks to flourish. At the same time, the advent of the Internet allowed small and local operations to have a global presence. During much of this period, the word 'convergence' was on a lot of people's lips. The gadgets of...
Gene Marks is dangerously wrong about "Tech 'solutions' your small biz can't use"
A couple of days ago via the extremely useful Sphinn I was directed to an article on MSNBC by Gene Marks - "Tech 'Solutions' Your Small Biz Can't Use". In amongst it he lists RSS, blogs, SEO and Web 2.0 as tech that have no uses for the small business. Once I'd spluttered out my coffee and started hammering my outraged response, I realised it was a great bit of linkbait designed to get lots of people frothing at the...
January 7, 2008
No tick-box for me in the Online Journalism Blog survey
The Online Journalism Blog is running a quick survey to try and get some figures on who makes up their audience. I couldn't help but feel a bit alienated by the options in the first question: "Which of the following describes the area(s) in which you work:" The division of all of OJB's readers into journalist (3 types), news management (3 types), educator (2 types), student (2 types) and technical (you all look the same to me) didn't actually give...
Issuing a DMCA take-down notice to Google over splogger
For some time now the content of currybetdotnet has been routinely ripped off by a set of 'splogs' using Blogger as a platform to promote their pr0n sites. They've been converting the Feedburner email alerts you can subscribe to into regular entries on their sites. Whilst I've certainly got nothing against legal types of adult content on the internet per se, I am somewhat reluctant to have my name and content associated with it, and to run the risk of...
January 6, 2008
Who's deceiving who? The Daily Mail on Jools Holland's Hootenanny
"The Hootenanny is an idealised New Year's Eve party with a line-up that would surely be impossible to deliver on 31 December. The stellar cast and audience are, therefore, assembled to record the show in mid-December. The show is recorded 'as live', with a midnight countdown led by Jools." And with those words in early December, the BBC's Press Office launched the Corporation's cunning plan to deceive viewers about whether Jools Holland's annual knees-up was a live show... ...well, at...
January 5, 2008
Response to my 'DRM for vinyl' article on Idolator
My post about analogue rights management for vinyl was mentioned on the Idolator blog (via No Rock And Roll Fun's bookmark) where DENNISOBELL left an interesting comment. They suggest that my recollections of it being in the late 70s are a few years out. "I can narrow this down for the poor guy: he failed copy-protection for analog sources dates to the late 1980s -- I know, because I remember reading about it in either High Fidelity or Stereo Review...
January 4, 2008
Audiophile pressings - where the maufacturing process is more important than the music
Over the last few days I've been writing about some of the variations there were on good-old fashioned vinyl LPs, looking at physical materials like Dynaflex, obscure formats like Quadraphonic Sound, and the 1970s attempt to embed copy-protection within vinyl pressings. When I used to work in the rarities department of Reckless, there was another particularly special brand of vinyl - audiophile pressings. Audiophile pressings, during the 80s and 90s at least, were the specialist preserve of a couple of...
January 3, 2008
Dynaflex - RCA's 1970s ultra-thin vinyl
Yesterday I was writing about the 1970s surround-sound solution - Quadraphonic. It never caught on, and really it was ahead of its time. It wasn't until home-cinema systems and digital surround sound became a possibility that the concept gained mainstream consumer viability. Quadraphonic records were rare though, and when I worked at Reckless we used to have a special mailing list of quad-buffs who we let know when we obtained any. Quadraphonic wasn't the only special format of vinyl LP...
January 2, 2008
Top Gear the second most popular downloaded TV show on BitTorrent
Yesterday TorrentFreak published an end of year round-up of Top 10 Most Pirated Movies and TV Shows of 2007. Nestling in amongst the usual suspect at #2 in the TV chart was the BBC's Top Gear. Top 10 TV downloads - Most popular episode on Mininova 1. Heroes (2,439,154) 2. Top Gear (1,217,923) 3. Battlestar Galactica (706,209) 4. Lost (705,724) 5. Prison Break (608,487) 6. Desperate Housewives (457,805) 7. 24 (524,303) 8. Family Guy (522,839) 9. Dexter (435,670) 10. Scrubs...
Quadraphonic: The forgotten surround sound of the 70s
Yesterday, when I was writing about the aborted attempt of the music industry to put some kind of copy-protection system into vinyl, I mentioned in passing an old friend of the family, who had hoped that his decoder gizmo to bypass the system would make him rich. He was also the only person I ever encountered with a Quadraphonic sound set-up. Quadraphonic is the forgotten surround sound system of the 1970s. It was never a huge commercial success, in part...
January 1, 2008
Copy-protection for vinyl in the 1970s
When I was thinking about an iconography for DRM, I began to think back to the old days of recording vinyl onto my portable tape deck using a 5-pin DIN plug to connect the two machines, the advent of tape-to-tape decks, and being poised over the pause button to record tracks from John Peel sessions. It was all so simple and blissfully analogue in those days, without a hint of copy protection in place. Well, that isn't strictly true. I...