March 2008 Archives
March 31, 2008
Google hijacks traffic from newspaper site search
There has been a controversy over the last couple of weeks about Google's introduction of 'Search in search' boxes. For some large web properties who appear at #1 for their brand name, Google has been adding a search box underneath their listing, allowing users to refine their search to get results for just the one domain. Amazon and Flickr are a couple of examples of where this has been introduced, although Amazon seem to have got the feature squashed. I...
March 30, 2008
When is a stolen photo not a stolen photo?
Earlier this week I was just about to post an item to del.icio.us, when I came to a shuddering and furious halt. No, not because the post I was about to bookmark was giving away the python code to break the captcha of my favourite social bookmarking service, but because of the header image on the Blue Hat SEO blog. It was one of my pictures from my travels around Europe a couple of years back! Now, I was sure...
March 29, 2008
Postcard from Macau #10: The grave of the magnetic telegraph engineer
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. As Macau was a Portuguese colony, the chief denomination of Christianity in the region was Roman Catholicism. That meant that for many...
March 28, 2008
'RSS Feeds: Managing the Mechanism' article for FUMSI
I've contributed an article about managing your consumption of RSS feeds to the Manage area of the FUMSI site - 'RSS Feeds: Managing the Mechanism'. If you get the FreePint newsletter you may have already seen the promotional blurb for the article. "Martin Belam explains the ins and outs of RSS -- not the technology or mechanics of it, but the nitty-gritty of managing yet another information stream on a desktop already close to bursting with resources. He provides practical...
Postcard from Macau #9: Information design on Macau's transport system
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. Whilst I was staying in Macau I mostly got around by public transport. There is an excellent network of buses across the...
March 27, 2008
Yuri Gagarin: March 9, 1934 - March 27, 1968
It is forty years today since Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, was killed in a plane crash. He was just 34, and died before the cold war space race reached its climax. He never saw a man walk on the moon. Over the years there have been various theories about what caused Gagarin's death during a MiG-15UTI training flight, and even as recently as a couple of years ago there were moves in Russia to re-open the files...
March 26, 2008
Son of a glitch
It has been a bit glitchy here on currybetdotnet over the last couple of days. Today my del.icio.us links didn't post automatically. At this distance it is difficult to tell whether that was a problem at their end, whether my server was down or unresponsive when del.icio.us tried, or whether there was some kind of special character in the package it sent that caused Movable Type to shy away from publishing. It meant I had to put them in by...
Postcard from Macau #8: David Beckham in Hong Kong
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. Whilst I was in Macau last month, it seemed simply churlish not to take the hour ferry ride across the Pearl River...
March 25, 2008
The Daily Express is back on the McCann case
When you are young and you fall off your bike, you are often told that the best thing to do is to get straight back on it again. And it must have been that kind of week for the Daily Express, as they took their first baby-steps backs into reporting the Madeleine McCann case in the post-front page apology era. Their first story online since the apology concerned Robert Murat, someone else whose life has been changed irrevocably by British...
Postcard from Macau #7: Information design in 3 languages
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. The unique appeal of Macau is that it is a former Portuguese colony located in Southern China. In fact, it is less...
March 24, 2008
A great visual way to advertise your blog's highlights
One of the blogs about internet marketing and blogging that I regularly get directed to via Sphinn and various link-dumps is Skelliewag. The last time I was visiting, one interesting feature caught my eye - the way that the blog highlights the most popular posts from the site. Most blogs, if they have a favourite or popular posts panel, simply list the titles of the articles. Skelliewag takes a more graphical approach, and in the right-hand panel of the page...
March 23, 2008
Postcard from Macau #6: The land of SMS spam
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. Macau's telecomms industry seems to have a great deal of competition in the mobile network sector. With leaks from mainland China, at...
March 22, 2008
Postcard from Macau #5: Hong Kong's Edison Chen sex photo scandal rumbles on
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. "As of this evening, the police have made significant advances towards solving this malicious crime. As from the beginning I will continue...
March 21, 2008
'Spyware!' or 'How I ditched Windows and learned to love the Mac'
I'm one of those people who have been happily running Windows on PCs since the early nineties, and have never had any problems with virus infections, adware, spyware, or other malicious programs. In fact, I'd quite got myself into the self-righteous position of thinking that anybody who did have problems clearly didn't know what they were doing with computers. So, it was somewhat dispiriting last month to discover that my laptop was riddled with a horrible infection. I know exactly...
March 20, 2008
Postcard from Macau #4: Hong Kong's missing TV archive
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. In the first of my posts about my recent trip to Macau, I mentioned the Sunday Morning Post. This is an English...
March 19, 2008
The online fall-out of the Daily Express apology to Madeleine McCann's family
There is only one story about the media in today's media, and that is the story of the Daily Express making a front page apology to the family of missing Madeleine McCann. There is plenty of fall-out from the apology on the web as well, where the story was the lead item this morning, with the additional admission: "Please note that, for legal reasons, we have disabled reader comments on this article". The effects are felt strongest if you try...
Woman's Own gets a print 'blog'
You'll do almost anything to keep yourself amused in an airport whilst waiting for a flight. On Monday in Heathrow's godforsaken Terminal 2, that included flicking through a copy of "Woman's Own". Well, a man has to get his fill of celebrity gossip, female health problems and lead interviewee Piers Morgan. At the back of the mag was the "Woman's Own" 'interactive' section, called 'Chat Room - Your life, your opinions, your page'. I was more interested in this than...
March 18, 2008
Postcard from Macau #3: An idiot's guide to Chinese piracy
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. The south-east Asian region has long been reputed as a hotbed of CD and DVD piracy. I saw many stores selling 'suspect'...
March 17, 2008
Postcard from Macau #2: Measuring customer satisfaction at the Chinese border
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. During my stay in Macau I made a day trip into China proper. Macau is a 'Special Administrative Region' as part of...
March 16, 2008
Postcard from Macau #1: Selling adverts in the Chinese 'free' press
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. One of the English language newspapers available in Macau is the South China Morning Post. The first weekend I was in the...
March 15, 2008
Would you like to buy some advertising on ($name)?
I get all manner of emails from people and spambots asking if I want to participate in spammy link exchange scams or take up some 'paid link advertising opportunities'. Seldom have I seen as much incompetence in a single spammy email as in this one I received recently. First of all, if you are going to send crappy marketing mail, try and get your names consistent. Uh-huh, so you are George Nelson, using the email account belonging to Selby Wiggins,...
March 14, 2008
The long (monkey) tail of YouTube
I got an email alert from YouTube a while back, informing me that someone had left a comment on my YouTube clip of a monkey teasing a pig which we saw in Salzburg Zoo last winter. XXRevolveXX had said: "that monkey needs a life" I was just in the middle of composing some witty retort about pots / kettles and the fact that XXRevolveXX had frittered away a minute watching the monkey with no life, when I noticed something I...
March 13, 2008
Making the most of blog comments: Part 13 - 'The best of' comments on currybetdotnet
I recently published the 2000th comment here on currybetdotnet, which was ironically an apology from me to regular comment contributor James Cridland. Reaching that milestone was one of the catalysts for thinking about the ways that comments can be brought to the fore on a blog, and writing this series of articles. I wanted to finish the series by picking back through some of those now 2000+ contributions to the site, remembering some of my favourites. Every now and...
March 12, 2008
Making the most of blog comments: Part 12 - Using comments to defuse complaints
I've been writing a lengthy series of posts looking at several aspects of running comments on a blog site. This week I've been looking at participation and moderation. Today I want to look at how having a comment facility on your site can help defuse difficult situations. Using comments to handle complaints In the five years I've been running this blog, I've only really had 3 serious complaints about the content on the site. (Which is a slightly better...
March 11, 2008
Making the most of blog comments: Part 11 - Everything in moderation
Earlier in this series of posts about blog comments, I looked at some of the implementation issues. This week I'm looking at some of the 'softer' skills involved in having comments on your blog site. Today I want to look at comment 'moderation'. For many people, the word 'moderation' is simply synonymous with censorship, and conjures up images of faceless minions at major publishers deciding what can or cannot be said on the Internet. However, anyone who publishes any...
March 10, 2008
Making the most of blog comments: Part 10 - Participation, participation, participation
So far in this series of posts about comment functionality on blog sites, I've been looking more at the nuts'n'bolts of implementation, and how people make comments available on their sites. This week I want to look at some of the 'softer skills' involved in keeping active comments on your blog, starting with participation. One of the reasons that the blogosphere is often described as a 'conversation' space is because adding comments to blog posts allows a discussion to...
March 9, 2008
Promoting bands online in 1995 - Telwhat Mutelibtech to where?
I love stumbling across little bits of nostalgia about the way computers used to be - whether it is an old guide to getting online, or a basic instruction book for programming micro-computers. I spotted another one the other week. I was going through and ripping some CDs to iTunes - a process which I'm guessing, like the UK, may technically be illegal in Greece - when I came across a Freepost mailing slip card in Nitzer Ebb's dismal final...
March 8, 2008
The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Doctor Whoniverse
Thirty years ago today, at 10:30pm on a Wednesday night, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a new landmark sci-fi comedy - the first part of Douglas Adam's "The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy". I was first introduced to the radio series by a school friend. Staying round his house in the early 80s, we'd stay up as late as we could get away with, listening to some C90 recordings he had of the episodes. He didn't have totally impeccable taste mind...
March 7, 2008
Can domain names predict where Euro2016 will be held?
Whilst I was in the middle of researching the websites associated with this year's Africa Cup of Nations, it suddenly occurred to me to check whether a website had been set-up for Poland and Ukraine's joint Euro2012 tournament. Since UEFA recently issued a stern warning (stern for them, anyway) expressing concern about the pace of preparations, I was pleasantly surprised that the domain is registered and already pointing to UEFA. Which got me thinking about euro2016.com and beyond. It seems...
March 6, 2008
Making the most of blog comments: Part 9 - Future blog comment interfaces
I've been writing a series of posts looking at the way that comments are implemented on blog sites. This week I've been concentrating on some of the usability and interface issues with the process. The blog comment format is a well established model on the Internet now, but it is also quite a constricting and linear one. I've been thinking about some ways that the next generation of blogging platforms may be able to improve on the model. The...
March 5, 2008
Making the most of blog comments: Part 8 - Comment usability
A couple of weeks back I began a series of articles looking at how you can implement comments in your blog in a way that gets the best value out of them. Yesterday I began looking at some of the usability aspects of blog comment systems, examining the different ways that comment forms are placed. Today I wanted to look at some good tips for technical implementation. Don't use rel="nofollow" The concept of rel="nofollow" was introduced by Google as...
March 4, 2008
Making the most of blog comments: Part 7 - Comment form positioning
A couple of weeks ago I began looking at the implementation of comment functionality on blogs. I'm intrigued that comments are accepted as one of the primary enabling features of the 'blogosphere' conversation, but that much of the functionality around them hasn't changed since blogs first emerged. Over the next few days I wanted to look at some of the usability issues that can occur with comments on a blog. I wanted to start by looking at the layout...
March 3, 2008
What difference does it make? Adding Wikipedia style 'diffs' to BBC News
I was giving some thought to the frequent requests that the BBC's news site make its editing more transparent and accountable by retaining each version of an article on the site, a 'diff' if you like, in the style of Wikipedia. On the face of it, it seems like a simple feature to implement, with some obvious advantages, but I've also been thinking about some of the practical problems it might present. As always seems to be the case with...
March 2, 2008
Doctor Who and The Pirates
In the 1960s, as Patrick Troughton's era drew to a close, Doctor Who faced The Space Pirates. By the 2000s it was Internet pirates who posed a threat to the Doctor's adventures. Audio drama producers Big Finish have found their officially licenced Doctor Who stories leaking onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. To help combat this, they've launched their own legal download service. I spoke to Paul Wilson from Big Finish about the 'battlefield' they face. A little while ago I...
March 1, 2008
Watching Swatch 25 years later
It is twenty-five years today since 80s style icon the Swatch entered the market. As a tweenager in the early eighties, naturally I had a Swatch. However, as a fledgling moody indie kid I had the least colourful design available - mostly grey with a hint of black. They didn't do a 'goth' edition at the time, so it looked a bit like an earlier version of this model. The trick that Swatch successfully pulled off was to sell a...