May 2008 Archives
May 31, 2008
A spelling test I've enjoyed - using the Spellr.us beta
I've been lucky enough to get a beta invite to test Spellr.us, which is a new web service for testing the spelling on your website. As someone with a long list of regular typos behind him on this blog, I thought it might be rather useful. Getting started was very easy - I simply followed the email invitation and put in the credentials they'd supplied, and I was up and running. Of course, with it being a beta test, there...
May 30, 2008
Euro 2008 host cities on the web: Vienna
In 30 days time the winners of Euro 2008 will be receiving the Henri Delaunay trophy in the Ernst Happel stadium. Before the whole tournament gets under way, I've been writing a series of posts looking at the official information being made available online by the eight host cities. So far I've looked at three cities in Austria. Salzburg, where I used to live, as well as Klagenfurt and Innsbruck. Today I'm looking at Austria's capital city, where the...
May 29, 2008
Euro 2008 host cities on the web: Innsbruck
I've been doing a series of posts looking at the online information available about the host cities at Euro 2008, which kicks off in just over a week's time. So far I've covered Salzburg and Klagenfurt in Austria. Today it is the turn of Innsbruck, where Spain, Sweden and Russia will be playing matches as part of Group D. Innsbruck The official Innsbruck city site has content about the tournament in English and German. There is also a site...
May 28, 2008
So what *was* on TV the last time England didn't reach the European Championsip?
Today England embark on their warm-up campaign for not playing in Euro2008 with a friendly against the USA. It got me thinking (again) about the last time England didn't feature in a European Championship Finals. Actually, when it comes down to it, England have a pretty dismal record in the Euro finals. Although at the time it was considered disappointing to exit the quarter-finals on penalties against Portugal four years ago, that and the semi-final appearance in 1996 are...
May 27, 2008
Google News and the missing Mayor from Henley
Most people building search services of any type hold Google up as their benchmark, so it always nice to be reminded that the search giant can be fallible as well. I was recently having a look at the advanced search features they offer on Google News UK. These include some options to limit results by date, which are not sadly available on the general web index, otherwise I'd introduce date-sorting and date restrictions to Chipwrapper in a flash. Google News...
Euro 2008 host cities on the web: Klagenfurt
I was looking yesterday at the information available online about Salzburg hosting three games at Euro 2008. If my plans to get tickets had gone right, as well as two matches in Salzburg, where I used to live, I would have been going to see Germany play Croatia in Klagenfurt. As part of a series of posts looking at the information the Euro 2008 host cities have made available online, here is what I would have found if I'd...
May 26, 2008
Euro 2008 host cities on the web: Salzburg
If the random number generator employed by UEFA in their ticket ballots had been calibrated a bit differently, right now I would be in the last stages of planning my trip back to Salzburg in Austria to see some matches at Euro 2008. I put my ticket application in before the final draw was known, and, as it turned out, I would have had tickets to see two matches featuring my adopted homeland of Greece. But it wasn't 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...
May 24, 2008
How was it for you? A month of Twittering
I've just spent quite a few weeks away from home, first in Miami for the IA Summit, then in London where I was working with The Guardian and another couple of media clients. Whilst I was in the UK I adopted Twitter for the first time. So how did I find it? Not the SMS please First off, I found that once I'd initially configured Twitter to SMS me updates, I pretty soon switched that off and restricted the service...
May 23, 2008
Newspapers and the movies: The future
The challenge of 'new' media Yesterday I was looking at what I see as parallel challenges and developments within the movie and newspaper industries. New Media has provided a complex array of challenges to traditional media activities, but I think the impact on film and newspapers can be gathered together under two broad themes - an attack on revenue generation, and an attack on 'attention'. Attack on revenue generation The movie industry argument about revenue is a simple one. The...
May 22, 2008
Newspapers and the movies: The past
The other day I was asked by someone to give my 'manifesto' for how newspapers should be adapting to new media, which basically boiled down to "Stop doing stuff badly". The byword for coping badly with the new media era is the music industry. A lot of the time when people are discussing the economic impact that new media has had on the newspaper industry, the music industry is cited as the obvious parallel example of a medium disrupted by...
May 21, 2008
Here we go again...not that bloggers vs journalists debate
Yesterday I asked the question whether you could trust a media blogger, looking at my own account of Adrian Monck's recent book launch. The answer, that I hoped people did trust my account, and that I expect I have a much stronger relationship with my limited band of readers than many mainstream broadcasters or journalists can have, revived the age-old journalists vs. bloggers debate. At Adrian Monck's "Can you trust the media" event, Andrew Gilligan said that 'even if everybody...
May 20, 2008
"Can you trust a media blogger?"
A couple of weeks ago I went to the launch of Adrian Monck's "Can You Trust The Media?" and I wrote up an account of it for my blog. That somewhat begged the question: "Can you trust a media blogger?". Reviews of the book have appeared in The Observer, The Guardian and on the blog of Charlie Beckett. Obviously, as these have been sanctioned by the 'great-and-good' of mainstream media these are valid reviews. But what about my account of...
May 19, 2008
Now and then at Green Park
Occasionally, as the London Underground gets re-fitted and re-developed, you get a glimpse back into time. On Monday night, leaving the Victoria Line at Green Park, I was suddenly transported back to 1992. The poster sites at the foot of the escalators have been peeled back to reveal adverts for, amongst other things, Pritt Stick, Monument and Bruce Springsteen. Here is one of Tower Records advertising their Easter specials. It is always good to see that regardless of whether Tower...
May 18, 2008
Walthamstow's Tramways Office building
Yesterday I was writing about the origins of the name 'currybet', which developed into a regular pub crawl around Walthamstow on F.A. Cup Final day. Part of that route was always from The Bell pub to The Dog & Duck, passing one of Walthamstow's most distinctive buildings - the Tramways Office on Chingford Road. Built in 1905, and later given codename 'WW' by London Transport, the Tramways office was a hub from trams, then trolley buses, and then motor buses....
May 17, 2008
Exotic cuisine in Walthamstow
I know cuisine has got more exotic and sophisticated in the UK, but I draw the line at 'roast dog' for Sunday dinner. Today is F.A. Cup Final day, a day from which the origins of the name 'currybet' are drawn. The original 'currybet' started in 1993, and it was, literally, a bet between three friends about football, with a curry as the prize. Teams from the Premiership were divvied up at random at the start of the season, a...
May 16, 2008
Understanding young children and the commercial Internet
"There is a young and impressionable mind out there that is hungry for information. It has latched on to an electronic tube as its main source of nourishment." No, not the Internet, but television in the 1960s according to Joan Ganz Cooney. This is one of those blog posts you can probably file under "I've read it so you don't have to", as I've been ploughing my way through the recently published 58 pages of the 'Like Taking Candy From...
May 15, 2008
Zattoo and the rights holders - it is going to end in tears
I ended up watching last night's Euro Vase UEFA Cup Final rather randomly in a pub in Bayswater. Which turned out, in a Daily-Express-reader-nightmare-come-true, to be full of Zenit St. Petersburg supporters, rather than Little Englanders sticking up for our plucky North-of-the-border cousins. But I could have been watching it on Zattoo. It might sound like it could come from Eastern Europe, but Zattoo is actually a way of watching peer-to-peer delivered Internet streams of the UK's terrestrial free-to-air stations,...
Has Boris Johnson switched 'off' the Mayor of London 'ON' branding?
Within a day of Boris Johnson announcing his initiative to ban alcohol on London's Transport network, posters started appearing about it on the Underground. I noticed something interesting on them. Since the inception of the office of the London Mayor, publicity material that has passed through the Mayor's office has had a distinctive branding - 'MAYOR OF LONDON', with the last two letters picked out in a different colour. Generally this has been blue with the last two letters in...
May 14, 2008
Newspaper widget review: Facebook Applications
I recently gave a presentation at the Miami IA Summit about Information Architecture and user-centred design ideas for widgets, and I very often blog about newspaper websites on currybetdotnet, so it seemed like an obvious idea to put the two together, and blog about newspaper widgets. In the previous two posts I've looked at the Yahoo! Widgets and Google Gadget platforms. Today I want to turn my attention to the Internet darling of 2007, Facebook. About Facebook Applications The decision...
May 13, 2008
Daily Mail 'fat dog' article takes the copyright biscuit
Now, remind me again, what is it that newspaper publishers are always saying about respecting copyright? I only ask because of this article on the Daily Mail site today about fat pets. As I scrolled down I recognised one of the dogs pictured. He is a local chum of ours from Chania harbour. In fact, I recognised the photograph - posted to Flickr by polietileno. The unnamed Daily Mail journalist who put the article together appears to have simply searched...
Newspaper widget review: Google Gadgets
I recently gave a presentation at the Miami IA Summit about Information Architecture and user-centred design ideas for widgets, and I very often blog about newspaper websites on currybetdotnet, so it seemed like an obvious idea to put the two together, and blog about newspaper widgets. In the previous post, I looked at the Yahoo! Widgets platform, and was surprised to find that only one British newspaper seemed to feature in any widgets - The Independent. Today I'm turning my...
May 12, 2008
Newspaper widget review: Yahoo! Widgets
I recently gave a presentation at the Miami IA Summit about Information Architecture and user-centred design ideas for widgets, and I very often blog about newspaper websites on currybetdotnet, so it seemed like an obviously great idea to put the two together, and blog about newspaper widgets. Well, obvious maybe, but it turned out not to be such a great idea after all. Rather than ending up with a lengthy series of posts looking at all the available widgets and...
May 11, 2008
When does it stop 'being' Kraftwerk?
The other day I bookmarked a story about the recent tour of the USA that Kraftwerk have just done, which culminated in their appearance at the Coachella festival. The set-list has changed slightly from when they were on their post 'Tour De France Soundtracks' world tour, but the biggest difference has been the absence of founding member Florian Schneider. There is no official word as to why he isn't on the tour. He might be ill, he might have left...
May 10, 2008
Fake plastic waste from British Airways
One of the problems with setting yourself high ethical standards in public as a brand is that you are easily judged on them. British Airways are proud of their 'green' credentials, and like to say so. "We were the first airline to produce an environmental report and we've issued an update on our progress every year since 1992." "As a global airline, we're proud to connect people, places and cultures and keep business on the move. But the freedom of...
May 9, 2008
My Favourite Tipples in Free Pint #252
I'm in this week's Free Pint Newsletter writing about my five favourite tipples. No, despite the 'pint' in the name, I don't mean mojito, rum'n'coke, frappé with Baileys, tequila or 'any fizzy lager will do', but my five favourite websites. Frankly, upon realising that I wasn't going to be able to list any websites for downloading music, video, pr0n or cracked software, I was slightly stuck as to remember what else the interweb was for ;-) In the end I...
May 8, 2008
A 'guest' review of the Miami Herald site
Whilst I was staying in Miami for the IA Summit, I couldn't help notice the building for the Miami Herald. It is near the waterfront on Bayside, and looms out at you as you cross the bridge from Miami Beach to 'Downtown'. So I thought, since I was a guest in their city, maybe they could do a guest spot in my newspaper website reviews. I had a quick look around the site to see what sort of online presence...
May 7, 2008
Looking at the 'new and improved' Telegraph news section
Last week The Telegraph launched the latest part of the re-vamp of their site. Ian Douglas posted a blog entry about it, making the point that it wasn't just about the design, but about changes at the back-end as well: "It’s much more efficient and easy to use, and the news team has been very pleased to get rid of the old system that was fiddly and demanded too much messing around with XML tags." Like The Guardian and the...
May 6, 2008
'Sorry - this page cannot be found': How newspapers handle 404 errors - Part 2
A comment when I started my recent 'Newspaper Site Search Smackdown' series of posts prompted me to go and have a look at which British newspapers use sitemap.xml files. As it turned out, it was only the Daily Mail and The Scotsman which I noticed, although The Telegraph and The Mirror and Metro have them as well. It meant that I got to have a close look at the 404 error pages generated by the others. I thought it might...
May 5, 2008
'Sorry - this page cannot be found': How newspapers handle 404 errors - Part 1
A comment when I started my recent 'Newspaper Site Search Smackdown' series of posts prompted me to go and have a look at which British newspapers use sitemap.xml files. As it turned out, it was only the Daily Mail and The Scotsman which did (well, and The Telegraph and The Mirror and Metro), which meant that I got to have a close look at the 404 error pages generated by the others. I thought it might be worth running through...
May 4, 2008
Wonderful Wifi at Walthamstow Central Library
The ratio of moaning and complaining to praise on this blog is always far too much of the former and not enough of the latter, so I thought I'd just write a few words in praise of the web services offered at Walthamstow Central Library by the London Borough of Waltham Forest. The heart of the library is a listed building. It was where, in the 1970s, I first started getting addicted to reading the Doctor Who Target books. The...
May 3, 2008
At last, some varied 'popular' search terms on the Express site
It seems I got a bit over-excited earlier this week when I wrote about the Daily Express changing two of the most popular search they list on their search results page. That appears in fact to have just been the first step towards providing a broader spread of search terms on the page. For nearly three months, the site had displayed the same set of ten search terms - including one blank one - as the most popular on the...
May 2, 2008
Can you trust going to a 'Can you trust the media?' event for a good debate?
I've been lucky enough that whilst I've been in London for a month working, there have been a couple of interesting events that I have been able to go to. Last week it was Chinwag Live, and this week it was the launch of Adrian Monck's book "Can you trust the media?". It is some testament to the openness of media professionals in the UK that you could just walk into a college and go to a debate featuring big...
Lies, damned lies, and motoring statistics in The Sun
There are lies, damned lies, and articles about motoring and crime statistics, and The Sun had an absolute classic yesterday in that genre. Topically titled 'Grand Theft Auto', the paper ran a two-page spread about the way that the motorist had become 'public enemy number one' in the last ten years, being treated as a criminal and taxed to the hilt. At the foot of the article in print was a great little box-out 'explainer': The Real Dangers IF drivers...
May 1, 2008
30 years of email spam
"What Samuel Morse was to the telegraph, what Thomas Edison was to the light bulb, Gary Thuerk is to the unsolicited e-mail advertisements popularly reviled as spam." - David Streitfeld, LA Times, May 11 2003 If you woke up this morning to an in-box deluged with unwanted email, you'll be delighted to know that today is the thirtieth anniversary of the first unsolicited mass email or, as we've come to know it, the 30th birthday of 'spam'. Well, sort of....