August 2008 Archives
August 31, 2008
The Verve - limey w%$ker c*&£s with bad teeth?
Occasionally one wanders onto a torrent site to speculatively download the odd album, to see whether it is a triumphant return, or just a load of self-indulgent tosh made by people whose musical fires burned out long ago. From the metadata, I'm guessing the person who originally uploaded The Verve's "Forth" album into the torrentsphere wasn't terribly impressed with it....
Trying out Silverlight - FAIL
I try and be platform neutral and agnostic as much as possible. This blog runs on a Debian Linux server from Bytemark, I work on a MacBook, my main PC is a Dell running Windows XP, and I get to play with the Linux-based Eee PC that my wife takes everywhere. My star sign is Libra and I like a balance in my OS experience. So I was fairly open-minded about trying out Microsoft's Silverlight. There has been some (inevitable...
August 30, 2008
The BBC's Super Cup fixture list blooper
Last night Manchester United lost to Zenit St. Petersburg in the UEFA Super Cup. The game started at 7:45 BST, but you'd have been hard pressed to find that out in advance by visiting the BBC Sport website. It looked like a classic case of your CMS content model not having some edge cases included - the edge case being British interest in the Super Cup. Last night I was trying to find out the kick-off time, and went straight...
August 29, 2008
Currybetdotnet recent comments round-up 2008-08-29
Back in February and March of this year I did a series of articles about blog comments, and one of my suggestions was that doing an occasional round-up of interesting comments was a way of making sure they got attention, particularly if they had been left on older articles. One way or another I've been in a bit of an Internet connection black hole for the last five weeks or so, and it means that the moderating of comments on...
August 28, 2008
Music from Slab!'s iron lung
This is one of those weird freaky Internet inspired co-incidence stories. In the mid-to-late eighties I was really into a pretty obscure band called "Slab!". Their first single "Mars On Ice" is still one of my favourite ever debuts, and I met the singer Stephen Dray a couple of times when seeing them at gigs. A few years back I wrote a piece about them for the BBC's Collective site, and a couple of the band got in touch with...
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]...
Telegraph redesign review - Part 3
Over the last couple of days I've been writing about my impressions of the new Telegraph web design, looking at the way they have used social media links, global navigation, and visual cues for visual content. Today I wanted to examine how the new design deals with their archives, RSS, and user-generated content. Access to the archives Tucked in the big navigation "bucket" of links at the foot of the page is a link labeled 'Archive'. It is an unassuming...
August 26, 2008
Telegraph redesign review - Part 2
A few weeks ago The Telegraph launched a new-look version for the majority of their website. Yesterday I looked at some of the issues I found with the new navigation system. I liked the simplicity of the top navigation, but was less-than-enthused about a big "bucket" of links at the foot of the page. Today I'll look at the visual cues the design gave to users about some of the paper's quirkier content, and the links to social media sites....
August 25, 2008
Telegraph redesign review - Part 1
I had a couple of people get in touch and ask if I was going to be doing a review of The Telegraph's recent re-design. In truth, with my trip to Macau, and a scarcity of Internet access over the last few weeks, the Telegraph site had been live for a while before I even got to have a peek at it out of curiosity, let alone to do an in-depth review. It didn't, at the time of writing, look...
August 24, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: London 2012
In Beijing today, at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, the Olympic Flag will be handed over to London, marking the official moment that London becomes the host of the 2012 Games. It also marks the hand-over of all of the politics, protest and dissent that usually accompanies an Olympic Games. Over the last 3 weeks I've been examining that history, from the modern founding of the Games in 1896, through the Nazi Olympics of 1936, the protest-laden...
August 23, 2008
"Land of the mascots"
I spent the build-up and start of the Olympics in Macau, which had certainly dressed itself up to celebrate the occasion. You couldn't move for 'The Fuwa', the five Olympic mascots. 'Beibei', 'Jingjing', 'Huanhuan', 'Yingying' and 'Nini' were everywhere you looked, decorating roundabouts, lamp-posts, and posters. 'Yingying' obviously wasn't prepared for the typhoon that hit whilst I was there though! Even Macau's greatest landmarks were not immune. The ruins of the Church of St Paul are arguably the distinctive...
August 22, 2008
So, when exactly did Peking become Beijing? And why?
Over here in Greece the Olympics are being broadcast by state channel ΕΡΤ. It took me a few days to realise that the phrase ΠΕΚΙΝΟ 2008 that swooshed across their coverage was effectively the Greek for Peking, rather than using a transliteration of Beijing. That prompted me to wonder when Peking had actually become Beijing. I mean, when I grew up the capital city of China was most definitely Peking. Then again, when I grew up there was a...
A brief history of Olympic dissent: Beijing 2008
During the course of the Olympics I've been looking at the history of dissent, protest, politics and terrorism associated with the Games. The 2008 organisers must have hoped that following the disruption to this year's international Torch Relay, they had seen the last of such incidents. However, it wasn't to be, and even before the glittering opening ceremony there had been terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, and 'Free Tibet' protests in Beijing. Even the ceremony itself came in for criticism...
August 21, 2008
Celebrate the Olympic handover to London on Flickr and YouTube
In just a few days time, at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, China will hand over the Olympic flag to London. I'm quite relieved it is just the flag actually, because I had this terrible mental image of them handing over the Olympic Flame, and then Boris having to keep it burning in his draw in City Hall for the next four years. He'll be receiving the flag though, from the Mayor of Beijing, in a handover ceremony...
Olympic milk, or gold medal substitute?
When I was in Macau, it wasn't just the clothing industry that was hi-jacking the Olympic brand and symbols to try and sell products. Take something as mundane as milk for example. Going to the local corner shop or supermarket presented you with a choice. You could either buy an official, Olympic endorsed "Milk Beverage"... ...or you could pick up the Kowloon Dairy's Gold Medal "Milk Drink"...
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 19, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: Sydney 2000
To accompany the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games I've been writing a series of posts looking at the history of politics, protest and dissent since their modern beginning in Athens in 1896. The Games celebrating a century of modern Olympiads were marred by a terrorist attack by an American anti-abortion campaigner Eric Rudolf. He killed one person in an explosion at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park. The next Olympics were also marking a significant numerical milestone - the dawning of the...
August 18, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: Atlanta 1996
I've been writing a series of posts looking at the history of politics, protest and dissent at the Olympic Games. On two occasions that dissent has turned into murderous terrorism. In 1972 there was an attack on the Israeli delegation that left 11 dead. In 1996 it was domestic American terrorism that killed two people and wounded over 100 others, when a bomb was placed at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. The bombing Alice Hawthorne was killed in Atlanta's...
August 17, 2008
The Olympic Swim-O-Matic on display in Macau
Unlike at Euro2008, where UEFA's top sponsors had billboards all over the stadia, one of the challenges of sponsoring or being a marketing partner at the Olympics is that you can't directly advertise within the sporting arenas themselves. Marketing activity has to take place away from the Games, and, as I saw in Macau, is at risk of being usurped by 'fake' Olympic branding. There was a lot of official marketing around as well, and Olympic timekeepers Omega had...
August 16, 2008
Macau presents for your enjoyment....Olympic horse-back fencing!
As I mentioned, I was in Macau during the build-up and start of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Although Macau is a 'Special Administrative Region' of China, and so under a different legislative framework, the area is still proud to be associated with hosting the Olympics. There are street signs and evidence of Olympic-related activity almost everywhere you go. Macau is an interesting area because of the mix of the Chinese population with the Portuguese heritage of the former colony....
August 15, 2008
'Lost playlists' and Chipwrapper in the Guardian's Music sections
I've had a couple of mentions in the Guardian's music section recently. You may have spotted in my Delicious links that Steven Wells described blogging list-making music fans as "the antithesis of rock'n'roll" on the Guardian Music blog, citing "Lifetime of lost playlists" as a prime example. There was also a mention for Chipwrapper at the weekend, in Johnny Dee's piece about the history of the "Now That's What I Call Music" albums - 'NOW that's what I call a...
A brief history of Olympic dissent: Seoul 1988 & Barcelona 1992
As this years' Olympic Games have been progressing, I've been writing a series of posts looking at the complex history of politics, protest and dissent at the Olympics since their modern inception in 1896. The first two summer Olympiads held during the 1980s both suffered from Cold War boycotts. The US led a coalition of countries who refused to attend Moscow in 1980, and the Soviet Union and the countries in their sphere of influence stayed away from the...
August 14, 2008
BBC News in-line text links trial out in the wild
I had my first brush with the BBC News trial of inline text links today - on a story about the discovery of a giant classical statue's head in Turkey. To see the trial, you need to select to 'turn on' the links from an options panel that is embedded a little way down into the story. The links then appear within the body of the text, preceded by a small icon - 'W' marks a Wikipedia link, a 'bookmark'...
Promotional Olympic leaflets in Macau
I was in Macau during the build-up and start of this year's Beijing Olympics, and, since it is one of China's "Special Administrative Regions", I really got a taste of what it was like to be in the host country. The British team stayed in Macau in the run-up to the Olympics, and we spotted quite a few people walking around with their Olympic accreditation badges and 'Team GB' shirts on. The reason they picked Macau was because it...
August 13, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: Los Angeles 1984
I've been writing a series of articles looking back at the history of politics, protest and dissent at the Olympic Games. In the last part I looked at the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, which was led by the USA in protest at Soviet military action in Afghanistan. Whilst that boycott is often now regarded as a principled, if misguided, action, most observers regard the corresponding boycott of the 1984 Olympics by those in the Soviet sphere of...
August 12, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: Moscow 1980
I've been writing a series of posts looking at the history of protest, politics and dissent at the Olympic Games since their modern inception in 1896. From 1968 to 1984 the Games saw some of their most turbulent times. 1968 was marred by protests on the podiums and a massacre away from the stadium, 1972 was scarred by the appalling terrorist murders of 11 members of the Israeli Olympic delegation, and 1976 saw the first mass political boycott. The...
August 11, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: Montreal 1976
With the Olympic Games being held in the People's Republic of China, there has been plenty of attention focussed on the Chinese record on human rights, the environment, and particularly the relationships between China and Tibet and Taiwan. Earlier this year the Olympic Torch Relay became a focus for political protest, and I've been writing a series of posts looking at the history of Olympic dissent. In the previous post in this series I looked at the lowest point...
August 10, 2008
Counterfeit Olympic branding in Macau
For the last couple of weeks, during the build-up to and start of the Beijing Olympics, I've been in Macau, the ex-Portuguese colony that is one of China's 'Special Administrative Regions'. China has a reputation as a home for counterfeit goods and piracy, as any trip to the average corner shop or Internet cafe in Macau will show you. If you venture further, into a shopping centre somewhere on mainland China like Zhuhai, you'll find you can get pretty...
August 9, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: Munich 1972
Over the last week or so I've been writing a series of posts looking at the history of dissent, politics and protest at the Olympics. 1968 was the first time that lives were lost on account of the Games. A political demonstration in the Tlatelolco area of Mexico City ended in state organised violence, killing hundreds of students, just days before the Olympics were due to begin. In 1972 in Münich, death came to the Games itself, with a...
August 8, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: Mexico 1968
To coincide with today's opening ceremony in Beijing, over the last few days I've been writing a series of posts looking at the political controversies, protest and dissent that has often surrounded the Olympic Games since their modern foundation in 1896. Some, like the student prank of a fake Olympic torch in Sydney for the 1956 games were funny. Others, like Peter O'Connor's protest at having to compete as an Irishman under the British flag, or Stamata Revithi's marathon...
August 7, 2008
Introducing Olympic Fansivu
As well as Olympic Chipwrapper, I've made an Olympic version of Fansivu - my one page aggregator of user-generated content around a sporting event theme. Olympic Fansivu picks up the latest chatter from Twitter about the Olympics using Tweetscan, and adds links to the latest blog posts appearing on Technorati about the Beijing Games. Photos are automatically pulled in from Flickr, and I've tried something different this time from my Euro2008 Fansivu. Rather than blending a couple of tags...
Latest Team GB news feed now on Chipwrapper...but not the BOA site
As Olympic Chipwrapper is focussed on British news about the Olympics, I've added the official Team GB RSS feed into the headlines mix, so that as well as seeing what British newspapers are saying about the Games, you can see what the BOA thinks. At the moment, it is one of the easiest places to find British Olympic headlines, as I had to do a bit of a hunt around for the feed address. The BOA site claims to have...
'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 6, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: The post-war years 1948-1964
With all eyes on the political situation surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympics in China, I've been writing a series of posts looking at the history of politics, protest and dissent at the Olympic Games. In the last post I was looking at what was the low-point of the Olympic movement to date - the hijacking of the games by the Nazis for propaganda purposes in Berlin in 1936. London in 1948 After World War II the Games resumed with...
August 5, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: Berlin 1936
Selecting China as this year's host for the Olympic Games has opened the country up to intense media exposure over issues like human rights and the environment. It has also made the Games a focus for protest over Tibet. It seems that ever since the modern Games were founded, politics, dissent and protest have been part of the spectacle. I've been writing about how these phenomena manifested themselves at the Games in 1896, during the pre-war years, and at...
August 4, 2008
Download 'A lifetime of lost playlists'
It was described as a 'freakily insular memoir-cum-meditation' by Bill Wyman's "Hitsville" blog. No, not that Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, although the real deal featured in part 4 of the series in question. I'm talking about my lengthy "A lifetime of lost playlists" set of articles, which has been gaining quite a few links around the web. Aside from the Hitsville blog, the series was also kindly posted to Metafilter by Feeling Listless. As ever, that brought a rapid spike...
Introducing Olympic Chipwrapper
When a global sporting event like the Olympics comes around, you can be sure that there will be acres of coverage in the British media, even if public interest is dwindling. And for every newspaper contingent that is slimming down this time around, the BBC can be guaranteed to be sending a bigger team than Team GB itself. If there is masses of coverage, you need something to guide you through it. That is where Olympic Chipwrapper comes in...
August 3, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: The inter-war years 1920-1932
The public eye has been on China's human rights record as the Olympic Games approach, with some people calling for a boycott of the games over political issues. It seems that almost everywhere the Games have been held over the last 112 years, there has always been an element of politics, protest and dissent. I've been writing a series of posts looking at that history, starting with the inaugural modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, and an overview of...
August 2, 2008
A brief history of Olympic dissent: The pre-war years 1900-1912
Hosting the Olympic Games in the People's Republic of China has put the spotlight on China's human rights and environmental record, and there have been some calls for the games to be boycotted. It seems that even from the start of the modern Olympics in 1896, the games have found themselves inevitably entwined with politics, protest, and dissent. Yesterday I wrote about how the Greek hosts in 1896 used the opportunity to boost national pride, but also how one...
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...