Recent posts in my Housekeeping Category
April 25, 2012
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January 1, 2012
November 28, 2011
Martin Belam books
Collections EuroIA Rome 2012by Martin Belam All of my notes from the 2012 EuroIA conference in one ebook, featuring coverage of talks by Gerry McGovern, Peter J. Bogaards, Andrea Resmini, Eric Reiss, Jim Kalbach, Carola Weller, Sara Wachter-Boettcher and Stephen P. Anderson and more. Available free for iBooks, for Kindle, and as a PDF Tablet and App summit 2012by Martin Belam Talks on the day included case studies from some big publishing brands like Condé Nast, the New York...
January 1, 2010
Working at The Guardian
I worked at Guardian News & Media for three years as UX lead, across the Guardian’s website and a variety of apps and platforms. This is a personal blog, but I wrote a lot about my work, including the reaction to the Guardian’s Facebook app, how the Guardian's iPad app changed my news consumption, and the IA behind the /culture area of the website. Some of my wireframes from Guardian projects I spoke frequently at conferences about the UX work...
Working at the BBC
From 2000 to 2005 I worked in the New Media department of the BBC. When I started the currybetdotnet blog in 2002 it was natural to blog about my work at the corporation, and the first thing I posted that gained any widespread attention was “A day in the life of BBCi Search”, a presentation based on an in-depth search analysis of one day's search activity across bbc.co.uk. Other articles about the BBC’s search service included "How search can help...
Site search management and design
I've been involved with managing and designing site search and web search services on the web since the end of the 1990s, and have blogged extensively on the topic. In 2008 I presented "Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right" at Euro IA in AMsterdam, which was a complete overview of how to make a distinctive site search, based on examples from European newspaper websites. Over the course of the last couple years I've written several overviews...
'Old' media relationship with 'new' media
'New media', 'Networked media', 'Digital media', 'Future media' - whatever it is you call it, it has actually been with us for the best part of two decades now. You wouldn't always know that from some of the attitudes you see from 'old media' or 'mainstream media'.Or 'dead media' as some people would have it.I'm fascinated by how these traditional large broadcasters and publishers have adapted to the new world, and I have frequently blogged about where they have collided....
Notes and quotes from media and web events
Whenever I attend talks, presentations or conferences I try to write up the sessions for this blog, or on Inside Guardian. With my various jobs, or just out of interest, I go to lots of events to do with the news industry, copyright and media policy and regulation. These are some of the ones I have covered on currybetdotnet: Nic Newman, Emily Bell and Peter Barron discuss "#UKelection2010, mainstream media and the role of the internet" - July 2010 #dendatameet...
Newspaper website design
One of the main areas that I have blogged about over the last couple of years has been the design and information architecture of news and newspaper websites. Topics I've covered in recent months include the user experience of external links on news sites, watching user feedback on the BBC News redesign in real-time and 5 things the news industry can learn from Google Wave. The vexed issue of how to improve the comment threads on general news sites has...
New media best practice
A frequent topic on currybetdotnet is pointing at something someone has done on the web and saying "You're doing it wrong". Perhaps more helpfully, I sometimes write about how to do things right. Although I don't always follow my own advice... "10 tips for 'ambush guerilla user testing' " and "8 tips for making ambush 'guerilla user testing' clip reel videos" was a short two part series explaining how I go about gathering anecdotal user insight on a budget of...
Media policy and regulation
Having worked in the industry for a decade, I am keenly interested in the way that Government policy, regulators and self-regulation affects the media business. In 2010, my main concern has been the regulatory process around the decision to let the BBC enter the iTunes app store. I blogged about why the BBC Trust simply had to examine the BBC's iPhone plans, and then, once the Trust had given the apps the go ahead, asked "Should the BBC have entered...
Forthcoming talks and training
11 February: “So you think you want to be a UXer?” — Guardian Masterclass, LondonUser Experience (or UX) is one of the key pillars of digital design. It is an umbrella term that encompasses a range of disciplines and skills which are relevant to anyone embarking on a creative project that involves interacting with users or simply with a passion for great design. This one evening will give you a taster of the kind of tasks, techniques and skills that...
Local and hyperlocal news
One of the most intriguing areas of development in the digital news industry has been the emergence of the concept of 'hyperlocal'. Most major newspaper publishers have at least some experimentation with this format of news, and many grassroots independent sites have sprung up, some of which appear to be flourishing in influence, if not in revenue. I still find some of the 'services' provided by local newspapers perplexing and out-dated. I've blogged about this in "My first term -...
User experience and information architecture events
I’m one of the organisers of London IA, a network for designers, information architects and thinkers. Since 2009 we’ve been holding evening events - usually monthly - and I’ve blogged the notes here. We’ve had talks by people like Andy Budd, Giles Colborne, Cennydd Bowles, Claire Rowland, Jason Mesut, Ben Bashford, Chris Heathcote, Dan Lockton, Relly Annett-Baker, Michael Blastland, Margaret Hanley and Richard Rutter amongst others. You can get a Kindle compilation of the blog posts with a foreword by...
The future of news
It has been suggested that 68% of journalism in the future will consist of people sitting around discussing the future of journalism. I've certainly been at, or spoken at, many events on this theme in the last couple of years. Last year the focus was very much on iPads and paywalls. I had a quick peek at some news apps as soon as the iPad was released, and I've been impressed with apps like Flipboard, despite worrying that it could...
December 22, 2002
About Martin Belam and currybetdotnet
I’m Martin Belam, and currybetdotnet is my personal blog. I’m Principal Consultant at Emblem, a digital consultancy I founded in 2012 to provide user experience design and training services for organisations and start-ups in the publishing, media, arts, heritage and culture sectors. Prior to that I was UX Lead at the Guardian, working on their award winning website, and other products like their Facebook, iPhone and iPad apps. On this site I mostly write about user experience, information architecture,...
December 18, 2002
Privacy and usage of cookies
I do not set out to collect personal information from visitors to currybetdotnet. However, the site does use some software and third party services which have some privacy implications, and I wanted to set those out clearly for users. This site does not use advertising cookies. By visiting this site in a browser that does not have cookies disabled, you are assumed to have agreed to the use of anonymous analytics cookies, and cookies that may be set and...
December 15, 2002
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Thanks to the generous chaps and chappesess at "FeedBurner", who have now been acquired by Google, you can subscribe to currybetdotnet via email. You'll get the articles from the site delivered straight to your email in-box. All you need to do is enter your email address in the form below, and then follow the instructions. Once you are subscribed, when I update the site you'll get an email with all of the latest content. You'll get a maximum of...
December 10, 2002
currybetdotnet Downloads
The following downloads are available from the currybetdotnet site Martin Belam articles Many of my full-length articles are available in print-friendly Microsoft Word or PDF formats. You can find a complete list of full-length articles in the Articles archive. Martin Belam presentations The following PowerPoint presentations are available to download from this site: Putting a F__k off sized Dalek on the BBC homepage isn't big or clever - OpenTech '05 How search can help you understand your audience - April...