Amusing Ourselves

Fantastic Scrabble videos

john — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 08:05:03 +0000

These videos are slightly outwith the purview, ambit or even aegis of this blog, however, I think they’re so super-duper I feel the need to share them (and get rid of some of my vowels while doing so). via Crackunit

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john — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:17:58 +0000

I’ve been on my hols for a couple of weeks, and while I have the simmering antipathy between the news media and Google has broken into open warfare with the release of the dramatically entitled Hamburg Declaration. A document in which a broad assortment of European publishers (roughly speaking) argue that Google news and other [...]

Joost headed for the dead pool

john — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:23:37 +0000

It would seem that online video site Joost is heading for the deadpool (in my experience the adoption of a white label strategy is generally an acceptance of defeat.) Michael Arrington’s analysis of Joost’s failings focusses on the personalities and the technology, and he may well be right, however, I think he misses the main reason [...]

Twitter, content sharing, chewed postcards and the Dresden Dolls

john — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:15:44 +0000

Web metrics analyst Hitwise reports on the rise of Twitter in the UK. It’s now the 38th most popular site in the UK with a 22-fold annual increase in traffic, etc, etc. None of which should come as much of a surprise to anyone with half an interest in digital media. However, what for my money [...]

Tweetminster - aggregating political conversations

john — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:30:45 +0000

I discovered Tweetminster yesterday as I followed the election of the new Speaker of the House. Tweetminster is a relatively simple idea - it aggregates and publishes Parlimentarians’ tweets (though it would seem that the eventual winner, John Bercow, doesn’t yet Tweet). And there’s value in this, because without spending time following every Twittering politician [...]

Google IO - Canvas, Web Apps and HTML 5

john — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:39:20 +0000

The Keynote address at Google IO outlines Google’s view of technical developments on the web. Which, if you can’t be bothered to watch the video, is all about HTML5, pixel level control of the browser with the Canvas tag, Javascript, CSS and the DOM, bringing the power of native apps to the browser, video tags, [...]

Newspaper aggregation and the political demise of the English squirearchy

john — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:16:26 +0000

I recently did some consultancy work on the shift to digital for a large newspaper, which is why I was particularly interested in this recent post about content aggregation and the newspaper business by Nico Flores at On Demand Media. The crux of Nico’s argument (one to which I subscribe) is that the real value [...]

The Guardian datastore

john — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:03:57 +0000

The Guardian Datastore is an excellent resource, where editors source and collate data (often as Google docs spreadsheets), which readers can then use to create their own mashups and visualizations. Amongst other things, they currently have the latest data on MP’s expenses, world booze consumption and two centuries of bio diversity data from Wicken Fen [...]

Interactive storytelling part 1: audio slideshows

john — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:17:41 +0000

Interactive storytelling on the web - I’m specifically thinking about audioslide shows - has a bit of a chequered history, it’s often been touted as the next big thing, but few content providers have really embraced it. There are cost issues - Flash development isn’t cheap, and then there’s the bandwidth to think about, but [...]

David Lynch - The Interview Project

john — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:29:59 +0000

David Lynch’s Interview Project launches today. The idea behind Interview Project is simple, David Lynch and his team travel the US interviewing people they come across. And that’s about it: in essence the Interview Project is just a big, unstructured oral history project (though it does remind me a little of the field recordings of [...]