currybetdotnet

Social media and terrestrial television

martin.belam@currybet.net — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:55:13 +0200

During July and August I recorded over 3,500 URLs from mainstream media sites becoming popular on 8 social bookmarking services.

Using the results I've so far published an e-book covering UK newspaper success with social media, and blogged about local newspaper and freesheet success, as well as writing a whole series on 24 hour news stations like CNN, the BBC, Sky News and Al Jazeera.

Another group of sites I looked at was the UK's terrestrial broadcasters. I expected to see content from BBC News in the list of URLs, but I also wanted to see if any content from ITV, Channel 4 or Five featured as popular on social bookmarking and sharing sites. The answer was pretty much no.

Over the course of the month I didn't see any web content at all from ITV or Five feature on any of the 8 link-sharing services I looked at - Delicious, Digg, Fark, Mixx, Newsvine, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Yahoo! Buzz.

Channel 4 on Newsvine

The only URL I spotted from the terrestrial broadcasters other then the BBC was from Channel 4. A microsite supporting some religious programming about the Qur'an appeared as a top seed on the Newsvine site.

Newsvine works by allowing people to share a link as the starting point for a blog post or discussion thread. Amongst others the Channel 4 webpage 'seeded' these discussion, both for and against the programme.

Next...

This view suggests that the BBC is much more successful at social media than any other terrestrial UK television station. However, the BBC is also the only broadcaster to also effectively run an online 'newspaper', and tomorrow I'll be looking at whether anything aside from the BBC's news content was popular on social media sites during my study.

Spooky shop on Hoe Street, Walthamstow

martin.belam@currybet.net — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:55:57 +0200

It appears that we might have a new ghost in Walthamstow - 'Spirits high despite the spooky visitors'

Well, not a new ghost exactly, it apparently dates from the 1950s, and has been haunting a jewellers on Hoe Street in Walthamstow. There is a theory that it is the spirit of a young man who was murdered in the shop, but the local paper is appealing for anyone with more information about the building to come forward. It was the page three spread this week.

Ghost hunters Eerie Investigations have been checking it out. According to the reports, shop owner Haroon Khan "often experiences a strange energetic field in the shop, and the wind-up clock regularly stops between 1am and 3am for no apparent reason"

Looks like we have a new stop to add to our Haunted Walthamstow and Chingford walk.

FIFA 2010 World Cup qualifying website review - Kazakhstan

martin.belam@currybet.net — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 08:55:11 +0200

As England progress through their Word Cup Qualifying group, I've been reviewing their FA website and those of their opponents. I won't actually be getting to see England's sold out match against Kazakhstan today as I'm actually in Gelsenkirchen for the deciding final round of the World Speedway Championship.

That, however, hasn't stopped me trying to get to grips with the Kazakh website.

Kazakhstan

The Kazakh team has been torn between East and West since they became affiliated to FIFA in 1994. They initially joined the Asian Football Conference, and in 1998 and 2002 tried to qualify for the World Cup via that route. They then changed tack, and became affiliated with UEFA. Not counting the bit of Russia that Sarah Palin can see, Kazakhstan is the furthest east member of UEFA. FC Aktobe represented the country in the Champions League this year, being eliminated at the first hurdle.

The website of the Қазақстанның Футбол Федерациясы presents me with a bit of a problem for this review. Having lived there for a couple of years I am fully versed with the Greek alphabet, and have a smattering of Russian Cyrillic due to visiting Moscow and Leningrad way back in the 1980s. However, the Kazakh version of the script is unfamiliar to me - although apparently there is another way of writing Kazakh in an Arabic-style script which would be even more of a mystery.

That made navigation a little tricky, although I could at least work out from the menu that there was coverage of the Kazakh U-21, U-19 and U-17 teams.

In fact the Kazakhstan FA have three language versions of the site - and publish it in English and Russian as well. Or, at least they claim to publish it in English. In the build-up to the match against England, the English language section seemed empty.

Even the English language site map is completely blank.

Besides the official Kazakh site itself, there seems to be good web coverage from an unofficial source - sbornaya.kz.

Kazakhstan have not had the brightest start to Group 6. After beating Andorra back in August, they have since lost to both Croatia and the Ukraine. Overall their qualification record is relatively poor. In Euro 2008 they were in the obtusely large Group A, and their best result was a home victory against Serbia. They finished bottom of their 2006 World Cup Qualifying group, with a solitary away draw against Georgia providing their only point. Nevertheless, according to deposed coach Arno Pijpers, the Kazakh FA are hopeful of making it to South Africa in 2010.

Next...

On Wednesday, when England are in Minsk to face Belarus, I shall back home in Greece for the very last time, prior to moving back to to London. I may struggle to find the match being shown on television anywhere, but that won't deter me from carrying out a review of the Belarus FA website.

links for 2008-10-10

martin.belam@currybet.net — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:02:43 +0200

MoD computer hard drive missing | BBC NEWS | UK

The key sentence here: "It is understood the drive was not encrypted".

(tags: security mod eds egovernment bbcnews dataloss)
Google Chrome not advancing with Telegraph readers :: Shane Richmond | Telegraph

"Four weeks on, nothing much has changed. Yesterday 1.54 per cent of visitors were using Google Chrome". Nice to see these kind of figures being published - there is no commercial advantage to be had by not releasing this kind of information from major media sites. FYI the currybetdotnet breakdown from the last month shows an obvious techie/media luvvie skew towards Firefox and Macs - IE 53.5%, FF 36%, Safari 5.5%, Chrome 2%, Opera 1.9%

(tags: shanerichmond telegraph browsers googlechrome statistics)
How comments affect whether we see bias in a news story « Reportr.net

"So, for example, people might see the original story as balanced, but the tone of the comments made them wonder if the journalist had deliberately chosen pro-life or pro-choice comments".

(tags: alfredhermida ugc comments bias)
Updated: IHT Site Will Be Co-Branded With NYT.com For New Global Edition | paidContent:UK

The most interesting aspect of this for me is how much thought they've put into "search" on this. Will the old URLs redirect? Will IHT stories be pushed out of the listings by NYT coverage of the same issue?

(tags: newyorktimes internationalheraldtribune paidcontent)
It’s FOWA time again « electronic museum

"If I’m perfectly honest (and REALLY not wanting to do the media thing and fan the flames of fear..), it all feels a bit pre-burst right now". Which makes me feel slightly better about having been stuck in The Guardian's office missing it ;-)

(tags: conferences blogging fowa)
Depeche Mode - Playing The Angel - Another victim of the loudness race | Brian Stagg

Graphical illustration of the effect mastering can have on a recording.

(tags: music depechemode vinyl recording mastering)

"You've lost your place in the queue" - the battle to buy Depeche Mode tickets from Ticketmaster

martin.belam@currybet.net — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:55:45 +0200

This week Depeche Mode announced what Fletch said was their "rather modestly titled" Tour Of The Universe. It gave me an opportunity to have yet another truly diabolical user experience with Ticketmaster.

I got an email alert from Live Nation that the tickets for the London gig were going on 'pre-sale' at 9am on Thursday morning. In order to be able to buy tickets you needed to register with the Live Nation site.

Naturally, I did that, and come five minutes past nine yesterday I was starting to try and get tickets. I logged in to Live Nation, and clicked the pre-sale link. This took me to the Ticketmaster page for the event and logged me out at the same time without telling me.

I selected the tickets, and then the fun and games began. Once I eventually realised that I had to log in to Ticketmaster as a separate registration from the Live Nation credentials I had already provided, I couldn't remember the password for my ancient account. So I asked for a password reminder.

Now, Ticketmaster go out of their way to make the ticket purchase processing as nerve-racking as possible, by providing a minimum time to complete each step of the transaction.

By the time they had actually sent me a password reminder, I had "lost my place in the queue", and had to start the transaction from scratch...

So, having selected tickets for the second time, I got to the payment section. Ticketmaster have some previous details for my card. The expiry date is wrong, and the billing address is wrong.

They offer two options - to add a new card, or to edit the details of an existing card. Trying to add a new card with the same primary number just to change the expiry date caused an error. But, when you try to edit the details of the card, it doesn't seem possible to get the system to accept any updated details.

I carefully edited and re-edited every field on the details - to no avail. All I got was the error message "There was an error with your submission". I'm not sure they could be any more vague about what was wrong, and above it was the ever-dwindling countdown until my tickets were 'released' back for other people to buy.

Aside from the constant countdown, the site keeps asking you repeated captcha tests. This screenshot might give you an idea of just how many tests I had to pass during the process of this transaction.

In the end, the only way I could complete the sale was to log out completely of the site, start from the Ticketmaster homepage, go into the account management section and edit my details there. That worked fine, with none of the problems the site exhibited when you tried to update your details mid-sale.

I finally got our tickets at the fourth attempt, having progressively moved from getting standing tickets to being up in the gods at the O2 Arena. As my wife wryly observed, at least we'll be able to hear them.

Still this was a marginal improvement on the last time I tried to buy tickets from them a couple of months ago. Then I was on dial-up in Greece, and often the 2 minute time limit to complete the details on a page had expired before the page had actually downloaded. That time a similar inability to edit my details meant I ended up just getting my wife to set up a new account and buy the tickets for me.

I first saw Depeche Mode on their 'For The Masses' tour in 1988 at Wembley Arena, when I was supposed to be revising for my mock GCSEs. It is always a risk buying tickets for a tour before a new album has been released from a band at this stage in their career. At the minute I've got no way of knowing whether the gig will be fantastic like the one we enjoyed in Milan on their last tour, or whether the album is going to be a dud of 'Exciter' style proportions. A clip from a couple of new tracks has already surfaced on YouTube, subsequently pulled down following an EMI Music copyright infringement complaint. So, fingers crossed...

links for 2008-10-09

martin.belam@currybet.net — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:00:42 +0200

Seumas Milne: The genie's out. Now they've shown what can be done | Comment is free | The Guardian

From the comments: "Can all of us taxpayers write snitty letters to the banks now, pointing out how much they owe us, *and* charge them £35 per letter?"

(tags: economy guardian ugc)
Martin Belam on moving back to the UK from Greece — Kits and Mortar

I've written a guest blog post over on Suw and Kevin's eco-and-cat friendly blog.

(tags: greece uk kitsandmortar)
Google Confirms RSS for Web Search Results | SearchEngineLand

"Google has confirmed for Search Engine Land that they’ll soon start offering RSS feeds for web search results". That is one of my EuroIA slides rendered irrelevant then...

(tags: google rss searchengineland)
The Sun falls victim to Robert Mugabe palace hoax - Press Gazette

"The Sun has removed an article from its website about a palace it claimed belonged to Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe - after it emerged that the photo used was of an American house used in the film Beethoven's 4th."

(tags: thesun zimbabwe pcc hoax pressgazette)
How do UK banks’ websites treat worried customers? « The Experience Design Scout

"Remarkably, none of the banks is explaining the entire situation and what the source of the problems is."

(tags: economy uxd customerrelations)
Google needs to mind its own business — mathewingram.com/work

"As far as I’m concerned, Gmail should just send the email and shut up about it. When I tell Hal to open the pod-bay doors, he should just open the damn pod-bay doors."

(tags: mathewingram google hal gmail)

Will The Telegraph's tie-up with eMusic expose the staff's guilty pleasures?

martin.belam@currybet.net — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:55:09 +0200

I noticed a couple of weeks back that The Telegraph has a special promotion, where they have joined forces with eMusic to give away free downloads to readers.

What struck me as really interesting is the way that they are selling the idea that you can see and follow the music taste of Telegraph writers and editors, as well as contribute to a Telegraph 'chart'.

Since eMusic is a social download platform, member's networks can build into an interesting blend of mixing genuine friends with contacts, colleagues, and strangers who just happen to buy the newspaper that you work for. For those Telegraph staffers who have joined the service specifically as part of this promotion, they can obviously pick and choose what they buy and download, knowing that it is being shared with the readership. And it isn't just the music writers involved either - people like Erin Baker, the Motoring Commissioning Editor, now have their download habits on display.

For someone like Shane Richmond, however, the situation is different. His profile indicates that he has been a member for a couple of years already, so linking up to him via The Telegraph promotion might expose any number of guilty pleasures he bought in 2006, not knowing that they would later be the public property of The Telegraph's audience. He doesn't seem too bothered mind you, and blogged enthusiastically about the partnership. With good reason - eMusic is a very good music download platform.

I really enjoyed using eMusic myself when I was living in Austria. Sadly my own e-Music membership has lapsed, so those Telegraph taste secrets are currently safe from exposure on currybetdotnet!

links for 2008-10-08

martin.belam@currybet.net — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:00:21 +0200

Capello will keep England grounded | BBC SPORT | Phil McNulty blog

From the comments: "I haven't read the rest of the article as I dread to think what that would be like if you can't word together your first sentance". Sir, meet your own petards.

(tags: philmcnulty bbcsport ugc)
Personalize Your Link Building | SearchEngineLand

Using personas as part of your link-building campaign.

(tags: personas linkbuilding searchengineland)
Why football going bust could be good news | And Another Thing

"It can't go on. One day the oligarchs and carpetbaggers will move on. They'll probably leave in the middle of the night like the holders of sub-prime mortgages, slipping the stadium keys through the bank's letterbox before setting off for pastures new. Once they've gone the game will still go on, albeit at a less sophisticated level, driven by the ancient tribal hatred that has animated the game for the last century."

(tags: andanotherthing football)
Series 4 DVD box set details | Outpost Gallifrey: Doctor Who News

"The same website [Den of Geek] has also published another article detailing information gleaned from some of the new audio commentaries. This includes the note that David Tennant at one point refers to new head writer and executive producer Steven Moffat as his 'new boss', which the website takes to indicate that they will be working together on the fifth series of the programme, to be broadcast in 2010".

(tags: doctorwho outpostgallifrey davidtennant)
Vodafone aims to take Christmas market by storm | Business | guardian.co.uk

"The whole touchscreen on the Storm is one large mouse button, so touching a button or key is not enough to activate any function - the user needs to press down on the item to set it off. In the past, business users have held off using touchscreen devices because of what RIM co-chief executive, Mike Lazaridis, describes as 'this problem where navigation and confirmation were inter-mingled in the same action'".

(tags: blackberry mobilephone ui usability guardian)
'Cactus Kid' ad for Oasis banned for condoning teenage pregnancy | Media | guardian.co.uk

"Coca-Cola GB said that the girl in the TV ad was meant to be 20 years old and that a 22-year-old actress played the character". Sweet cheeses, what is wrong with you lot in the UK at the moment? Oh, hang on, that's about to include me too...I've changed my mind, it is dirty filth, 22 is far too young to be having sex and a baby, get it off my screen etc etc

(tags: advertising mediaguardian oasis coca-cola asa)
Financial crisis: Parliament is letting Britain down :: Iain Martin

"MPs are fond of asking why their stature, and that of the Commons as an institution, has declined so markedly. I think the answer is this: When they don't take their responsibilities seriously enough, why should the rest of us take them seriously?"

(tags: politics economy parliament telegraph)

"It's for you" - Lloyds TSB splashes taxpayer's cash in the Metro

martin.belam@currybet.net — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:30:48 +0200

So was it just me, or was anyone else gob-smacked on their commute to find that today's Metro came wrapped in a 4 page advertising spread for the Lloyds TSB mobile banking service, whilst the main headline inside was "£50bn buy-up to save banks" including, of course, Lloyds TSB?

Did nobody at Lloyds TSB think this may not be a good time to use the slogan "It's for you", when the only thing the average taxpayer is getting from the bank this week is a whopping great bill?

US newspapers in the Google time tunnel: Part 2

martin.belam@currybet.net — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:55:42 +0200

Yesterday I started looking at a selection of US newspapers through the 'time tunnel' of Google's 2001 search engine index.

Today, I'm going to continue with a look at another 14 American newspapers, starting with some of the New York press.

New York Daily News

The 2001 edition of the New York Daily News online billed itself as "New York's hometown connection"

The site was number one for a search of its name, but Google seems to have lost some of the details in the intervening years.

New York Post

The New York Post also topped Google in 2001 when you searched for their name. Sadly, the version of the site stored by the Wayback Machine from 2001 is quite badly broken.

New York Times

The New York Times is these days considered one of the Internet's newspapers of record, but in 2001 their homepage did not rank #1 for their brand name on Google.

Instead a page from their jobs site, and a copyright notice occupy the top two slots.

Incidentally, a search for just 'new york' on Google 2001 turns up the New York Times at #8, the New York Daily News at #20 and the New York Post at a lowly #85.

Newark Star-Ledger

When searching for it by name, the Newark Star-Ledger's nj.com site was firmly at #1.

Newsday

Newsday had two different ways to access the site in the top four Google rankings for their name in 2001. As well as the Newsday site itself, users were invited to visit library.newsday.com.

The Oregonian

The excellently named The Oregonian these days publishes at oregonlive.com, but back in Google's 2001 time-frame - oregonian.com was the #1 result, with the Oregon Live sports section coming in at #3.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Another newspaper to have transposed URLs between 2001 and 2008 is the Philadelphia Inquirer. Nowadays you'll find it at philly.com, but the number one result for 'Philadelphia Inquirer' in Google's 2001 index was www.phillynews.com.

The Sacramento Bee

The Sacramento Bee was already available at the shortened sacbee.com URL, and ranked #1 for the paper's name in 2001.

San Diego Union-Tribune

There is yet another URL branding change with the San Diego Union-Tribune. In 2001, you could find the paper on Google at uniontrib.com. There was also a separate advertising sales site at www.utads.com. In 2008, however, the URL and branding of the site is 'Sign on San Diego'.

San Francisco Chronicle

The San Francisco Chronicle had a logjam of related URLs at the top of Google in 2001. As well as sfgate.com, there were separate sites for sponsored events, the San Francisco marathon which the paper sponsored, and for their ad sales operation.

St. Petersburg Times

The 2008 version of the St. Petersburg Times appears on tampabay.com, which ranked #2 on Google in 2001 for the search 'St. Petersburg Times'. At number one was the now defunct www.stpetersburgtimes.com URL, and, muddying the waters further, at #3 and #4 was the sptimes.com sports and business sections.

USA Today

USA Today is an interesting case from a search point of view, because the Google of 2001 only seems to have five references to the paper by name if you spell it with a space as "USA Today", yet 334,000 references if you run it together as one word.

In the 2008 version of Google - the reverse is true. "USA Today" generates over 60 million results, whilst "USAToday" reveal just 15 million results.

USA Today has blocked the Wayback machine, so there is no archive of the 2001 version of the site itself.

Wall Street Journal

Even though in 2001 the Wall Street Journal was operating an online subscription model for content, they haven't blocked the Internet Archive project, and so, unlike with USA Today, you can see what the site looked like back then.

As one of the leading news sources on the web, wsj.com was #1 on Google in 2001.

Washington Post

The last of the 25 US newspapers I've been looking at is the Washington Post, and it has one of the worst rankings in the 2001 version of Google, only managing to come seventh.

That link wasn't even to the news content itself, but rather to a corporate info page.

And finally...

I'll be returning to look at US newspapers in the next few weeks, to reveal the results of my study measuring their success on social media.

US newspapers in the Google time tunnel: Part 1

martin.belam@currybet.net — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:33:45 +0200

Yesterday I published some screenshots of the 2001 versions of UK newspaper websites, as linked to by Google's newly re-available 2001 index.

At the same time as doing my research on UK newspaper success with social media, I was also looking at the social media success of a range of US newspapers. I thought it might be fun to peer back through the Google time tunnel and see how 25 American newspapers looked and ranked online in 2001.

Arizona Republic

The Arizona Republic ranked at #1 for their newspaper name on Google in 2001, but sadly the site is blocked from the Wayback Machine, so you can't see how it used to look.

Mind you, looking at the 2001 results I did spot a way Russia could infuriate the West even more than by supporting illegal breakaway regions like South Ossetia and Abkhazia - they could throw their weight behind the Baja Arizona Republic, which also ranked highly for the term 'Arizona Republic' back then.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In 2008 the online incarnation of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution can be found at ajc.com. In 2001 however, the top ranking result for their name was the rather more unwieldy www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc. The results also included the separate ajcclassifieds.com site, and 'The Stacks' - an "archive of staff-written and other selected articles from 1985 to the present."

Unlike the Arizona Republic, you can peek back at the 2001 edition of the Journal-Constitution.

Boston Globe

The Boston Globe was as sure of their URL identity then - boston.com - as it is today. It doesn't look as if the logo has changed though.

Chicago Sun Times

In Google's January 2001 index, it is the Chicago Sun-Times' election coverage that was ranked #1, rather than the homepage.

Their regular site has a presence in the 2001 index as well, and on the Wayback Machine.

Chicago Tribune

Another Chicago paper, the Tribune, also appears in the 2001 Google index.

The Chicago Tribune out-ranked the Sun-Times in 2001 for the keyword "chicago". It comes in at #16 in Google's vintage index, compared to the Sun-Times at #45. In the intervening years, this ranking lead has increased. If you search Google for "chicago" today, the Tribune is at #10, whilst the Sun-Times has sunk to #65.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

The Cleveland Plain Dealer is one of the few newspapers that did not rank in first place for its name in 2001. Instead, Google ranks the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in top spot.

In 2001, Plain Dealer content was split between two domains: cleveland.com and plaindealer.com.

These days, the latter URL is just a corporate portal page.

Dallas Morning News

A 2001-era search for the Dallas Morning News brings back the dallasnews.com site at #1. Like many of the newspapers in this survey, the coverage captured by the Internet Archive is focused on news in Afghanistan rather than local news.

Detroit Free Press

A search for the Detroit Free Press back in 2001 showed that they were already employing the freep.com online branding.

It is noticeable though that in 2001 the branding of the paper was just as strong as the online identity, whereas the current design sees freep.com take centre stage.

Houston Chronicle

The Houston Chronicle easily ranked on Google for their name in 2001, and the Wayback Machine has a very good copy of one of their front pages from that time.

Los Angeles Times

The LA Times is blessed with a significant web presence these days, but the version exposed by Google's 2001 index is one of the more primitive web designs on display.

In 2001 the LA Times was also having problems with the Google index - the science section and comment sections were ranked #1 and #2 by the search engine, rather than the homepage.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

The Star Tribune was in top spot for their name in 2001, and the copy of the site on the Internet Archive shows that as far back as 2001 they were running audio content on their site, indicated by icons that preceded the relevant story.

Next...

Tomorrow I'll be looking at some more US newspapers through the Google time tunnel, starting with some of the New York press.

links for 2008-10-07

martin.belam@currybet.net — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:00:33 +0200

DFW and Jann Wenner and John McCain | Hitsville »

"Even in the context of celebrity-on-celebrity journalism it is not only one of the most superficial and hackneyed accretions of blowjobby pontification ever published, it is an insidious piece of propaganda urging 'Young Voters,' as DFW calls them, to support a right-wing nut job". Please, Bill, don't mince your words - say what you mean!

(tags: hitsville uselection johnmccain)
Is this the worst kit ever? | Sport | The Guardian

My eyes! My eyes!

(tags: guardian rugby fashion)
UK: Subeditors fired and journalists given 31-point job descriptions - editorsweblog

"According to the Press Gazette, the changes will take places at the following papers, Epping Forest Guardian, the Waltham Forest Guardian, Wanstead and Woodford Guardian, the Enfield Independent and the Borehamwood Times as well as the free Bishop Stortford Citizen and Waltham Forest Independent".

(tags: walthamstow walthamforestguardian)
Why is Peter Mandelson so highly regarded? :: Daniel Hannan

According to the comments, his reputation is all just a fiction concocted by the Gay and/or Jewish media mafia

(tags: telegraph labour petermandelson ugc)
BBC - Press Office - BBC 7 becomes BBC Radio 7

From the "D'oh, the humanity files" - 'BBC 7, the most popular of the BBC's digital radio stations with approximately 900,000 listeners, has taken the decision to name itself BBC Radio 7, as of Saturday 4 October.'

(tags: bbc radio bbc7)
Using the Microsoft Ribbon without anyone getting hurt » Flow Interactive :: The Think blog.

Phil with some of the pros and cons of adopting a 'ribbon-esque' UX design for an application.

(tags: flowinteractive ux ribbon application)
Most Brits Fear Identity Theft | Gizmodo UK

"A recent survey conducted to kick off awareness of NIFPW, or National Identity Fraud Prevention Week, shows that a massive 97% of British consumers are concerned that companies don't take good enough care of their personal data". To get 97%, presumably there were 15 lead-in questions along the lines of 'do you think it is a bad thing that the bad wolf was able to find the address of the three little pigs on a lost Government CD-ROM?'.

(tags: gizmodo privacy identitytheft)

links for 2008-10-06

martin.belam@currybet.net — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:00:45 +0200

Google Book Search Affects ECommerce, Is Your Vertical Next | Graywolf's SEO Blog

So the question you need to be thinking about is how much is a radical change like this affecting booksellers like Amazon. Then the thing that should scare the living daylights out of you is what happens when Google decides to move into market?

(tags: graywolf seo google amazon)
Spies will tap into all emails and calls :: Daily Express | UK News

"A poll by data security firm GB Group last night found that only the gambling industry was trusted less by the general public than the Government to look after private records". Great stuff in the comments too - "Although I have just signed up to join the Express community I will be limiting my use of the internet, telephone etc until I have devised an unbreakable code".

(tags: dailyexpress egovernment privacy ugc)
Rude Awakening - FT.com / Home UK / UK

"But the internet is a great leveller and pr0n now finds itself in a similar situation to the music and newspaper industries, which are both struggling to adapt to the online world. The profusion of free content online has shaken established business models in those industries and relentlessly eroded their profitability". [via smutty article spotter Adrian Monck ;-)]

(tags: pr0n ft)
Teens, dating, friendship, and school dances : apophenia

"When I read the Chicago Tribune's coverage of why teens have eschewed dates for school dances, I wanted to scream. This shift has nothing to do with 'the way young people view personal relationships in the age of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter'. Even in the context of the article, the supposed experts and teens are voicing very different explanations for what's going on."

(tags: apophenia teenagers chicagotribune socialnetworking)
Peter Mandelson brings a happy start to the weekend... :: Christian Adams

"All I can think is that Gordon is ringing up cartoonists (and Rory Bremner) and saying 'OK, I give up. Let's just have a laugh from now on. So, who is the most ridiculous, caricaturable, mockable person you can think of (doesn't even have to be an MP anymore) who I can bring into the Cabinet..?'"

(tags: politics telegraph)
Tackling Campus Piracy with FUD | TorrentFreak

"He says that the RIAA has no need to visit Elon, they can just jump on the net and track people down, and that the university ‘must comply’ with the RIAA. Again, this is not even close to the truth. The RIAA is a lobby group, not a government or law enforcement agency, and there is no requirement to comply with them. On the contrary, RIAA’s 'tracking company' MediaSentry is not listed as holding a private investigators license by the state, nor are investigators from their home state of Maryland allowed to practice in North Carolina".

(tags: piracy copyright riaa students torrentfreak)
EURO IA Roadmap '08

The proposed roadmap for strengthening the European IA/UX network

(tags: euroia2008 europe ux slideshare)

UK newspapers in the Google time tunnel

martin.belam@currybet.net — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:55:09 +0200

With everyone keenly paging through Google's 2001 search index, I thought it might be interesting to see how our British national newspapers were faring on Google back at the turn of the decade, and how their sites are represented in the Internet Archive.

Daily Express

Searching for the Daily Express in 2001 turned up express.co.uk at number 3 on Google.

The homepage that Google links to shows that the attention of the Express was firmly turned to the Sarah Payne murder case.

Poignantly, a search for "sarah payne" in the vintage Google index still turns up a Police appeal for her as a missing person.

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail website creeps in at #10 in Google's 2001 results when you search for 'Daily Mail'. This was a symptom of their fragmented approach to the web.

The Wayback machine retains examples of Daily Mail content from 1998, when their online presence was focused on IT topics.

Financial Times

A search for the 'Financial Times' sees the FT site firmly at #1 in 'old' Google - but under the full length URL rather than the ft.com we know today.

Google links to a version of the FT site that dates from December 2001, and I can't help noticing that their red 'special reports' branding looks very similar to a lot of the branding associated with BBC News today.

The Guardian

The Guardian have had one of the longest established British newspaper presences on the web, so it is no surprise to find them at #1 for a search for Guardian - or that the homepage Google links to doesn't look too unfamiliar, given that it hasn't been that long since this look and feel was retired.

The Independent

The Independent features at #1 on 2001 Google for a search of their name, with a description that echoes their old advertising slogan - "It is, are you?"

Sadly, the Wayback Machine seems to have mislaid their old CSS file, and so it is hard to get an impression of what the site used to look like.

The Mirror

Of all of the old newspaper sites on display via Google 2001 and the Wayback Machine, it appears that The Mirror is the one that has changed the most.

The Sun

The Sun is a newspaper that has always struggled to hold down the number one spot for their name on Google. It is one of those things that shows a weakness of the Google algorithm. Since online links are such a valuable currency, The Sun newspaper always finds itself out-gunned by Sun Microsystems.

They were, though, able to out-rank the Las Vegas Sun and the Baltimore Sun.

The Telegraph

I adore the fact that in 2001 the online version of The Telegraph was titled The Electronic Telegraph, just like the device that gives the newspaper its name.

Google actually links to a version of the site from 2004, but the Wayback Machine also still hosts the heavily blue themed version from 2001.

The Times

The Times was top dog for their keywords in 2001, but not by using the timesonline.co.uk URL we are familiar with today.

Sadly, The Times is one of those sites that has blocked the Wayback Machine from archiving the way their website looked, and they have not archived the old look'n'feel themselves

And finally...

And this site? Well, my first currybetdotnet blog post was back in December 2002. Prior to that, the 2001 version of Google indexes currybet.org.uk, which exclusively concerned itself with pictures of weddings, joke articles about football, and the all-important results of the football sweepstake that still gives this site its name.

And how refreshing to see Google search results that aren't clogged up with adverts, YouTube and Wikipedia!

H.N. Werkman's "ASCII art" in the Van Gogh Museum

martin.belam@currybet.net — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:55:20 +0200

I spent a few days last week in Amsterdam with my wife, enjoying a short break and some sight-seeing after my appearance at the Euro IA Summit. We purchased the 'I Amsterdam' card, which we found to be excellent value for money. On the first day, by the time we had visited the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, started using our 72 hour travelcard and taken a boat trip around the canals, we had already recouped our money.

I enjoyed the Van Gogh Museum a lot, although not everybody did whilst we were there. On the ground floor there is a display of artists who may have influenced Van Gogh, or pieces he may have seen whilst working at an art dealers in Paris. As we were looking at them, much to our amusement, an elderly American woman drawled at the top of her voice:

"There are not very good."

At the moment the Van Gogh Museum is hosting guest displays from the Stedelijk Museum, which is closed for refurbishment. One of the exhibitions was of the 'Druksel prints' by H.N. Werkman.

Werkman experimented with printing techniques during the 1920s, and produced an avant-garde magazine called "The Next Call", a few issues of which were on display. He also produced a whole series of calendars.

What particularly caught my eye, though, was a series of works that Werkman called 'Tiksels', but which the modern geek would recognise as one of the very earliest examples of ASCII art.

He made the pieces by experimenting with a typewriter, and repeatedly passing and moving the paper as it went through the machine.

During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, H.N. Werkman continued to produce printed material. He tried to make art that undermined the Germans and provided spiritual comfort to the resistance. He was executed by the Gestapo in April 1945.