currybetdotnet Articles archive

Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google: Getting site search right - Part 1
Over the course of the next couple of weeks I want to present an expanded version of the presentation I gave at the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam at the end of September. There I was talking about "Taking the 'Ooh' out of Google" and getting site search right for news. Over this series of posts I hope to show how you can use additional information about content that Google can't get access to to make your site...

Read the full post - Published October 29, 2008 in Articles, IA Summit, Search - 1 comment so far   Add your comment 

Take-away facts and quotes from the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam - Part 1
Over the weekend I've been in Amsterdam attending the 2008 European Information Architecture Summit. It was held at the Tuschinski Theatre, which was a simply amazing venue. Despite a couple of schedule clashes - including missing a much anticipated presentation by Deanna Marbeck and Silver Oliver because it coincided with my own session - I got to see a great selection of presentations. Here are some of my take-away facts and quotes from the morning of day one. Keynote...

Read the full post - Published September 30, 2008 in Articles, IA Summit, Popular - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Social media and TV news: Measuring social media success
Over the last week I've been publishing a series of articles looking at the social media performance of the websites belonging to some 24 hour news channels, including CNN, the BBC, Sky News, Al Jazeera, Russia Today, Euronews and France 24. The results have been derived from a thirty day study I carried out in July and August 2008, taking half-hourly snapshots of Delicious, Digg, Fark, Mixx, Newsvine, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Yahoo! Buzz to look for prominent media URLs....

Read the full post - Published September 27, 2008 in Articles, BBC, CNN, Social media, Television - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Measuring UK newspaper success with social media
It seems these days that the majority of mainstream media websites on both sides of the Atlantic, whether print or television based, have littered their online design with icons begging users to Digg this, StumbleUpon that, let people know they've Reddit, or describe it as Fark. I wanted to know whether adding this rash of buttons actually drives the audience to bookmark and share content, or whether users do it based on the strength of the content and news brand,...

Read the full post - Published September 15, 2008 in Articles, Newspapers, Popular, Social media - 2 comments so far   Add your comment 

The Mirror re-design review: Part 1
Earlier this year The Daily Mirror re-vamped their website, giving it much more of a visual-led magazine feel. At the time I didn't get the chance to do a review, but as I recently reviewed the re-design of The Telegraph, I thought I would have a look at how the new Mirror design has settled in. Old Mirror design New Mirror design Global navigation and mouse-over As seems to be the fashion at the moment, The Mirror has gone for...

Read the full post - Published September 1, 2008 in Articles, Daily Mirror, Newspapers, Product review, Web - No comments yet   Add your comment 

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...

Read the full post - Published August 25, 2008 in Articles, Daily Telegraph, Newspapers, Web - No comments yet   Add your comment 

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...

Read the full post - Published August 1, 2008 in Articles, Cyprus, Greece, Olympics, Politics, Popular, Turkey - 4 comments so far   Add your comment 

A lifetime of lost playlists: Part 1 - Pump up the volume
Format-driven changes in my music consumption over thirty years Nowadays we are surrounded by 'attention' data about music. Amazon tells us that other people who bought the same music as us also liked something else. The iTunes music store gauges the relative popularity of tracks from an artist. Last FM allows us to let all our Facebook friends know what we've just been listening to - however embarrassing it might be. And we miss it when it isn't there....

Read the full post - Published July 10, 2008 in Articles, Music, Popular - 3 comments so far   Add your comment 

Daily Mail website review for the Press Gazette
If you were interested in my opinions of the Daily Mail's recent website re-design, but found you didn't have time to wade through my over-wordy multi-part review the other week, you might be interested in an article published in the most recent edition of Press Gazette. They asked me to contribute a much shorter review of the Mail for their 'Expert Eye' column - "Net gains for Mail Online". The longer review series has also been summarised on The Editor's...

Read the full post - Published July 7, 2008 in Articles, Daily Mail - No comments yet   Add your comment 

"People, Places, Subjects" - BBC Topic and Guardian keyword pages: Part 1
Some time in 2001 I went to my first ever meeting with people from BBC News Online. I was enthusiastic, fresh-faced, and completely oblivious to the 'difficult sibling' history that existed between the BBC New Media & Technology department where I worked, and the senior managers from BBC News Online that I was meeting. I suggested they do two things. Firstly, remove the 'noindex' meta tag at the individual story level on news.bbc.co.uk. Secondly, based on the evidence of search...

Read the full post - Published July 4, 2008 in Articles, BBC, Popular, The Guardian, Web - 3 comments so far   Add your comment 

The Daily Mail site redesign: Part 1 - Navigation & RSS

Published June 23, 2008 in Articles, Daily Mail, Newspapers, RSS, Web - No comments yet   Add your comment 

"You're wired!" - 7 things The Apprentice can teach you about new media projects

Published June 20, 2008 in Articles, Popular, Television - 3 comments so far   Add your comment 

Euro 2008: The websites - Switzerland & the Czech Republic

Published June 7, 2008 in Articles, Euro2008, Football, Web - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Begging more questions than answers - the BBC Trust bbc.co.uk review: Search

Published June 6, 2008 in Articles, BBC, Search - 4 comments so far   Add your comment 

Euro 2008 host cities on the web: Salzburg

Published May 26, 2008 in Articles, Austria, Euro2008, Football, Web - No comments yet   Add your comment 

IA for tiny stuff: Exploring widgets and gadgets - Part 1

Published April 17, 2008 in Articles, IA Summit, Widgets - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 1 - The Daily Mail vs The Sun

Published April 8, 2008 in Articles, Daily Mail, Newspapers, Search, The Sun - 1 comment so far   Add your comment 

'RSS Feeds: Managing the Mechanism' article for FUMSI

Published March 28, 2008 in Articles, FUMSI, RSS - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Postcard from Macau #1: Selling adverts in the Chinese 'free' press

Published March 16, 2008 in Articles, Macau, Newspapers, Travelogue - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Making the most of blog comments: Part 1 - Promoting blog comments

Published February 20, 2008 in Articles, Blogging - 137 comments so far   Add your comment 

24/7 TV news websites: Part 1 - Introduction

Published January 8, 2008 in Articles, Media, Television, Web - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Ten years of BBC Online

Published December 22, 2007 in Articles, BBC, Blogging, Nostalgia, Web - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Blogging at the BBC: Part 1 - My introduction to blogging

Published December 11, 2007 in Articles, BBC, Blogging, Popular - 3 comments so far   Add your comment 

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 1 - Daily Express

Published November 6, 2007 in Accessibility, Articles, Daily Express, Newspapers, Product review, Web - 1 comment so far   Add your comment 

The London freesheets and the web - Part 1: Music reviews

Published September 20, 2007 in Articles, Music, Newspapers - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Reckless Records RIP - Part 1: An End Has A Start

Published August 13, 2007 in Articles, Music, Popular - No comments yet   Add your comment 

A tour of Tour De France news sites - Étape 1: LeTour.fr

Published July 23, 2007 in Articles, Cycling, Tour de France, Usability, Web - 2 comments so far   Add your comment 

Why my Doctor Who blog failed: Part 1 - The Greatest Show In The Galaxy

Published July 2, 2007 in Articles, Doctor Who, Popular - 5 comments so far   Add your comment 

Newspapers 2.0: How Web 2.0 are British newspaper web sites?

Published May 8, 2007 in Articles, Media, Newspapers, Popular, Web - 3 comments so far   Add your comment 

My 'biased' view of the Biased BBC blog

Published March 14, 2007 in Articles, BBC, Popular - 9 comments so far   Add your comment 

Smarter searching: liberating information from the Internet

Published October 9, 2006 in Articles, Search - 2 comments so far   Add your comment 

Building my rebooted:bbc.co.uk homepage

Published June 16, 2006 in Application design, Articles, BBC - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Designing your website to be search engine friendly - part 1

Published February 22, 2006 in Articles, Search - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Gaining Online Advantage: Building an effective web presence in a large organisation - part 1

Published January 1, 2006 in Articles, Web - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Managing 'Glue' at the BBC: Introducing the BBC - part 1

Published December 8, 2005 in Articles, BBC, Usability, Web - No comments yet   Add your comment 

The software used to access the BBC homepage

Published October 22, 2005 in Apple, Articles, BBC, Linux, Microsoft, Popular - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Putting a F__k Off Dalek on the BBC Homepage isn't big or clever - part 1

Published July 24, 2005 in Articles, BBC, Doctor Who - No comments yet   Add your comment 

Fine Tuning Your Enterprise Search - part 1

Published December 3, 2004 in Articles, Search - No comments yet   Add your comment 

How search can help you understand your audience - part 1

Published May 6, 2003 in Articles, BBC, Search - No comments yet   Add your comment 

A day in the life of BBCi Search - part 1

Published March 27, 2003 in Articles, BBC, Popular, Search - No comments yet   Add your comment 

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