links for 2008-04-24
by Martin Belam, 24 April 2008
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Very thorough article with a great line about Angelina Jolie and Basket Weaving as a linkbait hook. Totally undermined by a comment pi$$ing war between the author and the first person to leave a comment, mind you.
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Guardian Media Group chairman Paul Myners today challenged the BBC's decision to allow advertising on its international website BBC.com.
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"Reliance Globalcom, which owns the cables, was able to piece together this scenario, using satellite photos to identify the culprits, essentially sinking the official Egyptian version of events".
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"The switchover body said the process had created confusion for some people and had forced viewers to 'toggle' between analogue and digital services to access all channels during the transition". Not entirely clear why they were 'forced' to toggle myself.
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"Can you imagine a regional newspaper these days sending round a reporter to interview a household that had managed to blag the first BlackBerry or Asus Eee?".
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"The Grand Island Independent found a clever way to use CoverItLive. They’re chatting with folks about the redesign of their site. The conversations are public and allowed them to immediately fix quirks and bugs that readers found".
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"Everyone has searched his own name. Now a documentary takes this vanity searchto a new level with 'Google Me the Movie'. Jim Killeen discovered there were 6 other Jim Killeens so went round the world and interviewed them". Sound familiar anyone?
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Not sure my mother *would* love this, but I was pleased to find out that adding &pws=0 to the end of your Google search URL disables personalised results without logging out amongst other things
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"Sky One is to remake the science fiction series Blake's 7, following the recent reimaginings of Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica and Bionic Woman". Doesn't this sort of thing get announced every couple of years and then nothing happens?
Re: Whitehaven repeat may be ruled out by Digital UK
On the Whitehaven toggling point - IIRC there were no digital terrestrial television signals in Whitehaven prior to the switchover process.
During the first phase, BBC Two analogue was switched off, and one of the BBC's multiplexes turned on. So BBC One and BBC Two were available on digital, but ITV/Channel 4 were still analogue, and not yet available on digital.
I think that's right anyway...
Oh, that's interesting Andrew, I didn't know that. I kind of assumed they just meant that people out of habit switched to the terrestrial versions of the channels if they still could. For years my parents have had cable, but until quite recently they still switched the TV to analogue-through-the-air if they were watching channels 1 through 5. I guess that region was picked then because the digital signal wasn't already present?
I think that's the case - it's a relatively self contained broadcast area, thus reducing the risk of problems and interference. The Whitehaven switchover was more about testing out the public reaction and less about technical issues.
The real tests will be this year when parts of the Border region switch over!