links for 2008-07-17

"When Private Eye dabbles in the internet the result is usually both comic and alarming. It’s like having a blacksmith repair your car; it’s amusing to watch him bash around aimlessly for a minute but you soon start to worry he might do some real damage".

"In other words, if your organization hasn’t embraced and standardized social software, your employees will begin installing it and using it without your permission."

"By simply entering in a few search queries you can literally discover hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs that support the dofollow movement; you can comment on them and get a free backlink". Using advanced search to target comment forms on .edu sites.

"One of things worrying me in recent weeks has been that people in Britain seem determined to be more gloomy about the economy than the data warrants". It is bloody confusing me- how are you meant to plan for anything if you can't tell if the country is going bust or not?

"2 years ago we highlighted the government’s decision to shun social media in educating the young of Britain about the dangers of STDs. This flew in the face of research showing most young people took advice about sexual matters from their peers."

Great line: "What they are worried about, of course, is that there are voters out there who are moronic enough to take it seriously, who believe the stuff about Obama being secretly a Muslim (he is, in fact, like many presidents, secretly an agnostic)."

"This year we describe a project from Scotland, the first national schools intranet, which provides every Scottish school with a common e-platform". George Lucas - really? - is gushing about the Scottish Schools extra/intranet project Glow [via Toby Ward]

"Ok this blog is a exception (!), but let’s admit it: Web analytics is boring". Useful pointers to making web analytics less boring and more actually about gathering the information as business needs...

"I would very rarely work with anybody that has a Windows machines these days. They just come with too much baggage". Memo - if you are going to call out Windows users as idiots because you are a Mac supremacist, at least make sure your <TITLE> tag is something other than the value of the URL...

Excellent number crunching of inbound and outbound links to and from the major news media players

References my post about the Cricinfo 3D cricket simulation, amongst some interesting thoughts about playing "take it from there..." to see if you can do better with real data from live sports events

"Until now Murat has had to watch silently as the worst elements of the British media have gone about destroying his good name and reputation. The behaviour of the tabloid journalists and their editors has been grossly irresponsible, demonstrating a reckless disregard for truth."