December 2008 Archives

December 31, 2008

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December 30, 2008

A few of my favourite blogs of 2008

A few days ago I was tagged by Adrian Monck with a blogging parlour game meme - "The One Blog I Read That You’ve Never Heard Of". As it is time for my annual round-up of my favourite blogs, I thought I'd include the response in here. The blogs that I nominated in 2007 and 2006 featured, amongst others, Adrian Monck himself, AndyDickinson.net, Davblog, Diamond Geezer, Fabric of Folly, Frankie Roberto, Ian Douglas, James Cridland, Karen Loasby, Lee Harker, Martin...
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December 29, 2008

"I'm sorry, we're not allowed to have laptops here"

"I'm sorry, we're not allowed to have laptops here" And with those words I had further evidence for my theory that whilst I was out of the country for a couple of years, everybody in Britain slowly but surely went bonkers. A bit of context. I was in a small coffee shop and patisserie on Bedale Street near London Bridge, having a quick shot of caffeine and getting some work done before meeting up with some friends. I'd already found...
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The 10 least popular currybetdotnet posts of the year 2008

Last week, when I was posting my charts of the most successful posts from last year on currybetdotnet, Chris Applegate asked in a comment if there was "any chance we can see the least popular posts of the year?".Always eager to oblige, I ran through the figures again, and had a rifle through the worst performing posts from last year. They can be grouped into roughly three types. Announcements and side-projects During the year there were lots of short posts...
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December 28, 2008

"Darwin: Big idea, big exhibition" at the Natural History Museum

In the run up to Christmas, I took some time out to go to the "Darwin: Big idea, big exhibition" show at the Natural History Museum in London. I was very impressed with it, and came away having learnt quite a few new things about both Charles Darwin the man, and the science behind the theory of evolution. From the human point of view, I hadn't realised that as well as noting in meticulous detail the flora and fauna he...
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December 27, 2008

'Parachuting Teddy Bear Jumps' in Muswell Hill

You might have noticed on the blog that since the move back to the UK, I've been trying to do lots of 'local' things, and really get to grips with having moved to a new area of London. As well as the couple of book launches that I've blogged about - 'Hornsey Past' and 'The Folklore of London' - I've been for a guided walk in Highgate Wood, and even ventured into a carol service in the John Baird pub,...
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December 26, 2008

The BBC stole my money, and now I'm battling to get a TV Licence refund

Thanks to the unique way that the BBC is funded, yesterday I got to enjoy Wallace & Grommit, and the Doctor Who Christmas special. Thanks to the unique way that the BBC collects that money, I got to pay twice for the privilege. Moving back to the UK we had a long list of things to sign up to...council tax, water authority, TV Licence etc. I applied for most of them online where possible, and the TV Licence process was...
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December 25, 2008

The 20 most popular currybetdotnet posts of yesteryear in 2008 - part 2

Most people with any sense will be spending Christmas Day away from their computers and in the company of family and friends. Here I am, however, with the currybetdotnet equivalent of a Christmas edition of 'Top Of The Pops 2' - a countdown of the posts on the blog from yesteryear which attracted the most traffic this year. Yesterday I looked at numbers 20 to 11, and today it is the turn of the top ten. 10: Top 100 British...
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December 24, 2008

The 20 most popular currybetdotnet posts of yesteryear in 2008 - part 1

Over the last couple of days I've posted a list of the most popular content that I've published on the blog in the last year. That is only half the story, however, as I still get a great deal of traffic on pages that are more than a year old. Over the next couple of days I'm going to list the top twenty posts from yesteryear that have continued to draw people to visit the site. 20: Haunted Malta -...
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December 23, 2008

The 20 most popular currybetdotnet posts of the year 2008 - part 2

Yesterday I started a Christmas Countdown of the most popular currybetdotnet posts of the year - based purely on the numerical evidence supplied by Google Analytics. Never mind conversion rates, engagement, whether something went viral on social bookmarking or gained some decent referral links, this chart is purely based on that old-fashioned 'page views' metric. 10: Being an extra on John Fogerty's Live at the Albert Hall DVD This post ended up becoming one of the references on John Fogerty's...
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December 22, 2008

The 20 most popular currybetdotnet posts of the year 2008 - part 1

It is, without a doubt, review of the year time - so here is the start of my "20 most popular currybetdotnet posts of the year" round-up. No editorial intervention, this is simply the most popular articles from the site strictly according to page views. Or 'server hits' as I believe they are calling them on teh interwebz these days - especially if you were one of the people who asked these questions. 20: Quadraphonic: The forgotten surround sound of...
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December 21, 2008

VAT rate cut information design in Muswell Hill

We are approaching the end of December, and will soon be getting retail figures that will prove whether the Government's emergency VAT rate cut sparked a last minute Xmas shopping spree, or whether retailer's doom and gloom about the Christmas period was warranted. I have painful memories from back in the 1990s of having to re-price every single item in Note For Note, a record store in Walthamstow, due to a VAT rate increase. With no computerised till or stock...
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December 20, 2008

'Designing Change' at the British Museum

I went to the 'Designing change: Coins of Elizabeth II' exhibition at the British Museum last week, which looked at how the coin designs for 1970s decimalisation and the recent re-design came about. One thing that really interested me was the change it illustrated in the design process itself. In the 1960s, Christopher Ironside painstakingly sketched his ideas for decimal coins. According to the captions, at one point in 1964 he wrote to the Royal Mint saying: "When I get...
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December 19, 2008

Local social: Contextual help for social bookmarking in the UK's regional press

Over the last couple of days I've been looking at the social bookmarking offerings of the 20 regional newspaper websites that I've been reviewing. Usually when I do this kind of survey I also look at the contextual help provided alongside the buttons. How do sites explain social bookmarking to their users?   West Midlands Express & Star  Shropshire Star For example, the West Midlands Express and Star (and by extension, the Shropshire Star) has a link saying "What are these?"...
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December 18, 2008

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Local social: Social bookmarking links in the UK's top regional papers - Part 2

Yesterday I started looking at the social bookmarking features on some of the UK's leading regional newspaper websites, and also pointed out the excellent research that Louise Thomas has just carried out in this area. Today I want to continue with a look at the social bookmarking links on another 10 local press sites.   This is... The 'This is...' series of sites all of a similar social media set-up, with links included in a "This story" panel at the...
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December 17, 2008

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Local social: Social bookmarking links in the UK's top regional papers - Part 1

I've been turning my attention to the online presence of the UK's leading regional papers. So far I've looked at their provision of RSS feeds, Google subscriber take-up, and I've looked at the online video features they offer. Today I want to look at an area which can be seen as a barometer of how closely a site has been paying attention to fashionable online developments - the provision of links to social bookmarking sites.   Manchester Evening News Of...
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December 16, 2008

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Reflections on the BBC Internet Blog's "iPlayer day"

Last week's iPlayer Day on the BBC Internet Blog illustrated some of the tensions that still exist between 'corporate' and 'personal' blogging. After the event both Nick Reynolds and Dave Lee have blogged about what they thought well and what didn't. However, both these posts have appeared on their 'personal' blogs, rather than surfacing on the BBC Internet Blog itself. Nick's post at least featured on the blog's linkroll, but Dave's is yet to surface. On the day itself I...
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December 15, 2008

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The ghost of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway Bridge across the Thames

Earlier this year I was working with a client who had offices near Blackfriars Bridge, which gave me the chance to explore that bit of Central London. I'd actually passed by that way very closely when doing a ghost walk around Haunted Clerkenwell, St. Pauls and the Barbican, but during the daylight hours it was the ghost of a bridge that intrigued me. Alongside London's Blackfriar's Bridge runs a series of supports for a bridge that looks like it was...
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December 14, 2008

Chipwrapper now available with time-slices

I can officially announce that the Russell Brand furore is over for the British press. Well, nearly. In the last week the national papers only managed to publish 270-odd stories to mention the ex-BBC comedian. At the height of the scandal, between them, they managed to churn out something like 440 articles a week referencing him. How do I know these figures? Well, not because I've counted them, that's for sure. Instead I've been using Chipwrapper's new time-slicing feature. Ever...
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"To all young couples I see together..."

Now, it is just a hunch. But I couldn't help but think that the fact you were scrawling graffiti like this in the toilets of the British Museum might, just might, be a clue as to why you find yourself in the relationship predicament that you do... "To all young couples I see together, f&%k off. I should be with a wife or girlfriend, not by myself."...
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December 13, 2008

Thoughts, notes and quotes from the Online Information 2008 Seminars: Part 4

This is the last of four posts gathering together my thoughts, notes and the top quotes from this year's Online Information seminars at Olympia. Today I'm posting about what I saw there, mostly around the topic of content publishing, from the 14th century to the 21st... "Turning the pages - Bringing the world's most treasured books to life through technology" by Barry Smith This presentation from the British Library was a case study into their online digitisation project "Turning...
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December 12, 2008

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Thoughts, notes and quotes from the Online Information 2008 Seminars: Part 3

Over the last couple of days I've been sharing some of my thoughts, notes and the best quotes from the seminar sessions I got to see at the recent Online Information expo in Olympia. I was there talking about emerging trends to help information professionals escape down-sizing in the coming months, and so far I've published two posts summing up sessions that focussed on social media and on content and information management issues. Today I'm writing about the VIP...
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December 11, 2008

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Thoughts, notes and quotes from the Online Information 2008 Seminars: Part 2

This week I've been publishing some of my thoughts, notes and quotes from the seminar track of Online Information 2008, including a summary of my own presentation on the FreePint stand. Yesterday I wrote about three seminars with a social focus from Will Critchlow, Arthur Weiss plus Jill Beard and Penny Dale from Bournemouth University. Today I'm looking at three session that were more about content and information management. "Case study: Social networking in an NHS Trust" - Norman...
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December 10, 2008

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Thoughts, notes and quotes from the Online Information 2008 Seminars: Part 1

Last week I was at the Online Information Exhibition in Olympia, representing my role as a contributing editor for FUMSI at the FreePint stand. It also meant I got a chance to wander around lots of the stalls, and to attend quite a few sessions for the 5-track free seminar programme that takes place away from the main Online Information presentation programme. Although it is very much the younger sibling of the event, the seminars nevertheless had a series...
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December 9, 2008

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FUMSI editor's briefing at Online Information 2008

At Online Information this year I had my 'FUMSI Contributing Editor' hat on, and as part of that I took part in a couple of panel sessions at the FreePint stand. I had three minutes in which I was hoping to identify 3 emerging trends and opportunities to help information professionals through the choppy waters of an economic downturn. Here are the three I picked: Microblogging New tools and services are gaining wider adoption that facilitate 'microblogging', the short,...
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December 8, 2008

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Local RSS: Google Reader subscriber numbers for the UK's top regional papers

A couple of weeks ago I published a list of the Top 75 British Newspaper RSS feeds in Google Reader. Since I've been looking at the RSS feeds published by the UK's top 20 regional papers, so I thought I'd make a note of their subscriber numbers as well. The table below plots the popularity of the main RSS feed from each paper's website in Google Reader. There are two things of particular note. Firstly, the number of subscribers...
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December 7, 2008

'The Folklore of London' with Antony Clayton at Hornsey Library

Last week I went to another book event at Hornsey Library in Crouch End. This time it was for Antony Clayton's book "The Folklore of London" Judging the book by its cover, I had a dread that it was going to be all about Morris Dancing and worshipping "The Green Man", but thankfully it concentrated much more on legends of the urban underground, and curious ceremonies. Clayton opened his talk with the story of the Butterworth Charity, and then went...
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December 6, 2008

My kri-kri photo joins the ARKive

I was recently approached by the ARKive project for permission to use one of my Flickr photos. ARKive is run by British based charity Wildscreen, and the aim is to preserve a multi-media record of the planet's endangered species before they become extinct. Low resolution copies are available for free on the ARKive website, and high resolution copies are kept securely offline to preserve the collection. "Like the wildlife they depict, the images of these rare species are themselves endangered,...
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December 5, 2008

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'Xmas futures, crystal balls?' - Festive Chinwag Live

I had a hectic day on Tuesday, as after speaking at the FreePint stand at Online Information I then headed into central London for the last Chinwag Live event of the year. Entitled 'Xmas futures, crystal balls?' it asked a panel of experts, chaired by the BBC's Richard Titus, to gaze 5 years into the future and imagine the mobile and new media landscape in 2013. Certainly the person on the panel with the most intriguing sounding job was Jonathan...
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December 4, 2008

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Reactions to my post on the Mumbai terrorist attack search engine response

There was quite a bit of interest in my post last week about search engine response to the Mumbai terror attacks. A couple of the comments left here disagreed with my premise. Matthew Cain made the point that it would be no help to Mumbai's recovery from the attacks to have search engine users constantly reminded of the events. He posted about it over on his BacAtU blog, and I left the following comment there: "Yes, I do see your...
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December 3, 2008

Local RSS: What do the leading regional newspapers offer? - Part 2

Yesterday I had a look at the RSS provision of ten of the UK's leading regional newspapers. Today I want to continue looking at the newspapers that make up the rest of my regional 'top twenty'.   Birmingham Mail The Birmingham Mail offers a range of nearly 200 feeds, which can be found by visiting the site map. The main feed is auto-discoverable from the homepage, but the RSS logo in the top-right of the page leads to information about...
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December 2, 2008

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Local RSS: What do the leading regional newspapers offer? - Part 1

With job cuts and financial uncertainty in the sector, and the BBC Trust's decision to prevent the BBC producing £68m worth of new local news content, I've turned my attention to a selection of the UK's leading regional newspapers to assess their online offerings. I started last week with with an overview of the video content that they provide. Today I wanted to turn my attention to RSS - and look at the syndication services provided by ten of...
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December 1, 2008

Mail Online the first national to allow you to rate the comments on their news articles?

Excuse the pun, but I haven't seem much comment around the net on the Daily Mail's latest addition to their comment functionality. This thread on This Is London is all I've seen about it I first noticed it over the weekend, but now users have the ability to rate comments with a vote up and vote down mechanism. At the moment, it doesn't seem as if the voting re-orders the comments or changes which three are displayed in the default...
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5 essential Google Labs features to improve your Google Mail experience

A little while ago, Google launched "Mail Goggles" as a Google Mail Labs feature, which generated lots of press and blog exposure for the fact that you could modify your Google Mail interface using Google Labs products. I thought it might be worth taking a look through to see what were they really useful Google Labs extras you could add to Gmail. Here are 5 Google Mail Labs features that I've got enabled. Forgotten Attachment Detector Everybody who has ever...
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