Links of the year 2008 - Part 4
by Martin Belam, 4 January 2009
This is the last of my posts gathering together some of my favourite links from 2008 - a selection that manages to cover from August to December, thus proving that 'interestingness' wasn't evenly distributed throughout my year.
-
I love Apple fanboys. From the comments: "If Apple, the CEO, or its board was indeed manipulative, there would be ads on iTunes". Of course, what appears in the promo slots on the iTunes store homepage isn't a careful arrangement between labels and Apple
-
Exactly. I blame all the immigrants. I mean, when do you ever meet a good-old traditional Eadfrith, Wulsig or Leofstan these days?
-
"The time for innovation in journalism is over. Its mature. Its been done, perfected, written about, studied, taught, and analyzed for a couple of centuries. It comes down to a few simple things: check your facts; include as many sources as possible; avoid bias; avoid libel. Jesus Christ, these are things a ten-year-old can grasp. The innovation, the ideas, in the Internet age MUST come from the content delivery side."
-
"Walthamstow without the stadium is like Paris without the Eiffel Tower" - Barry Clegg perhaps going a little over-the-top there, but today is a sad day as yet another local E17 landmark closes for the last time. I paid my last respects back in June.
-
"Last weekend, I was with a hardcore copyright conservative who kept arguing that people watching the opening ceremonies online were cheating NBC out of money. I countered that what these people were doing was indicating what the market wanted. Many were happy to watch the Chinese CCTV version live instead of waiting until what NBC declared to be 'primetime'".
-
"When she did her time trials in December, 2007 in China, she took along her husband's GPS unit to capture the elevation along the route. Then she used that data to find the best training route back home". Inspired use of technology.
-
"The latest [Gvmt website] is a social network / discussion board / poorly thought-out and ill-defined pseudo-web2.0 project that lets people have their say about ID cards. Surprisingly enough, the board contains little other than people pointing out what a deplorable idea. See here, for example. So this post is just to say thanks, HMG, for spending my taxes on this. I assume you looked into the matter carefully and established that previously there was no facility anywhere on the web for people to comment on ID cards."
-
"Well, mes amis, have a look at Chris's figures. He has gone through the budget line by line and revealed exactly where the euros go. Anyone who reads to the end and continues to support European integration is either touchingly determined to elevate hope over experience or - more likely - is on the payroll himself."
-
Washington Post's political browser to recommend rival websites | Media | guardian.co.uk - 2008-09-23"The Washington Post has taken a bold decision by launching a new web section that links readers to the best of political coverage, including that carried by rival newspapers". Of course, in truth it is only bold if you subscribe to the idea that if the user visits another website once, THEY MIGHT NEVER EVER COME BACK. That's why I never link to any external articles on currybetdotnet, in case I lose all my loyal readers.
-
I agree with Hamish in the comments: "I found your article to be misleading and biased in almost every way against open source. Either this was intended as an ad for companies with vested interests in selling proprietary software and keeping users locked into their own proprietary model, or the author was woefully misunderstanding the realities of the GPL and openSource". Shockingly ill-informed article, via The OpenSkills Sett
-
And if Russell Brand & Jonathan Ross had been newspaper journalists? | Martin Moore Blog - 2008-10-30"The result? If it had been two newspaper journalists there almost certainly would have been virtually no press criticism, few complaints, no apologies, no suspensions, no resignations, no inquiries, no fines".
-
Journalist Andrew Gilligan accused of internet "sockpuppeting" | UK news | guardian.co.uk - 2008-11-04"This blog is eager to provide a platform for a variety of guest posters. Should Andrew Gilligan wish to enlighten me about any connection he has with kennite and the reasons for it should one exist, I will be more than happy to publish his words here - under his real name, and everything."
-
"One of our doctoral students spent Election Night grabbing screen captures from 98 different news Web sites, from about 11:30 P.M. EST until almost 6 a.m. Wednesday morning. The fruits of his labor are viewable at Iterasi, a free Web site that allows you to capture and save any Web page — with all its text selectable and its links still clickable — with a single click. How cool is that?". Really cool is the answer.
-
Awesome photo gallery from The Telegraph with a visual history of "UFO" pictures
-
"Here's the story of how a hack day project in the office coupled with a data leak from the BNP allowed us to easily present an interactive view of news events to our readers". Awesome representation of the BNP membership data that didn't invade privacy but provided context. Love to see other political parties voluntarily release anonymous postcode or constituency level membership data for comparison.
-
"While 54 per cent of people believe in God, 58 per cent believe in the supernatural. Researchers found women were more likely to believe in the supernatural than men, and were more likely to visit a medium. Nearly a quarter of the 3,000 questioned by researchers claimed they had an encounter with the paranormal. Some 37 per cent said aliens and ghosts were the basis of their belief system. The study, to mark the DVD release of X Files: I Want to Believe..." I bet they didn't ask how many people thought that movie was actually any good...
-
He admits he is over-stating the case for dramatic effect, but Michael has screenshots of people already forcing pr0n spam into the new Google feature that you can't switch off: "Google has a dominant lead in the search market, in some sectors it approaches near monopolistic levels. The fact that google is unchallenged by its closest rivals gives them some breathing room to have the bad combination of ego and recklessness, and have no fear of repercussions."
-
"The popular press, with its sensationalising and sentimentalising of every distressing case, bears the heaviest responsibility for this ugly and atavistic culture of vigilantism. Its coverage of Baby Peter has been virtually pornographic in its lingering upon every horrific detail of the child's suffering. In portraying the adults involved as simplistic avatars of evil they have done little to explain, or give any sense of, what might actually have occured."
-
Dave Hill: Christmas has not been banned, contrary to what some newspapers believe | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 2008-11-28"Once again, as the build-up to festivities begins, newspapers are reporting non-stories designed to enrage Middle England". Thankfully, Dave prevents me having to blog about this in the run-up to Xmas - now, if he could just do a catch-all post about A-Level results coverage all my media bug-bears would be laid to rest.
-
BBC in new decency row after Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles suggests Poles makes good prostitutes | Mail Online - 2008-12-04How delightful to see the Mail ride to the rescue, two weeks after broadcast, of Polish people. You remember the Poles don't you? They are the people that negotiated the removal of anti-Polish articles from...you guessed it...the Mail's own website after the intervention of the PCC in August of this year.
-
"This time round authorities are citing the 'impact on creative talent' that piracy causes. In other words, the ubiquity of untreated bilge like High School Musical hogging the movie charts is a direct consequence of you buying that dubbed version of Shanghai Surprise off a fellow in Seven Sisters the other month."
-
One of the better responses to the Scorpions album cover "outrage". Surprised the mid-market papers haven't made more of it today to be honest.
-
Watch out regionals, now the librarian is after your market: "So, if you're in a public library and your town is potentially dependent on the McPaper or a major national (If the NYT survives), what could you do? Can you use RSS feeds to assemble a local news source from smaller independents? Can you surf the local blogs and aggregate?"
-
I missed this at the time - "Field Marshall Clifford leads 7,000 troops and captures BBC Manchester, Content Protector General Ross swears to retake it and mounts a massive counter attack from BBC Liverpool and BBC Leeds and Sheffield, the loss of life is the highest yet on both sides leading the campaign to be dubbed the 'Slaughter of Salford'".
And finally...
That is almost the final part of my end-of-year list-making. Next week I'll be starting afresh with a new topic - looking at the site search engines of the UK's leading regional newspaper websites.