links for 2009-03-12

If there is a prize out there for getting mentions of the ZX Spectrum and the Byzantine Empire into the same paragraph, then I've just bagged it with this Q&A about my new job at The Guardian, which I did with Judith Townend last week.

"So I did check that last link - and instead of an inoffensive picture of a BBC studio, it was a shot of a young woman wearing nothing but a smile, in a pose that can only be described as extremely post-watershed". From the comments: "Does that mean someone else thought they were posting an x-rated image, and instead found they'd linked to a photo of the BBC News set? Wonder which one of you was most shocked!"

"How perilous is it to cycle where you live? Here’s a map showing Department for Transport data of all the road accidents in 2007 involving cyclists where injuries were reported to the police. There were just over 16,000 accidents in total - about 46 per day. Thanks to the raw data released by Direct Gov, we were able to learn the grid reference for each - presumably thanks to the police report. We turned these into latitude/longitude co-ordinates using a program one of our coders wrote, which we then plotted on a map". Good, good work for The Times Labs

David muses on Dom Penrice's idea that 'the new owners of the means of production/control are coders'. Caught my eye today, because last night I was discussing how, with the advance of automated trading dashboards, the relative performance of financial institutions could start being viewed as "our software engineers and IAs are better than your software engineers and IAs".

"When deciding on the layout for your search results pages, clearly define the appropriate page behavior at all screen sizes your audience uses. Design your search results using a liquid layout if your visual treatment and level of technical expertise allow it". Comprehensive article on the issue of laying out search results

Incredibly in-depth fantasy re-design of Craiglist.

More genius from the Shatner web operation - buy loads of unwanted odds'n'ends from the production of Boston Legal

"Your core product is a commercially relevant audience, gathered through multiple print channels (daily paper, weekly free TMC, free specialty products) and now also through multiple digital channels (web site, "moms" and other specialty sites, mobile, email, and now even distributed behavioral advertising networks)".

"BBC reporter Spencer Kelly and security company PrevX took over an existing botnet of approximately 22,000 computers, and used them for their spam experiment - ordering the innocent third-party computers to send 500 spam messages each to Hotmail and Gmail accounts under the control of the BBC". Poll on the site suggests people think they did break the law, but 'for a good cause' in raising awareness. I'd be interested to see what is on the compliance forms for the episode!