links for 2009-03-25

What can I say? Given a choice between my hypothetical nine year old being taught either about the Bayeux Tapestry, or being taught that the Internet exists, learning some of the risks of social networking sites and having it explained to them that Wikipedia isn't 100% reliable for homework, well, I'd plump for them learning about the Bayeux Tapestry by rote every time.

"Hmm, seems to me that the Guardian went for drama over substance to get people to read this story. At first glance I was with Rory Cellen-Jones - why on earth would kids need to learn about Twitter at school? But in context it seems to me that the plans merely bring education into the 21st Century, teaching kids about important technologies that are shaping our culture, not least in the way that we receive and interact with news."

"As well as popular queries, I've been examining the bounce rates in our search logs. Often interpreted as a bad thing (after all, you don’t want people to leave your site) bounce rates can mean all sorts of things. The searcher could have rapidly realised they are in completely the wrong place for their query, they could have been dissatified with the content, or they might have only been looking for a quick answer which the site actually satisfied". Karen continues a fascinating series examining search behaviour on the RNIB web site

"A bail out is needed. But this is no bail out for newspapers — it’s a bail out for journalism".

"If you ever want to punish a user interface designer, make sure they get to use an airline's long-haul inflight entertainment system. It must be like hell on earth for them". James was obviously on a very long, very dull flight to get all of this noted down

More great stuff from James Kelway.

Linkdump from Max of all the things he mentioned at the Innovation Forum event last night.

Obviously this will all become easier in the future when the entire population has spent four years learning about nothing except Twitter from the ages of 5 until 11. More seriously there are some very good points in here about the downside of being the 'person' responsible for being the 'brand' on Twitter

I can only give Andrea 7/10 for this article but it seems like a brave attempt to sum up the complex relationships between football clubs in London in one article for people who call it soccer. Minus points? Not mentioning the anti-semitic nature of much anti-Spurs chanting, and ridiculously placing West Ham as the 'final' London Premiership club behind Fulham. As if. But credit for how she describes the O's. What is not to love about Leyton Orient?

"Truly, the Guardian is an evil newspaper". At least you can never ever accuse Melanie of not saying what she means!