links for 2009-04-14

"Generally it is a bad sign if your professional community makes you feel like a weird bird". I know what Karen means. Why is Mini-IA on Monday not Mini-UX? Because us penguins need our little corner of the UX ecosystem in order to flourish...

"And there's a big elephant in the news room: Whoever said that print newspaper readers were guaranteed to only be getting their online news from newspapers? I can get digital news on my mobile or my PC, via text,audio or video, and via social networks, blogs, websites, link aggregators, RSS, podcasts, videocasts, and from global sources".

"Why waste your time eking out 3 votes on Digg when there's a growing community of local insiders who'd love to check out your latest local coverage? Sure, the Citizen can't drop 5,000 readers on your front door, yet, but do you really think you're going to make the front page of Digg writing about local stuff?"

"Something kind of scary happened last week. Yelp announced that they’ll soon let businesses respond to the critiques and the not-so-glowing reviews made against them on the site. I know, this should be good news, but, holy heaven does it make me nervous. Let’s face it, social skills and a beating heart aren’t necessarily two characteristics common to most organizations. Giving them a microphone to address the people vocally speaking out against them, well, let’s just say this could go horribly wrong."

There's still something that makes me laugh about this whole story boiling down to "bloke who makes living out of rumour and innuendo, complains that someone else is thinking about but has not yet published some rumour and innuendo, thus causing the rumour and innuendo he is so indignant about to be published in the national press" ;-)

"Frances Osborne has complained to the Press Complaints Commission after the two papers on Easter Sunday printed details of the email allegations that forced McBride to leave his civil service post. Osborne said that she was complaining because the false allegations were 'gratuitously repeated' and other publications were mentioning them". Now, that is an interesting turn of events. Bloggers repeating the allegations, of course, are only open to recourse via the courts...

"We all have to take a realistic - but not pessimistic - assessment of the way things stand. I’m sure that many young graduates will give up and get out of the game, but I love journalism too much to do that. Thoughts of walking into one of the best graduate schemes are gone and the aim must be making sure we are best placed for that elusive job which should eventually show up". Smart thinking.

"One of newspapers' great remaining advantages is portability. Devices like the iPhone, and apps and services like those that Posnanski lists, are killing that advantage".