links for 2009-06-23

From the MySociety newsletter: "There's a Pledgebank pledge underway to raise money for TheyWorkForYou.com, which has some very, very exciting changes coming up over the next few weeks, some of which are already visible. We're aiming to get 250 people to pledge a fiver a month for continued development and enhancement of our parliamentary tracker site. If you can spare a fiver a month to help us build these cool things, please pledge!"

"Want to use a CSS grid but don't feel like going back to college? Join the club". Oooh.

The Daily Telegraph's special supplement on MPs' expenses is understood to have boosted the paper's Saturday edition by up to 150,000 copies above its base rate – its best sales uplift since it broke the story last month". Wow, impressive. Well done.

I missed this last year. An open letter from ex-Depeche keyboard player and producer Alan Wilder about the state of the music industry. Really interesting observations from inside 'the machine', especially "because of my background in Depeche Mode, I am secure, which has meant (and continues to mean) that I don't have to tailor what I do to conform in any way. The market shift hasn't really affected me that much. It certainly doesn't change how I approach making music. It does reinforce my cynicism towards the injustice of so much good music lost in the mêlée of dross. But that is nothing new. The nature of mainstream radio hasn't improved in any way; magazines have minimal impact, television exposure is more limited than ever...In fact the best way to get your music heard is through a TV advertisement."

"However, last night's revelation wasn't as much of a surprise as many had been led to believe. The episode was actually filmed on Wednesday and despite presenter Jeremy Clarkson asking the audience not to reveal that Schumacher appears from under the Stig's white helmet, one person emailed several fan websites in the US which published the name, although this was apparently not picked up in the UK". Not picked up in the UK? Have you heard of this thing called the Intertubes?

Only on the Internet could I post a picture I sneakily took on the underground of a woman's chest without her permission, and be dissed not because I was perving at her breasts, but because I had failed to correctly identify the Manga character on her t-shirt. All in the name of I-Spying Ghosts, Mysteries and Legends of course.

Somewhere, there is a PR industry news site with a pithy retort like "Most PRs uninterested in reading all Sunday supplement sections"

A serious allegation, but I wonder if anyone knows the comparative column inch figures The Sun has given 'SuBo' compared to the British hostages in Irag?