links for 2009-08-02

Stephen Abram recommends setting the default search engine on some terminals in libraries to Bing, and then asking users how they found it.

"And then there were two. Make no mistake, Yahoo’s out of the search game. I know the spin. Better user interface, new ways to innovate, a winning play. Let’s not kid ourselves. They’re done. Not today, not necessarily in a year, but down the line at some point. Done."

This post started off a spat featuring @yiannopoulos and @paulcarr. I don't think it is so much that Michael Gray is aggravated by whatever Sarah Lacy may or may not have done on TechCrunch, as his long standing and often demonstrated gripe that Google simply do not apply their own rules consistently to larger 'trusted' domains.

"Scientists have been worrying about the environment for years, but what they believed would doom the planet changed over time. The graph below shows how many stories containing particular environmental phrases have been printed in The Times in a given year. Each coloured section represents a particular phrase; the thicker the section of the graph, the greater the frequency of the phrase". I love the visualistion, but is this really a timeline of what scientists 'believed would doom the planet', or just a timeline of journalists using stock phrases and short-hand soundbites repetitively?

"When I was on Press Gazette the worst story I was told about work experience was from a journalism student who was offered a week on a top fashion mag. Their 'experience' was ironing the clothes for the fashion shoots". Ouch.

"Have a design related question? Want to know how to do something in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign? Want a critique on your latest logo project? Not sure if Agenda Black and Garamond Semi-Bold italic go together well? Get answers to your design questions by myself and the readers of this blog!". Niki is trying out Google Voice in a very interesting way.

"Blogs last year (April 08 - 09) were getting around 20% of the traffic every month of the total traffic (page impressions) to the BBC's social media services (communities, blogs, message boards). In other words in terms of traffic to moderation spend blogs are out performing boards."