links for 2009-08-10
by Martin Belam, 10 August 2009
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"The XX have made their forthcoming debut album, 'XX', available to listen to in full online before its official release". It took me a moment to realise this was actually a story, not just some placeholder variables leaking on to the live site ;-)
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Truly excellent post from Malcolm Coles pointing out some of the elements of the paywall puzzle that the usual "Information wants to be free" naysayers miss out.
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"What no government seems to have thought fundamentally about is what their regulatory regime should set out to achieve, and what best structures would be needed to achieve that. Instead, they have taken their opening position and tweaked it – and done that pretty quickly, too". As ever, if you start with the wrong questions, you'll most likely end up with the wrong answers.
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"Villa Park, home of Aston Villa Football Club in Birmingham, will no longer be used as one of London 2012’s venues for the preliminary rounds in the Olympic football tournament. The club has confirmed that it is considering plans for major development work at Villa Park over the next few years. Whilst these plans are being developed, the club is unable to commit fully to hosting matches as part of the London 2012 Olympic football competition".
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"Council years are slower than internet years – which are faster than normal time. To accommodate these differential you need to build a permanent online civic space which will outlast the next big fad".
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Max approves of our football infographics design. Yay!
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"I thought I would have a look to see just how wide ranging Council’s powers to charge already are. I typed in charges to the Reading Borough Council website. I was told there were 686 web pages that might be relevant!". Always good to hear that the likely next government are basing their opinions on typing one word queries into local council websites. Brilliant work there, John.
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"At some point, 90-9-1 crossed over from a Wikipedia observation to a rule defining participation in any community. It’s a lie. For community building, 90-9-1 is irrelevant. At best, it showcases poor practice or lack of understanding. At worst, it lets you feel happy about 90% of your members not participating". WIthout re-hashing the entire spat, this is *exactly* what I was getting at when I was talking about participation numbers on the Points Of View message board.
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"The portrayal of the news media in the Harry Potter series of books may have a significant impact on children's understanding of journalistic integrity or journalism as a career, according to a study by Baylor University researchers". In other news, children are also refusing to travel on London buses that only have two decks, and don't even begin to contemplate putting them on a train that isn't a steam engine with passenger compartments. [via Joanna Geary]
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New standalone footie site from The MIrror which still looks a little rough around the edges at the moment. Not entirely convinced with the idea of spinning content silos off onto separate domain names myself.
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"The concept we worked to was known as 'one page/URL per match'. A single, permanent 'match page' for every game in the major league and cup competitions. Hopefully something that fans can use a reference to see who really did get that assist in that crucial midweek match."
Baylor, my wife tells me, is a Texas university she went to visit aged 18 to humour her grandmother.
It is so chock-full of southern baptist Taliban lunacy that there is a strict dress code enumerating exactly by what fraction of an inch a woman's skirt may avoid the floor, and while she was touring the campus a bleeding man in a loincloth was dragging a mahogany cross over the quad.
I fear that they'll say more or less anything bad about Harry Potter, not because they are concerned for journalism but because of the ten-year pogrom over the SATAN WITCHCRAFT SATAN, etc.
Just sayin'. Context is valuable.
When you say to "humour her grandmother" do you mean that her grandma wanted her to consider going there, or that it just made her laugh to think of people's faces when they visited it? :-)
The former :)
well, ok, I think a grandmother should be humoured, or she will be bored to death.