February 2010 Archives

February 27, 2010

The Sun relying on 'copyright thieves' Google and Yahoo! for their Wrightys XI campaign

Despite Murdoch's stance that search engines steal his newspaper's content, The Sun are using search keywords as the main marketing thrust for their 2010 FIFA World Cup competition.

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February 26, 2010

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February 25, 2010

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February 24, 2010

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Balloons at Depeche Mode's O2 gig illustrate the difference between 'community' and 'fans'

My colleague Meg Pickard gives a great presentation about the nature of social media, and it includes a slide of three people waiting at a bus stop, with the question 'is this a community?'. At the weekend I had cause to think about the nature of being 'in a community' at Depeche Mode's O2 gig. There is no doubt that I am a big fan of Depeche, and have been for many, many years. I also visit a lot of...
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February 23, 2010

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Reader's comments about The Observer relaunch

"Well you seem to have made a lot of people extremely unhappy" - a look through some of the comments left on Observer editor John Mulholland's blog post about the recent redesign of the Sunday print edition of the paper.

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February 22, 2010

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The Observer relaunch - my first impressions

The Observer relaunched at the weekend with a new magazine and 'The New Review'. Here are some of the things that caught my eye in the new format.

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February 19, 2010

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Alan Turing and John Foxx feature at the London Kinetica Art Fair

A couple of weeks back I went to the Kinetica Art Fair held at P3 in London. A couple of things caught my eye. The Aikon Project is trying to get computers to imitate the strokes that a human artist might make when creating a portrait. To that end they have some 'sketches' by machines of computer heroes Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing. Another piece, "No numbers", examined our notions of digital piracy. A machine is silently playing...
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Bioshock 2 and "Organisation-centred advertising"

I'm an advocate of user-centred design in digital products, but I understand how digital publishers often end up with organisation-centred design. "Organisation-centred advertising" is something else, and I saw a classic example of this the other day. Bioshock 2 is a big release in the games world. And, of course, as a punter, I want to know whether it is available on either the PS3 or XBox platform, or both. But as I stood on the platform at Kings Cross...
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February 18, 2010

Now scientists say "Stop reading the Daily Express to enjoy a longer life"!

From the "D,ho! The irony" files. In recent weeks the Daily Express has bought us front pages like this.             Yet today, on page 3, they tell us that 'being happier' is the secret to a longer life. And so it seems like stopping reading all the miserable doom-mongering in the Daily Express might make you live longer......
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"Journalism in the digital age" at the Edinburgh International Science Festival

On April 11th I will be speaking as part of a panel at the Edinburgh International Science Festival discussing "Journalism in the digital age: Trends, tools and technologies" alongside Iain Hepburn and my Guardian Local colleague Sarah Hartley.

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February 17, 2010

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European Young Journalist Award 2010

There are still a couple of weeks for young journalists to enter the European Commission sponsored award.

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February 16, 2010

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'Identity' at The Wellcome Colection

A visit to the Identity exhibition at The Wellcome Collection was the first time I've seen 'blog comments' appear as part of an exhibition.

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February 15, 2010

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February 12, 2010

Implementing hNews on a blog - what does 'Value Added News' mean for a blogger?

As part of the recent redesign process on the currybetdotnet blog, I implemented the 'Value Added News' hNews microformat to provide additional metadata on my articles. Doing so raised some questions that were not just practical about how to implement the format, but philosophical about the nature of the blog itself.

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February 11, 2010

Fixing the IA of an IA's blog: Part 4

In the final part of this series about my recent blog redesign, I look at how I set the criteria for success, and use the Venn diagram in the top right-hand corner of the banner area to set my content strategy.

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February 10, 2010

Evening Standard's Richard Godwin can't stand IT - even for fact-checking NASA's "space pen"

Richard Godwin's argument that schools should use pencils rather than the latest technology would be a lot more convincing if he didn't back it up with the tired old urban myth about NASA's "Space Pen".

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Fixing the IA of an IA's blog: Part 3

In part three of this series looking at the currybetdotnet redesign, I talk about the new 'hub' and 'theme' pages, and what I hope they will achieve.

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February 9, 2010

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Fixing the IA of an IA's blog: Part 2

In the second part of this series looking at the how and why of the recent changes I've made to the site, I'm focusing on the homepage and the demotion of the linklog.

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February 8, 2010

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Fixing the IA of an IA's blog: Part 1

At the beginning of the year I changed the design and information architecture of this blog. This series of posts examines how and why I finally fixed the IA of an IA's blog.

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February 5, 2010

Tomorrow's newsmakers today - Student newspaper online review: Part 3

In the final part of my review of user experience features in the online versions of university student union newspapers, I'm looking at social media usage, and the moderation overhead of providing online comment facilities on a student newspaper.

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February 4, 2010

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Tomorrow's newsmakers today - Student newspaper online review: Part 2

In part two of this series looking at some of the user experience features in the online versions of university student union newspapers, I'm examining student news sources like Pluto Online in Preston, and The Demon in Leicester.

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February 3, 2010

Tomorrow's newsmakers today - Student newspaper online review: Part 1

With my interest in the future of news, I've been looking at the digital publishing by the people who might be producing the news in the future. This series looks at some of the user experience features in the online versions of university student union newspapers.

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February 2, 2010

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'What is information architecture?' on Inside Guardian, and talking with Talis

I've recently started a blog post series on Inside Guardian about my role as information architect at guardian.co.uk, and also been interviewed for the Nodalities podcast about 'Linked Data' and news.

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February 1, 2010

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Page Three plugs 3D

The Sun was plugging Sky's experimental live football 3D service - even on Page Three!

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Day of the Triffids: How long would the Internet survive, and could you still publish news on it?

Mobile phones and the Internet have transformed interpersonal communication since John Wyndham wrote his classic novel. I wondered, in a 'Day of the Triffids' scenario where most of the world has suddenly gone blind, how long would the Internet last, and could you still publish news on it?

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