links for 2010-02-09

"The Guardian severed its historic newspaper link to Manchester today with the sale of its regional media business to Trinity Mirror."

"On a national level it works – I could surf the Guardian for free via guardian.co.uk on the Safari browser on my iPhone, but I choose to pay £2.39 for the app because it’s way more than £2.39 better an experience to consume the content that way. The content is the same, the better experience is what I’m paying for."

"Electronic Arts on Monday presented a pessimistic outlook for the video game industry this year, predicting a fall in sales of disc-based games and issuing revenue forecasts that fell short of Wall Street expectations."

"We are pleased to announce that the Talk About Local Un-Conference 2010 will be held on Saturday 17 April at Old Broadcasting House in Leeds. Old Broadcasting House is an excellent venue in Central Leeds, in the Civic Quarter just off the Ring Road. We are delighted that this event will be in partnership with The Guardian’s Local initiative."

"Faceted search has been around for a long time and has become the de facto standard for search on most ecommerce sites. However, filters with numeric values remain among the most confusing, because many sites have not able to design usable numeric filters that people can use in an intuitive manner."

"Donating money to a charity should be as quick and easy online as it is to stuff a few coins in a collection pot on the high street. It should also be apparent what the money will be used for. With these two things in mind, it is surprising how often charities miss the mark when it comes to their online donation screens. Fiddly pull-downs, peculiar microcopy, trillions of steps, and minimal transparency".

It isn't really the choice of presenter that matters to me, but the way a subject is handled. At the risk of sounding like "Cantankerous of East Cheam", 'Seven Ages of Britain' lost me as a viewer the moment it opened with a sequence that made it clear the producers didn't think the audience could imagine digging a Roman statue's head out of the Thames silt unless we saw Dimbleby, you know, digging a Roman statue's head out of the Thames silt.