links for 2011-07-29

"This team conducted a series of studies, most of which involved increasing one variable which represented a site the user had previously visited (such as thumbnail size) until the user recognized it, at which point the user would buzz in to stop the expansion and identify the site."

"19 year old Sanum Ghafoor, a university student in London is now notorious for starting the popular #blamethemuslims Twitter hashtag which ‘trended’ globally for 48 hours just a few days ago.  We spoke to Sanum the day after, and got the full story about why she did it, and what she thinks of the reaction the hashtag provoked."

"The common route into journalism involves starting local covering the low profile stories and working your way up to national and international high profile stories, but social media and blogging sites such as WordPress are starting to make that route less of a necessity."

New series from Guardian writers talking about their holiday book encounters

"With too many text fields, users have to constantly type-tab, type-tab and type-tab, hopping from one field to the next. This slows users down because it puts them in a stop and go rhythm, while mentally preparing what to type for each new field. Also, think about novice users who still use their mouse to move to next text fields. That’s a lot of unnecessary hand movement on and off the keyboard that can make filling out forms difficult."

"I was wondering how on earth the Guardian's own Nick Davies was so overwhelmingly beaten by Michael Acton Smith, creator of Moshi Monsters, in the MediaGuardian 101 poll (top) until I read the plea for votes on the Moshi Monsters site (bottom)."

July 18, 1914, war declared between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. The Times splashed the news on page 8 http://twitpic.com/5x92ec

Are you loving your sysadmin today? [via @girlygeekdom]