currybetdotnet Daily Telegraph archive

Looking at the 'new and improved' Telegraph news section
Last week The Telegraph launched the latest part of the re-vamp of their site. Ian Douglas posted a blog entry about it, making the point that it wasn't just about the design, but about changes at the back-end as well: "It’s much more efficient and easy to use, and the news team has been very pleased to get rid of the old system that was fiddly and demanded too much messing around with XML tags." Like The Guardian and the...

Read the full post - Published May 7, 2008 in Daily Telegraph, Newspapers

'Sorry - this page cannot be found': How newspapers handle 404 errors - Part 2
A comment when I started my recent 'Newspaper Site Search Smackdown' series of posts prompted me to go and have a look at which British newspapers use sitemap.xml files. As it turned out, it was only the Daily Mail and The Scotsman which I noticed, although The Telegraph and The Mirror and Metro have them as well. It meant that I got to have a close look at the 404 error pages generated by the others. I thought it might...

Read the full post - Published May 6, 2008 in Daily Telegraph, Newspapers, The Independent, The Sun, The Times

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 2 - The Telegraph vs The Independent
I'm running a series of smackdowns between British newspaper site search engines, to test how fresh their indexing is. Yesterday, in Round 1, The Daily Mail had the edge over The Sun. The Mail had 9 of their top 10 headlines indexed and findable via search by 9am - The Sun was left in their wake with only half of their top 10 stories in their index. Today it is the turn of The Telegraph and The Independent. The...

Read the full post - Published April 9, 2008 in Daily Telegraph, Newspapers, Search, The Independent

Google hijacks traffic from newspaper site search
There has been a controversy over the last couple of weeks about Google's introduction of 'Search in search' boxes. For some large web properties who appear at #1 for their brand name, Google has been adding a search box underneath their listing, allowing users to refine their search to get results for just the one domain. Amazon and Flickr are a couple of examples of where this has been introduced, although Amazon seem to have got the feature squashed. I...

Read the full post - Published March 31, 2008 in Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Google, Newspapers, Popular, The Guardian, The Sun, The Times

Mark Thompson survives online Telegraph grilling
BBC Director-General Mark Thompson did an online question and answer session with The Telegraph newspaper yesterday. I can't, off the top of my head, think of a more potentially hostile environment for him, except perhaps the bits of the BBC in White City and Bristol that used to make Factual programming. Actually, those BBC staff appeared to be joining in the debate anyway - this proposed question caught my eye: "Why is the BBC clinging onto minority channels such as...

Read the full post - Published January 16, 2008 in BBC, Daily Telegraph

Biblical Christian names still out-number Mohammed for Britain's boys
The tabloids have been spluttering their outrage at the news that Mohammed is now the second most popular boys name in the UK. Well, provided you massage the figures of course, I mean, why let facts get in the way of your editorial line that 'the fuzzy-wuzzies are taking over our country'. To get that result, you have to add up all the variations on Muhammed, whilst steadfastly refusing to aggregate any other names - I noticed both Jake and...

Read the full post - Published December 21, 2007 in Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Newspapers, The Sun

Not qualifying for Euro2008 - as it happened in Greece
I already had one Euro2008 slap in the face when UEFA didn't grant me any tickets to return to Salzburg to watch a couple of games staged in a place where, this time last year, I was living. And then there was the Croatia game. The comedy of errors here in Crete was nowhere near as bad as Scott Carson's competitive debut, but I thought I should share. According to the Athens News, Greek channel ΝΕΤ were showing the game...

Read the full post - Published November 23, 2007 in Daily Telegraph, Euro2008, Football, Greece, The Sun, The Times

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 7 - The Telegraph
Over the last week and a half I've been looking at the accessibility issues surrounding British newspaper websites, and testing some of the most popular against a set of criteria. So far I've looked at the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Guardian, Independent, and The Sun. So in broadly alphabetical order, provided you count the 'Daily' bit but don't count 'The'. Sometimes. Anyway, today it is the turn of The (Daily) Telegraph. Text resize Allowing your users to control...

Read the full post - Published November 14, 2007 in Accessibility, Daily Telegraph, Newspapers, Product review, Web

More details on the Linux user base of the BBC, The Telegraph and The Guardian
A mistake can have unintended consequences, and a nice one after Ashley Higfiled's original claim that the BBC only has 400-600 Linux users is that it has thrown a bit of a spotlight on OS statistics in the UK media landscape. First of all, Ashley has posted on the BBC's new BBC Internet Blog to upsize the estimated Linux user base to between 36,600 and 97,600. Secondly, Neil McIntosh of the Guardian came out with some figures for Linux usage...

Read the full post - Published November 5, 2007 in BBC, Daily Telegraph, Linux, The Guardian, Web

Telegraph nails England Rugby World Cup Final colours to their mast(head)
By the time Saturday comes around, I suspect you won't be able to move in England for printed supplements about the England teams appearance in the Rugby World Cup Final in Paris. In the meantime, the war for the nation's patriotic attention is being played out online. Even with the distraction of this afternoon's crunch Euro2008 qualifier against Russia in a different type of football, most of the newspapers online have lots of Rugby World Cup features, and 'Rugby'...

Read the full post - Published October 17, 2007 in Daily Telegraph, Football, Newspapers, The Times

My Telegraph is held up by Texas Hold 'Em spam

Published September 19, 2007 in Daily Telegraph

My assessment of My Sun and My Telegraph in the Press Gazette

Published September 15, 2007 in Daily Telegraph, Newspapers, The Sun

Thoughts on being 'outed' as ex-BBC staff in comments on The Telegraph

Published August 21, 2007 in BBC, Daily Telegraph, Web

Sense of humour failure as my iPlayer comment is re-written by The Telegraph

Published July 30, 2007 in BBC, Daily Telegraph, iPlayer

A tour of Tour De France news sites - Étape 6: The Telegraph

Published July 27, 2007 in Cycling, Daily Telegraph, Newspapers, Tour de France, Web

The Telegraph puts BBC Executives in an assassin's gun sights

Published July 20, 2007 in BBC, Daily Telegraph

A level playing field for the BBC on Google AdWords?

Published July 6, 2007 in BBC, Daily Telegraph, Google

The Telegraph's scatter-gun approach to related RSS feeds

Published June 26, 2007 in Daily Telegraph, Media, Newspapers, RSS

Newspapers 2.0: OPML files for The Telegraph and The Mirror blogs by author

Published June 5, 2007 in Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, Newspapers, RSS

Who benefits financially from the Madeleine McCann publicity juggernaut?

Published June 1, 2007 in Children and Teenagers, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Media, Newspapers, Search, The Times

Today's burning question: "What will the weather be like on the UK's Bank Holiday?"

Published May 7, 2007 in Daily Express, Daily Telegraph, Greece, Media, Newspapers

Newspapers 2.0: How Web 2.0 is The Telegraph?

Published April 26, 2007 in Daily Telegraph, Media, Newspapers, Web

Bob Woolmer's wife rules out / doesn't rule out* murder [Delete as applicable]

Published March 22, 2007 in Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Newspapers

Can you be right wing, pro-hunt AND pro-violent protest?

Published September 15, 2004 in Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Politics

BBC staff advert in The Daily Telegraph

Published January 31, 2004 in BBC, Daily Telegraph

BBC staff place advert in The Telegraph

Published January 30, 2004 in BBC, Daily Telegraph, The Times