currybetdotnet Newspapers archive

Newspaper widget review: Google Gadgets
I recently gave a presentation at the Miami IA Summit about Information Architecture and user-centred design ideas for widgets, and I very often blog about newspaper websites on currybetdotnet, so it seemed like an obvious idea to put the two together, and blog about newspaper widgets. In the previous post, I looked at the Yahoo! Widgets platform, and was surprised to find that only one British newspaper seemed to feature in any widgets - The Independent. Today I'm turning my...

Read the full post - Published May 13, 2008 in Daily Telegraph, Google, Newspapers, The Sun, Widgets

Newspaper widget review: Yahoo! Widgets
I recently gave a presentation at the Miami IA Summit about Information Architecture and user-centred design ideas for widgets, and I very often blog about newspaper websites on currybetdotnet, so it seemed like an obviously great idea to put the two together, and blog about newspaper widgets. Well, obvious maybe, but it turned out not to be such a great idea after all. Rather than ending up with a lengthy series of posts looking at all the available widgets and...

Read the full post - Published May 12, 2008 in Newspapers, Widgets, Yahoo

A 'guest' review of the Miami Herald site
Whilst I was staying in Miami for the IA Summit, I couldn't help notice the building for the Miami Herald. It is near the waterfront on Bayside, and looms out at you as you cross the bridge from Miami Beach to 'Downtown'. So I thought, since I was a guest in their city, maybe they could do a guest spot in my newspaper website reviews. I had a quick look around the site to see what sort of online presence...

Read the full post - Published May 8, 2008 in Newspapers

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

'Sorry - this page cannot be found': How newspapers handle 404 errors - Part 1
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 did (well, and The Telegraph and The Mirror and Metro), which meant that I got to have a close look at the 404 error pages generated by the others. I thought it might be worth running through...

Read the full post - Published May 5, 2008 in Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Star, Newspapers, The Guardian

At last, some varied 'popular' search terms on the Express site
It seems I got a bit over-excited earlier this week when I wrote about the Daily Express changing two of the most popular search they list on their search results page. That appears in fact to have just been the first step towards providing a broader spread of search terms on the page. For nearly three months, the site had displayed the same set of ten search terms - including one blank one - as the most popular on the...

Read the full post - Published May 3, 2008 in Daily Express, Newspapers, Search

Can you trust going to a 'Can you trust the media?' event for a good debate?
I've been lucky enough that whilst I've been in London for a month working, there have been a couple of interesting events that I have been able to go to. Last week it was Chinwag Live, and this week it was the launch of Adrian Monck's book "Can you trust the media?". It is some testament to the openness of media professionals in the UK that you could just walk into a college and go to a debate featuring big...

Read the full post - Published May 2, 2008 in Media, Newspapers, Radio, Television

Lies, damned lies, and motoring statistics in The Sun
There are lies, damned lies, and articles about motoring and crime statistics, and The Sun had an absolute classic yesterday in that genre. Topically titled 'Grand Theft Auto', the paper ran a two-page spread about the way that the motorist had become 'public enemy number one' in the last ten years, being treated as a criminal and taxed to the hilt. At the foot of the article in print was a great little box-out 'explainer': The Real Dangers IF drivers...

Read the full post - Published May 2, 2008 in Newspapers, Politics, The Sun

OMG! They are not searching for 'Princess Diana' anymore at the Daily Express!
I've mentioned before that I have a little Perl script that keeps an eye on the 'Most popular searches' at the Daily Express site. Each day it faithfully goes and checks what they are, and then alerts me with a 'VROOT! VROOT!' email if anything changes. This morning the alarm went off for the first time in 74 days. The Express has finally changed the list of what users are most looking for, by altering two of the terms. You...

Read the full post - Published April 30, 2008 in Daily Express, Newspapers, Search

Chipwrapper and the Ofcom PSB review

Published April 26, 2008 in Newspapers, OFCOM, Search

How many British newspapers use sitemap.xml to help search engine indexing?

Published April 24, 2008 in Newspapers, Search

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 6 - Google vs The Search Engine All-Stars

Published April 13, 2008 in Google, Microsoft, Newspapers, Search, Yahoo

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 5 - The Newspapers vs Google

Published April 12, 2008 in Google, Newspapers, Search

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 4 - The Daily Express vs The Times

Published April 11, 2008 in Daily Express, Newspapers, Search, The Times

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 3 - The Guardian vs The Mirror

Published April 10, 2008 in Daily Mirror, Newspapers, Search, The Guardian

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 2 - The Telegraph vs The Independent

Published April 9, 2008 in Daily Telegraph, Newspapers, Search, The Independent

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 1 - The Daily Mail vs The Sun

Published April 8, 2008 in Daily Mail, Newspapers, Search, The Sun

Google hijacks traffic from newspaper site search

Published March 31, 2008 in Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Google, Newspapers, Popular, The Guardian, The Sun, The Times

Postcard from Macau #8: David Beckham in Hong Kong

Published March 26, 2008 in Football, Macau, Newspapers, Travelogue

The Daily Express is back on the McCann case

Published March 25, 2008 in Daily Express, Newspapers

The online fall-out of the Daily Express apology to Madeleine McCann's family

Published March 19, 2008 in Daily Express, Google, Media, Newspapers, Search, Web

Postcard from Macau #1: Selling adverts in the Chinese 'free' press

Published March 16, 2008 in Macau, Newspapers, Travelogue

Chipwrapper goes to church

Published February 23, 2008 in Blogging, Newspapers, Search

Reviewing The Independent's re-design for the Press Gazette

Published February 18, 2008 in Newspapers, The Independent

Some very British reporting of the Chania court case

Published January 26, 2008 in Greece, Media, Newspapers, The Guardian

Metro solves the mystery of Heath Ledger's death

Published January 23, 2008 in Newspapers

Now the Daily Express RSS feeds are in Latin

Published January 15, 2008 in Daily Express, Newspapers, RSS

Reflecting on reflections of a Newsosaur

Published December 30, 2007 in Blogging, Newspapers, Search

Biblical Christian names still out-number Mohammed for Britain's boys

Published December 21, 2007 in Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Newspapers, The Sun

British newspaper robots.txt files

Published December 6, 2007 in Newspapers, Web

The Sun's broken RSS still affecting Chipwrapper one month on

Published December 5, 2007 in Newspapers, RSS, The Sun

ACAP - flawed and broken from the start?

Published December 2, 2007 in Newspapers, Popular, Search, Web

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 11 - Feature chart and scores

Published November 20, 2007 in Accessibility, Newspapers, Web

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 10 - Methodology

Published November 19, 2007 in Accessibility, Newspapers

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 9 - Daily Star

Published November 16, 2007 in Accessibility, Daily Star, Newspapers, Product review, Web

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 8 - The Times

Published November 15, 2007 in Accessibility, Newspapers, Product review, The Times, Web

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 7 - The Telegraph

Published November 14, 2007 in Accessibility, Daily Telegraph, Newspapers, Product review, Web

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 6 - The Sun

Published November 13, 2007 in Accessibility, Newspapers, Product review, The Sun, Web

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 5 - The Independent

Published November 12, 2007 in Accessibility, Newspapers, Product review, The Independent, Web

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 4 - The Guardian

Published November 9, 2007 in Accessibility, Newspapers, Product review, The Guardian, Web

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 3 - Daily Mirror

Published November 8, 2007 in Accessibility, Daily Mirror, Newspapers, Product review, Web

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 2 - Daily Mail

Published November 7, 2007 in Accessibility, Daily Mail, Newspapers, Product review, Web

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 1 - Daily Express

Published November 6, 2007 in Accessibility, Articles, Daily Express, Newspapers, Product review, Web

British newspaper RSS subscriptions in Google Reader

Published November 5, 2007 in Google, Newspapers, RSS

Daily Sport brand hi-jacked by Russian RSS squatters

Published November 4, 2007 in Newspapers, RSS

Top 100 British newspaper feeds in Google Reader

Published November 2, 2007 in Google, Newspapers, RSS

The Daily Star's unique approach to promoting RSS feeds

Published October 30, 2007 in Daily Star, Newspapers, RSS

Telegraph nails England Rugby World Cup Final colours to their mast(head)

Published October 17, 2007 in Daily Telegraph, Football, Newspapers, The Times

The Daily Express Inheritance Tax 'Crusade' re-writes British politics. And massages the numbers in the process.

Published October 10, 2007 in Daily Express, Media, Newspapers, Politics