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'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

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

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 1 - The Daily Mail vs The Sun
The other week I wrote about the potential threat to newspaper revenue from Google's new 'Search in search' feature. Links to the article appeared on a few blogs, and Kevin Anderson made the point that Google was doing search better than most newspapers: "Where I might disagree is Martin's argument that it negatively impacts user experience. He says that Google's position is that they can provide search better than the news sites. Well, the sad truth is that whether...

Read the full post - Published April 8, 2008 in Daily Mail, Newspapers, Search, The Sun

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

Saucy Sun snaps in their Facebook apps
Over the last couple of years I've had more cause to be critical of clumsy attempts by newspapers to incorporate advanced web features into their offering than I've had opportunity to praise them. However, I feel I have to grudgingly offer some respect to The Sun for the way they are using MySpace widgets and Facebook apps. They've launched a MY Sun Girl Next Door application on both platforms. "Is your Facebook or MySpace profile lacking some hotty action? Fancy...

Read the full post - Published February 13, 2008 in The Sun, Widgets

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

The "feelthy" French get hold of The Sun's front page
The editorial tone of The Sun has very often represented the epitome of British contempt for our French neighbours. Perhaps the most famous example is 1990's "Up Yours, Delors!" front page. The Sun today calls on its patriotic family of readers to tell the feelthy French to FROG OFF! They INSULT us, BURN our lambs, FLOOD our country with dodgy food and PLOT to abolish the dear old pound. Now it's your turn to kick THEM in the Gauls...

Read the full post - Published December 16, 2007 in The Sun

More RSS errors - The Sun and The Express
In theory Chipwrapper should be so easy to product manage. I spent a little while registering the domain name, making some HTML pages and finding a logo image. I set up a Google Custom Search Engine. I mashed up some Yahoo! Pipes and pumped them through some of my own Perl and then Feedburner, and it should all just run just tickety-boo. Unless, of course, newspaper publishers kept doing really dumb things with their RSS feeds. The Sun's feeds remain...

Read the full post - Published December 16, 2007 in Daily Express, RSS, The Sun

Sky News give up on the hunt for Madeleine McCann
Well, after over 8 months, it seems that Sky News have given up on the hunt Madeleine McCann. Since May 2007, the single word Madeleine has been the third item on their main navigation - above Politics, World News, above Business and the Weather. That has all changed with today's redesigned homepage. Editor Steve Bennedik has even been moved to blog about it: There's one other change you may already have noticed. We've removed the heading "Madeleine" from the navigation...

Read the full post - Published December 6, 2007 in Children and Teenagers, Media, The Sun

The Sun's broken RSS still affecting Chipwrapper one month on
Well, it has been a month now since Dave Cross pointed out on his blog that The Sun's re-design utterly broke their RSS feeds, and still we await them being fixed. As a consequence it also broke several aspects of Chipwrapper. Until today I'd resisted the temptation to poke around and try and fix things, on the grounds that surely The Sun themselves would put things right. That doesn't seem to be the case. The first problem was that The...

Read the full post - Published December 5, 2007 in Newspapers, RSS, The Sun

Not qualifying for Euro2008 - as it happened in Greece

Published November 23, 2007 in Daily Telegraph, Euro2008, Football, Greece, The Sun, The Times

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

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

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

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

The Sun's Dream Team debut nightmare

Published August 14, 2007 in DCMS, Football, Newspapers, The Sun

Newspapers 2.0: How Web 2.0 is The Sun?

Published May 3, 2007 in Media, Newspapers, The Sun, Web

The Sun's MY Sun registration systems and odd date range behaviour

Published April 11, 2007 in The Sun, Usability

The Sun using blogs to solicit amateur Page 3 Girl style photos

Published March 28, 2007 in Children and Teenagers, The Sun

The Sun's sexiest barmaid vote goes a bit tits up

Published February 22, 2007 in Media, The Sun, Usability, Voting

Guess Brit babes bra size, and you can help catch rapists in The Sun

Published February 14, 2007 in Media, The Sun

Getting content onto Britain's sex beasts' mobile phones

Published October 24, 2006 in Media, The Sun

Some six year olds are not very good at geography

Published October 23, 2006 in Children and Teenagers, Media, The Sun

Redesigned Sun Online search

Published September 6, 2006 in Media, Search, The Sun

Searching The Sun online - part two

Published July 18, 2006 in Media, Product review, Search, The Sun

Searching The Sun online

Published June 28, 2006 in Media, Product review, Search, The Sun

Doctor Who and Rose in crisis

Published September 26, 2004 in Doctor Who, The Sun

EastEnders vote in The Sun

Published September 17, 2004 in BBC, The Sun, Voting

Which job was it we were doing anyway?

Published June 29, 2004 in Politics, The Sun

Another one bites the dust

Published May 15, 2004 in BBC, Daily Mirror, Evening Standard, Politics, The Sun

England due to play this week? Must be time for another Sven story then

Published March 27, 2004 in Football, The Sun

ER vs EU

Published October 17, 2003 in Europe, The Sun