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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

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 4 - The Daily Express vs The Times
I'm running a series of smackdowns between British newspaper site search engines, to test how fresh their indexing is. The Daily Mail triumphed over The Sun in Round 1, and in Round 2, The Independent emerged victorious over The Telegraph, getting a perfect 10 out of 10 in the process. Yesterday was a low scoring Round 3, with The Guardian just edging out The Mirror, by 7 points to 6. Today I'll be finishing off the inter-newspaper contests with...

Read the full post - Published April 11, 2008 in Daily Express, Newspapers, Search, The Times

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

The ripples of the Zahopoulos scandal reach The Times
I mentioned last week the Zahopoulos scandal - or Maximougate as people keep calling it here. There have been fresh developments in Greece daily. Last weekend a Sunday paper published some still images from the sex DVD that allegedly features the Culture Mininstry official Christos Zahopoulus, who tried to commit suicide before Christmas. Now, the two owners of the paper in question - Proto Thema - have fallen out over allegations that one of them was promised that, if the...

Read the full post - Published January 20, 2008 in Greece, The Times

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 8 - The Times
I've been looking at how accessible British newspaper websites are, testing the most popular online papers against a set of criteria. So far I've looked at the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Guardian, Independent, The Sun and The Telegraph. Today, I'm looking at the accessibility of The Times website. Text resize The Times, along with The Mirror and The Guardian was one of only 3 out of the 8 newspapers I tested who allowed users to resize their text...

Read the full post - Published November 15, 2007 in Accessibility, Newspapers, Product review, The Times, 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

A tour of Tour De France news sites - Abandons: CNN, The Times and The Independent
Since my exposure to live coverage of the Tour De France in Greece has been restricted to occasionally popping down to a nearby bar which shows Eurosport on satellite, I've mostly been following the now drugs-tainted 2007 edition on the internet. This week I've been reviewing the sites that I have been using, and have so far looked at the official site, state and semi-state broadcasters France 24 and The BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and Eurosport's online partnership with...

Read the full post - Published July 28, 2007 in CNN, Cycling, Newspapers, The Independent, The Times, Tour de France

Times Online WBLG oddity
Whilst I was doing my recent survey of the Web 2.0 features on British newspaper websites I spotted one or two quirks which I wanted to highlight. The Times has a very curious approach to putting titles to their blog feeds. For some reason, as well as the bizarre CSS in their recent redesign, it seems someone decided they needed to append 'WBLG' to the title of every weblog. Occasionally I spotted the odd variation where weblog was written out...

Read the full post - Published June 27, 2007 in Blogging, Media, Newspapers, The Times

Who benefits financially from the Madeleine McCann publicity juggernaut?
I noticed towards the end of this week that, alongside the rumours of journalist frolics in Portugal whilst following the Madeleine McCann case, a couple of columnists have broken rank with the default position of their newspaper. Today on The Time's site Stefanie Marsh has been called "a very lonely, sad, selfish person" for her piece "I confess: I have not been agonising about Madeleine". There has been disquiet expressed in the Telegraph, and yesterday it was Amanda Platell...

Read the full post - Published June 1, 2007 in Children and Teenagers, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Media, Newspapers, Search, The Times

The Times RSS feeds are broken

Published May 4, 2007 in Media, Newspapers, The Times, Web

Newspapers 2.0: How Web 2.0 is The Times?

Published April 24, 2007 in Media, Newspapers, The Times, Web

Don't talk to me anymore!

Published March 5, 2005 in BBC, The Times

William Rees-Mogg in The Times on Jerry Springer and Muslims

Published January 10, 2005 in BBC, Television, The Times

BBC staff place advert in The Telegraph

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