currybetdotnet Popular archive

60% of Editors Blog comments hate the BBC News redesign
"A silly waste of licence-payer's money and another example of the relentless advance towards turning the Web into a Fisher-Price wonderland for simpletons." And with a quote like that, you know you must be on the BBC Editor's blog talking about the re-design of the BBC News site. At the time I checked it yesterday, Steve Herrmann's piece about the new look had generated 627 comments. At last count there were over 1,500. From experience I have a checklist...

Read the full post - Published April 2, 2008 in BBC, Popular

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

Doctor Who and The Pirates
In the 1960s, as Patrick Troughton's era drew to a close, Doctor Who faced The Space Pirates. By the 2000s it was Internet pirates who posed a threat to the Doctor's adventures. Audio drama producers Big Finish have found their officially licenced Doctor Who stories leaking onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. To help combat this, they've launched their own legal download service. I spoke to Paul Wilson from Big Finish about the 'battlefield' they face. A little while ago I...

Read the full post - Published March 2, 2008 in DRM, Doctor Who, Popular

The Buffy guide to the Internet - 1997 style
Back in 1997, in an episode called "I, Robot...You, Jane", Joss Whedon pitched Buffy The Vampire Slayer against a demon that had invaded the Internet. This article looks at all of the computer and technology in the episode. Was Sunnydale High was a Mac or Windows school? What does demon possessed computer software look like? And how can techno-pagans build 'circles of protection' using chat room software alone... Ms. Calendar: Oh, I know, our ways are strange to you,...

Read the full post - Published February 24, 2008 in Nostalgia, Popular, Television, Web

10 tips for integrating your del.icio.us links into your blog
Over the last month I've been experimenting with publishing my del.icio.us bookmarks on the currybetdotnet site for the first time. Publishing daily lists of links in this way gives a blogger an opportunity to 'micro-blog' about items they've read but haven't wanted to or had the time to write a full-length post about, and to add another regular stream of content to their blog. It is really simple to get the basic set-up running - all you need is a...

Read the full post - Published February 5, 2008 in Blogging, Popular

Blogging at the BBC: Part 1 - My introduction to blogging
6 or so weeks ago the BBC finally launched a website equivalent of the news editors blog, called the BBC Internet blog.[1] It was long overdue, and an idea that had been kicked around internally at the BBC for some time. I'm fairly certain that lurking around the folder on my laptop called 'Old BBC documents' I've got at least one, if not two, product pitches for just such a thing, or at least something pretty similar at any...

Read the full post - Published December 11, 2007 in Articles, BBC, Blogging, Popular

ACAP - flawed and broken from the start?
Last week a consortium of online publishers announced ACAP - Automated Content Access Protocol - a new 'standard' for instructing search engines how to index content. For me there were three immediate major flaws apparent. It isn't user centred The entire thrust of ACAP seems to be to control the way in which newspaper or publisher content is indexed and displayed by search engines, in an attempt to strictly define the commercial parameters of that relationship. On the ACAP site...

Read the full post - Published December 2, 2007 in Newspapers, Popular, Search, Web

Busting the BBC's 600 Linux users myth
It seems my ex-boss Ashley Highfield dropped a bit of a clanger this week with a claim that amongst BBC.co.uk's 17 million or so users, 5% of them use Macs, but only about 400 to 600 users run Linux. The Linux community has been spluttering with outrage at the low figure given, and there is already a group on Facebook with the aim of collecting more than 600 members who run Linux and visit the BBC website to prove the...

Read the full post - Published November 2, 2007 in BBC, Linux, Popular, iPlayer

"The Tardis and Multiplatform" - Julie Gardner talks about Doctor Who's multi-media incarnations
If there is one thing I've learned from many, many years of watching Doctor Who, it is that you can often get into places where strictly speaking you shouldn't be, just by boldly striding in as if you know exactly where you are going, whilst wearing an unfashionable jacket and a pre-occupied look. Which is how I found myself on Wednesday in a Q&A session at the BBC about the multi-platform nature of the Doctor Who brand. This was part...

Read the full post - Published September 28, 2007 in BBC, Doctor Who, Popular, Web

The meerkat photograph hoax review - which UK newspapers admitted online to being duped?
Last week pretty much every newspaper in the UK ran an agency supplied story that Meerkats in Longleat Safari Park had been caught snapping themselves on camera. At the time I wrote bemoaning the fact that the very same newspapers that were so keen to see broadcasters admit to any case of minor editing on the box, were themselves running photographs that were clearly a 'reconstruction'. It turned out that the entire story was a hoax. I thought it would...

Read the full post - Published September 12, 2007 in Newspapers, Popular

Reckless Records RIP - Part 1: An End Has A Start

Published August 13, 2007 in Articles, Music, Popular

BBC iPlayer launch: The first 14 days

Published July 17, 2007 in BBC, DRM, Linux, Popular, iPlayer

Why my Doctor Who blog failed: Part 1 - The Greatest Show In The Galaxy

Published July 2, 2007 in Articles, Doctor Who, Popular

Free the BBC from the same old tired DRM debate

Published June 13, 2007 in BBC, DRM, Linux, Media, Microsoft, Popular, Radio, Television, Web, iPlayer

Madeleine McCann and Alex Meschisvili - a culture contrast

Published May 28, 2007 in Children and Teenagers, Greece, Media, Popular

Newspapers 2.0: How Web 2.0 are British newspaper web sites?

Published May 8, 2007 in Articles, Media, Newspapers, Popular, Web

It was twenty years ago today...The Beatles CD reissues from 1987

Published April 17, 2007 in Music, Popular

The ten things most likely to be on The Daily Express front page

Published April 3, 2007 in Daily Express, Media, Newspapers, Popular

My 'biased' view of the Biased BBC blog

Published March 14, 2007 in Articles, BBC, Popular

Using Bloglines to snoop on people's private Gmail

Published October 1, 2006 in Google, Popular, Web

The software used to access the BBC homepage

Published October 22, 2005 in Apple, Articles, BBC, Linux, Microsoft, Popular

Haunted Walthamstow and Chingford

Published September 8, 2005 in Ghost Walks, Popular, Walthamstow

Haunted Malta

Published July 11, 2005 in Ghost Walks, Popular, Travelogue

A day in the life of BBCi Search - part 1

Published March 27, 2003 in Articles, BBC, Popular, Search