links for 2008-08-29

"Incredibly, many ad sales people are not allowed access to the internet at work". I assume, initially in the 1950s, there must have been ad sales staff who didn't have access to TV and were only allowed to listen to the radio whilst selling telly slots they never saw.

Great headline and the story doesn't disappoint...well, unless you were hoping for pictures.

"The latest [Gvmt website] is a social network / discussion board / poorly thought-out and ill-defined pseudo-web2.0 project that lets people have their say about ID cards. Surprisingly enough, the board contains little other than people pointing out what a deplorable idea. See here, for example. So this post is just to say thanks, HMG, for spending my taxes on this. I assume you looked into the matter carefully and established that previously there was no facility anywhere on the web for people to comment on ID cards."

"Well, mes amis, have a look at Chris's figures. He has gone through the budget line by line and revealed exactly where the euros go. Anyone who reads to the end and continues to support European integration is either touchingly determined to elevate hope over experience or - more likely - is on the payroll himself."

"The industry has a big part to play in the problem. 'HD Ready' is perhaps the worst marketing term you could give for a TV - 'ready for HD TV' is most likely to be taken as, 'hey, when HD TV starts, this will just work! Cool! Isn't that great?' rather than the actual answer of 'This TV will give you HD pictures when you go out and buy a new HD set top box!'".

"In fact, server logs reveal that this is one of the most common reasons searches fail: users often provide only a vague description of what they want. Worse still, in testing we found that users had difficulty recognizing when their searches weren't well-phrased, and they tended to blame the poor results on the system, not themselves". Great article from John.