Internet / Web Business — No comments
04
Aug 09
Fashion… what a wicked mistress you are. Back in the day (2005), Delicious was gravitational – objects gyrated around it, and you were nothing without a cooler Delicious bookmarks page than the next delusional geek.
Four years (and one Yahoo buy-out) later, fewer objects gyrate around Planet D. Firefox probably didn’t help (why stick your bookmarks into a public cloud, when a mix of the Awesome Bar and Weave reduces the whole tagging concept to dust?). And also, we kind of just… forgot about it. Phrases such ‘where links go to die’ didn’t help.
But hey, today’s a D-Day. Delicious has just enjoyed a serious splash of paint. Better recommendations, better tagging, better search… all good. Now all I need to do is care.
Best sites / Internet — No comments
02
Aug 09
Only the NPR would turn a goof into a 15-min read.
Journalism / Web Business — No comments
02
Aug 09
So the European Court of Justice decides that even a snippet of text from a newspaper can be enough to break the law, in the same week that The Associated Press decides to take aggressive steps to protect its content.
First, here’s the predictable response that the web’s most vocal analysts are barking to anyone who’ll listen: the traditional news agencies are waging a war that’s already lost. The music and movie industries have spent the last five or more years learning that lesson, and have now decided that it’s easier (and more rewarding) to piss from within the tent.
And those entertainment industries arguably didn’t face the oversupply issue that news faces today: the day of the release of a new Eminem album didn’t coincide with the launch of 52,000 beat-for-beat photocopies of the same thing (well, not 52,000, anyway). A corner store owner will tell you that you can only sell so many bean cans to so many people. Get the supply of tins to meet demand, and you’re in the money. News is not in short supply. Continue reading →
Advertising / Internet — 1 comment
31
Jul 09
This isn’t a puppet.
It’s Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s insightful, experienced business leader, giving a considered evaluation of the recent Microsoft / Yahoo search deal. It’s always slightly awkward when an icon such as Ballmer opens up to the camera in this way, so it make make painful viewing for the more sensitive among you.
‘I took your search business,’ says Ballmer, obviously aware of the significance of the deal for the web competitive landscape. ‘YOUR SEARCH BUSINESS. YOUR SEARCH BUSINESS.’ Indeed, Steve, you did.
Internet — 1 comment
30
Jul 09
Install bookmarklet, visit a favourite site, break it. Sit back in your chair, and remind yourself why every web designer I know loathes Internet Explorer 6 with a venom usually reserved for ex-wives and dictators. OK, I know, half the world is starving and the other half’s skint – there are more serious issues afoot. But if we’re going to sink, we may as well do it with an utterly screwed BBC home page burned on our collective retinas.
The little toy has a hilarious secondary use, I’ve discovered. Call in your friendly CSS guru to discuss a new site section he has just spent eight weeks painstakingly piecing together, and ensure you whack the IE6-replicator just before he arrives. Watch the lost, pained look on on the poor lad’s face as he sees his handiwork reduced to misaligned shite. Hours of pointless fun.
Best sites / Internet / Journalism — No comments
29
Jul 09
I work in an industry that’s obsessed with its own demise. The newspaper business spends its days planning its own funeral party (crisps, anyone?), while ironically enjoying an online gold rush (in traffic, anyway). My Google Reader feed is a river of contradictory figures and silver bullets. Snake oil salesmen? The web wrote the book.
But in the midst of seemingly self-destructive second (third? fourth?) industrial revolution, there are some remarkable things. I got lost for 30 minutes today studying the stats for one of our sites. I won’t go into detail or name names, but three guys had produced 1000%+ leaps in traffic through the power of what we used to call journalism. Good stories told well, and usually before any the crowd had spotted the signals.
As I said, I won’t name them (internal rivalry is rife, and there’s nothing worse than being handed an apple – ‘specially by me), but you know who you are. Regardless of how this one works out, you deserve to prosper: any endeavor that has that kind if energy and imagination can’t be allowed to fail.
Internet — No comments
27
Jul 09
First view of Firefox 4; Chrome, meet IE8.
It’s not that the current Firefox couldn’t do with a healthy UI spring clean (try this – open Firefox and Safari 4.0 on your Mac, then flip between the windows. See? Messy.).
And I think I can wrap my head around the fact that not every software release can deliver a seismic breakthrough. After all, Snow Leopard will be a slightly faster, Exchange-enabled Leopard. Nothing wrong with that.
But when you start de-constructing a design within milliseconds of first seeing it (Google Chrome tabs, IE8 Tools and Page buttons), there’s a problem.
Journalism — No comments
15
May 09
Look at the date of the last post. Years ago. But then, I have been busy. Or maybe it just feels like I have.
Since the last missive (which wasn’t a missive really – I mean, you can’t call a video embed a cogent thought, can you? Can you?), some water has flowed under some bridges.
In summary:
- Journalism took an odd turn. Radio 4 used the word ‘provision’ in association with the profession, something you’d normally associate with social services.
- The UK’s most used search engine began its journey to become a content provider. Go on, Google something, and click that ‘show options’ link top left. Bugger.
- I listened to journalist colleague explain how the industry he served expected him (or his site and journal) to act as its saviour.
And to put a nice hermetic seal on all that, I spent two hours today arguing the case for two websites to, well, just bloody work.
A childhood friend was absolutely convinced that his favourite football team would lose if he didn’t watch them. In the same vein, the events of recent months have only come about because of my radio silence.
Expect 10,000 words next week. There, it’ll all be alright now.
Journalism / Media — No comments
09
Aug 08
The virtuous circle from Digitaldickinson on Vimeo.
I spent two days last month discussing the future of journalism at the University of Central Lancashire with a group with representatives of all corners of the UK media scene. Fascinating two days, not least for the wealth of disagreement (no bad thing).
It’ll come as zero surprise to know that the way in which journalists deal with an audience that can instantly react (and even begin steering the news agenda) swallowed much of the 48 hours.
One of their esteemed tutors, Andy Dickinson, has just posted The Virtuous Circle depicting his version of how it should work.
