I guess it's more about knowing or getting to know individual journalists. Which is one of my tasks for next year.

1512 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:11:54 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: How to Get Your Products Featured in the Mainstream Press

"The secrets of blog-to-book success."

1511 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:05:39 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: How To Get A Book Deal With Your Blog

"New government procurement guidelines to make government a more 'intelligent customer'"

Don't make me laugh.

"We want the UK to be a key knowledge hub in the global economy: a country with a reputation not only for outstanding scientific and technological discovery, but also for turning that knowledge into new and exciting products and services," said Science and innovation minister Lord Sainsbury, who has been leading a review of innovation policy.

Blogs connect innovative people, forces them into thinking before they write, and allows rapid peer collaboration and correction.

1510 Also posted to: Home page , GOWM . At: 10:24:56 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: National strategy for technology nets £150million

"Presentations are as much about slides as poetry is about handwriting."

Lovely overview and advice for creating a presentation, and getting up there and doing it. I'll be making several presentations and pitches next year, and this really is going to be a big help.

1508 Also posted to: Home page . At: 8:54:01 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The Problem With Presentations

"Microsoft's soon-to-be-released [Q2 2004] service pack for Windows XP will come with a major security-centric overhaul to the company's flagship Internet Explorer browser, including a new add-on management and crash detection tool and several modifications to the browser's default security settings."

Mainly security, no PNG nor better CSS2, sadly.

1507 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:48:28 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: IE Overhaul Part of Windows XP SP2

Be suspicious of sites that claim to mass-submit your URL to many dozens or hundreds of search engines. There are less than 10 major search engines that you should care about being listed in.

I'd take that a bit further... There really is only one. Google. Alright, two. Yahoo.
Not a bad article, though nothing new (I've been reading such for years). It's the new content and links to your site that are really important, once you've mastered meta tags, good titles and a wide breadth of content.

1505 Also posted to: Home page . At: 8:04:28 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: E-Commerce News: 10 Ways To Increase Your Search Engine Ranking

"The Nokia Content Syndication Program (NCSP) offers direct links to Nokia documents, toolkits, videos, images, etc., all through standard XML and JavaScript interfaces."

Phwoar! A tonne of channels to pick from. Glad to see so many very large names coming into the syndication fold. (No RSS2.0 feeds though.)
I'll have to decide which ones to pick: thinking of XHTML, Symbian and MMS initially.

1504 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:51:33 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Nokia Content Syndication Program

""UserLand has advanced products and deep customer base. We will continue to support that base and intensify our focus on the enterprise. In the near term, we expect to be enhancing Manila with improved authentication and single sign-in support, making it even easier to deploy secure weblog based solutions," said Scott Young, chief executive officer of UserLand Software. "These are features that our academic and government customers have also requested." "

New management team. (Go for it chaps.) Going after the corporate customer sounds quite sensible. The blogging public market has moved on, looking not for features but crowds, while the corporate has no real software to blog in an intranet environment except Traction or "Manila" which can be combined with "Radio".

On a related note I found an article, Blogging software for intranet applications. Though it doesn't mention Manila, which is odd, since it's the oldest of its type, and fulfills all of the criteria, it does outline the requirements of an intranet blogging system.

1503 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:46:24 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: UserLand Announces New Management Team

"Access to online services through a digital network includes both narrowband and broadband services as well as digital terrestrial, cable and satellite TV. It also includes the new generation of mobile phones that work with 3G technology and can access a pared-down version of certain internet sites."

Nice idea. Of course, I'd want to go further, giving people a way to write on the web - to be producers as well as consumers. Get all of the UK blogging. Now that would be a competitive advantage for UK plc.

1501 Also posted to: Home page . At: 9:46:06 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: UK Gov. wants internet access for all by 2008

"Traditional image maps, though, don’t work well with text-only browsers, and they aren’t as efficient or versatile as many newer techniques."

Handy. And just in time. I need to do an image map, and was wondering what to do with it.

1500 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:28:11 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: CSS image maps

From the World Summit on the Digital Divide: we know about the language, cost and sexual divides (mostly English, cost of computers education and mainly men) but hadn't thought about this point:

"There is a commercial divide. E-commerce is linking some countries and companies ever more closely together. But others run the risk of further marginalization. Some experts describe the digital divide as one of the biggest non-tariff barriers to world trade."

This is quite serious, not just for the foundry down the road, but also between countries. For sure the UK ties to the US are strengthened, but without other counties it makes the internet a poorer place in competition and in depth of character. I wish more could speak English, and more were able to blog.

1499 Also posted to: Home page . At: 9:16:57 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Bridging the many digital divides

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the web he anticipated that we'd all want to write as well as read. The first web browser could edit web pages as well as display them.

I didn't know that. I used Mosaic then Netscape 1, designing my first site to work with both browsers. But I don't remember Mosaic being two way.

1494 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:41:11 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Weaving the web

"Blogging and IM are just an extension of what corporations fear from employees using email - if they get sued, look what they've left behind." It's true, as we've noted before, that companies who have successfully stayed out of trouble have very strict policies about what's written. "

Making it tough for companies to release the power of freedom. This is FUD in all it's gory detail. Staying out of trouble is one thing, and they're only talking about very big companies, but when it come to the smaller companies, who can move faster, have more determination, and freedom to think — they can reap the rewards of new technology, rather than fearing it.

1493 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:31:13 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Poke the eye out of camera phones

A campaign in California. Lot's of good comments in the post.

1490 Also posted to: Home page . At: 7:21:42 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Part of a large HP campaign

Very useful list of ideas for blogging. There's probably a million other reasons to add to this list.

1489 Also posted to: Home page . At: 7:02:04 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Top 20 Definitions of Blogging

"Governments and companies should keep investing in IT if they want their economies to flourish, the WEF said." The UK really should pull it's socks up. Having seen what Government organisations do with money, spending far too much on completely the wrong solution, while the right solutions are far cheaper... I guess it's the same everywhere, or perhaps not.

United States Singapore Finland Sweden Denmark Canada Switzerland Norway Australia Iceland Germany Japan Netherlands Luxembourg United Kingdom Israel Taiwan Hong Kong France S.Korea

1487 Also posted to: Home page , warBlog . At: 12:20:50 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: US on top in tech competitiveness

In different shapes and forms, we now have Apple, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Napster, Pepsi, Coke and maybe even Wal-Mart hawking songs online. All of these companies are rushing to enter a business with atom thin margins at best and business sinking losses at worst. In almost every case, the motive is to link to a larger sale be it pricey iPods or placing a brand in the consumer's face for other, profit-making goods.

1483 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:59:13 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Coke does music DRM in Europe

So what would I do if I was the editor of a major press title ?

• put all my content and articles in a permalink, blogging form in addition to print
• make it available in RSS, at least short transcripts
• give authors (journalists) credit under their name
• integrate advertising in feeds
• get my cost structure as low as possible and redistribute earnings to the authors according to the audience they get from what they write.

I'll have more to say on this in the morning, [past midnight here] but the business model won't work. They're too dinosaur to pull it off. Ads in RSS feeds would make me puke, and for Radio, I'd make a tool to delete them. Unless they're good like GoogeAds.

I'd get the advertisers to blog.

1482 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:21:49 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Blogging will have the same effects to journalism as Napster & P2P to the music industry

Perfect! My arse. Much of the professional journalism I read these days, isn't well or thoroughly researched, and with their penchant for being easily swayed by advertising purchases, fancy PR releases, or nice lunches, I tend never to think of them as being authoritative anymore. I need consensus or fact checking of my own in a search of google with the word blog in the string. Collective thought, as smart as the smartest person in the network - which can be quite big on the net.

OK for sure some journalists look deep, hard into their stories, and they get good reps, but far too many ordinary joes are out there, under the guise of a seemingly  respectable title. It's a big world with many titles on the net, many covering the same stories.

But even these lesser journalists can find redemption in blogging, if they open comments, and 'grow' their knowledge, and the article. Changing or modifying or adapting the article live, as their knowledge grows. If only they too used the power of the network as a collective, collaborative effort to 'perfection.'

 This is much different then high quality newspapers where a complete hierarchy of editors slows down the publishing process, but also secures a perfect quality all over the paper.

There are millions of blogs out there now, when I need an opinion or help, there's usually something written in a blog or discussion group that I found in Google.

On-line journalists, these days, only bring me the TV headlines in more detail. (I gave up my printed newspaper over four years ago.) They have correspondents all over the world, these, we'll always need, but on the net, I also want to read the thoughts of the ordinary citizen, to check the facts, to add colour, perspective, 'the other side of the story.'

These things are far more important to me now I have been educated about the distortions of the media, the gagging and spinning, mis-direction, and the black art of misinformation.

Never trust that what you read in a newspaper. Or a blog. Check it yourself using millions of brains.

1481 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:16:31 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Lunches and lies in newspapers

342 Radio Stations were found in United Kingdom.

Not all are internet stations, but still... Dead handy engine for finding worldwide internet radio stations.

1480 Also posted to: Home page . At: 3:45:35 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Radio-Locator

We tested the best of the bunch. In addition, we looked at one application for those who prefer to host their own.

Doesn't look as though they've researched this well at all. But I guess, to cover each tool in a few paragraphs, you're bound to leave a lot out. From my point of view they've totally misjudged weblogger or rather "Manila". They said it was for groups? 99% Of my Villa bloggers are single editors.

1479 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:18:24 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: PC Mag: review of Blog Tools

After seven years Jennicam is ending. Probably because of PayPal stopping her account due to 'nudity.' Which is strange, as that was the whole reason why she was once getting millions of viewers every week. I guess the profits have nose dived over that time, there's been many, many more copyists who are far more lewd (and younger), and seven years of living in a fish bowl — well, anyone would get fed up of that. [Via MetaFilter]

While I'm at it, and also via MetaFilter, LesbianPhoneCall.com delivers you a phone call from a genuine lesbian!
Choose from:

• Bull Dyke (Militant Lesbian)
• Regular Lesbian
• Lesbian-on-the-fence
• Transgender lesbian
• Catholic Lesbian
• Lesbian Film Critic
• Stoner Lesbian

1475 Also posted to: Home page , sexblogs . At: 10:35:48 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Final Days in the Life At Jennicam

"...Blogs with a dozen readers are often successful on their authors' terms."
True. I did like their research the other day, and I believe that many bloggers blog not just for traffic, but also for themselves. I blog about my kids, certainly not for traffic, but for posterity. I blog about business, so I've got a reference when I need something, and blog about politics and war to vent some steam.

1474 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:24:19 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Nanoaudiences for blogs

Major bummer. I switched over from Radio's referers because they were too slow, it held up my page loads, to blogPatrol, is it six months(?) now. I think it's time I bit the bullet and wrote my own from my raw logs. Then I can do far more anyway. I'd like to receive a daily emailed RSS'd referer log, hits, unique visitors and search queries. I suppose I could go the whole hog and get 404s, clients and a bunch of other things too. Though, I guess it's just referers that I crave.

1473 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:14:09 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: 509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

SmartyPants is a free web publishing plug-in for Movable Type, Blosxom, and BBEdit that easily translates plain ASCII punctuation characters into “smart” typographic punctuation HTML entities.
SmartyPants can perform the following transformations:

• Straight quotes ( " and ' ) into “curly” quote HTML entities
• Backticks-style quotes (``like this'') into “curly” quote HTML entities
• Dashes (“--” and “---”) into en- and em-dash entities
• Three consecutive dots (“...”) into an ellipsis entity

I was thinking of writing an equivalent for Radio, but even though I'm a trained typographer, I think it's too much of a problem when quoting from sites that use smart punc, I'll skip it.

1472 Also posted to: Home page . At: 8:41:19 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: SmartyPants

"Most Little Seen, Quickly Abandoned
Survey of 3,634 blogs on eight leading blog-hosting services to develop a model of blog populations. Based on this research, Perseus estimates that 4.12 million blogs have been created on these services: Blog-City, BlogSpot, Diaryland, LiveJournal, Pitas, TypePad, Weblogger and Xanga.

• 92.4% of blogs created by people under the age of 30.
• Females are slightly more likely than males to create blogs, accounting for 56.0% of hosted blogs.
• the number of hosted blogs created to exceed five million by the end of 2003 and to exceed ten million by the end of 2004.
• Those who abandoned blogs tended to write posts that were only 58% as long as the posts of those who still maintained blogs, which simply indicates that those who enjoy writing stick with blogs longer."

1469 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:55:51 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The Blogging Iceberg

"Applying the Three-Click Rule leads to a number of design suggestions, such as putting global navigation on every page and making a navigation hierarchy shallow and wide. While these suggestions seem a natural extension of the Three-Click Rule, they assume the rule is worth following."

Very good article. I've always believed that there are no sites on the internet, all pages.
If you enter a site via a search engine, and have the time, you'll look deeper than three clicks if the page you landed on is close enough to your search criteria. If it ain't you're outta there to the next of the search result. If you enter via a link on someone else's site, you'll look for three clicks, possibly more if the navigation is good and informative enough.

In short, most people navigate via search engines. Build your site for these, not testers entering your site via the front page. And, make sure your navigation is detailed, categories/sections well differentiated.

1468 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:46:51 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Testing the Three-Click Rule

This is a neat idea, I've tried it out for a few days now. Looks good, though I'm not into comics much, I'd prefer it if Steve Bell were there too.

1466 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:48:03 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Tapestry - Your Favourite Comics by RSS

"What are weblogs? How are they different from ordinary home pages? Should I write a weblog? How do I get started? In this workshop, we will introduce weblogs and attempt to answer these questions. We'll present a simple definition, survey a variety of popular weblogs and weblog writing styles, help you set up your own MIT weblog at http://weblogs.mit.edu/ and write your first post, and demonstrate how a news aggregator works."

A free weblog for every MIT student. Damn the US is running away with this.

1464 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:27:05 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: MIT: Getting Started with Weblogs

"Every month or so, Google makes changes to try to stop the cheating. This is called the Google Dance. And occasionally it carries out a fairly major overhaul. The latest happened in November and is known as the Florida Update. It's this which has caused the anger and bewilderment among web users."

I've noticed that there's far, far fewer pages returned when I search for "Steve Hooker" It used to return over 24,000 now it's just 7,400.

I think they're doing it for advert money, rather than to stop people cheating. After all they're the biggest and best but don't actually earn much out of searching. [Related:] How to profit from google ads

1460 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:34:20 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Google changes anger web businesses

"Instead of the usual "bring bring", its customers will be able to select hits from the likes of Kylie or Busted."

Costs a pound to sign up and £1.50 each tune. All this sounds quite expensive to me. But, I've never ever bought a ring tone, so I guess this isn't for me.

1459 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:03:59 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Ringing tunes come to UK mobiles

"The RIAA said it planned to file another 41 lawsuits this week and would warn another 90 users that they may be sued"

1457 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:28:28 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Record industry bullies more people

From the makers of Right Wing News (Conservative News and Views)

I'd forgotten that there were so many warblogs.

1456 Also posted to: Home page , warBlog . At: 11:25:05 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The 2003 Warblogger Awards

"As powerful and useful as they are, floats can make for tricky layout tools. Chances are that you may have seen something like the situation shown in Figure 1, which is accomplished with just two div elements, each with a floated image inside it." Dead useful this will be for me in a week or so. I've been trying to figure out how to add news items without the containing table, but all my efforts have resulted in over hanging images, just like their figure 1 (left).

1455 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:40:24 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Containing Floats

"Like Triple Point, an increasing number of corporations are using RSS feeds as a way to distribute information internally and externally."

Cheap as chips. And as email become more and more useless, a great method of tuning into the hum of an organisation.

1453 Also posted to: Home page . At: 4:18:39 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Triple Point Relies on Rss

"On average, employees get 20 spam e-mails per day."

Via the BBC, they seem to be saying that about 2 emails a day are porno pictures. I guess that would be the same here. And they talk about staff leaving their email addresses all over the place.

Once the spammer's have you, there isn't much that can be done, other than Bayesian Filters but these take time to learn good stuff from bad, only a few days, but in a large org, it'll be down to the server admins to sort out. Easy for some spam, but hard for the cleverer spammer. And after all it's an arms race, you could never fully rid yourself of spam and still keep the false positives to zero. Once your address has been gobbled up, it's time to get another, and to use the already exposed address for pasting into website log in fields, and the other for using in the reply addresses for legitimate emails.

Careful management of the Bayesian Filters and rules in outlook routing emailing into different folders as well as the two addresses trick above is the method I'm using to stop the spam.

1452 Also posted to: Home page . At: 3:57:23 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Sexual spam could spark lawsuits

And while I was at gizmodo I found this... Catch 'em young, toy picture phones

"Watch the tube (no pesky packet fees), grab screen shots and capture live video from broadcast programs, access TV guides via browser, and use it as a remote to control your karaoke machine." I wonder what the BBC will do about the licence fees when these phones come out in the UK? {via gizmodo)

1451 Also posted to: Home page . At: 1:43:34 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: NEC's V601N: Japan's First TV Cell Phone

"Pirated versions of Microsoft's next generation computer operating system are on sale in Malaysia, more than a year before the official release date."

Pre alpha Longhorn, from October's developer conference.

1443 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:13:29 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Asian pirates in Microsoft 'coup'