Malcolm Coles has a great list of some high profile sites who don’t play fair with links – either by using the “no follow” tag indiscriminately, or by badly designed or convoluted internal redirects. Names like BBC, YouTube and MySpace are probably a bit of a surprise; Wikipedia is famous for it’s no-follow policy.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
US election online
This US election will be the most online, real-time election in history, without a doubt. There’s a Flickr show with pictures tagged with "election08", countless blogs and all the online news sources, of course. But perhaps the most interesting example of the new social technologies at work is Twitter. You can see a stream of people voting on Twitter search and the tag #votereport has been used to allow citizens to report on conditions on the ground at the polling station. If there are irregularities in voting in any parts of the country, I wouldn’t mind betting it will be Twitter blowing the whistle.
Replacing the newspaper
Jeff Jarvis is following up from his New Business Models for News Summit at CUNY with a thoughtful post outlining the way forward for local news organisations. It sets out the framework very well, I think. The comments add some real insight, too, so do read it…
Salesforce links with Amazon and Facebook
Salesforce, the software-as-a-service customer relationship management platform, has announced integration with both the Facebook platform and Amazon’s on-demand cloud computing services, reports MacWorld.
The Facebook development will allows developers on the "Force" platform to build applications which operate within Facebook. An example might be a recruiting app which allows Facebook users to recruit from among their social network.
The connection with Amazon is particularly interesting, though, as it apparently makes Amazon’s on-demand storage and computing available from within the Force platform. One of the criticisms I’ve heard of Force is that it’s data storage costs are relatively high, so giving access to Amazon’s cloud should be a welcome development.
APIs galore
Techcrunch has some interesting charts showing the development of web APIs, based on the sterling work done by ProgrammableWeb, has been tracking the development of APIs for over three years. The total tracked has now climbed to over 1,000, which shows just how mainstream the mash-up is becoming. The ProgrammableWeb site is a great resource for those looking for functionality to plug in.
(Very) mobile internet
Demand for mobile web grows
Most mobile users now want to access the web on their phones reports OJB (Online Journalism Blog). Citing the first annual US mobile phone user survey by Azuki Systems, OJB reports that:
Almost 80% of those surveyed said they wished it were easier to access information from the Internet on their mobile phones, and an equal percentage stated they wished it were easier to access rich media on their mobile phones.
62% of respondents indicating they either own or will own [a smart phone] in the next 12 months.
Calling time on the NYT
Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, calls time on the New York Times in an interview with Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com. When asked what he would do if he was in charge of the paper he answered:
Shut off the print edition right now. You’ve got to play offense. You’ve got to do what Intel did in ’85 when it was getting killed by the Japanese in memory chips, which was its dominant business. And it famously killed the business—shut it off and focused on its much smaller business, microprocessors, because that was going to be the market of the future. And the minute Intel got out of playing defense and into playing offense, its future was secure. The newspaper companies have to do exactly the same thing.
The financial markets have discounted forward to the terminal conclusion for newspapers, which is basically bankruptcy. So at this point, if you’re one of these major newspapers and you shut off the printing press, your stock price would probably go up, despite the fact that you would lose 90 percent of your revenue. Then you play offense. And guess what? You’re an internet company.
I wonder who’s listening.
How to write better for the web
Tim Ash, author of Landing Page Optimization and an industry expert in website optimisation, has put together a three part post on "writing for conversations" on the The Official Google Web Optimizer Blog. Read on here….
Part One – Structure
Part Two – Tone
Part Three – Format
Online Tsar promises quick decisions
The Guardian carries what it says is the first interview with the newly-appointed minister for communications, technology and broadcasting, Stephen Carter.
His job, according to The Guardian, is to "draw together work in existing areas of government". He has promised to deliver swift conclusions on a number of pressing issues, the paper says, including the future of digital radio, the questions surrounding the next generation of broadband access and mobile phone networks, and the future funding of public-service broadcasting.
The Guardian says his report, Digital Britain, will also consider issues around the digital divide and look into whether there should be a guarantee of universal access to broadband for all consumers. He has promised to deliver a set of recommendations by January, says the paper.