Bug Brain Check-Out?
…ndeed we had a mechanism to totally exclude pages (I remember playing whack-a-mole with goatse mirror sites) but no ability to make a site be “it can appear but lower in the ranking”. I remember on one occasion spending a lengthy amount of time doing comparative searches on the BBC website and Google itself to demonstrate the results could be replicated, and also gave him some free SEO advice about not having a sitemap file or optimised title tags…
Closing Mustardland – the end of the Archers messageboard
…en the role of being a mass broadcaster, and having a digitally enabled one-to-one relationship with the audience. Hosting communities on the BBC website created a false expectation that users were part of an official feedback loop. So, Nigel explained, then they felt that their comments weren’t being listened to by the programme makers — “but then we’d never really made that promise.” This was very much the case when I used to help host the Point…
How we built Ampp3d in eight weeks
…signed off. I wrote a content strategy document, which was about a side-and-a-half of A4, scribbled a couple of IA sketches, and briefed the designer “I’d like something that works a bit like Quartz but looks like the Mirror mobile site”. Chris Lam then did a fantastic job of turning that loose brief into the design you see today, with a main focus on the mobile layout. In truth we’ve designed for mobile and tablet, and for desktop just basically…
#GamerGate poll: Clarifying the change from “Uncovering corruption” to “Fighting corruption”
…lam Check it: can’t tweet pro-GG vote until you edit manually! pic.twitter.com/5FIuTO7Dlp — Scott Malcomson (@RoyCalbeck) October 3, 2014 The suggestion being hinted at there was that I had deliberately done that to stop #GamerGaters sharing their vote. That wouldn’t be something I’d ever do. So I was faced with a choice of either editing the poll after it had been up for a while, or leaving pro-#GamerGate votes unshareable. Both of those options…
Friday Reading S08E06
…most competent at talking their way out of trouble when things go wrong on-air.” Having done some sport desk stints myself, it’s such an enjoyably curiously different beast to news, and I’m always reminded on the nights I’m up late covering elections or the Oscars or something, the bosses always lay on pizza and beer and whatnot because it is such a special effort on news. Whereas the sports desk are hanging on for late shifts to cover extra-time…
Friday Reading S09E06
…ian started in Sept 2016 and cut articles by a third within a year. We’ve maintained that while massively reducing share of low-PVs articles and massively increasing share of high-PVs articles.” This makes for an uncomfortable read. “But my treatment on the show revealed the production team had a shallow understanding of sex work. On set, I felt far from comfortable. If you’ve seen the show, there’s a short clip where I yell, ‘I’m going to be late…
“The who, what and why of UsVsTh3m” – Martin Belam at Hacks/Hackers London
…heir SEO keyword value. We don’t churn out something to try and catch the tail-wind of a Google Doodle, we try to write about things that the internet is already interested in sharing socially. We’re interested in reverse engineering the magic of things that go viral, to work out how to consistently tap into that. #2. Visual. Not articles. We want to make sure that the site is very rich and visual, and so the way we treat things like a popular Twi…
Hello, world (Slight return)
…ord and URL. And even all the spammy comments. In fact, at one point, I’m fairly certain I had the biggest Apache redirect config in history. On reflection, it’s amazing how much spare time you had before you have kids. When I switched to MartinBelam.com, I froze currybet.net as it was, and started afresh, with a plan to gradually migrate over some “key posts”. I think I migrated two or three. This time? I wrote down off the top of my head the pos…
“The digital place you love is gone” – Joe Sokohl at EuroIA
…ed that phrase would resonate that they made it the calling card of a multi-million dollar venture. He also showed an old homepage of thefacebook.com, from when it was first rolling out to different universities. There are people in their thirties, Joe said, who will still talk about how exciting it was when their university got added to the list, and suddenly they had a “place” to go to online, and it became their “place”. Typically, as time has…
“Every story starts with an audience of zero” – Jay Lauf of Quartz at news:rewired
…lots of throat-clearing”. The Quartz developers sit in the newsroom, an all-too-rare phenomena, and build the tools that the journalists are using in collaboration with them. Their infographic tool has been out-sourced, a move that Jay Lauf said he questioned. If this thing gives us such an advantage in story-telling over our competitors, he said, why would we give it away? He was persuaded by two answers: It is the right internet ethos thing to d…