New Firefox add-ons

Image via Wikipedia

It's a while since I've done one of these and my add-ons have actually changed quite a bit.

With the last Firefox major upgrade a number of them failed to update and others took ages to update. This now seems to have settled down but I have had to find replacements for a few that remain incompatible and for some I haven't found an easy replacement.

Gone are

TinyUrl Creator · ScrapBook · ReminderFox · Menu Editor · Advanced Dork · Text/Plain and one which I would like the functionality of but I haven't found a simple compatible replacement LinkChecker.

New are

bit.ly preview
With the bit.ly Preview Plugin for Firefox, whenever you hover over a bit.ly URL on any web page, we display a tooltip showing the Page Title, Long URL, and any Click Data we have about the page the URL links to.
Extended Copy Menu
Provides the option to copy selection as plain text or html.
Fasterfox Lite
Performance and network tweaks for Firefox, without the Enhanced Prefetching.
FireFTP
ScribeFire
A full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. I may drop this and I hardly ever use it.
Shareaholic
Shareaholic is the ultimate tool for sharing stuff with 60+ destination services including Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Delicious, MySpace, Wordpress, and more!
Shorten URL
Shorten long URL from context menu or toolbar button with your selected URL shortener and display the result in location bar.
View Dependencies
Adds a tab listing dependencies and their sizes in the Page Info window.
Zemanta
Contextually relevant suggestions of links, pictures, related content and tags will make your blogging fun again.

Gmail now rocks even more

I had the unfortunate experience recently of having to access a Yahoo account. Could I work out how to do some simple tasks? No, not easily.

Yahoo seem to be on a self-destruct bender with a badly received homepage redesign and increasingly dodgy search results containing paid-for entries.

And don't get me started on the horrors of Hotmail.

Gmail - in sharp contrast - just gets better and better.

I just added a bunch of useful stuff to my set-up from Gmail Labs. To find them go to settings > labs.

Such as? Auto non-English message translation, signature tweaks (this places your signature before the quoted text in a reply and removes the "--" line that appears before signatures), 'Canned Responses' (save and then send your common messages using a button next to the compose form), quote selected text (just text you have highlighted when you reply to a message), a tweak which lets you specify starting and ending dates for the out of office autoreply, adding a Mark as Read button, Undo Send functionality, and a tweak which allows insertion of images into a message body.

As well, Gmail now lets you automatically unsubscribe from mailing lists when you hit 'spam' for a message.

Like with Firefox, I just love this type of functionality personalisation. Why use anything else?

HT: Craig Elder/thenextweb.com

New common tag format + some useful firefox add-ons

Image via Wikipedia

Been meaning to mention a few new Firefox add-ons which I've been using and some PR today prodded me.

Web Companies Develop Common Tag Format
A group of Web companies announced today the development of a new tagging format for Web pages called Common Tag. The companies--AdaptiveBlue, DERI (NUI Galway), Faviki, Freebase, Yahoo!, Zemanta, and Zigtag--offer services that help publishers use semantic tagging to make their content more discoverable, connected, and engaging.

This is about developing the 'Semantic web', which is about a web which can be more easily read by machines and hence made more useful for humans. The tags would be commonly defined and linked to rich data.

Zemanta is a tool I'm already using - that's why the 'blog this' button is now appearing at the bottom of my posts. It offers up tag suggestions as well as related web content and free to use images.

It's fairly new, so the image suggestions can be a little limited. But it is extremely useful.

Two other new add-on for me are Shareaholic - which allows you to send a page quickly to social networks plus email - and Scribefire which allows you to quickly blog about something you've seen on the web and is integrated with Zemanta. I'm using it now.

As well I use twitterfeed.com - which does what it says on the tin and auto-tweets new blog updates to Twitter.

All I need to do now is completely update the tags on all my blog posts, gulp :[

ReminderFox

Just started with this Firefox plugin and already finding it extremely useful. For anyone spending most of their day infront of a browser it looks like an essential.

Twitter ...

Where the Scrapbook clips goes to live .. (although I still have the draft posts to deal with).

[Scrapbook?]

New add-ons

Did a tidy of my Firefox add-ons list. Lots just don't seem to be keeping up with Firefox updates, so I've switched to something else.

New ones are:

• text/plain - converts plain text links to real links
• Tab Mix Plus - previous tab add-on flunked so switched
• ReminderFox - neat ping for when you get lost in time online etc
• gTranslate - as I often check foreign stories, this is very useful

Some more on my list are doomed to deletion if they don't catch up soon ...

Scrapbook clips catch up

Scrapbook is the Firefox extension I use to quickly capture either a whole page or a text selection. It's not, yet, online - meaning that I can't access clips anywhere - but much more useful for my needs than del.icio.us.

Accessibility, two new useful resources.

• Shape Shed on How to make websites more accessible for users with Intellectual Disabilities.
  
• Jack Pickard on WCAG 2.0 and Accessibility for older users.

Why we posted epilepsy film to YouTube

Epilepsy charities condemned Russell Barth andChristine Lowe's YouTube seizure video as a "freak show". Not so, say the couple: the movie has saved lives.

Since posting this footage, we have had over 254,000 views (23 times more hits than the next-most-viewed clip), and have received dozens of emails from people asking for advice in reducing seizures, and hundreds of positive comments about our bravery and compassion.

This footage has been used in medical schools and presentations around the world, and a prison in New Mexico has even used it to help new guards recognize real seizures. Another man in Fort Worth, Texas emailed us to say that our video helped him save another person who had a seizure while at his place of work. Our video has saved lives.

What is it with charities and the web?

Wired's Wiki on how to set up an online pirate radio station.

From the US, UK egov read this and weep:

More than 400 government Web managers from across the country are meeting this week at the fifth annual Government Web Managers Conference, co-sponsored by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and the Federal Web Managers Council. This year's conference focuses on new collaborative technologies that allow agencies to work together to create and deliver better Web content for citizens. The Web Managers Best Practice Awards were presented as part of the conference on May 5, recognizing six exemplary federal Web sites.

From Public Sector Forums (.gov.uk only):

The Cabinet Office is currently embroiled in a huge behind-the-scenes row with the Treasury who they are accusing of failing to sort out tax rules on VAT on shared services for the last two years. Although some public bodies are VAT-exempt, buying shared services incurs 17.5% VAT which they cannot recover. The Cabinet Office, along with many other departments, believes this is one of the two single biggest barriers to shared services, is wrecking business cases for shared services and costing the public sector more than £200 million per year in lost potential efficiency savings.

Others have reported how Gordon Brown talked up the Internet at a Scottish faith gathering. Here's how the Express reported it:

To many it is a talking shop or a playground for perverts. But for Gordon Brown the internet is a new force for global good.

Gordon Brown's speech to Google Zeitgeist:

Churchill once said that those who try to build the present in the image of the past will miss out entirely on the future. And he also warned about people who were facing change, resolved to be irresolute, he said, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, and all powerful for impotence - and that is a warning to all of us.

Chairman: So am I right in paraphrasing that that you expect the web to drive more responsibility and accountability to our elected leaders?

Prime Minister: Yes.

Chairman: And will we see a lot more 'coups de blogs' and 'coups de social networks'?
Prime Minister: 'Coups de blogs' and 'coups de texts', yes!

What was clear from his speech and answers to questions, though, was that although Downing Street will be webbie he doesn't understand how this isn't flowing down through Whitehall and local government. Now why is that?

Those new online maps from DEFRA showing noise in the UK managed to crash on their first day.

On FutureMajority a neat explanation of the ancient rules which stop the US Congress from doing anything on YouTube or social networks.

Franking Rules state that unless you're in the leadership you can't use anything outside the House/Senate firewall. So, YouTube is technically not ok (even though most members are pushing the envelope), no Facebook, or Myspace... nothing…

The article points out how far behind Downing Street the US is.

The Atlantic magazine on how Obama's use of the web has produced The Amazing Money Machine.

Whenever I think about the quarter billion dollars he has raised so far, the image that leaps to mind is Scrooge McDuck diving joyously into his piles of gold.

Picking up my Google Reader clip on being aware of sadists at the US border - Taking your laptop into the US? Be sure to hide all your data first, The Guardian reported.

They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Customs and Border Patrol has not published any rules regarding this practice, and I and others have written a letter to Congress urging it to investigate and regulate this practice.

But the US is not alone. British customs agents search laptops for pornography. And there are reports on the internet of this sort of thing happening at other borders, too. You might not like it, but it's a fact.

When the New York Times reported on the Pentagon's use of retired generals as 'experts' to push propaganda onto US TV networks, they did so from FOI releases of thousands of documents and audio. This huge archive was then put on dailykos for others to hunt through and it's turned up gem after gem, such as this one from audio of Donald Rumsfeld:

RUMSFELD: [Iraqi militias] know the center of gravity of the thing is here in the United States. It isn't out there. And they're designing their attacks to have maximum effect politically, to weaken the will of the American people. Doing a pretty good job. Hell of a lot more skillful at it than we are. Have a lot greater flexibility. They can lie. Don't have bureaucracy. They have media committees that they operate to manipulate the media. And they do it very skillfully. (mp3)

In the wake of the earthquake, Shanghailist carried the Chinese government's order for websites to 'go dark' for three days national morning:

To all propaganda departments, online propaganda units and foreign affairs offices, and to the various bureaus and websites in all cities and counties:

The State Council has gazetted May 19-21 as national days for mourning. In line with the spirit of the Central Foreign Affairs Office's emergency notice, the requirements are as follows ...

Ethical Corporation Magazine on how the exposure of Yahoo's complicity with Chinese censors has had a positive effect

Former Chinese dissident Harry Wu is administering the new Yahoo human rights fund. As John O’Reilly, a leading human rights commentator, said of the letter to Condeleeza Rice: “This is the first time a company has been so explicit in its condemnation of human rights violations and this, together with the establishment of the new fund, is pretty ground-breaking stuff.”

Same magazine has a feature on Olympics 2008: Beijing games – Sponsors enter rings of fire

Sponsoring companies have difficult choices. They have paid huge sums for rights to global marketing. Limiting that marketing to China seems like a safe last resort, but will undermine their investment. Meanwhile, the moment can be seized by their competitors back home.

Speaking up for human rights, as campaigners want, could now be very risky if the Chinese authorities took it as a “loss of face” and retaliated by making life in China difficult for the companies.

Africa is definitely going digital.

For veteran wildlife ranger Joseph Kimojino, the traditional tools of his trade -- binoculars, off-road jeep and a rifle -- have been supplemented by Twitter, Flickr and a blog.

A ranger in Kenya's acclaimed Mara Triangle wildlife park, Kimojino is a member of the Masai tribe. He first learned how to click a computer mouse in November. Now he blogs about the Mara Triangle and posts wild animal photos on Flickr nearly every day.

WhiteAfrican had more on startups in Nigeria and Techpreneurs in Kenya.

Marco Cantu reports on how Microsoft Blames Users for Vista Problems

An article covering "Five Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista" claims that all Vista problems are only perceived by users and blames their judgment of the OS. You can get upset, or have a good laugh.

Joe Lieberman tried to hustle Google into censoring YouTube, here's Google telling him to get lost.

Larry Page criticising a potential Microsoft takeover of Yahoo:

Now, if you put 90 percent of communications all in one company ... that's really a big risk, especially one (Microsoft) that has a history of doing bad stuff.

Scott Schmidt used Google AdWords to discover many Americans Searching for Hilary (it's 'Hillary'). He also discovred a method for Republicans to waste Obama's millions.

Search for either candidate and their own website is the sponsored link that returns - at a cost of somewhere near $3 each time someone clicks on the link, a fortune in click-through ad rates.

Slate details why although Microsoft's new 'cashback' scheme for boosting LiveSearch looks radical on the surface, underneath the hood it's actually all about the same old - limited and hence hardly useful for users - dealmaking.

Google search results can now be tweaked to provide top categories and in-site search. Yahoo has announced the general public availability of their SearchMonkey program. This is a program that has been in beta testing with limited partners. It allows the partner to provide Yahoo with structured data that provides advanced information about a web page. This information is then used by Yahoo to influence the presentation of organic search listing results for that page. This includes building apps into the search results.

From Bootstrapper (no, not a gay porn site) : 50+ Google Reader Productivity Hacks. Keyboard shortcuts, firefox add-ons and time-savers. Very useful.

The generation gap defined:

Ralph Nader showed up at the Google offices to talk about his presidential campaign. About 5 minutes in, he says the Internet has been a "disappointment," and then, "don't get me going on the Internet." He goes on to say that "it hasn't shown much by way of mobilizing, except on Internet issues..."

Here's a gem from Master Miliband's recent trip with Condi to Mountain View:

Finally, Rice and Miliband came out of the auditorium and walked over to the microphones at the edge of our grassy pen.

Miliband remarked that he was thankful that Secretary Rice rescued him from the chilliness of the United Kingdom for the warmth and sunshine of "Southern California."

"Northern California!" Rice corrected him. "Oh, sorry!" Miliband said. Scattered laughs.

In a damned radical move, Comedy Central said it will soon start streaming full episodes of The Daily Show, Colbert Report and South Park. As you might imagine, this raises some eyebrows with cable companies, in this case, Time Warner. “They can’t have it both ways. If they put content they ask cable companies to pay for online for free, they are making it less valuable and we should be expected to pay less for it.”

Great cover story in Prospect Magazine about the moral panic surrounding Gaming.

A generational rift has opened that is in many ways more profound than the equivalent shifts associated with radio or television: more alienating for those unfamiliar with new technologies, more immersive for those who are. How do lawmakers regulate something that is too fluid to be fully comprehended or controlled; how do teachers persuade students of the value of an education when what they learn at play often seems more relevant to their future than anything they hear in a classroom?

So far, the dire predictions many have made about the "death" of traditional narratives and imaginative thought at the hands of video games have at best equivocal evidence to support them. Television and cinema may be suffering, economically, at the hands of interactive media. But literacy standards and book sales have failed to nosedive, and both books and radio are happily expanding into an age that increasingly looks like it will be anything but lived on-screen. Young people still enjoy sport, going out and listening to music. They like playing games with their friends, and using the internet to keep in touch and arrange meetings rather than to isolate themselves. And most research—including a recent $1.5m study funded by the US government—suggests that even pre-teens are not in the habit of blurring game and real worlds. This finding chimes with an obvious truth: that a large proportion of "problem behaviours" in relation to any medium or substance exist for resolutely old-fashioned reasons—lack of education, parental attention, security, support and experience.

Unintentional laugh of the week, from an article about 'lifting the ban' on US soldiers in Afghanistan having sex:

According to Helixon's staff, 28 soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade have been punished for having sex in Afghanistan or for violating the no-entry rule in the past year. Those punishments ranged from letters of reprimand to field-grade Article 15s.

Google Reader clips catch up

• The Five Mistakes Clinton Made
  Karen Tumulty in Time. One mistake is simply not understanding the rules for primaries and delegate counting - she has a quite astonishing tale of Mark Penn's idiocy.
• Firefox: Can browsers make bucks?
  Rory Cellan-Jones gets a demo of v. 3.0 for BBC NEWS | dot.life and he thinks he sees how they'll do it, via Google.
• Disintermediation of minds?
  Via Media Influencer
  'There has been a proliferation of tools that help me aggregate but there are still very few tools that help me filter. Part of the reason may be that the human mind is the best filter of all but, surely, there is room for tools that can help me to it easier and better.'
• Street View Sabotage!
  Google Sightseeing has this funny tale
  'The saboteurs must have been extremely quick on their feet of course, as the bag appeared without any warning while the car was travelling at speed.'
• It’s not just video
  Dave Briggs explains on the DC10plus blog about the importance of tagging to pull in content and create a legacy from an event.
  
  
• New Web Content Accessibility Guidelines ready to test drive
• More Gov live blogging
  Simon Dickson is at it again with the video and the bleeding edge and takes my point about the yet-to-be-demonstrated worth of liveblogging of election coverage.
  'But for something like this, it can provide an excellent channel for colour commentary, or even ‘context sensitive links’: when we did the ProGov event, people were contributing URLs providing additional background on the points being raised, for people who didn’t know the subjects. (Like, for example, me.)' — I agree.
  
• Come Together, Now? The World Live Web and Politics
  Micah L. Sifry was watching the Indiana/NC coverage with sound down and ended up focusing on the quite fascinating comment streams on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's official blogs.
• Should TV news bias be overt?
  Roy Greenslade says no.
  
• Lawrence O'Donnell: Hillary Will Drop Out by June 15
  
  
• Girls turned off IT careers by lack of role models - ComputerWeekly.com
  No role models. Even though they're there - see my post on this.
  
• Has Facebook Jumped the Shark as a Political Tool?
  Colin Delany says
  
  • Facebook is Not (Yet) a Mass-Communications Tool
  • Facebook Advocacy: Too Many Groups, Too Little Attention
  • The Presidential Experience: Facebook Is Nice To Have, But...
  He does provide Elements of a Successful Political Facebook Strategy.
• Art Brodsky: Why The 'Right' Gets Net Neutrality Wrong
  'Those [profits from netbiz] results were achieved under mandated Net Neutrality, the original, fundamental characteristic of the Internet that protects the individual consumer's freedom to innovate without permission and to receive, and pay for, the services he or she chooses. Why a conservative opposes that, I'll never know.'
• Operation Anti-Chaos: The Narrative on "White Voters" Is Fiction
  Al Giordano: 'So, to sum up: Look at the damn graphs. You can see that Clinton is in a staggering free-fall among African-American voters, her favorability is down 36 points while 17 percent view her more negatively than before, while Obama's favorable and negative ratings among whites have paired at five point increases.'
  

Not on Reader:

• barackobamaisyournewbicycle
  Neat timewaster — 'Barack Obama wanted you to have some cupcakes ... Barack Obama recited a poem that reminded him of you .... '
  
• Barack Obama delegates wiki
  Not been done before - really. Another outcome of the Obama method, they did this themselves, learning from previous campaign efforts and nobody came from HQ and took them over ...

• Ya Libnan Lebanon News Live from Beirut
  Breaking News Live coverage of the Situation in Lebanon - 'liveblogging', indeed.
• Networks reportedly refused to appear on PBS' NewsHour to respond to NY Times' military analysts story; several continue blackout
  MediaMatters documenting just how the US TV News networks are trying to kill the story off, blogosphere is keeping it alive and kicking.
• Killing by the numbers
  Shocking tale from Iraq
  'In 2007 elite U.S. snipers executed an unarmed Iraqi prisoner in cold blood. Have the insidious tactics that led to atrocities in Vietnam reemerged in Iraq?'
  'Top battalion leaders, who had to sign off on the charges, have faced no serious questions about whether their demand for more bodies, their vague rules of engagement or the confusion sown by the secret program might have contributed to the events of spring 2007.'
• Political Commentariat in Group Circle Jerk
  Iain Dale, with top political bloggers list: 'The one thing which the report immediately provokes me into asking, is just who the Commentariat influences apart from its own members? How many 'normal' people are influenced by newspaper leader columns or indeed blogs? Do we all not feed each other in some amorphous way rather than be a crucial individual influence on a particular debate?'
  
  
• Face to face with climate change
  The Sun is running a blog from Alaska in their Climate Change section. Stop spluttering. Good stuff and a great object lesson in Plain English.
• The Visible Man: An FBI Target Puts His Whole Life Online
  HT: Stephen Colbert!
  Hasan Elahi is tracking his entire waking moments online at trackingtransience.net.Why? Because he was once mistakenly picked up by the FBI.
  'So it dawned on him: If being candid about his flights could clear his name, why not be open about everything? "I've discovered that the best way to protect your privacy is to give it away,"'
  'For now, though, Big Brother is still on the case. At least according to Elahi's server logs. "It's really weird watching the government watch me," he says. But it sure beats Guantanamo.'
• When Democrats Go Post-al
  James Wolcott in Vanity Fair: 'The vicious Clinton-versus-Obama rupture at Daily Kos, the most activist site in the liberal blogosphere, reflects a party-wide split. What really rankles, as Democrats tear at one another, is the free pass they’ve given McCain—and the White House.'
• Young Video Makers Try to Alter Islam’s Face
  New York Times: 'When Ali Ardekani started fishing around on the Internet a couple of years ago for video blogs about Muslims, he did not like what he found: either the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims were depicted as bloodthirsty zealots, or they were offering defensive explanations as to why they were not.'
  “Arabic sounds foreign and scary — you don’t know what is going on,” Mr. Ardekani said in an interview at his small Sherman Oaks apartment, its walls decorated with Koranic verses. “Or they show a woman with the veil, who doesn’t speak, and it is assumed if she did speak she would say, ‘Help me!’ ”

Google Reader clips catch up

• Analysis: Google App Engine alluring, will be hard to escape
  Opening up the 'cloud', Google gets good reviews from those looking under the hood.
• Flickr Video Launches - A Unique Experience
  There's already a backlash from Flickers, and it's only supposed to be a 'moving photo': hence 90 seconds. It's not a YouTube competitor.
• The new web communicator
  Gerry McGovern says too many government websites 'overflow with vanity, pomposity and waffle'.
• Blogging Kills Disproportionately? NYT’s Story Doesn’t Make the Case
  Dan Gilmor: .. because "the data are so breathtakingly shallow", and don't other professions work hard?
  
  
• Timothy Karr: OK Go: The Heat is On an Open Internet
  And it's analogous to "boiling the frog."
• Professor questions the value of e-democracy centre
  Stephen Coleman damns ICELE with faint praise.
• A Widget That Tracks Political Sentiment
  What's being talked about in news and blogs.
• Europe Is Searching For Its Silicon Valley
  London has it's pros but isn't the concept out-of-date?
• Lost BBC coding found
  The author of the 404's finds them again - five years on, no change. I'm shocked.
• Council Logo
  Luke Akehurst plays with that quickly disappeared Progressive Governance Summit 'swastika' logo.
  
  
• Zimbabwe elections
  Kenya Pundit's take. The possible development of a new trend of “civilian coups” in Africa?
  
• Game for a laugh - Anne Diamond on games in the Daily Mail
  Martin Belam looks in depth at another, ridiculous take in the MSM.
• SEO Rapper
  From JackP. Hysterical. Yes, he raps about SEO.
• Social networks - will the government crack down?
  BBC reporter thinks they'll have trouble.
• Bill Maher: The Biofuel Boom
  It's a big mistake.
• Hillary Tries Grassroots Budgeting
  A very interesting new fundraising tool, help rent a van!
  
  
• BBC News redesign: while developers ignore their users, the users fix the site!
  How Firefox/Opera users can fix the bugs themselves.
• Al Gore's RealSimple 'We' Campaign
  The $300m campaign to raise climate change in the election isn't doing web well.
  
• Is Hazel Blears on drugs feeling ok? : Pickled Politics
  Tackling rhetoric and lazy journalism. Where are these 'no-go areas'? And what, exactly, do they do about them?
• U.S. Invasion Has Made Life Worse for Iraqi LGBT Community
  Oh yes it has.
• Coleman connects on Citizenship
  Professor Stephen Coleman stops being negative about blogging and joins in.

Not on Reader - A 'West Wing' Writer Imagines the Showdown at the Democratic National Convention. From New York Magazine. Lawrence O’Donnell Jr writes the script for Four Days in Denver. Wonderful.

Google Reader clips catch up

Way behind with a catch-up, so a long list :[

• "Hidden Costs" of Watching TV Online?
  BBC swipe at The Torygraph, containing this gem: "Content providers, if they find their content being specifically squeezed, shaped, or capped, could start to indicate on their sites which ISPs their content worked best on (and which to avoid). I hope it doesn’t come to this."
• Forget Everything You've Learnt About Project Delivery, Part 8: Benefits Measurement
• The Secret to Successful Project Teams
  Couple of good pieces from CIO; first is part of a very useful series.
• Searches for 'tibet' quadruple
• Court Backs Craigslist in Discrimination Brouhaha
  Big implications. possibly. They can carry discriminatory housing ads ("no blacks, irish, dogs"). Odd when that's where all classifieds are moving to.
• No 10 Twitters and Flickrs into life
• New Foreign Office website
  Which Emma doesn't want my thoughts about ...
• Power of Information: New taskforce and speech
• Military Report: Secretly 'Recruit or Hire Bloggers'
• Election breaches in Zimbabwe
  Tom Watson picked up on another Google maps link-up, as happened in Kenya. Here's more about how Zimbabweans are using blogs to get around media censorship.
• Obama's YouTube Speech Tops TV Ratings
  That's 24hr news shows.
• The online fall-out of the Daily Express apology to Madeleine McCann's family
  Martin Belam spots a lot of hangovers from the apology on the Express' crap website.
• The Daily Express is back on the McCann case
• What if Hillary Clinton gave a speech about gender? (And why she won't.)
• Galloway's Iranian propaganda?
  Peter Tatchell on CIF. The comments on this were crazy.
• Reader and ARIA: A new way to read
  That's Google Reader and a Screenreader
• The Royalty Scam
  That's Billy Bragg editorialising for the New York Times.
• The all-seeing eye
  Nicholas Carr sort-of losing it. Again.
• Texting-on-the-go injures 6 million Brits
  They walk into lamp-posts en masse. Includes funny video.
• This blog is garbage!
  Seeing is believing.
• Online video traffic up 178% in a year
• The Foolishness of Crowds (and certain erudite New York City professors)
  Andrew Keen makes a useful point. Shock.
  
• Not getting it may be a worldview thing
  It is still early days ...
• Firefox Goes "Organic"
  Mozilla is green.
• Super-Regulator’ Sharpens Focus On Accessibility
  Ofcom sharpening its threats.
• OurPress: websites for the rest of us
  Neat project from Dave Briggs.
• The Free Our Bills Campaign launches
  Another plug :]
• 1M+ Donations to Obama in March
  Now 2m individuals. This campaign is changing lots of old ways of doing politics.
• Set the Census data free
  Simon Dickson yells at the Office for Stats about the 2011 census.
• China unbans the Beeb
  As the Dalai Lama keeps saying - what happens after the Olympics?
• RSS to Newsletter Maker - A pitch to the Social Innovation Camp
  Very neat idea from Tim Davies..
• Cyber attacks target pro-Tibetan groups
• In the Guardian: ‘we’re now in sight of victory’; so what next?
  Charles Arthur for Free Our Data on Another Power of Information impact.
• Municipal Wireless Success Demands Public Involvement, Experts Say
  All going pear-shaped in US cities - but there's 'ope.
• Links, libel and law
  Emma Mulqueeny wants to be off Milliband's blogroll.
• Google Sees Surge in Web Use on Mobile Phones
• Network to explore "civic function of news"
  David Wilcox on another 'walled garden', this time at the RSA.
• Morocco's Facebook faker is freed
• Web Technologies Scotland
  JackP details great stuff about this event.
• Secret Guide to Social Media in Government
  Incredibly useful new guide.
• [Roy Greenslade] Resign! Resign! Resign! Resign! Why four editors who libelled McCanns should go
• Web creator rejects net tracking
  Sir Tim isn't a happy bunny.
• Spare a thought for the people of Adelaide…
  The hottest since records began. This is why Aussies take global climate change seriously - and vote accordingly.
• BBC 'opens floodgates' to iPlayer hackers
• The high cost of a good reputation
  eBay demolishing 'the wisdom of crowds', says Bill Thompson.
• What is web science?
• Do Internet Ads, Content Effectively Reach All Ages?
  Older users think websites are designed for the young.
• Poll: Most Americans don't read political blogs (Reuters)
  ... but fully one quarter of all American adults do.

Also: This was released on April 1st, but is apparently serious! Antarctic Polar Bear Relocation to Begin on Earth Day. Some Americans want to move thousands of them to the edge of the Ross Sea near Emperor Penguin colonies trapped by recent movement of giant icebergs . Nothing on the site about unexpected impacts - like happened with rabbits and foxes in Oz. Project is supported by oil drillers ('we're fed up being attacked') and 'Americans for tax reform' ... and lots and lots of American 'liberals'. Gore has his work cut out.

AdBlock shock: still no threat there

Back in September, Nicholas Carr posted a long, highly combustible diatribe invoking Geezuz against AdBlock Plus: the Firefox extension which will stop practically all those revolving, screaming ads (that's one way, my way, of looking at it). Much online advertising is still stuck in the throw-mud-at-wall stage and, sorry, but I can't read when I have intense visual or auditory distraction. So, like a few other useful extensions (list in right-hand column), AdBlock saves my time and energy.

I explained, at length, how Carr was plain wrong and more than a tad hysterical (although he was timid compared to some hysterics who think it's all about Marxism in disguise). This was simply because it remained and would remain largely a geeky thing. At that point, the only numbers which anyone could source on AdBlock's worldwide usage was 2.5 million, which is nothing.

Because I was reading him again I thought I'd try and find some numbers on AdBlock usage seven months later.

It's now 3 million 'active daily numbers' (where the 2.5 million came from) and probably X3 - 9 million, not-daily, say the geeks who are very excited it's that many. Here's the details.

When Firefox claims it is approaching 20% of worldwide browsers and in a month where China finally eclimpsed the USA as #1 for web users, even 9 million is a pittance.

I suppose getting-a-grip in a follow-up would be out of the question, Nicholas?

More Obama speech reaction - it's positive but you won't read about it

I've been following the reaction to Obama's speech on race (which you can watch in full in this previous blog post).

The only polling done that I can find (for CBS) gave 69% of Americans who had heard or read about it giving it a positive reaction.

63% agree with Obama's views on race relations. Seventy-one percent say he did a good job explaining his relationship with Rev. Wright - the pastor of his church whose sermons have been edited and received blanket news coverage.

The only negative was when people were asked if Obama would unite the country 52% said yes. This is down from 67% last month.

Most voters following the events say they will make no difference in their vote.

Nearly a quarter of Democrats say the events have made them more likely to back Obama, while a similar number of Republicans say they are now less likely to do so. Three in four independents say the events make no difference, and the remainder are nearly evenly split between those more likely to support him and those less likely to do so.

As well, his overall poll numbers have returned to a lead over Clinton (via Andrew Sullivan)



Another Gallup Poll shows a 'Perceived Honesty Gap for Clinton Versus Obama, McCain'.



Nevertheless, reporters continue to assume a negative reaction for Obama (see the Times/BBC) and US Networks have continued to selectively edit both the original sermons by Rev. Wright as well as comments by Obama himself.

The BBC's North America Editor Justin Webb posted the following about Wright:

"The fact that he is shouting in the clips, and swaying about, does not do him any favours."

Which is astonishing, given that this is how black pastors preach: something you'd assume he would know about and understand. This sort of comment reflects the tenor of the BBC's coverage of Obama and Wright and is also to be found in some of the broadsheets.

Some commentators have noted that the real reason that Wright's comments continue to dominate TV News coverage of Obama - despite, for example, a lengthy speech last week further explaining his position on Iraq - is because they need the Democratic race to continue for their own reasons.

Despite there being little chance that Hillary will win, the media needs the conflict and is unwilling to call the reality: baring acts-of-god, Obama will be the Democratic nominee. Plus, it's a statistical tie with McCain vs Obama (post 'race speech' polling).

Politico:

Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one only slightly better situated than the other to win in August at the national convention in Denver.

One important, if subliminal, reason is self-interest. Reporters and editors love a close race — it’s more fun and it’s good for business.

Just this week, Clinton made the bizarre claim that she had to run to avoid sniper fire when visiting Tuzla in Bosnia with her daughter in 1996. This, well, lie, has received no play at all. However some have rebelled over the 'loop' on Rev. Wright and Obama.

CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 looked at the actual tapes of Wright, rather than the excerpts and discovered that one of the most quoted excerpts, made just after 9/11, was actually Wright quoting somebody else, a former Ambassador.

“I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end, he pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said Americas chickens, are coming home to roost.”

They said:

His sermon thesis:
1. This is a time for self-examination of ourselves and our families.
2. This is a time for social transformation (then he went on to say they won’t put me on PBS or national cable for what I’m about to say. Talk about prophetic!)

The Washington Post provided more context by highlighting similar comments made by Martin Luther King:

Listen to what King said about the Vietnam War at his own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Feb. 4, 1968: "God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place." King then predicted this response from the Almighty: "And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."

And imagined what would have happened to King's campaign if today's technology had existed then.

Even on arch right-wing News Channel Fox News, the 'loop' so outraged two anchors that one upped and left and another berated his fellow anchors.



On another channel, the 'loop' was challenged by someone whose comments surprised many - Mike Huckerbee (comment @ 3' 20" — notice the lead male with his arms crossed):



In their reaction to Obama's historic speech - the tenor and content broke new ground for any leading American politician, black or white - much of the media, both in the USA and UK, appears a/ ignorant of Black America and b/ determined to continue to pump up the Democratic primary election for their own reasons.

Where to turn to for accurate reporting?

Previous:

• Postscript: Obama addresses race: hear the whole speech, not the BBC's meme
• Obama addresses race: hear the whole speech, not the BBC's meme

NB: "20 hour days"! 20 "hits" in the morning! Something lost in the translation ...

Gaming YouTube

There's buzz that 'The evolution of dance' has finally been knocked off the YouTube #1 spot by a fan tribute to an obscure Brazilian pop band called Cansei de Ser Sexy. waxy.org examines this in detail but doesn't nail whether it's definitely gaming, it just smells like it. At least partly because it's an awful video.

This is a long standing complaint, Mashable published Gaming YouTube for Fun and Profit in 2006.

Essentially, if you set your browser to auto-refresh a YouTube page (a Firefox extension does it), every time the browser refreshes the video has a new view added to it. People testing this, though, don't seem to necessarily see 1000 refreshes becoming 1000 extra views.

Numbers can be inflated by videos being embedded on high traffic sites but waxy couldn't find any evidence of that being the cause with this one.

There have been claims that the early high numbers for some Obama sites (such as his MySpace) and videos were also being gamed but that's now discounted I think as they're within range of other candidate products/other content.

What's annoying is that YouTube (Google) doesn't seem the slightest bit bovvered.

I'll stick to the Viral Chart for now for seeing where trends are — generally, the best policy with stats is to look first at the trends.

AdBlock: "not evil"

The always interesting blogger, author and commentator Nicholas Carr has a thing about AdBlock - that's a little plug-in or add-on which around 1-2% of users have installed - to the point that he just asked the question

• 'Adblock Plus: what would Jesus do?'

If that sounds OTT that's because it is .

As I explained before, there is no way that AdBlock, the effort of one geek in Germany, not the Russian mafia, is ever going to seriously challenge ecommerce.

AdBlock somehow representing armageddon for ecommerce, if not capitalism in general, is what Nicholas and most others on this subject have been carrying on about.

And here's why they all need a bex and a good lie down:



This is the faaaabulous Broadway World website trying to flog me Xanadu tickets, finding it's own way around my AdBlock, which is the red circle in the bottom right of the screengrab.

Haaretz and others get some ads round my default AdBlock set-up as well.


(Xanadu? Is this some sort of off-beam behavioural targetting? I Haaaate Xanadu, brings back bad memories .. :{ )

Several industry commentators have written that AdBlock is evil.

Some are arguing that Firefox users be actively blocked, (which just sparks another add-on arms race).

Carr is right on one thing though, that a paid commentator should see the Web the same way as the poor sods who don't use AdBlock. I won't spoil his post by telling you his answer to 'Jesus's' conundrum ...

• NB: Here's the real origins of A Bex and a Good Lie Down
• New York Times scare article
  

~~~~~~~~~~~


Postscript: here's Google getting around AdBlock on JackP's blog:



And a comment made me investigate my filters in AdBlock and - ahah! - there is indeed a 'Dr Evil' involved in this conspiracy against capitalism!

[Adblock Plus 0.7.1]

!       Filterliste von Dr. Evil & MonztA (mit Hilfe der Foren-Nutzer auf firefox-browser.de)
!       Zuletzt geändert: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:06:37 +0200 wird alle 4 Tage aktualisiert (expires after 4 days).
!       Kommentare (verbleibende Werbung, fälschlicherweise blockierte Inhalte, Danksagungen ;-), ...)


!       bitte per Mail an adblockfilters@mozdev.org oder auf http://www.firefox-browser.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28904 an uns richten

I come back to The Pickards after clicking 'add filter' a few times and - voila! - Jack's Ads disappear :{ Even when I disable AdBlock on Jack's site :@ It must be learning !? Only when AdBlock's entirely disabled do Jack's Ads reappear :~

Odd.

Nicholas Carr goes ballistic

Adblock Plus: the nuclear plug-in
from Nicholas Carr

Adblock Plus, the Firefox browser plug-in that erases advertisements from web pages, is a killer of a killer app - or at least it would be if it became widely popular. Right now, it sits like a coyote at the edge of the net, quietly eyeing all the businesses it would happily devour. The plug-in, writes Noam Cohen in today's New York Times, has the potential to be an "extreme menace to the online-advertising business...

Yes, potential ... but something in the 90s% of even Firefox users (it's not easy to plug into Internet Explorer) don't use add-ons. Plus, who's going to develop and promote a full-on ad blocker? Symantec?

Carr: If web users decide they don't want to see ads, Google would face an extremely unpleasant dilemma. Either its business or its credibility would end up in tatters.

Flee for the hills! Cash in your options now!

Says Cohen, about similar PVR 'concerns':

(As things turned out, TiVo and a rival, ReplayTV, opted not to include an automatic service to skip ads after vociferous objections by the television industry.)

He also points out that business whingers - for that is what they are - already have an answer, which is

“to serve ads from their own servers.”

Haa'retz do this and I still see internal promotions elsewhere. What I don't see is the full horror, revolving, irritating, smack-me-with-your-BRANDING ads ...

Marketeers have started to get the message about pop-ups, which is not because of AdBlock.

Yes, AdBlock is grrr-eat, but who else but geeks? Seriously? The odds are stacked against it. There's not a version for mobiles - the future mass market - and I'd imagine that's a even harder environment for something like AdBlock.

There have always been these type of developments because anyone can tweak how they receive the Web, that's why there are so many browsers. Things like AdBlock have been around for ages. I s'pose you could also say that things like MySpace have also been around for ages but ... calm down Nicholas! It's only an add-on!

What I'm reading

I've made some changes to make the blog a bit more useful for myself.

I've started using Google Reader and it's by far the easiest way to note stuff I've read. I'm a quick scanner. This I'm outputting into a 'what I'm reading' widget in the left-hand column and it comes with a 'public page' for 'starred' items plus I can make tagged feeds public too, I've done this with 'egov' and 'netmarketing' tagged feeds thus far.

Not made Google Reader my homepage but I'll cull feeds on my iGoogle homepage probably back to BBC/drudge/local now I can add Reader to iGoogle. Apparently there's some hacks too. Plus I've got personal search so I get Google Trends analysis of what I'm reading!

Here's Matt Cutts' Reader trends:



From looking at my start, it reads like I've done shit-loads of 'reading' but a lot is reading one line, or rather scanning it. So '543' with a big pinch of salt ...



The other thing is to add many more tags (Blogspot calls them 'labels'). I should have done this from the start, it's the easiest way for me to access and organise stuff and seems to have had the side-effect of encouraging tag clicks, though on ones like 'RAF' and 'firefox' - previously, tag clicks were on 'usability'. It also has the side-effect of boosting post visibility to search engines.

• Jeff Jarvis: The end of the homepage?

Great Firefox add-ons

I'm a big fan of Firefox and have started using a new add-on which is just brilliant.

Using SEOpen, from one right-click, I can check a page's:

• Yahoo Backlinks
• Pages in Yahoo Index
• Google Backlinks
• Google Cache
• Pages in Google index
• Google Translate to English
• Google Related
• PageRank Check
• MSN Backlinks
• Pages in MSN Index
• Alexa Overview
• Alexa Traffic
• Alexa Related
• Alexa Backlinks
• "Mass Check" multiple sources at once
• Check DMOZ Inclusion
• Keyword Density
• Page Size Checker
• HTML Validator
• Server Header Viewer
• Wayback Machine
• Check robots.txt
• Whois Info

Fab.


This is a bit specialist (ahem) but some of the other add-ons I love can be useful for everyone:

TinyUrl Creator
Very easy copy'n'paste for a shorter URL

Tabbrowser Preferences
Useful things like retrieving closed tabs, copy tab URL

Snipshot
Edit images easily, simple crop, resize

Show Screen Captures
Displays thumbnail screenshots next to external links on a web page, this one I think I'll disable

ScrapBook
Extremely useful to clip pages or text but be even better if I was saving to my web repository, not my hard drive

Plain Text Links
Lets me open a URL from text

Menu Editor
Edit right-click menu

Image Zoom

IE Tab
Shows a page as it would appear in IE

Groowe Search Toolbar
Combines Google, Wikipedia (I use that a lot), Yahoo, de.li.cious etal

Greasemonkey
Great developer tool. More >

Advanced Dork

DOM Inspector

LinkChecker

ColorZilla
Copies any colour from a page.

DownThemAll!
Speeds up + manages downloading

deskCut
Puts a shortcut on your desktop

Adblock Plus
Blocks ads (except those served from the site, which some do)

What am I missing?

Bytes · Google's everyday firsts - Singapore - South Korea

• According to YouGov 'folksonomy', is the most disliked web term followed by 'Blogosphere'.
  
• Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder, told the recent Supernova Internet conference, that the going rate for addresses and credit card numbers for fraud is $14.
  
  
• Udi Manber, vice president of engineering for Google, told the same conference that 20 to 25 percent of the queries Google fields every day have never been entered before.
  
  Maybe this might have something to do with the integration of Google Search much more easily in online research through browser extensions, like the one I have in Firefox which allows me to select any block of text and right-click then search from it, cropping back to find what I want quickly.
  
  
• Google Spreadsheets (which have been dramatically overhauled) now have Live Data linking to Google's lookup feature. The whole suite has been enhanced with folders - an interesting and apparently user-driven choice over tags.
  
• Clipblast is a very good new video search engine - especially for news.
• Playing with mash-ups and using every device, the Beeb is trying a Web 2.0 experiment with journalist Ben Hammersley covering the Turkish elections.
  
  
• Children of the Web: where globalization meets Web 2.0 [MPEG]
  How the second-generation Internet is spawning a global youth culture--and what business can do to cash in:
  

  "The idea isn't done somewhere in particular. It's just done. And it suddenly just happens. There are no borders. You can't control who sees it and comes to it."

• Following various court cases over Google News linking to and profiting from their content, newspapers are negotiating a new mechanism called the Automated Content Access Protocol which will allow search engines to recognise the terms and conditions of specific newspaper websites. Google doesn't like this, arguing that robots.txt exclusions are enough.
  
  
• Video: Singapore Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Dr Lee Boon Yang describing their amazing ten-year tech plan. Nearly half a million are already on free wireless.

  "By 2010, we target to have at least 80 percent of SMEs using broadband and having Web presence."
  
  

• Skrentablog: Are network effects getting weaker?
  

  MySpace is a tired social network that may have a ton of traffic but it has peaked. It doesn't have mojo anymore. Like AOL in 1999, it will take years before people realize it.

• Video: John Shepherd-Barron talking about his invention of the Cash Machine forty years ago. The machine used cheques that were impregnated with carbon 14, a mildly radioactive substance. The machine detected it, then matched the cheque against a Pin number.
  

  "I later worked out you would have to eat 136,000 such cheques for it to have any effect on you."

  
  

~~~~~~~~~~~

OurKingdom covers the Open Rights Group's damning report on the e-voting trials during the May local elections.

Even if some thought that others were talking in code it looks like ORG’s message, that we simply cannot endorse the results of the e-voting/counting trials as being fair and democratic, is being taken on board. It was a shame we had no representatives from the vendors. They avoided the argument here but will undoubtedly be intensifying their lobbying following this report.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Simon Bureau, managing director of business development consultancy Vectis International, told the recent CommunicAsia conference that the success of South Korea's broadband market provides important lessons for countries that are trying to promote broadband adoption.

Highlighting the role of the South Korean government as a key driver of broadband services, Bureau said the government has been aggressive in spearheading broadband adoption since the 1990s. "They've put in large amounts of money, not just in infrastructure but also in applications and content development," he noted.

The government has also adopted other creative ways to boost broadband adoption, including a system that rates buildings based on the availability of broadband services to households. "If you meet certain criteria and your building is qualified, you get tax breaks and your apartment prices will also get higher," Bureau said, adding that South Korea's high population density has also made it cheaper and more efficient to build broadband networks.