A new view of London

e-society classification

UCL has developed a fantastic new tool, still in Beta, which uses Google Maps and has a pretty good interface.


PTAL - Public Transport Accessibility Level

London Profiler builds up a picture of the geo-demographics of Greater London from data on population attributes such as cultural/ethnicity, deprivation, the extent of e-literacy, level of higher education, and health related problems.


London's Welsh

You can "visualise themes at different scales, search by postcode or zoom at borough level, to change the layer's transparency and to add KML layers". Loads quickly and all it's missing is a 'how to use' link.


Index of multiple deprivation

It's amazing, really, that the BBC covered this solely as about 'Mapping London's immigration', which is actually wrong. I don't see a map showing how the early C20th Jewish emigres landed in the East End then moved to North London ...

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  London has it's pros but isn't the concept out-of-date?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.

Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis

In Al Gore's brand-new slideshow (premiering exclusively on TED.com), he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of "generational mission" -- the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement -- to set it right. Gore's stirring presentation is followed by a brief Q&A in which he is asked for his verdict on the current political candidates' climate policies and on what role he himself might play in future.

Favorite line: "Junkies find veins in their toes when the ones in their arms and legs collapse."

Another reason to laugh at the Torch relay

From Wired:

Olympic Torch Emits 5,500 Tons of CO2

That's from flying it 85,000 miles.

London has a plan to ensure that the 2012 torch relay ends up carbon neutral, so we figured that Beijing must have one too, right? Sally Lu, the frazzled Olympic media relations rep that we reached in Beijing, says that if there is a plan to neutralize the torch-carrying jet's carbon emissions, she hasn't heard about it. But she thinks there is one. Probably.

Actually, she's not really sure.

Here's some brave people on the Golden Gate Bridge. One is interviewed live.



There's something deeply ironic and 21st century about this happening to a PR stunt invented by the Nazis.

Not lost on Jon Stewart ...

Huff Post beats Drudge

Arianna's baby has grown up:

In February, The Huffington Post drew 3.7 million unique [American] visitors, according to Nielsen Online, for the first time beating out The Drudge Report, the conservative tip sheet with which The Post is often compared.

Silicon Valley Insider says that comscore has her beating Drudge in February too. It also notes that:

The outside measurement data is all over the map

Which it is, as I try to double check those numbers. But a trend is a trend!

The New York Times feature says it's worth $200m, which values each visitor at $50 each. Article says it's developing an international news section too, which will be interesting - that's a major gap. They say the aim is to be - good phrase - an Internet curator. Not just a tip-sheet à la Drudge.

This tells a story too:

Staff members also credit much of the growth to moves that have made the site’s commentary more prominent on search engines like Google and Yahoo. More than half of traffic now comes from nonpolitical pages.

As does this:

Despite its number of visitors, it still has a high “bounce rate,” referring to users who visit one page and then leave the site. Drudge still records seven times the monthly page views of The Huffington Post, meaning that readers are frequently refreshing for the latest headlines.

Not enough loyalty then yet. And the growth's presidential campaign driven. Big numbers but it's not the biggest single [American] blog though.

Techcruch beats it on links via Technorati scoring and TMZ on visitors (8.1 million).

Send me your stereotypes

• Views: 993,566
  
• Comments: 2,655
  
• Subscribers 3,273
  
• QueenRania on YouTube
• And then what? This is as one-sided as Hillary's efforts, but it's a start ...
  

More Zimbabwe blog wisdom

The only run off we want is for Mugabe to run off. Is this an election or an erection because everything seems to be standing still? These are the words on Harare's lips and in its text messages. Our joy is agony. So close but yet so far. We are tired. We can't take this anymore. Everyone I talk to wants the old man to go. If he doesn't they will. Some say they will take to the streets. Others will leave the country. Everyone has a plan in Zimbabwe. Most of us plan to be here. But many will leave if Bob doesn't.

Comrade Fatso

More great Zapiro cartoons.

Blinkx and the Beeb

Rory Cellan-Jones does a big promo rah-rah for Blinkx on the BBC dot.life blog. No problemo there. I love Blinkx too, it is better than - shock! - theGoogle.

Apart from a few 'they'll fix it' issues like tiddly text ('what is that video about??') and that you can't just embed them - you have to apply - and that it just plays and doesn't give you a button to hit to play (always a bête noire for me) and that it'll probably need a version which doesn't induce potential psychosis. But, apart from all that!, the tech behind it is brilliant and unique (and they're local).

Thing is, the BBC has an expected commercial relationship with Blinkx.

Which Rory doesn't mention in his blog,

And that's very naughty for a BBC journalist to do. 'Disclosure' and all that ...

I would tell them this on the blog but the f*&^%$£$%$g comments are still not working. After five tries I run out of patience. Thanks to the wonders of tagging though, they'll see this. Hi guys (you are mostly guys, aren't you?). Pass this on to Rory, there's a love.

A violent game addict? You're in the money!

Fresh from Star Now

A national newspaper wants your story and will pay hundreds of pounds to the right person.

Write a few lines about how computer games turned you to crime and if it's something we like, we'll call you straight back.

Please note: To take part, your story must not incriminate yourself or any other person (sic).

Hot on the heels of that leaked Daily Mail email about 'your Polish migrant hell - we'll pay!'

Where's Ofcom when you need it? Nowhere!

Hat-tip Martin Belam

Rudd delivers for Aborigines

I, alongside many Aboriginal Australians, was actually quite cynical about the new Labor Australian PM Kevin Rudd and his well-trailed apology to the Stolen Generations earlier this year.

Unlike the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, who said he wept as he watched it on CNN (I didn't weep, been there, done that). But now he's done something which is really, truly significant.

The plight of indigenous Australians will be detailed by the Prime Minister each year in Federal Parliament to measure the success or failure of the Government's pledge to increase Aboriginal living standards.

Announcing this in London of all places, Rudd said that on the first parliamentary day of each year he would report on the progress of his promise to close the 17-year life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians by 2030.

The Government plans to guarantee indigenous people will get health services equal to those of the rest of the population within 10 years.

The time has come for the debate to move on from intentions and focus on outcomes, because in this endeavour outcomes are what really matters [too right, mate]. This annual statement will greatly increase pressure on my Government to make progress towards closing the gap.

The other elements of the new annual statement would detail the progress or otherwise on closing gaps in infant mortality, literacy and numeracy.

Australia, a successful developed nation with a modern and prosperous economy, should not accept a 17-year life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

There is no reason that indigenous children in Australia should have less opportunity for education or health care than the opportunities provided to non-indigenous kids. This gap has no place in a modern Australia.

The point being that they don't have equal health services at the moment (or sewage or lots of other basic things Aussies take for granted - that's the legacy). Pretty basic, but it has taken years for these facts to become accepted or not blamed on Aborigines themselves. There are millions of Australians who want this shame to end - finally, they seem to have some leadership. (And it is worth noting that Boris Johnson has the spinmeister responsible for continuing this shame running his team).

Rudd has also said that Australia will finally sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples - something which the UK has failed to do. (And we rarely apologise.)

If you read nothing else about this, read (Aboriginal) Professor Larissa Behrendt's feature in the National Indigenous Times on why this is so important.

My father, whose life had been shaped by his experience in a home and his mother’s removal from her family, did not live to hear the apology. He died before he could hear the kind of acknowledgement of his experience that Kevin Rudd offered, that John Howard denied.

This alone can forgive the occasional smugness which accompanies the deep satisfaction in knowing our nation has finally moved on.