I’ve noticed recently a new feature sporadically appearing on Google search results: As you can see, the BBC News website is returned here as an…
One CommentCategory: Thoughts and Rants
Just received in my inbox, the following bounce: Your message From: Ben Metcalfe To: [address] Subj: RE: [backstage] IPs for news feeds? Sent: 2005-08-17 15:28…
Comments closed“The Internet has mainly been seen as a derivative medium, certainly in the eyes of mainstream media. Are blogs the first real example of us…
One CommentIn light of Google’s recent image syndication on Google News, I wanted to clear up a few misinterpretations about the BBC’s position with respect to…
Comments closedEver since eBay’s conception, many have cited it’s user trust model as a cornerstone to it’s success. The theory goes, if someone conducts themselves well on eBay then their trust level will increase. Conversely, if someone behaves inappropriately then it will soon show as their rating is diminished. Buyers and sellers can use this rating to decide whether they want to do business with a given person.
However, I’ve always found it to be a shaky system at best – with a number of potential flaws. Recently I have fallen foul of some of those flaws…
5 CommentsAs you will no doubt be aware, Google have released an RSS and Atom service that outputs any Google News search or subject listing in RSS or Atom format. This is achieved by adding &output=rss or &output=atom.
The feeds themselves include a Google-produced summary (usually ignoring the provider’s summary) and the image associated with that story, not forgetting the obligatory headline and link to the story.
In addition to making this service available for newsreaders, Google have also created a licence to allow end-users to reproduce the RSS and Atom feeds on their own websites.
All well and good I guess. Except there are two potential issues here:
- Most news providers have their own RSS terms and conditions, which may differ from the Google News RSS licence
- The images included with the stories are usually agency stills (AP, Reuters, Getty,etc). These agencies exercise strict controls over the reproduction of their images and it’s not clear how Google can be in a position to sub-licence their reproduction on third party sites.
I’m literally just about to start working on some code for backstage.bbc.co.uk. This will be my first bit of coding for backstage.bbc in at least…
Comments closedI was recently contacted by PayPal to take part in customer satisfaction and feedback survey.
Funnily enough, despite being a multi-million dollar profitable company, and wanting over 45 minutes of my time, they were not offering any remuneration in return. And don’t forget, customer feedback and satisfaction analysis like this is worth a massive amount to any company.
With the above in mind, I don’t normally take part in such requests (although I did once call up a consumer research company that was facilitating such survey to ask where I should send my invoice to. After some confusion at their end I informed them that as a consultant I usually charge people for my time, and their request was no different to any other. But that’s probably because I’m a stuck up bastard.)
However, I have a couple of gripes with PayPal so I thought I would do it anyway. And lets face it, PayPal are one companies that are so big and so dominant in their sector that they generally work on economies of scale to the point that they are happy to piss a percentage of their customer base off, knowing that people will still be forced to use them and that there isn’t much choice anyway (Roll on this new Google payment gateway, I say!).
So here’s what I wrote:
Comments closedSofia and I try to visit Asia once a year. We’ve not quite managed to stick to a once-every-12-months trip, but I’m pleased to say we’ve booked a holiday to Shanghai and Tokyo.
We’re both really excited as it will be our first trips to China and Japan, and neither of us quite knows what to expect. However I’m hoping Tokyo will be a great indicator of future technology, and Shanghai should be a great indicator of a massive future economy waiting to be tapped into.
However, the main purpose of the trip is to attend the Chinese F1 Grand Prix. We’ve done the Malaysian Grand Prix a couple of times, and so we thought it would be good to do a new one.
We also wanted to attend the Japanese Grand Prix too, as it takes place a week before the Chinese GP. However tickets were practically sold out and accommodation near the circuit was impossible to find. Never mind, perhaps we’ll do Suzuka next year.
Comments closedFurther to my previous post about the cool elevator hack, I’ve been trying it for a couple of days and I think it works! The…
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