Gervais to Charge for Podcast

This won’t go down well in the blogosphere. Or the podcastosphere. Or whatever it’s called. There were a couple of jokes in an episode of the Ricky Gervais Show podcast about how much money they would have made if they had charged for downloads. And now. it seems, that’s exactly what they’re going to do.… Continue reading Gervais to Charge for Podcast

BBC Four

The always excellent BBC Four has been excelling itself over the last couple of weeks. First there was the Folk Britannia season which looks at the history of British folk music since the 1950s. Then there was Lefties – a series of three programmes about people involved in left wing politics in the 70s and… Continue reading BBC Four

Overstating the Case

The Guardian rather overstates the case on the smoking ban. Parliament, so often maligned and so often ignorantly, has done itself and the nation proud by banning smoking in England. “Banning smoking in England”? Smoking won’t become illegal everywhere in England. Just in public. Which puts it, I suppose, about on a par with masturbation.… Continue reading Overstating the Case

Basic URL Advice

It’s about time for another look at some basic mistakes that people make on the internet. Today we’re going to be looking at URLs. It’s important to design a useful URL scheme for your web site. The easier your URLs are to understand, the more likely it is that people with share them with their… Continue reading Basic URL Advice

More Stupid People

The BBC is reporting new UK government findings about the impact of greenhouse gases. It makes chilling reading: The report, published by the UK government, says there is only a small chance of greenhouse gas emissions being kept below “dangerous” levels. It fears the Greenland ice sheet is likely to melt, leading sea levels to… Continue reading More Stupid People

Google Web Survey

See, this is a good example of what you can do if you’re parsing every page you can find on the web. Google has been examining the HTML used in the pages that it trawls and has published its findings. The results are interesting but not altogether surprising. The executive summary seems to be “most… Continue reading Google Web Survey

Folk is Cool Again

Well, at least, it is according to an article in today’s Observer. One of the new names to watch that they list is Sheila Chandra. I’m not sure I’d describe her as a new name though. I first heard of her in 1982 when she was the lead singer on Monsoon’s hit single “Ever So… Continue reading Folk is Cool Again

Guardian Unlimited Greasemonkey Scripts

One interesting use of Greasemonkey is to improve web sites that you don’t like the look of. This is useful feedback to the owners of the sites that are being “improved”. With that in mind, I noticed a couple of Greasemonkey scripts that are for use on Guardian Unlimited. Guardian Title Goodifier reorders the parts… Continue reading Guardian Unlimited Greasemonkey Scripts

UK Newspaper RSS Feeds

I’ve made a start on building a directory of all of the RSS feeds available from UK national newspapers. It’s online at dave.org.uk/newsfeeds. If I’ve missed anything then please let me know. Also, if anyone can work out why my Javascript filtering code doesn’t seem to work on IE, then I’d love to know what’s… Continue reading UK Newspaper RSS Feeds

The Times RSS Feeds

Looks like The Times have completely reorganised their RSS feeds. The old ‘one size fits all’ feed is dead and has been replaced by a number of individual feeds (including a some that come from weblogs). The full list (together with a brief explanation of RSS and all the licence terms) are here At some… Continue reading The Times RSS Feeds