On this day . . .

Kakophone is a clever site from the US that aggregates information from a given day in history. Tells you what was number one, gives the covers of Time Magazine and Rolling Stone, how much a dozen eggs would have cost and a few bits more.

Library Laugh

A funny Mercedes ad set in a library, courtesy of Youtube.

World Wide Web (nearly) Invented in 1977

Tim Berners-Lee takes all the credit for inventing the World Wide Web and actually coined the phrase in 1990. But 23 years earlier the phrase was nearly coined by an unknown sub-editor at the Daily Mail. Thursday May 19 1997 front page headline reads: WORLD-WIDE BRIBERY WEB BY LEYLAND.

Welcome to the future

Steve Blow from the Dallas Morning News tells in this article how he's decided that he no longer needs to keep a cuttings book of his bylines. He gets a bit mushy as he welcomes the news that digital archives mean the world no longer needs "morgues", "clip files", "pica poles" and "stringbooks".

Wednesday moan

Spent 20 minutes trying to find a transcript from UK parliamentary site Hansard. I had the exact date of the testimony. I had the exact name of the witness. I even had a verbatim quote from the witness. Every possible combination of I information I pumped in to the search engine. And what did it return? Nish. Nada. Nil. Zero hits. So, what the hell, I'll give google a go. I typed in "richard evans defence select committee" and it comes in at hit number three. Google. Don't knock it. Ever.