Fight! Fight! Fight!

Googlefight compares the popularity of searches on Google. So for example, put BBC News and Guardian Unlimited up against other and see who wins.

U R Hell

Here's a list of unfortunate urls that need a bit of re-thinking. They include:

Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at
www.therapistfinder.com

and

A site called ‘Who Represents‘ where you can find the name of the agent that represents a celebrity. Their domain name… wait for it… is
www.whorepresents.com

Build your own search engine.

Here's a bit of Friday fun. It may have taken many years, big brains and much cash to develop Google but in moments the whole search engine could be yours. You can change it so the Google banner is replaced with your name. Go here to give it a go.

How to become a librarian.

The Times have produced a short article on how to become a librarian. It will be news to some journalists and lawyers that I've worked for that not only do you have to "have a degree to be a librarian!?!?" you also need a masters as well(?!!!).

Are you reading the news?

Apparently news stories on the web are barely read by anyone 36 hours after they were posted. That's the message from a team of statistical physicists at the University of Notre Dame in the US and colleagues in Hungary who have analysed how people access information online. The short life of a news item implies that people could miss significant news by not visiting the site when a new document is first displayed, which is a good reason for publishers providing e-mail news alerts. The full story on physicsweb.

Washington Post News Research Center

Deborah Howell, The Washington Post's Ombudsman, has written a great column on the Washington Post News Research Center. I don't thnk you could better the quote (from the Center director) that research staff are "news junkies, who see themselves not just as librarians but journalists finding and analyzing original documents, tracking people down, finding leads, using obscure databases."

man bites dog

Looking for reviews of film Shoot the Messenger I came across a lovely headline from the LA Times: Top cop tried to shoot messenger (June 25, 2006). Sadly the online headline is less interesting but here's the story. If you think you can do better check out Man Bites Dog, for budding Sun reporters everywhere.

Vive, vive, Cote d'Ivoire!

To highlight global poverty during the World Cup, the World Development Movement has come up with Who Should I Cheer For?, a handy guide to which countries are most supportable in terms of, among other factors, poverty, aid, military spending and human rights. The site also lists separate rankings for each category. Statistics are sourced from the
UN Development Report, OECD, World Bank, Transparency International and the FT, so it's a great shortcut for those niggly country comparison questions. Ghana to win!

The Guardian is, like, sooo gay

Last week the BBC complaints committee ruled in favour of Chris Moyles, deciding that the word gay was acceptable yoof speak for "lame or rubbish" (Evening Standard). It seems unfortunate then that Stuart Jeffries of the Guardian should choose to describe the Canadian marriage of Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger as "gay in every sense of the word". Or is the paper not as liberal as it makes out?

The Diana Express

Scanning the tabloids recently it struck me that the Express seems to know something the rest of us don't about the death of Princess Diana. I conducted a vaguely scientific experiment to see how often the Express carried stories on the People's Princess. Over a period of five weeks, it gave six front pages to Diana, and mentioned her in 36 separate articles (aside from front page stories on the Queen's 80th birthday, Princess Michael's indiscretions and Camilla's unsuitability as Diana's replacement). Charles must be jubilant.

Here's how the other big nationals fared:

Times/Sunday Times: 7 mentions
Telegraph/Sunday Telegraph: 3
Independent/Independent on Sunday: 5
Guardian/Observer: 15
Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday: 31
Mirror/Sunday Mirror: 14
Sun/News of the World: 20

The Guardian's G2 beat me to this story, but I'm not bitter, oh no...

Hosting the front page.

The British Library is hosting an exhibition of memorable front pages from the past 100 years, to celebrate the centenary of the Newspaper Publishers Association. No doubt some poor librarian had to go scrabbling through the cuttings files to find them. Newsnight is running a poll to find the best one - three of the top ten are from the Sun, but then tabloids always have more dramatic front pages, so this is probably reflected in the exhibition (especially as I hear Associated Newspapers had a veto on what went into the exhibition). If "Freddie Starr ate my hamster" wins it'll be a sad day for journalism. Exhibition opens May 25.

Free Maps at the Indy

I really like the Indy's recent set of free maps. The US map is full of statistics no doubt compiled by a harrassed researcher. The only disappointment is the breakdown in ethnic groups - I can only assume that America's hispanic population of 40 million has been lumped in to the 'white' sector, which makes up 75.6%, according to the chart. I can't imagine the immigrants who have been protesting this week would be happy to be ignored by the British press as well as the White House. For more detailed population figures, see the US Census Bureau.

F****** Blogs!!!

This week's Press Gazette features comments from Observer editor, Roger Alton. On blogs, he suggests that blogs will never replace newspapers. He says, "Blogs are basically comment on stories that have been broken by other media most of the time."

I'm not even going to comment on that.

Ha Ha Headlines

There's an email doing the rounds detailing the most bizarre headlines from newspapers in 2005. Like the good little researchers we are we ran a few checks and some actually date back to 1990. Even so they are still a bit of a larf:

Crack Found on Governor's Daughter

Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says

Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers

Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over

Miners Refuse to Work after Death

Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant

War Dims Hope for Peace

If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile

Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures

Enfield (London) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide

Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges

Man Struck By Lightning: Faces Battery Charge

New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group

Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas In Spacecraft

Kids Make Nutritious Snacks

Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half

Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors

And the winner is....

Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

Enquiry of the week

Can you find me an academic paper on the rise of women taxi drivers reportedly being asked for sex by their male customers?

Shoot the text messengers.

Read here why shooting library users who use mobile phones in the library is a good thing.

Librarians forever!!

The lastest issue of AUKML's newsletter, Deadline (sadly not online yet), includes an excellent explanation of why information professionals are still far better than Google. Omer Ali, Time Out's listings editor, is obviously a fan of the librarian, and this quote deserves to be repeated in dissertations across the land.

"It would be a very sad indication of our arrogance and the decline in our estimation of knowledge if we thought that the superficial research the internet affords can in any way beat a well-trained librarian."

For those of you from foreign climes, AUKML is the Association of UK Media Librarians, and here'stheir site - well worth a look.

Loss of Mirror library

The Daily Mirror no longer has a library. Or rather, as reported in the Press Gazette's Axegrinder column, it does but from now on all cuttings are compiled electronically by cheap labour in Delhi. I'm sure they're doing a fine job although there are worrying stories about the Horse Racing cuts becoming' 'Orse Racing' and, er, the 'S' being missed off Scunthorpe. Of course this could be sabotage but I suspect the mistakes are real...

Can't see the map for the trees.

I'm not sure why, but a journalist who is lost in a park phones up the department and asks us to locate a certain tree for her. Needless to say the web isn't crawling with park maps that identify every tree contained therein.

And talking of trees: I found this tale of woe on a favourite blog of mine, newsarama. The writer's house had been damaged in a tornado. It encapsulates the attitude of some of my esteemed colleagues rather well.

The reporter showed up with a cameraman and I began to explain how the Insurance Company had ignored my little baby son, how his health had been jeopardized, how we had been misled intentionally on five or six separate occasions.

The reporter lady looked genuinely dismayed: “I thought the tree was still stuck in the back of your house,” she said.

“No, it slid down to the ground. The story is about the Insurance Company. I have a little premature baby with underdeveloped lungs and there is a huge hole in the roof. There’s fiberglass insulation everywhere. They keep ignoring us.”

The Television reporter looked pained. “We can’t do that story,” she said. “They advertise with us.”

The seldom visited fourth page.

An survey by iProspect has found what most internet users already suspect - that most people only bother to look at the first few results of a web search. It found that 62% of search engine users click on a site on the first page of results, with 90% clicking on a site within the first three pages (up from 48% & 81% in 2002).

This confirms either:

a) Search engines are amazing at doing their job
b) Searchers are amazing at doing their job
c) Searchers are lazy

I suspect that c) is the correct answer. And hope that professional searchers are digging deeper into the results pages . . .