When choosing your product logo, avoid it looking like a paedophilic bear
Thu May 26th - 1:07am
Brizzly is a social networking app from Thing Labs. The app even has its own cute character logo that’s meant to look like a bear in a Twitter costume. Unfortunately it looks more like Pedobear.
Brizzly on the left, Pedobear on the right…
London School of Economics forgets "LOL" in fees statement
Wed May 25th - 11:50pm
It’s textbook image management to do something not quite as bad as you want to do, and because it’s not quite as bad as what you could have done, you pass it off as a good thing.
Cue today’s undergraduate fees announcement by the London School of Economics. Earlier this month the school’s academic board met to discuss two fees options: £8,000 or the maximum permitted £9,000. The board voted 68-67 in favour of the £8,000 option and that recommendation went forward to the school council.
The council has now decided to set fees at £8,500 and is passing that off as a good thing:
£8,500 as a headline fee, below the maximum chargeable amount, sends a clear message that LSE welcomes students from all backgrounds.
– London School of Economics statement
Which is of course nonsense. There will be a very small number of exceptions, but as a rule if someone can’t afford £9,000 for university fees then they can’t afford £8,500 either. Over a 3-year period that £500 really isn’t a deal breaker. So the LSE has done nothing of any worth to "welcome students from all backgrounds". They’re getting some good publicity out of it though.
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange demands fact checking, ignores you when you do
Wed May 25th - 9:06pm
Most of us like WikiLeaks for one reason or another. We may not agree with everything that Julian Assange’s whistle-blowing organisation does, or the way it does it, but I think most people would agree that the modern world needs WikiLeaks. Try to write anything about the organisation, though, and you find a wall of silence. These guys are Google-like in their unwillingness to talk to people, unless you’re from a major news organisation.
One such news organisation is America’s PBS which last night ran a documentary that included an interview with Assange. Anticipating that the interview would be selectively and negatively edited, WikiLeaks even released its own recording of the full interview so people could judge for themselves. What has really irked Julian Assange, though, is the inclusion in the programme of an old allegation by Guardian journalist David Leigh. According to Leigh, when discussing Assange’s decision not to hide informants’ names in leaked documents, Assange said: "These people were collaborators, informants. They deserve to die."
Assange now says that PBS did "not do basic fact checking on the false and libelous statement", a charge that PBS denies. And you know what, I’m inclined to believe PBS on this. Because I personally tried to do "basic fact checking" on Leigh’s allegation, and I hit the WikiLeaks wall of silence.
My "basic fact checking" was as basic as it gets: I contacted Assange directly, gave the quote, and asked if it was true. It would have taken him seconds to reply with "no". You can even see my Twitter message, sent publicly on 16 Feb 2011, to see how "basic" the fact checking was. Not basic enough for Julian Assange though, who was either unable, unwilling, or unmotivated to reply.
BBC backs out of Marmite ban story
Wed May 25th - 6:00pm
It’s the novelty story of the day: Denmark has banned Marmite. Except they haven’t. Denmark requires that "fortified foods with added vitamins, minerals or other substances" must be approved by the Food and Veterinary Administration, and Unilever hasn’t applied for marketing approval.
The tantalising lure of righteous indignation was too much for the UK press to resist, with the Daily Mail proclaiming "They definitely hate it! Denmark BANS Marmite… because it has too many vitamins", the Scotsman going with "Marmite fans unhappy as Denmark bans divisive spread", and the Guardian telling how the "Marmite ban spreads consternation across Denmark", to give just a few examples.
Respect is due to the reputedly reliable BBC for getting the story right, with the headline "Marmite: Denmark says spread could be illegal". Or at least that was for afternoon readers, after some heavy revisionism. People reading in the morning were told "Denmark bans sale of yeasty Marmite spread". Same web page address, different story. And the world will never know.
Morning page on the left, afternoon page on the right…
The BBC’s breakfast news report about the full blown "ban" is currently still available.
Daily Mail can’t agree between headline and story
Wed May 25th - 1:46am
Not to make light of pensioners being scammed out of thousands of pounds by a conman, but you can’t help but chuckle at the Daily Mail’s inconsistency between headline and story. The story tells of conman Derek Hepple taking his victims for around £250,000 and pocketing half of that for himself, yet by the time some eager headline writer got involved the figure had risen to "millions".
Adam Ondra makes first ascent of Chaxi Raxi, graded 9b
Wed May 25th - 12:52am
One for the few climbers who read my blog. This is stunning. Sport grade 9b is around trad grade E12 which in theory means this route is a bit more difficult that Dave Macleod’s Rhapsody. But Rhapsody got its E11 grade for the danger of the possible high fall on to poor protection; the climbing is actually graded at 7a. Climbing a 9b is something that only the most elite climbers would even try. Adam Ondra is part gecko.
Sun and Mail focus on Giggs "family man" image, print pics of his kids
Tue May 24th - 4:54am
The Sun and the Daily Mail have both used pictures of Ryan Giggs with his children this morning. This is either because they want to goad him, or because they want to lambast his family man image. What’s interesting to me is how the two papers are exhibiting polar opposite ethics on the identifying of a celebrity’s children.
Usually when a photo of a famous person has their kids in it, unless the kids are part of the story, their faces are obscured. This is the approach taken by The Sun, with Giggs’ son looking away from the camera and his daughter’s face pixelated:
But there’s quite a different approach taken by the Daily Mail, who are making a point of showing both kids’ faces, even going so far as to show them in a banner on the front page of the paper’s web site:
So is this where the battleline is being drawn for the next stage of the conflict? Arguably the kids have become part of the story: Giggs claimed that his super-injunction was needed to protect his family, so he brought his family in to the story himself. But that won’t wash with most people, and likely the big debate today will be about the kids’ right to privacy. I’d wager that the British public won’t look kindly upon any paper that decides to show the kids…
Ryan Giggs named everywhere, High Court judge still wants to ‘protect’ him
Mon May 23rd - 6:42pm
Newspapers and web sites in the UK are now freely reporting that Ryan Giggs was one of the footballers who obtained a super-injunction to prevent coverage of his alleged affair with TV personality Imogen Thomas. This is all thanks to an MP using his "parliamentary privilege" to break the injunction and name Giggs in the House of Commons.
That’s all well and good. The world has seen sense, you might think. But one person who disagrees is High Court judge Mr Justice Eady, who has decided to uphold the super-injunction, rejecting an application by The Sun newspaper to lift it.
The BBC reported the judge’s ruling with this bewildering quote:
The court’s duty remains to try and protect the claimant, and particularly his family, from intrusion and harassment so long as it can.
– Mr Justice Eady
Giggs is believed to have had an affair. There must be some form of evidence to support that allegation, even if it’s just Imogen Thomas saying that it’s true. Newspapers in this country are subject to some good libel laws that favour anyone who is falsely accused of something. No newspaper would have ever reported the allegation unless they were sure it had merit. Conclusion: Giggs wasn’t concerned about a newspaper printing a lie, he was concerned about them printing the truth. He effectively asked the High Court for help in preventing the British press from reporting something that is true.
Mr Justice Eady has given us a clue today as to why these absurd super-injunctions are being issued. You, same as me, probably thought the courts were concerned with what is right and what is fair. Not so, says Eady. The way he sees it, the courts have a "duty" to protect Giggs.
Chequebook justice. Simple as that.
Still it’s all very entertaining to watch, isn’t it? 
Hugh Grant on super-injunctions, seems to have slightly lost his marbles
Mon May 23rd - 1:16am
Hugh Grant does have some valid reasons to dislike certain British newspapers. But there won’t be many ordinary people who can agree with his comments on the BBC’s Newsnight programme about super-injunctions.
You should watch the discussion for yourself but here are a few choice quotes from Hugh. On the press reporting stories that celebrities consider private: "To me there is no distinction between mugging someone for their wallet and their watch and selling it on the street, and mugging them for their privacy and selling it in a newspaper." On scrutiny from paparazzi and reporters: "It’s a bit like living under the Stasi." And on the current censoring of the media: "I’ve been very pleased with this whole injunction business. It seems to me it’s not perfect by any means, there are flaws to it, but it’s fabulous that people can go to a judge and stop these things being printed."
Sunday Herald identifies super-injunction footballer, scares online newsagent?
Sun May 22nd - 1:54pm
Round of applause for today’s Sunday Herald for identifying the footballer who is trying to sue a Twitter user for identifying him, in violation of a court order.
And that should be it. The name is out there for everyone to know. We should all be able to talk freely about this guy. But things are never that simple, are they?
If you walk in to any high street newsagent today you’ll be able to pick up a copy of the Herald and find out who this footballer is. But what about people using the virtual newsagent, PressDisplay, a worldwide service that offers digital versions of 1,850 newspapers from 94 countries. Anyone using PressDisplay today will see this edition of the Sunday Herald…
That’s last Sunday’s paper.
Now before you assume that PressDisplay is just lagging and hasn’t got today’s edition online yet, firstly keep in mind that most British papers go live on PressDisplay by around 8am UK time, and it’s now nearly 2pm. Secondly, here are the front pages of three other Sunday papers, picked at random:
Those are today’s editions of the Sunday Telegraph, the Mail on Sunday, and the Observer. So there doesn’t seem to be an update problem.
Which begs the question, is NewspaperDirect, the Canadian company behind PressDisplay, refusing to publish today’s edition of the Sunday Herald because of concerns over a UK super-injunction?
Remember this is all because of a footballer not wanting people to know about an alleged affair. There are no state secrets at risk, nobody’s life in danger. It’s just some allegedly unfaithful footballer who doesn’t want his dirty washing aired in public.
