That Danny!

On the day after the two emblematic retail groups Woolworths and MFI had gone under in the UK, their websites showed the signs of disaffected (and potentially jobless) web staff - and who can blame them.

At Woolies they couldn’t be asked, so the website simply reported that the site was “undergoing essential maintenance”, which is a euphemism for “we took the servers down for now, buy us out, let us keep our jobs and we might be back.”.

(click to enlarge)

At MFI, there was a nice letter from the administrators telling customers what to do. A lonely “<div>” tag at the very bottom was the only sign of employee apathy:

(click to enlarge)

Technorati Tags: credit crunch, economy, mfi, woolworths

With bingo bringing in high revenue streams for online newspaper editions, it is little wonder that the Daily Star chose to hit The Sun where it hurts with its bingo advertising campaign - but bombing The Sun’s Wapping HQ with Bingo balls?

I’m sure the Sun’s staff in Wapping will see the hilarity. After all, James Murdoch has recently decided to postpone the move from the Wapping site to a new venue, at least until financial conditions improve.

Whether any Daily Star readers will understand the in-joke is quite another matter.

Technorati Tags: bingo, daily star, Media, New Media, Newspapers, the sun

“One fewer person” or “one less person”? It’s one of those nagging questions you only come across rarely. I did, when I had to translate a line from Dutch for my previous article. It went: “Een cadeautje minder, een friend meer” or (literally) “one fewer/less present, one friend more”.

My head says “one fewer present” is correct grammatically (if you can count it, it’s usually “fewer”), but my gut says “one present less”. So what should it be?

Determined, I set out to find a definitive answer.

I tried the BBC news style guide, and The Guardian style guide, both of which were utterly unhelpful.

Some websites gave sensible answers, an excellent example of which is the Arrant Pedantry blog, stating quite rightly that “less and fewer illustrates quite well virtually all of the problems of prescriptivism,” and opting for “one less” as the better option, on the grounds that no one recommends the use of “one fewer”. Another well sourced article here explains why this is not the sin some call it, and The Grammar Logs considers the example “there is one fewer student” and says: “we use “less” with uncountable quantities and “fewer” with countable. You really can’t count one student. Well, you can count him or her, but “one student” cannot be pluralized (forget cloning!), so “one student” is a non-count noun. This means we want “less” in that sentence.”

Of course there are those who are incensed by the growing use of “one less”. Their argument takes a purist view of the rule (if it is countable use “fewer”, if it isn’t use “less”), and that too makes perfect sense to me. I don’t like it when publications display ignorance, but I wasn’t sure about this one.

To resolve this question once and for all, I wanted to find out how the rules are treated in the media, which isn’t always grammatically pure, but is a good representation of accepted modern use, especially in places like the BBC that strives to uphold high standards of language, whilst staying current. I ran a set of searches on six major news websites and on Google News (that aggregates news articles).

And here are the results of my survey, which counts usage of the “one fewer” and “one less” on each site, presented in percentage rates for comparison:

Although “one fewer” is used some of the time, “one less” is the most common. Interestingly the BBC makes an effort and its hacks use “one fewer” the least, while the New York Times uses it the most.

“One less” wins. Overwhelmingly. If it was ever a rule, then its time is up.

Geeky entry over.

Technorati Tags: english, grammar, grammarians, grammatical, language, less fewer

Dam Square in Amsterdam was covered with 15,000 single shoes on Monday (17 November) as part of a campaign run by the Dutch chapter of charity War Child.

War Child is a network of independent organisations, working across the world to help children affected by war. The Dutch campaign is running with the slogan “one present less, one friend more” (concerned grammarians click here).

The campaign encourages people in Holland to give up one present from their Christmas list and donate the money to the organisation’s efforts instead. This specific campaign highlights the plight of 250,000 child soldiers around the world.

Technorati Tags: amsterdam, charity, child soldiers, war child

The rule that Internet veterans have sworn by for years, that a website should be designed so that a user finds their content within three clicks is not a valid principle, Hoa Loranger told the audience at the NNG usability workshop in Amsterdam.

The workshop was led by Jakob Nielsen, who has developed the most widely used set of rules (“heuristics”) in website usability, and who is principle at the NNG group.

Ms Loranger told the audience that the leading usability company often gets asked if the three-click rule still applies.

The number of clicks is not important, Loranger explained, as long as the content flow makes sense and is logical, leading the users in a way that they understand and expect to the information that they need.

We absolutely need to understand from an information architecture perspective what the user’s requirements are, and build the flow to address them, she added. If we do that properly the number of clicks is no longer that important.

It is probably worth noting that the three-click rule has been increasingly questioned by design and usability experts, but it is still very prevalent with internet executives and web departments. A statement of this sort coming from NNG is therefore another weighty view taking us closer to its abolition.

Technorati Tags: usability

Google Flu trends tracker - the new service launched by Google.org holds both an amazing promise and a somewhat disconcerting threat.

The flu tracker was created by Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, and it uses aggregated search information to estimate flu activity in the US, or as Google.org itself explains: “We’ve discovered that there is a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening, and are therefore good indicators of flu activity. Our estimates, based on up-to-date aggregated Google search data, may indicate flu activity up to two weeks ahead of traditional flu surveillance systems” (source). Hopefully this will roll out to the rest of the world too.

Google Flu trends is an outstanding use of technology and no doubt a first of many information harvesting initiatives that connect the dots to create a sort of ‘group consciousness’ driven by web activity and search results. It can be used to track trends of many sorts, and potentially people’s interests, attitudes and consumer aspirations. In its advanced form it may also inform election and opinion pollsters, although the models to understanding those are somewhat more involved.

Exciting as this capability is, it can of course be used to a more sinister end. Imagine for example the ability of the Chinese authorities to identify areas where there are many searches for the term “Falun Gong” as a predictor of potential trouble in those regions. Given the history of search engines bowing to local laws, it is not unreasonable to think that data will in fact be abused by regimes in a way not originally foreseen by the good people of Google Flu Tracker.

This is no reason to stop technological breakthroughs. But we do need to watch out for their potential abuses.

You can find Google Flu Trends here.

Technorati Tags: CDC, china, falun gong, flu, google flu tracker, google flu trends, Health, WHO

Chris Read, a 42-year-old from Kent, is facing legal action for libel after leaving negative feedback for an item he bought on auction site eBay. On October 3, Read used the feedback facility on eBay and wrote: “Item was scratched, chipped and not the model advertised on Mr Jones’s eBay account.” Mr Read subsequently received an e-mail from Mr Jones, a 26-year-old businessman from Suffolk who deals in second-hand electrical goods, saying that his comments were damaging his business, and threatening him with legal action unless he deleted them from the site (Source: Times online).

This case is interesting because it demonstrates how personal libel can get when it takes place on the Internet. If the seller wanted to get rid of the comment posted by Mr Read on eBay, the quickest way to achieve this would have been through a legal threat to eBay, not the buyer.

Companies like eBay would most commonly be advised by their lawyers to remove comments that bear a legal threat, to avoid becoming responsible for the content themselves.

As soon as a libel is reported to eBay, all the legal protections that it might have had by claiming it was only a third party to the dispute are no longer certain. Once it is notified, it is most likely responsible. This principle is often referred to by moderation professionals as “notice and takedown”.

But when individuals, not companies, are involved, insult is personal, and they often don’t have the benefit of a legal team and a cool assessment of the best way to achieve their objective (in this case the removal of a comment).

Lawyers are trained to separate emotion from fact and process. Private citizens aren’t. This case is no doubt one of many to come. It would be interesting to see how the legal system adapts.

UPDATE:
As this blog is of a UK slant, it is always interesting to hear how things are across the pond, where libel laws are less onerous, and freedom of expression has more of a legal stance. I got the following comment from Michael Roberts, a reputation analyst at Rexxfield:

“I liked your article. The poster of the information is certainly liable for damages. However, I think you will find that eBay as a third party republisher of the libel enjoys federal immunity (at least in the USA) from civil litigation; furthermore they do not need to remove the offensive material, even if served with positive proof. (section 230(C) of the information communications decency act). (Although I am sure eBay would, they just don’t have to)

Be sure to follow the links to the “google” blind eye responses to “take down” notices.”

ThatDanny comment: As Michael rightly points out, the treatment of libel is different under US law to English (and Scottish) law. The protections that stringent libel laws provide are a double-edged sword, but in this case they make it simpler for individuals to achieve content removal in the UK than in the US.

Technorati Tags: Community, ebay, legal, libel, web 2.0

Xiahe - an update on access for foreigners.

Following my article about the Tibetan towns of Xiahe and Tongren being closed to the outside world, I got the following update from Oswald, a Dutch traveller who managed to get through:

I read on your website you wanted to know if people were in the region and whether it was possible to enter Xiahe. I just ended my holidays in China with my friend Arne and we have been so lucky to visit Xiahe (we arrived on Sunday the 12th of October).

I am very happy we went there although somehow it did not feel really safe.

Footnote: I am pleased to report that the Chinese authorities have blocked accessed to my blog. I must be doing something right…

Technorati Tags: china, gansu province, tibet, tongren, xiahe