The stunning rise of Pintrest, already ranking fifth in terms of pushing genuine traffic to sites… Might be interesting to see where WordPress.com is, in that ranking of “time spent”.
Archive for February, 2012
Still Walking – Birmingham festival of walking
27 Feb 2012 at 10:24
David Haden
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Still Walking, a 2012 festival of walking in Birmingham, taking place between 15th March and 1st April. Lots of walking tours (not all city-centre/Digbeth), and one three-hour cycling tour (on bicycles, not walking) that will… “explore the social history of bicycle production and use in Birmingham. We will visit 15 sites of local and sometimes […]
Unbuttoning social
Excellent new Greasemonkey script for the Chrome Web browser (and Firefox)… “Remove Facebook “like” buttons / iframes / widgets / shareboxes from other websites, along similar buttons from Google Plus, LinkedIn, Twitter, Sharethis, etc. Supports dynamic sites (AJAX, etc.) as well. Works in Chrome, too!” After these buttons heavily slowed down my loading of several […]
Library of Lost Books
26 Feb 2012 at 08:49
David Haden
Artist(s), Birmingham, Reading
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The Library of Lost Books. The Library of Birmingham, one of the largest in Europe and currently undergoing a huge move-and-rebuild, is calling on book artists and crafts makers to… “rescue old, discarded and damaged books and to re-work them”
Keep the shred flag flying, comrade
23 Feb 2012 at 09:23
David Haden
Arts cuts, Birmingham, Teaching
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The total number of full-time undergraduate arts and humanities degree courses in the UK fell by 14% between 2006 and 2012. Or such is the headline arising from a dubious new report, Choice Cuts from a trades-union, released today. Ever skeptical of socialist flim-flam, I took a closer look at the report’s figures. I saw […]
Animating infographics
Visual.ly blog has a long illustrated tutorial this week, on How to Turn a Static Visualization Into a Successful Animation, turning data into animation and telling a story at the same time.
Sam Buxton
Your business card, after passing it to Sam Buxton…
Embedding knowledge transfer
15 Feb 2012 at 23:01
David Haden
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What if… all new recuits to British university posts, as a requirement of getting the job, had to publicly publish a 3,000 word plain-English essay on how to address a particular problem/opportunity1 in the locality in which they will work? Of interest to them, not one one chosen for them ↩
£20bn a year quietly lopped off the creative industries figure
15 Feb 2012 at 22:31
David Haden
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Open Democracy questions the need for the DCMS to exist, and throws up an interesting new statistic on the measured worth of the creative industries… “the DCMS has […] quietly chopped down the stated value of the creative industries in the UK — for which it has policy responsibility — from £59 billion a year […]
2012 events updated
D’log 2012 events list updated. TIGA Midlands is back in the header links. Also added up there are links to WordPress Birmingham, and the Brum Girl Geeks Meetup. 2012 events added to the list: “Setting up On Your Own in the Creative Industries” at BIAD; TIGA Games Developers meetup; Google Apps for Business; and a […]
The basics of Web advert-blocking in the Google Chrome web browser
14 Feb 2012 at 15:04
David Haden
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The basics of Web advert-blocking in the Google Chrome web browser. Just install these (they’re all free)… AdBlock for Google Chrome. (Update, Sept 2012: Adblock Plus replaced here by the normal AdBlock. Adblock Plus project has not been updated since April 2012, while Adblock continues with regular development). Disable Text Ads — disables text ads, […]
Don’t Ask for the Mona Lisa
14 Feb 2012 at 09:44
David Haden
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A new Association of Art Historians booklet, co-written by a former teaching colleague of mine, Don’t Ask for the Mona Lisa: guidelines for academics on how to propose, prepare, and organise an exhibition.
Indie businesses
“Indie” businesses… “The profile of an indie business would be similar to independent practitioners of any craft [but different from a ‘lifestyle’ business]. An independent musician, for example, might eschew a major label who may force them to make compromising sacrifices in hopes of making that artist more commercially viable. Instead, the Indie musician takes […]
Pintrest
I joined Pintrest. Not sure if it’ll last, but it’s fun so far…
Skillset Skills Group report
The recently launched Creative Industries Council, chaired by culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and business secretary Vince Cable, has a new report from its Skillset Skills Group, showing that the arts and creative sectors suffer from… “under-investment in human capital, fewer training opportunities, insufficiently structured career progression, and unfair access to jobs and opportunities” The report […]
Grubbing up the grassroots
06 Feb 2012 at 18:24
David Haden
Artist(s), Creative industries, Zeitgeist
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“Understanding everyday participation” is a new £1.5 million investigation by The University of Manchester, just announced. It will survey the many unregarded and unfunded creative hobbies and cultural activities that Britons take part in, outside of the usual arts activities of museums, theatre, and galleries. It will also “carry out trials of new policy interventions” […]
The ladder back to Summer
The ladder back to Summer
Fine Web typography tools
04 Feb 2012 at 14:53
David Haden
Creative industries, Reading, Techie, Zeitgeist
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Some really interesting developments in fine Web typography: 1. Typesetter.js is a javascript bundle able to parse a Web page on the fly, and embed numerous typographic qualities that are usually only associated with print. 2. Lettering.js offers “complete down-to-the-letter control” for making appealing magazine-style layouts. 3. Google Web fonts is basic enough that even […]