Google Reader's "person liked this" service doesn't grip me

I'm not sure what the point is of Google Reader's "person liked this" service.

I really don't care that 2 people liked Al Jazeera's news story on Pakistan's opposition leader Nawaz Sharif was cleared of hijacking the plane of former President Pervez Musharraf.

It gets slightly morbid when 1 person likes a BBC News story about Bristol tourist Stuart Urquhart being attacked by a buzzard in Helford, Cornwall.

All a bit like Facebook, except that people will already be aware of these stories as they will have them in their Google Reader. It's not highlighting new content.

Besides, we already have the ability to star content. How does this differ?

However, I do like the fact that one can now find people publically sharing items by searching on Google Reader. I'm sharing a few but need to add more.

I suppose that you can click on the profiles of people who like items in your Google Reader and view their shared items, but why not just use the search function to find people?

Having said that, I did find the below Youtube video of a toy train floating using a liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductor, posted to BoingBoing and shared by the buzzard attack fan*.



*sounds like a tedious indie band.

New dawn for public interest reporting after investigative journalism bureau grant?

Fantastic news from Press Gazette that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which aims to uncover and sell independent public interest stories that newspapers cannot afford to write in house, has recieved a £2 million grant from the Potter Foundation.

Press Gazette claim the bureau will launch "in the coming months".

Stephen Grey, who launched the Investigations Fund last month, will be the bureau's acting editor.

Reporters will include Nick Davies, Heather Brooke, Phillip Knightley, Martin Bright, Misha Glenny, Mark Hollingsworth, Andrew Jennings and David Leigh, according to Roy Greenslade in the Guardian.

Centre for Investigative Journalism director Gavin Macfadyen told Press Gazette: "We will experiment with all the techniques available to us from crowdfunding to crowdsourcing and provide content across the media spectrum.

"But there is no substitute for first rate reporters being given time and resources to deliver great stories, which hold the powerful to account.

"The bureau will offer investigative journalists both proper funding and the support of senior and experienced editors and researchers to carry out important investigations that are in the public interest."

Despite the commercial pressures on newspapers, I hope that this will mean a rise in public interest stories in the coming years, and less tedious product placement pieces and soft news on celebrities, which seems to make up most of the free papers distributed by hordes in Central London.

Via Martin Stabe.

Help put Jacqui Smith on trial with the Sunlight Centre for Open Politics

Former Home Office civil servant Christopher Galley, now the research director of the Sunlight Centre for Open Politics, is trying to raise enough money to prosecute former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for fraud.

While she maintained that her sister's spare bedroom in London was her main home, allowing her to claim £116,000 for her second home,Galley claims that she spent most of her time at her alleged second house in Redditch,north-east Worcestershire.

According to Tim Shipman in the Daily Mail, the group has also made Freedom of Information requests for Jacqui Smith's appointments diary and details of her movements from the Whitehall car service.

Christopher Galley, who had access to Miss Smith's diary between January and November 2008, told the Mail: "From what I know having seen Jacqui Smith's diary and having watched her daily routine, I saw that she came in on Monday afternoon and left on Thursday evening.

"From what I can see Redditch was her main home and London was her second home."

Guido Fawkes reports that the Sunlight Centre raised £7000 the first day it asked for donations. Tens of thousands of pounds are needed to fight this case.

You can donate money to the Sunlight Centre for Open Politics here.

Let's have the truth in court, no matter how embarressed Jacqui Smith or the Labour Party might be. And let's do the same for all MP's, whether Labour, Tory, or Liberal Democrat, against whom a case could be brought for expenses fraud.

There must not be one law for the powerful and wealthy and another for the rest. Consider how hard Department for Work and Pensions are on alleged benefit cheats (ironic, given how greedy James Purnell and Yvette Cooper were!)

Print editions of newspapers should have poster-style photos

For those media outlets who want to carry on producing a print edition, I suggest a poster of a single photo like the Guardian carries each weekday as the newspaper centrefold.

Today, myself and other staff members ate a semi-working lunch together in a chili restaurant in Dray Walk, just off Brick Lane near where we all work.

The restaurant provided copies of the Guardian to read while one ate, and flicking through today's copy I noticed a beautiful photo of the fifteen mile Petermann glacier in Greenland by Nick Cobbing.

I had to have this photo for my sparsely decorated room, and so while going to the Selbourne Walk Asda in Walthamstow tonight for a carton of orange juice and gum gel, I purchased a copy of the Guardian just for the poster (although the Italian language guide is also useful).

Posters are a rip-off in most shops, and if people know that a newspaper has a nice poster each day they may buy it just for that.

Of course, red top tabloids such as the Sun use Page 3 in the same way, though not having read the paper for years I am unaware if they have a pornographic centrefold. I reckon the Daily Star and Daily Sport do. More unpleasent, but the principle is the same.

MP's right to highlight disgraceful state of Britain's public toilets

Too many of Britain's public toilets are disgusting, in a dangerous area, badly lit or simply closed.

Thankfully, 26 MP's have signed a a House of Commons motion arguing that the recent closure of public toilets has been damaging.

In London, the Great Portland Street area is terrible for a lack of public toilets, while ironically the best public toilets I have visited are outside nearby Baker Street underground station.

Thankfully, Walthamstow, where I currently live, at least has decent toilets in the bus station (nice blue lights, classical music).

When I go to Oxford city centre, I usually use the Debenhams store toilets , as the public toilets near the Ashmolean museum seem pretty disgusting.

If you are concerned about the lack of decent public toilets, you can join the British Toilet Association.

This organisation campaigns for appropriate legislation for provision of public toilets by local authorities and for clean, safe secure toilets that specialist groups such as the elderly are able to use.

Thoughts on Sacha Baron Cohen's film Bruno

Saw the comedy film Bruno last weekend. This post will contain spoilers for those who have not seen the film.

I do wondering if Bruno needed to be quite such a ridiculous caricature, one assumes he was a send-up of the image some people have of gay men. Of course, he was also partly used to send up the materialistic fashion industry.

Highlights were the greedy parents of babies used in fashion shoots, the Republican senator Ron Paul being used as a possible seductee for a sex tape, the reaction of hotel staff to a chained up Bruno and his assistant and the talking penis.

The talking penis was fantastic. In fact, I wonder if they will bring out a talking penis screensaver for the computer or the mobile phone. It would certainly be popular.

I'm not sure if the film had elements of homophobia.

It could be interpreted by homophobic morons watching the film as how all gay men act, and I am concerned about the pack mentality of homophobic schoolchildren deciding that the one gay (or possibly gay) child in the class is like Bruno.

The section where Bruno and his then boyfriend take part in bizarre sex rituals, including using a exercise-bike powered dildo, shoving the large end of a champagne bottle up the boyfriend's bottom and spinning his boyfriend round while penetrating him, was probably the one that did most to reinforce homophobic stereotypes.

A.O. Scott in the New York Times goes further, claiming "The film demonstrates, at a fairly high level of conceptual sophistication, that lampooning homophobia has become an acceptable, almost unavoidable form of homophobic humor, or at least a way of licensing gags that would otherwise be out of bounds."

I would have liked to see less focus on Bruno himself (who isn't very interesting) and more on how people react to Bruno.

It would also be interesting to see how people on the left reacted to Bruno, including some of the hypocrites on the far left who only support gay rights when it suits them.

Bouncy castle record?

I wonder if the fair in Walthamstow town centre has broken the record for the most bouncy castles in a small space. There are at least three of them on the small green near the huge television that nobody watches (waste of power) and the Selbourne Walk shopping centre.

Also some teacup ride in a pink castle.

Voteforachange launch on Thursday 9th July: Towards a new voting system

To the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, London this Thursday to attend the launch of a campaign, as advertised by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian, to obtain a refernum on our voting system.


The problem with First Past The Post, which Britain currently uses, is that it disproportionatly favours the two main parties, Labour and the Tories. Since 1945, every government has been elected with a minority of the overall vote.

There was music from Billy Bragg (check out Between the Wars or You Thatcherites By Name) and, bizarrely, someone called KT Tunstall, who sang a couple of songs that didn't seem to be related to the event. A nice singing voice though.

Messages of support were given via video from Martin Bell, John O'Farrell and Matthew Taylor.

The highlight was the panal, with the wonderful Peter Tatchell (a hero of mine) and Chuka Umunna, who seems to be more sensible than many of his front-bench collegues. In fact, looking at his Wikipedia entry, he'd probably get my vote, and I don't care if he is Britain's Barack Obama or whatever meaningless soundbite people attach. The panal was chaired by Mehdi Hasan of the New Statesman.

Gerard Batten MEP from the United Kingdom Independence Party (who seemed charming) and Jo Swinson (disappointing, and seemed insincere) were also talking.

A nice campaign and a clever if rather pushy idea to get people to text messages about the campaign to their friends, but I would have preferred a one hour rally without poetry or songs, especially as this was after work. Reasonable attendance though.

It seemed like the panalists were determined to force change, and even if the Tories did not appear (which John Denham MP used to make a party political point in his overlong speech), maybe some UKIP, Liberal Democrat, Green and Labour activists will start to promote proportional reprensentation among their local parties.

One point made by Gerald Batten was that we might need two referendums, one to decide which system of PR we use. Other panalists disagreed, saying this could be a ballot paper question.

I feel the campaign is important, but did regret it clashed with another event that was mostly badly publicised. Polly Toynbee, who spoke from the audience at the debate,says "If you can't make it – and the reason had better be good – then I shall be there and if you have questions you want answered, or points you want made, I'll do my best to get them to the panel."

One good reason would have been to attend a rally in support of Iranian dissidents, which I only saw on Harry's Place.