How to DuckDuckGo out of Google’s shared endorsement adverts

If you use Google+ to ‘like’ something (or +1 in Googletalk), you could soon be helping to advertise it. Google is introducing ‘shared endorsements’, through which the adverts on its site and on thousands of others may include the face and comments of Google users. (If you only use Google to search and don’t log in then don’t worry, this doesn’t apply to you.)

As the Register says, “it sounds about as enticing as going to a pub with your pals to discover all they want to talk about is the products they have bought since you last saw them”. However, it is at least possible (and easy – follow the instructions here) to opt-out before this goes live on 11 November – unlike Facebook’s latest anti-privacy move, meaning that all user profiles can be found through a search. Continue reading “How to DuckDuckGo out of Google’s shared endorsement adverts”

Subeditor twisting my melon: Manchester headlines, get over the Smiths

It is a subeditor’s truth quite often acknowledged that articles about Greater Manchester, or about bands from the city, must shoe-horn in a song title or lyric from a Mancunian band. That’s fine, but for some reason, that band is almost always the Smiths, which broke up in 1987. This must change. Anyone would assume that all subeditors are miserablists. Continue reading “Subeditor twisting my melon: Manchester headlines, get over the Smiths”

Police ANPR: Ring of steel for MATTER, sieves of steel for rural cops

MATTER, each issue of which consists of a single long feature article on science and technology, has run some great stories since its launch last autumn (as well as trying to find new ways to make journalism pay).

In my humble and biased opinion, I think it has just published another one: ‘Ring of steel’ by James Bridle, which I co-edited and is based partly on my Freedom of Information-based research into how the police use automatic numberplate recognition. It’s available from MATTER. Continue reading “Police ANPR: Ring of steel for MATTER, sieves of steel for rural cops”

Recycling print vs digital and paperlessness into rightpapering

Scene one: an office in the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead. Will Smart, the hospital trust’s director of information management and technology, considers whether the NHS should go paperless, the policy of health secretary Jeremy Hunt. His answer: “I think paper is just another device. I don’t think we will ever lose it.”

Scene two: a bar near Tower Bridge. A high-flying digital executive, freshly returned from a foreign trip advising one of his employer’s subsidiaries on optimal social media usage, is introduced to the handsome paperback version of my ID card book Card declined. “Ooh!” he says, lovingly flicking through its pages. (I don’t think Ben was just being polite.) Continue reading “Recycling print vs digital and paperlessness into rightpapering”

@ImpatientNHS service notice: any suggestions for more blogs and news?

impatient-nhs-logo-2My automated Twitter feed of NHS news and comment pieces, @ImpatientNHS, now has 334 followers and has produced nearly 13,800 tweets (see here for an explanation of how it works).

On Thursday 25 July it tweeted 41 articles and posts, from obvious sources such as HSJ, the BBC and the Guardian, but also the Scottish edition of the Sun (‘NHS in death surge probe’), the Health Policy Insight blog (Alan Maynard on big pharma) and the Northern Echo (‘Support gathers for NHS rally in Darlington’). Continue reading “@ImpatientNHS service notice: any suggestions for more blogs and news?”