The blog that exploded

How many expectations can produce a new homepage? What if deepening in the site, from inner level 1, the layout is stuck to the previous one? How many people are working for a project as wide as the web site of the BBC? How many in the IA team? Is there an IA team or there are Information Architects deployed on different tasks or areas of the site?

About 70% of Americans think traditional journalism is out of touch with them. This is the result of an online poll conducted by We Media/Zogby Interactive.

For 48% of the interviewed the primary source of news and informations is Internet, this is a 40% increase from a year before. This percentage is higher (55%) for those aged 18 to 29, lower (35%) for those aged more than 65. Television account as 29% of the interviewed primary source for news, radio is at 11%, newspapers at 10%.

A quick how to on setting up your own portable sandbox to text your web projects, or text your site on a test zone, either you are on the move, or safe at home. This post is about setting up a WAMP scenario on a USB pen, or an external storage device more in general.

Let's say you are frequently travelling, or maybe you are a freelance web developer and have a lot of meeting with clients and want your work with you without the need to bring your laptop together. Or you want a simple test zone to play with your blog, or web site, but you are running on Windows and your web pages need a MySQL database and an Apache server to run. Whatever the case, this quick step-by-step guide will help you to run you own WAMP scenario on a portable device like a USB pen.

What you need to build a WAMP scenario on a USB pen

In this post we are presuming you'll have a USB storage device to work with, nevertheless it should be quite easy to replicate the process no matter the device you would use. The main goal of this guide is to have a portable WAMP system, if you prefer this same scenario could be set up on your pc hard disk quite easily.

Germanwatch, a German think tank devoted to the promotion of North-South equity and the preservation of livelihoods. We observe, ana-lyse and interfere. In doing so, we focus on the politics and economics of the North with their worldwide consequences. presented today in Bali (Indonesia) the Climate Change Performance Index 2008, a comparison of the 56 top CO2 emitting nations.

Rumors are a new Apple überchic gadget is on its way: the iTablet. Basically looks like a tablet communicator device that will connect to your Mac.

An interesting piece on the New York Times Magazine, Deborah Solomon interviews Umberto Eco. Online an extract on Media and Populism: Questions for Umberto Eco, Media Studies

Two concurrent news in the last week are a sad window on Italian society. The first one is the yearly Women to Watch ranking published by the Wall Street Journal, a list of the top 50 women in world politics, economics and culture. Not even an Italian one, despite Italy being one of the G8 nation.

It doesn't sound so strange if you look at the second news, reporting a study realized by the Italian Association of Pediatrics (Sip) interviewing 1.251 children among 12 and 14 years old (the study is dated 2006). When asked what they wanted to be when grown up, young girls had no doubts: their dream is to be a velina (a barely speaking/barely dressed television showgirl). That was the most popular answer, followed by an embarrassing I don't know.

Welcome to Italy

Android, the Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications, has just released its SDK to public. The Google sponsored open source software for mobiles is running a Android Developer Challenge to promote it around the web. Fact is Italy is out of the games, this is because the heavy, baroque and useless bureaucracy of a Country stuck in middle ages won't allow Google to run the challenge in an acceptable time range.

BBC.co.uk is possibly the best web site you can find on the world wide web. Quality (and quantity) of content is just great, web site overall look and feel is both a lesson in understatement and usability, giving a top class user experience to users.

Just some examples:

How newspapers approach the digital scenario? A photo gallery of online newspapers. The full gallery is available on Flickr at:

Keep reading for more screenshots.

From the official Portishead blog:

so then.......music for free is it? well fuking great. so if you get our album for nothing or very little , does that mean i can get my boiler fixed for free... --------i could tell the plumber that its all for the love of sharing and its to combat the evil money grabbing corperation that is zanussi. ...............im sure he will understand.

Claudio Midolo, Edgar Castellanos, Natan Sinigaglia, Pedro Mari are the guys behind wiiwiiwiiwii, a thesis project enabling music production with Nintendo Wii controllers.

A system based on vvvv and Max/MSP which turns Nintendo Wii remotes into simple yet funny "musical instruments

Nobel Prize in Physics goes to the fathers of hard disks

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2007 jointly to Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg for their discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance or GMR, a physical effect that gave the impulse to the development of technologies for read-out heads used in hard disks for computers.

This year's physics prize is awarded for the technology that is used to read data on hard disks. It is thanks to this technology that it has been possible to miniaturize hard disks so radically in recent years. Sensitive read-out heads are needed to be able to read data from the compact hard disks used in laptops and some music players, for instance.