If, like me, you use the BBC news website to catch up on what’s happening in the world, you may have seen evidence of the presentation of news items being skewed by external influences. I just saw something on the site today which leads me to believe it’s still happening, despite them being aware of the problem.

There’s a screenshot below of a section of their site which displays the most popular and most shared text news items and the most viewed video stories. There’s one story shown in the most read section, “Beer with 32% strength launched” about a Scottish craft  Brewery called Brewdog who have created a beer which has a very high alcohol content. Trouble is, the story was from November – why is it suddenly appearing as a ‘most-read’ story in the middle of February?

I have a suspicion that this story could be an example of one being bumped up the list artificially. It may be no coincidence that the brewery concerned are skillful in the art of viral marketing (as well as making excellent beer) and they have a share-ownership scheme which is coming to a close and has been widely promoted over the past few days.

OK, so if you like Brewdog (and you think their viral marketing methods are doing this), you may think they’re clever in the way that they’re getting national news coverage for free. However, if nothing else it should make everybody think twice about the way our news is presented and the fact that we’re constantly manipulated by all kinds of marketing and political / religious / commercial  lobbying ploys.

Do you know somebody into birdwatching? North Norfolk’s a bit of a paradise when it comes to ‘twitching’ and a brilliant shop where you can buy all the gear is out at Titchwell, on the coast.

In Focus are one of my oldest website clients and the guys there are seriously into birding – what they don’t know about binoculars and scopes could be written on a grain of birdseed, so they’re the ideal people to ask for advice when buying a birding prezzie for somebody.

Optical equipment can be an expensive investment, but In Focus allow you to try things out first and their shop has great views over the surrounding RSPB reserve – ideal for comparing the kit in field conditions. Need some help? See Vernon or Richard at Titchwell – they’ll look after you!

I’ve just pulled the plug on the old Wensum.net website and livened up the new one. Like my blog, it’s created in WordPress - which will hopefully give potential clients an idea of what’s possible using the software.

I’m really liking WordPress. It strikes a pretty good balance between power and useability. The new site doesn’t particularly look like a blog, although it has some elements of one. The layout theme has provided a couple of random glitches, but otherwise it has been pretty well-behaved.

I’ll be interested to get viewers’ feedback.

29th October 1969 saw the birth of the Arpanet network – the US-only forerunner to the Internet we know and love/hate today. Hirsute boffins in bow ties, based at UCLA and Stanford, sent the first data between its nodes… 400 miles across country. When the sender typed in the third letter of the sequence, the system crashed and had to be reconfigured, but since then it has all managed to work reasonably nicely (well apart from Tiscali and the occasional bit of congestion at the BT exchange, that is).

More on the story at the BBC’s website.

I was Googling around, as you do, when I spotted a photo of Fakenham on Google Images that looked familiar. Sure enough, it was one of mine – but not on one of my sites. Looking at the site itself (it was a local accommodation website) threw up several photos nicked off FakenhamWeb without permission. Whats more, the author had also swiped loads of my text too – without so much as a ‘by your leave’. A swift email got the required response and the offending material was removed.

But this had me wondering what else was out there - and this was quite an interesting exercise…  I did a search for a phrase I’d used on one of my pages – “Pretty brick-and-flint faced buildings” – click the link and you’ll see what I found. Cool.

I’ve just installed some code into my WordPress blog and it should now post to Facebook automatically. Earlier, I got my blog to accept posts via email and publish them – also automagically. Isn’t science wonderful?