Waxy discovers that The Times (UK) is spamming just about every social network out there
The SEO consultant they’ve used is astroturfing sites like Mahalo, Digg and del.icio.us to post timesonline.co.uk articles with no transparency. Fear not, Encyclopedia Baio is on the case!
How to create an online dating video profile that says “I’ve invested heavily in Axe body spray.” I dare you to watch this the full way through. [via Esquire]
One of my favorite people on earth started a food blog
Dawn (and friends) are writing about cooking and eating, mostly focused on local choices in Syracuse, NY. But her post on eating in Seattle is excellent and her writing is great. Dawn is a great cook, I can’t wait for the recipes.
I wanted to highlight an incredibly cool new investigative report and interactive feature that just launched over where I work, msnbc.com, looking at bridges in America. Ordinarily, this would be a pretty mundane topic to cover, but with the collapse of I-35 in Minneapolis last August, it’s a topic with great deal of urgency.
Bill Dedman, msnbc.com’s investigative reporter, looked at federal records to determine whether bridges had been inspected in the previous 24 months. The bridges – nearly 600,000 – were then classified as “not deficient,” “functionally obsolete” or “structurally deficient.” Dedman found that at least 17,000 bridges haven’t been inspected in the past two years, as is federally required, that there’s no real penalty for not meeting the mandated time frame and that there is a great degree of difference, state to state, about how bridge inspection is handled.
Then, there’s some magic – all of that data was dropped into a database and mashed up with a Virtual Earth map to create the bridge tracker application. The bridge tracker will let you plot a route – such as the one you take to work every day – and see how long it’s been since a bridge was inspected and the status of those bridges. All of that cleaned and collated data is available for free as Excel spreadsheets to anyone who wants to use it.
Even if I didn’t work with the people who put this together, I’d think that this is unbelievably cool. More than anything, though, it’s a great example of the kind of journalism that comes from smart people with great ideas and hard work. Mind you, I’m not tooting my own horn here, I had nothing to do with this project, that credit belongs to Bill Dedman’s investigative work, Phil Zepeda, who built the map application, designer Julie Yokers, and Paige West, who managed the map tracker application. I couldn’t be prouder to say that I know and work with these talented people.
UPDATE: Reporter Bill Dedman talked with Poynter about how the project came together – nice behind the scenes look.
Guy that published the paper on the five second rule turns his attention to double dipping
“The way I would put it is, before you have some dip at a party, look around and ask yourself, would I be willing to kiss everyone here? Because you don’t know who might be double dipping, and those who do are sharing their saliva with you.”
Utah film “cleaner” arrested for paying for sex with 14 year-old girls
Conservative wacko who edited and resold movies sans sex, nudity and swearing (but not violence?) proves that irony is not yet dead.
Waxy turns his blogovestigative eye to Colin’s Bear Animation
I was just pondering the other day when Andy Baio, blogger detective, was going to put out his shingle. Couldn’t have picked a finer start.
Order now for delivery by the 14th
