jamezpolley.com

Posted on behalf of Adam’s better half. (I’m not entirely certain that Adam exists. I’ve heard talk of him, but never met him. Hrmmm… I know people who claim to have met him, but never while I was around. This is either due to him not existing, or me not going to the right parties)

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Last year, lots of people helped out a great deal with a survey that was being conducted on Australian TV Downloading and its effect on the free-to-air networks. The media loved it… feature articles in the Australian, and 6 months later we saw the FTA networks start to alter their business models and offer downloads of selected shows.

What’s your opinion on the state of TV in Australia, and does have nice n’ fast broadband access mean you will change how you watch TV?

The guy who did the survey last time, Adam Zuchetti, has just a few weeks ago started a new research project into TV Downloading and Broadband access, and I’m hoping you guys can help him out once more in doing a short survey.

The link is:

http://www.zuccomedia.com.au/survey/index.php?sid=1

It would mean the world if you could take a look at the survey and complete it, and if you have any ideas who else would be interested in such things, please let me know.

Thanks everyone!

I posted this as a comment at Mother Tongue Annoyances, but it’s (a) tied up waiting for moderation, and (b) slightly messy there, so I’m copying and pasting here. I’ve also tidied it a little – the ability to preview here lets me get it a bit neater

Phil Plait manages to clearly indicate when he’s making corrections, through not relying solely on overstriking.

I do the same: If I have an update, it will be labelled as an update. In addition, my CMS has a “Revisions” feature, which allows users to look at the history of the post and see every revision I’ve made (this may not be enabled for anonymous users, but it’s easy enough to register).

In short, to answer your direct questions:

• <del/> isn’t a neccessary way to indicate deletion or correction – there are alternatives, many of them clearer
• <del/> isn’t a sufficient way to indicate deletion or correction. You’re going to have to provide other information to show what the new text is, why you changed your mind, etc – and this extra information will show that there was a correction or deletion.

  To address a couple of other problems with your post:

  • <del/> is not the same as overstrike. The w3c definition of the tag states:
    

    User agents should render inserted and deleted text in ways that make the change obvious. For instance, inserted text may appear in a special font, deleted text may not be shown at all or be shown as struck-through or with special markings, etc.

    . Strike-through is one way that <del/> might be displayed, it’s not the only way.

  • overstrike is not the same as <del/>. If you want to guarantee your text is displayed with an overstrike, you’d use <strike>; This is, in fact, what I use whenever I’m making changes of the sort that you describe as “crying wolf”. You should *not* assume that just because you see overstriking that the author was mis-using the <del/> tag – it’s far more likely they were using the <strike/> tag.
  • Using overstrike is a continuation of a tradition of using things-that-resemble-deletion-but-aren’t to indicate humour – cf The Jargon File talks about a much earlier incarnation of this.

  In short, your confusion between <del/> and <strike/> is another data point in favor of seperating display information (like, overstrike?) from metadata (like, heading type, deleted/inserted, etc).

Australia:

The Australian Government Consultation Blog Discussion Paper is, as the name implies, an invitation to public discussion about the potential value for government and the community in having a government “consultation blog”, what such a blog might contain, how it would be managed and so on.

New Zealand

NZ Police were reviewing the old Policing Act, from 1958, which had become “anachronistic” and was “written for a completely different age, not policing of today”, Superintendent McCardle said.

But drafting new legislation “shouldn’t just be the sole reserve of politicians”, he said, so the wiki was created to invite input from members of the public.

So I’ve changed the way I do linkblogging. Instead of FeedBurner inserting blocks into the feed, I’m now using Google’s Shared Stuff for linkblogging.

If you’re reading my main feed, viola, you’ll be getting the linkblogging to, thanks to Drupal’s Leech module pulling things in.

If you just want the linkblog, you can grab it from http://feeds.zhasper.com/zlinkblog.

Along the way, I created some feedflare – you’ll see a “Share this!” item on each item in the feed – and each item in my main feed too, for that matter. This will take you straight to the Shared Stuff widget that lets you share the item yourself.

Yes, I just created a FeedBurner feedflare that lets you add feeds to Shared Stuff. I’m a company shill, what did you expect?

If you want the feedflare for yourself, it’s at http://zhasper.com/sharethis.xml.

Note for the reader team: shared items in gReader need to go into Shared Stuff.

Note for Shared Stuff team: I want people who know my gmail address to be able to find my Shared Stuff easily. At the moment, the only way they can find it is if I tell them where it is.

[Update 24/09/2007 18:39]Urgh, that was ugly. I’ve removed the linkbloggy thing from the main site; if you want to see it, sign up to the linkblog feed seperately.