Tag Archives: Official

links for 2008-07-03

Hysterical woman – also a Spanish government minister – ruins AP copy

I don’t mean to sound over emotional – it’ll just be the hormones acting on my smaller female brain – but I’ve got a problem with a report yesterday from the Associated Press about Charme Chacon, the Spanish defense minister.

The ministry has ordered its staff to stop browsing entertainment and sport websites during working hours. Says the report:

Spain’s Defense Ministry, run by a woman for the first time, has ordered its staff to stop browsing sports and entertainment Web sites while on duty, an official said Thursday.

A ministry official said the order was distributed this week, but did not come directly from the new minister, Carme Chacon, who took over last week as Spain’s first female defense minister. She is 37 years old and seven months pregnant.

What relevance do these points (in bold) have to the story? The order didn’t even come directly from Chacon, as the report states, so why let the copy imply that her gender and her pregnancy are somehow related to the situation?

Just in case there’s any confusion over this blog post – I am 24 years old and not pregnant.

Google launches measurement tool for YouTube videos

Google has launched YouTube Insight – a new measurement tool for YouTube users, which will provide stats on the videos they upload.

According to an announcement on the Official Google Blog, uploaders of videos to the site will be able to see figures and graphs of:

  • how often their videos are viewed by geographic region;
  • how popular their contributions are compared to other videos in that area;
  • ‘the lifecycle of a video’ e.g. how long it takes for a clip to gain popularity.

The metrics, says the blog, makes YouTube ‘one of the world’s largest focus groups’ and could be of use to advertisers and content providers in evaluating the benefits of the platform.

Below is a screenshot of how the figures, which can be seen in the ‘My Account’ section of the site, are displayed:

Screenshot of YouTube Insight statistics page