Observant readers may have noticed this page's silence during most of April and May. No great crisis, just a change of computer, operating system, browser, email, etc (Mac OS X, Safari, Mail, if you're interested) and an inevitable period of chaos.
While I was fiddling around, Google introduced its UK News Page, which has, as usual, become the one to beat.
You will note that Google's running order is supposedly automatically generated according to popular interest. If universally applied, this system would put many of us out of business.
Luckily, the results it throws up are occasionally bizarre, so the time-honoured and scary job of news editing may survive.
Free scholarshipNow that even the wretched Independent has decided that its online future lies in getting people to pay to read the articles* they generallly don't care to buy in newspaper form, it is easy to form the view that the age of free content is over.
Well, that's not the whole picture. Try the Directory of Open Access Journals for a database of scholarly publications that persist in offering open access to their texts. They work on the basis that as public institutions they have a duty to make their work available to the widest possible public. What a refreshingly old-fashioned view of the world. In seconds I found a nice piece about journalistic education in 19th century Missouri, and a health services journal from New Zealand with some interesting thoughts about how much good or harm is being done to public health by information technology.
*Including quite a lot by me, I might add, and I don't recall any rise in the freelance rate to reflect the new arrangements.
Sometimes it's hard to explain to people exactly what it is that makes the Internet special. It's not a library, it's not television and it's certainly not a very convincing publishing medium or place to work.
Then along comes something like www.tinfoil.com and you are reminded once again about what people can do when they put their minds to it. It's not of any great journalistic interest, but if you're at all like me it will make you smile. It's an online museum of truly ancient sound recordings, including one carved on a lead cylinder in 1878. It was an early attempt to make a speaking clock, apparently.
I'm also partial to Eugene Rose's 1906 ocarina solo, Genevieve. Now if that's not unique, I don't know what the word means.
Anyway, in addition to the sound samples, the site has a wealth of pictures and text about the early technology of sound and those who developed and exploited it.