Over time, the branding faded and GU.com became a URL shortening service. Tiny URls like gu.com/abc could be printed in papers, sent via SMS, or posted on Twitter. They made a huge fanfare about how it would help with analytics.

You can read some of the history of the shortner to understand why it was created.

Rev Dan Catt

@revdancatt

Niche twitter thread time. I'm raising a glass to the end of the @guardian's URL shortener gu.com, which is now on sale for £2.5 million.

Back when twitter was only 140 chars & didn't shrink url links itself, making short URLs a whole important thing.

1/8 pic.x.com/wu9joo3vkw

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And now, for reasons best known to themselves, The Gaurdian have stopped the service and put GU.com up for sale.

The starting price is TWO AND HALF MILLION DOLLARS!

Look, if I had an asset that valuable and was looking at declining revenue, I'd sell it.

But breaking that URl comes with a problem. I've written before about why URl shortening is bad for users and bad for the web. I've even helped publish government guidance about it. But all of those were based on the premise that the shortener was a 3rd party service. I never thought someone would be as daft as to switch off their own service.

Here are some of the problems this sale causes.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Whoever buys the gu.com domain will effectively get to rewrite history.
They can redirect links like these - and change the nature of the content being commented on.

Joyce Alene

@JoyceWhiteVance

The Steele Dossier asserted Russian hacking of the DNC was "conducted with the full knowledge & support of Trump & senior members of his campaign.” Trump's war against the FBI & efforts to obstruct make sense if he thought they could prove it. gu.com/p/axa7k/stw

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Is there a tweet somewhere of a future politician saying "I support this 100% GU.com/...."? Redirect that to something horrific and you have a potential scandal on your hand.

There are lots of academic papers with gu.com shortened links. Those are all now dead.

Millions of links around the web - including many on the Grauniad itself - are all now broken.

The Guarrdian could fix this by publishing a list of all the shortened URls. That wouldn't stop links breaking, but would make it possible for researchers to reconstruct the original destination.

For decades, we've tried to remind people that "Cool URls Don't Change". We'll just have to hope that the people of the future find a way to decipher all these obsolete links.

In light of the publication of the disastrous Investigatory Powers Bill, I've decided to write up my notes.

Except for the opinions expressed in public, I've deliberately avoiding attributing any of the comments to individuals. As per my posts on Communist Robots and iPhone Slavery the points I make here aren't necessarily my own.

This is a series of observations and questions.

The lecture theatre is filling with greying hair - almost exclusively male. Beside me a couple of chaps with RAF pins on their lapels mutter darkly about how it wouldn't have been allowed in their day. The journalists in front of me are either tapping furiously on iPads or scribbling indecipherable shorthand.

Alan Rusbridger cuts an impressive figure as he carefully maps out the story of Snowden. Not the tawdry details of how documents were liberated from the US Government - but how the response from the press and lawmakers has been curiously subdued.

In the USA, there have been numerous reports, debates between lawmakers and the public, a strong response from the Intelligence Services. In the UK... Nothing. Labour have been terrified of being seen to be weak on security. While the Libertarian wing of the Tory party would normally support personal freedoms - they've been overruled by their hatred of the liberal media. The LibDems - bless 'em - don't have the clout to do much of anything.

The odd questioning of spooks and their nominal overseers has been lacklustre at best.

Unspoken in the room is the problem of collusion. The Guardian journalists are Oxford educated. The GCHQ chaps are Oxford chaps. The politicians - you guessed it - PPE from Oxford. There's a cosy club of perfectly decent fellows - and most of them are men - all gently assuming that the other is acting in the best interests of... society, one supposes.

This trick is working. The state is simply ignoring the argument - at all levels. Don't mistake it for a head-in-the-sand attitude - it's the sure-fire knowledge that wholesale surveillance is just too big for anyone to understand. And that makes it hard for people to care about. So it can be pushed aside. After a few years of intense non-debate, the establishment can state with confidence that "it's time to move on from Snowden."

Perhaps industry will pick up the fight? In the USA, we see companies aggressively promoting Privacy as a competitive advantage - yay capitalism. And in the UK? It's hard to find a significant industry player who has kicked up a stink about the pillaging of their customers' data. Say, I wonder where their CEOs went to school...?

At least the tech community is having a passionate debate. We're the ones busy fixing bugs, getting tools to those in needs. We're the ones doing the damned work, fighting the good fight, and still being ignored, belittled, and infiltrated.

Sat a little way ahead of me is a former Director of GCHQ. He writes exclusively in green ink. His hands trembles as he talks. And, boy, does he talk! He's a terribly reasonable. That's the worst thing about him. As he's telling the audience that mass surveillance of all citizens by the state really isn't that big a deal - I find it hard to disagree with him. Such a kindly old man couldn't be malicious, could he?

But when you listen to his words, it becomes clear that he's a trained liar. There's no way an honest man can say with a straight face that it is in no way intrusive for the police to have a list of every websites you've visited. Lawyers don't really need confidentiality with their clients.

There's a philosophical debate to be had. If a computer system snaffles up all your emails - but they're not read by a human - have they really been intercepted?

Above all, he asks, can we please be a little more respectful in our tone. It strikes me that it's not possible to have a polite conversation with a burglar. Especially while a theft is in progress.

The conversation is schizophrenic. When Sony was hacked - they were castigated for having such weak security. In the aftermath of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, companies were criticised for being too secure. How can we track the enemies of freedom if we can't read everyone's emails?

There are protections - of course. Journalists - especially the decent sort - ought to be protected. That's what American law says anyhow. We're often asked "is blogging journalism" - perhaps we need to ask "why do journalists get protection from state intrusion when ordinary citizens don't?" But that's not quite so snappy, is it?

And snappiness is a problem. As well as the philosophical debates - there's the technological debate. And it's too hard for most people to follow. Half the MPs can't turn on a computer without an advisor pointing out where the switch is. How many of them do you think understand the intricacies of public key cryptography?

No, it's more fundamental than that. It's a public perception problem.

In the UK, we never had the KGB or the Stasi. We didn't have the FBI undermining our civil rights leaders. We didn't have that sonofabitch Nixon screwing everything up. We had Alan Turning single-handedly defeating the Nazis and James Bond keeping the British end up. Our guys are the goodies!

Which, of course, leads one old journalist to huff and puff that The Guardian really ought to have been more responsible and let the government see the stories before publication.

One of the journalists around the table likes this struggle to the fight against slavery. Not in terms of human pain and misery, but there are parallels to be drawn. This is a fight against huge economic resources, entrenched culture, and men who crave the power of life and death over other humans. They are fighting to keep the status quo. The fight against slavery took hundreds of years. It is all but eliminated and yet we're still living with the repercussions of such evil. That's the time scales we have to work on. A minimum of 50 years to change public and private opinion.

It will take a catastrophe to shake up the public. The leaking of everyone's medical details? Perhaps Facebook inadvertently shows who other than your wife have you been looking at? The end of a million marriages in one weekend, what would that do to the public's perception of data security? (This was all months before Ashley Madison. Sadly, that event seems to have failed to shift the public's attitude.)

Geeks have failed to realise that we are engaged in massively asymmetrical warfare. International standards bodies are corrupted by the state, trillions of dollars are directed towards total domination, human lives are collateral. We have GitHub, Tumblr, and the sainted BlockChain.

Where's the tipping point where geeks can freely admit that we lost and it's time to kowtow?

Our government wants to protect the Internet. They see it as an engine of massive growth. But they fear the ease with which criminals and ne'er-do-wells and use it. The gives the security services contradictory requirements.

Perhaps the only question we need to ask is "How do we reach a least worse local minimum?"

At the moment, there is the technical capability to store... everything. They can hold an infinite file on everyone for an indiscriminate period of time - then all they need to do is wait for the law to change and run a dragnet through all the data.

Y

our guilt is a quantum needle simultaneously popping in and out of multiple haystacks.

Finally - and it's been a long evening - how do we prepare for the next leak? Snowden won't be the last. The next might come from within industry, or a nation state, or a hacker who blags her way into a cache of juicy data? What are technologists doing to tighten up systems? What are legislators doing to ensure proper procedures are in place?

Our spies ought to be protecting us. But they're conflicted. Every flaw they fix means one less access point for criminals - and one less access point for the themselves.

We melt off into the night. This isn't even the end of the beginning - this is a culture war which can never be resolved as long as men desire each others' secrets.

The Guardian is very hot on security. Many of their writers have PGP keys which they publicly advertise. In theory, that's great (complaints about PGP notwithstanding) - but the reality shows just how tricky it is to act in a security conscious manner.

Have a look at Alan's Twitter profile.

In the bio, we see a link - http://bit.ly/1g4S9WR which points to http://static.guim.co.uk/ni/1393869928289/Public-Key.asc.

Let's take a look at a few reasons why this is sub-optimal.

Control

Who controls bit.ly? Not Alan. Not the Guardian. How easy would it be for a rogue employee to subtly redirect that URL elsewhere?

Gone are the days of Libya exercising its control on the .ly space (you did know that's what .ly stood for, right?) But that doesn't mean you should trust a third party with directing people to sensitive information!

Bit.ly isn't accessible over HTTPS. A sufficiently determined attacker can see who is accessing the page - and possibly redirect the URL to a different site.

Information Leakage

Most bit.ly links allow you to append a "+" to the URL to see a page of statistics. I've written about this several times.

Off we go to http://bit.ly/1g4S9WR+

We can see when a cluster of people have visited the URL and what country they're in. Is this leaking the identity of a journalistic source? Not directly - but it could help narrow down the target.

Homographic Disambiguation

Bit.ly allows you to create your own custom URLs. Useful for pulling pranks - and extremely useful for redirecting people.

So, if someone hacked the Twitter account and replaced http://bit.ly/1g4S9WR with http://bit.ly/Ig4S9WR - how long would it be before someone noticed? The latter example uses an upper-case i rather than the numeral 1 - and points to my PGP key.

Final Destination

But, let's assume that no-one has monkeyed with the shortlink. We end up at http://static.guim.co.uk/ni/1393869928289/Public-Key.asc.

What is "guim.co.uk"? I guess it's a server used by the GUardian to serve IMages - but it doesn't quite carry the same trust as seeing the public key on TheGuardian.com

guim also suffers from security issues. It's not served over HTTPS - which means that it's possible to see who is accessing the page and, crucially, a man-in-the-middle could alter its contents.

Putting it all together

By exploiting one or all of these weaknesses, a malicious attacker could create quite a convincing forgery.

If a random Bit.ly link took you to GUlM.CO.UK (a lower case L) and served you a PGP key for alan@guardian-email.co.uk (not the real address) - would you be convinced that it was a legitimate key for the correct user?

Fixing It

This is a pretty simple fix.

• Use a direct link...
• ...to a trustworth site...
• ...served over HTTPS...
• ...
• That's it!

Security is, sadly, too hard for most people. I wrote about how freedom fighters in South Africa were unable to maintain security due to human weaknesses - nothing much has changed in the intervening years.

I've shared these tips directly with The Guardian's security people, and they are in the process of changing to a more robust system.

I've been reading "Think Like A Freak" by the authors of Freakonomics. In it, the authors ask us to start thinking more like maverick economists. It's a fine way to increase your cognative ability and get a fresh perspective on the world.

I'd like to ask you to think like a hacker. Find every weakness in the chain and work to eliminate it.

1. More people are using smartphones to access the Internet than ever before.
2. Smartphones are heavily locked down.
3. Mobile Operators are "corporate control-freaks".

The author concludes that this is radically different from the PC world and, therefore, a very bad thing.

Hogwash!

Let's take those points in order.

Yes, more people are using smartphones to access the net. Five points to Hufflepuff.

The author assumes that smartphones are more heavily locked down than PCs. Nonsense.

Unless you, like me, are part of the small number of people who love installing Linux on every bit of kits you own - your laptop runs the same OS it shipped with. You buy a PC, you get Windows. You buy a Mac, you get OSX. Could you wipe the OS and replace it? Theoretically - but people on the whole don't.

Apple and Microsoft do lock down their mobile ecosystem - and I think that's disgusting - but that ignores Android's free-for-all and the coming of new mobile OSes like Jolla and FirefoxOS.

Finally, Mobile Operators are "corporate control-freaks". I work for Telefonica (views are my own, etc) so naturally I disagree with this. The argument totally ignores that every smartphone on the planet can access WiFi. So if you can find a hotspot - you're out of the (somehow) evil clutches of the Mobile Operators and into the warm and loving embrace of the fixed line ISPs.

The same ISPs who are (mostly) owned by the same people as the mobile networks. And who wanted to track your every move with Phorm. And will happily block access to sites with no legal justification.

Conclusion

So, people are using their mobile to get net access. Their phones are - for all practical purposes - as locked down as their PCs. The mobile ISP they is use identical to their fixed line ISP.

Yes. I can see the terrible price we will pay if this disturbing trend continues.

What?

Would I like a phone which is as freely accessible as my Linux running PC? Yes. And I have that in Android. Would I like an ISP which didn't filter me at all? Yes, but all UK ISPs are control-freaks to a greater or lesser extent. Unless I can run my own cable to Linx, I'm stuck with the free market.

I really struggle to see what the author of this piece is saying.

Failure 1 - Targeting

This version of the Tesco shopping app is only available on Nokia phones. Nothing wrong with that - Nokia are still the biggest phone seller on the planet. So why allow the advert to be shown to Android users? It will annoy users, reduce your CPM, and make users less likely to click on adverts in future.

Failure 2 - Sizing

This is the full resolution on the advert.

(full resolution)

168*28 is barely enough to contain all the information you want to impart - let alone make it look attractive. The Tesco logo is tiny and indistinct - the wording blurred and hard to read.

Failure 3 - Mobile Friendly

Here we come to the failure that we see so often. A lack of mobile friendly landing page.

Responsibilities

Guardian needs to make sure its ad-server are only showing adverts relevant to the user viewing the site. The ad-server needs to make sure its adverts are scaled correctly for different phones. Tesco needs to ensure that its advertising agency is buying advertising space correctly. Nokia needs a mobile friendly page for non-Nokia devices.

Lost Opportunity

Just think what Nokia could be doing with this landing page for non-Nokia phones.

• Show off the amazing capabilities of the app.
• Display screenshots of the app.
• Tell the user which phones the app works on.
• "Don't have a Nokia? Take a look at these awesome devices!"
• "Here's a map to your nearest Nokia store..."
• "Get £100 off any Nokia device when you trade in your Android phone!"

You know the crazy thing? They do most of these things already!

If you try to download Ovi Maps on a non-Nokia - you get this page?

Nokia really need to have a joined up strategy for how they deal with users who have competitors' devices. Both the Guardian and Tesco need to do some quality control on their adverts and ad servers.

Samsung Galaxy S

The Galaxy S is Samsung's latest Android handset.  There are so many Android phones out there that you need a really great advertising campaign (or a really great product) to stand out from the competition.

Let's take a look at the Samsung campaign.

Small Isn't Beautiful

Advert for GalaxyS on Guardian Mobile site

The advert is disproportionately small compared to the rest of the site.  The Android phone I'm viewing on has a screen width of 480 pixels - the advert looks tiny and pathetic.

At first I thought it was the Guardian mangling the advert - but a look at the URL http://images.mpression.net/image/11251/galaxy_banner168x28_v2.gif shows that 4th Screen have decided to serve up a 168*28 image.

Tiny Banner Ad

Worse than that, they've blindly resized the image rather than rework it.  Take a look zoomed in - the text is illegible.

Tiny Banner Ad

The Micro-Site

The site behind the advert isn't too bad.  But there's nothing exciting about it.  Just a series of static pages.  You can visit it at galaxys.co.uk/

What Do You Want Your Customers To Do?

With every mobile advertising campaign, you need to think about what it is you want to accomplish.  This campaign is, presumably, designed to encourage people to buy the Samsung Galaxy S phone.  So, it would make sense if people could buy the phone from the site. No?

Try to buy the phone from this page

There are three glaring mistakes on this page.  Can you spot them?

1. No mention of price. Is this pre-pay or contract? Is this a premium product or a cheap and cheerful device?
2. No click-to-call.  Those phone numbers should be clickable and should take the customer straight through to the dedicated Galaxy S representatives.
3. Those images of the phone company logos are clickable - yet there's nothing to suggest they are.

Still, clicking on those logos will let me buy the phone through a mobile-friendly shop. Right?

Mobile Companies Who Don't Do Mobile

eTailing is hard.  Getting a web based shop up, running and profitable is tricky.  Getting a mobile version of that site can be even harder.  But if there were ever a company to do it well, you would expect them to be a mobile company.  Sadly, that's not the case.

Vodafone's non-mobile website

Virgin's non-mobile site

So, our hapless user can't use her phone to make a call to buy the handset, she can't use the web browser to buy the handset.  Is she supposed to wander down to her local store to buy one? Way to make use of the mobile medium...

How To Fix It

All is not lost.  There are several easy steps which can be taken to fix this disaster.

• Serve up adverts which are correctly sized for the screen requesting them.
• Don't resize adverts - create a unique advert for each screen size you're targeting.
• Make you micro-site interesting. Add mobile YouTube videos.  Add wallpapers, ringtones, or competitions.  Give people a reason to visit the site and share it with their friends.
• Click To Call.  I don't know how often I have to say this, but if your potential customers can't place an order from your site - you will never convert them into a paying customer.
• Let the user know which parts of your site are clickable.
• Never redirect a user to a non-mobile website.  The user may have to pay the data charges and will get a site which they can't use.
• Mobile e-tailing.  Three huge names in mobile - yet I can't order this phone from my mobile. That's just embarrassing. Either make a mobile friendly site, or give customers directions to their nearest store.

Mistake #1

Take a look at this rather charming advert on the Guardian's mobile site. The more astute among you will recognise the problem. I'm being advertised an iPhone game when I'm browsing the site using an Android phone. This is the fault of the Guardian - or, more likely, whoever runs their advertising department.

Well, let's click on it.

Mistake #2

The image expansion doesn't work. This is probably because it uses iPhone specific code.

Mistake #3

Let's take a look at the raw image. The image is a 135KB PNG. That's massive. At a time when unlimited downloads are under threat, it is incumbent on the mobile web designer to minimise needless data usage.

If we convert the image to a JPG, the size goes down to 26KB. Can you spot the difference in quality?

Mistake #4

What happens if we visit the destination? Ah. Apple send us to the desktop version of iTunes. This is better than what used to happen, where they tried to install iTunes!

Preventing The Problem

Every browser sends a User-Agent String. The advertising server should be configured to only send iPhone-specific adverts to iPhones.

It really is that simple. You can use services like WURFL and DeviceAtlas to automate this process if you like.

What Should Have Happened

• The advert shouldn't have been shown in the first place. The Guardian needs to ensure that the advertising space it is selling is being correctly targeted.
• The click should have gone directly to Barclays - if they saw the phone viewing the content wasn't an iPhone they should display alternate content.
• Apple needs to have a mobile friendly page. It really is that simple. A great mobile friendly page with a link that says "Want to play this games? Find your nearest Apple Store here".

Insert a pound in the slot, press the button for The Times, aim your handheld's IrDA at the blinking light and ZAP! All the latest news for you to read on your train journey.

It's just as well that my idea never got out of the paper prototyping stage.  While BlueTooth has supplanted Infrared in the majority of modern phones, it is network provided data which is now king.

The Daily Show did a wonderful interview with the New York Times. The interviewer asked the editor...

Can you show me one thing in this paper that happened today?

And, of course, the answer is "no".

I remember on that dreadful day in September, barely a few hours had gone by before the first "extra" editions of the Evening Standard had pictures and analysis.

A few hours? That feels like a life-time. Especially when it comes to breaking and developing news.  There is a huge lag between a reporter typing away, the presses rolling, and the delivery drivers depositing the paper on the streets.

The Internet totally eliminates that lag.  A journalist can clatter words onto a laptop and with a push of a button have them broadcast to the world via their website.

The Web is Too Slow

I simply can't wait until I'm back at my desk. Nor can I be bothered to boot my laptop, find some Wifi, find some power, load FireFox, etc...

Flip open my phone, click news, read. That's what I want. And that's what I can get.  For breaking news, the mobile Internet is the only real solution.

What's Available

I present here a quick overview of the most popular British Newspapers' mobile sites.  I've also included the New York Times for international flavour and Reuters for the agency view.

List of mobile newspapers - spot the favicon

I don't intend to comment on the politics of the papers, nor their choice of stories  - I'm going to concentrate on the first impression only. Later I'll do a full review of their capabilities.

The first thing to spot is the use of the Favicon. Favicons are the little icons which are used to differentiate your site from others. Think of it like a visual bookmark.  Bizarrely, half of the UK papers don't use a Favicon.  That means that in the bookmarks list they are likely to be overlooked.

A special mention for Reuters' Favicon (highlighted) - It's an indistinct yellow splodge.  I've highlighted it because it's hard to see yellow against a grey background.

FT.com - http://m.ft.com/🔗

m.FT.com

Traditionally printed on pink paper, the mobile site seeks to replicate the distinctive hue of its paper counter part.  From a branding perspective, this instantly tells the user that they are on familiar ground.  It doesn't affect the readability - so why not.

Showing the time next to a story instantly tells the reader how "fresh" the content is.  Confusingly, there's no date displayed.

Search is always important to readers; allowing them to get straight to the content they want.  Not having any navigation is a hindrance to users quickly finding their way around.  While users will scroll to get to navigation - placing it at the top is an easy way to let them choose where to go next.

While advertising is a necessary evil, this advert is hard to read and jars with the rest of the page.  The layout of the whole page seems very heavy on the dead-space.

Guardian - http://m.guardian.co.uk/🔗

m.Guardian.co.uk

I've already reviewed the Guardian - but to my mind it still stands out as one of the best examples of mobile news sites.  Compact and efficient layout, navigation, teaser images, and the date all contribute to a well designed first impression.

The Independent - http://m.independent.co.uk/🔗

m.independent.co.uk

Dispensing with navigation has allowed The Independent to cram a few more stories above the fold.  Although their teaser text hasn't been optimised for the size of the screen leaving some rather jarring dead-space.

The colouring is rather plain, but fits in well with the paper's brand.  Colouring the background space given over to the advert is an interesting design choice.  It simultaneously draws attention to the advert while keeping it conceptually separate from the rest of the site.

Metro - http://metro.mobi/🔗

metro.mobi

The Metro is technically a newspaper.  The mobile site reflects the paper version - cheap, cheerful, primary colours and a blonde on the front page.  The total dominance of the image detracts from the rather good navigation choices - split by category.  The masthead is perhaps a bit large - but the promise of the image will probably be enough to get 50% of the population to scroll down.

It's interesting to notice that there are no stories or direct links to stories to be seen.

New York Times - http://mobile.nytimes.com/🔗

mobile.nytimes.com

They "Gray Lady" lives up to its reputation with a very plain site which, nevertheless, packs in a lot of information.

Using an anchor link to get to the navigation is a smart choice.  It reduces clutter at the top while keeping navigation options available.  With intelligent use of space they've also crammed in a search box.  The date and time give the viewer the reassurance that the news they are reading is not stale.

Unlike the other sites, the NYT places images on right.  While this is distinctive, readers of English are accustomed to a flow of information from left to right.  I wonder if this style helps or hinders readability.

The link to a dedicated application is a smart touch and will probably upsell readers.  Unfortunatley it comes at the expense of looking like it is part of the headline.   A less subtle change of font, colour, or placement would help here.

Reuters - http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/mobile/uk/🔗

uk.mobile.reuters.com

Reuters is not a newspaper. It is austere and feature poor. Deliberately so - it caters to those who want the news without any fuss. That said, they do make poor use of the space available; only the lower third contains any real content.  It makes a nice change not to have an advert at the very top of the page - but the heaps of space aren't really necessary.

Shifting the masthead and date on to one line, then removing some extraneous space would provide a better first impression by bringing more news to the forefront.

The Sun - http://thesun.mobi/🔗

thesun.mobi

The Sun is Britain's biggest selling paper.  Unlike the others, they totally eschew advertising at the top of their site.

The page is strongly branded and very picture heavy - that's likely to negatively impact download times. Navigation is very clear but it is missing search. They have deliberately taken the paper's style - the ripped edges of the image, for example - and applied it directly to the mobile.  That's not always a great idea, but it certainly makes it stand out from the crowd.

Times - http://timesmobile.mobi/🔗

timesmobile.mobi

I've reviewed the Time before.  I find the logo unnecessarily large.  It's great that they've got the date and time on there - but giving them their own line feels like an inefficient use of space.

Essentially, over half the screen is wasted here.

Mirror - http://m.mirror.co.uk/🔗

m.mirror.co.uk

The Mirror's mobile site feels dominated by its advert - yet, impressively, they still manage to keep 3 stories above the fold.

There's no navigation or search.  Indeed, it's as simple as you can be without the barren space typified by Reuters.

While offering a good amount of news - this really gives the impression of being Lidl's site, with a bit of news thrown in.  Adverts should be carefully designed not to swamp the pages on which they live.

Telegraph - http://m.telegraph.co.uk/🔗

m.telegraph.co.uk

Alphabetically last, The Telegraph is a rather mixed bunch.  The only images are an advert and its logo.  The navigation and use of date are well integrated. Despite this, they can only fit two stories above the fold.

There are no images to entice the user - although the text rich screen does convey a depth of purpose that the others may be missing.

Conclusion

It's important to remember that users will scroll. The idea of putting important assets "above the fold" is, at best, a distraction. But there's no denying that the first impression really does count.

It's heartening to know that the UK's mobile (mainstream) news market is so vibrant and healthy. While they differ in functionality and content - these sites show that providing news on the mobile is no longer a niche activity.

Mobile news sites come in a wide range of shapes and sizes - demonstrating that mobile needn't be static and simplified.

These sites - despite their problems - are evidence that mobile news, for many people, is the news.

The Guardian's Saturday edition strikes me as a long form version of Private Eye, but written by those who would never use a sentence where a paragraph would suffice.  Full of long rambling articles about the truly trivial and incomprehensible.

After the Guardian's excellent reporting on Trafigura, I decided to help their coffers and circulation figures by purchasing a copy of their paper - breaking ten years of abstinence from paper-based news.  As I've reviewed their website, I thought I'd review their paper from the point of view of one who is deeply familiar with online media but unfamiliar with print.

What A Lot Of Paper

Background

In 1998 I bought my last newspaper.  My parents always had newspapers at the weekend and - due to a stock of vouchers given away in Freshers' Week - I assumed I'd follow in their footsteps.  In halls I was one of the lucky few with a permanent Internet connection.  Every morning started with a scan of http://news.bbc.co.uk/, a browse through USENET and one or two international newspapers' nascent websites.  I haven't bought a paper since.

Nowadays upon waking, my Blackberry has already downloaded the headlines from the BBC, Guardian and a hundred different news sources all, seemingly, for free.  Why would I buy a newspaper?

The Paper

The first thing that struck me was the user interface.  Actually, scratch that, the first thing that struck me was the price. £1.90! Nearly two quid.  For someone unaccustomed to paying for news, that's quite a tall order.  I gather that the weekly paper is "only" £1 an issue.  For £1.90 I was expecting quite a lot.  I don't think I found value for money.

User Interface

So, the user interface.  I remember a kerfuffle a while ago about the Guardian moving to a Berliner format. Supposedly easier to hold and read.  Utter nonsense. To even try to read this paper on a commuter train would be a recipe for disaster. Huge unwieldy pages and, to add insult to injury, no staple in the middle!  Even though I was placidly sitting on my sofa, pages kept falling out!  Perhaps reading a newspaper is a skill that has atrophied in me - but having to continually shift my grasp on the sheets was a chore.  A simple staple through the middle would make for a much more pleasant reading experience.

One good thing though.  The linear nature of the paper meant that I was forced to read stories I would otherwise have skipped were I on the web.  A newspaper is presented like a book; you read each page in turn.  You're perfectly free to skip over a story - but I found myself reading at least the first paragraph of each story.  On the web, I pick and choose. I never have to read a story about childcare, sport, Scottish politics etc.  It was refreshing to get a wider view than my usual self-selected reading.

Adverts

Naively, I thought that there wouldn't be much advertising.  We're continually told that there has been a collapse in the advertising market. I assumed my couple of quid would pay for the majority of this paper.  There was advertising on nearly every page. Some pages had nothing but advertising!

What struck me was the sheer randomness of the adverts.  When reading an article about the Lost City of Atlantis online, I'd expect to see adverts for cheap holidays to Greece, SCUBA gear - maybe even a computer game.  In the paper, it's Abbey mortgages and Moben kitchens.  The adverts are randomly placed, unrelated to the text and somehow, highly intrusive.  One section of the magazine has a full page advert disguised to look like a normal article.  Yes, it says "Advertising Feature" at the top of he page - but it's otherwise presented as another piece of journalism.

It is even bundled with separate advertising sections. Little leaflets drip out of every page littering the floor.  They're the equivalent of pop-up ads and just as annoying.

Reviews

There seem to be three separate sections which do reviews.  The main paper reviews classical music, theatre and TV, the Guide does games, clubs, websites, theatre and television. Then there's a whole section called "Review"!.  Why split over three different bits?  Why are some reviews barely a paragraph and yet others are A-Level essays pontificating on the deeper meaning of art.

Blogs

There are some articles which, to my eye, are little more than blog posts.  Nick Duerden writes about taking his daughter to see Disney Princesses on Ice. Apparently girls like sparkly things.  Who knew?

David Hare has also written an interminable essays in the magazine.  While I'm sure that it's of great interest and importance for his readers, I resent having paid for such... Well.. flotsam.

These articles are not news - they're just blog entries.  Only, for some reason, I'm expected to pay for their ramblings.  There are plenty of better written and more interesting articles being posted every day on blogs round the world.  I suspect that's the idea behind The Blog Paper.  I'm as guilty as anyone of writing self indulgent tosh on my blog.  Entries which are of no interest to anyone other than me.  But I don't expect anyone to pay for them.  I don't bundle my writing in with my work.  "Hey, boss, I'll finish that report you're paying me for - and I'll throw in an essay about how my wife doesn't understand me!"

What it really highlights is that opinion pieces aren't news.  They're not even journalism except in the most litteral sense of the word.  They are barely a step about "Have Your Say" sections of news websites.  Indeed, the Guardian's own Comment is Free section shows that anyone can write a similar article.  Tellingly, the comments in CiF show the utter contempt most readers have for opinion pieces.

Sport

I hate sport.  One reason why I am usually loath to buy a paper is massive sport sections. I was feeling guilty about buying the Guardian only to recycle the sports section unread.  Evidentially, Guardian readers, like me, were last to be picked at PE. The sports pages are mercifully short (16 pages) and fitted neatly into my recycling bin.

Etc.

What A Jumble

There's just so much that's confusing about the Guardian in paper form.  So many different, overlapping sections.  Different shapes, sizes, grades of paper.  Long rambling articles, tightly focused analysis, full page pictures, full page adverts, a list of every comedy club in Britain, a review of an obscure restaurant in the middle of nowhere.  Don't get me started on the pathetic "Free Gift" which is meant to entice me like a child to a bland breakfast cereal,

What does the Guardian want to be?  Is it news? Is it "lifestyle"? Is it review? Is it academic essays? Is it everything jammed into one ill-fitting format because "That's what newspapers are"?

It's a format that in incomprehensible to anyone under the age of 30.  It's an insular little work with only one page given over to readers' comments.

Demographics

My moaning comes down to a question of demographics.  There is only one slice of the population which matters. Me.  No one else.  It's hideously ego-centric to think this way but I do. Why can't I buy the Guardian without the sports section? With an expanded technology section? Charlie Brooker on the front page and David Hare banished from view?

Well, on the web, I can.  This paper in physical form has to please everybody. An unenviable job and one I suspect is impossible.

My Conclusion

Love The Guardian - Hate The Paper.

I'm sure I'm depressingly close to their target audience - but whole swathes of the paper are lost on me.  I love reading the Guardian's news online and on my mobile.  So why do I hate the paper version so much?

The web allows us to see how many people click on each story. See who reads, how long they read for, what they read next, where they came from and where they go to.  I suspect if you were to put the newspaper fully online, it would become clear that some sections of the paper survive through inertia alone.  Can anyone really be interested in Mark Lawson blethering on about people who don't speak like what they ought to? Or Lucy Mangan's meanderings on "Are You There God? It's Me, Margret"?  They are there to fill space.  Their sole purpose is to reaquaint me with the joke behind Polly Filler and her ilk.

Anyone who has read Flat Earth News cannot fail to recognise that the newspaper industry is in crisis. Journalists are too stretched, deadlines are too tight and money is in short supply.  How can newspapers be saved?

Well, there are easy solutions. Stop writing articles for space filling reasons. Retrain the "journalist" who wrote about celebrity trends in the "noughties" and get them to write about news. Recognise that - if you're committed to a finite space resource like paper - you have to trim the fat, not the meat.  A review of a book does not need to be a undergraduate essay on the author and contain a huge photo of her and her dogs. By contrast, a review of a computer game, club, or bar needs to be more than a puff-piece paragraph.  See what your readers want - make a paper that they can use.

Is an article on Russia taking state control of all TV channels really worth a tenth of the space as an article by Alan Rusbridger where he tells us that Google, Wikipedia, Twitter and Comment is Free are pretty cool?

Above all, kill the quaint.  Tradition is no more than monkey folklore.

What reading The Guardian in paper form has taught me is that the web allows me to easily ignore the turgid or vapid - paper is less forgiving.

But there, of course, I've argued against the existance of Private Eye's hidden gems.  Perhaps someone, somewhere is desperate for an obituary of David Troostwyk and I am an ignorant philistine.

I will continue to read the Guardian; but I won't be buying it again.  While its journalism and newsgathering are excellent, for £1.90 I expect not to have to throw half of it away, unread and unloved.

Discovery

The first I knew of the site was this advert nestled away on their website.

No mention of the URL on the advert

The URL is the rather tautological http://timesmobile.mobi/

Good: Using a .mobi to indicate it is a mobile friendly site Bad: Not autodetecting my phone and redirecting me to the .mobi site.

Page Layout

A nice clean front page.

The Times - Mobile Front Page

The logos are, to my mind, too large - they dominate the page whereas they should be subtle enough to be useful.  The adverts predominantly for The Times' own services.

Big Images

Stories are well laid out, although the images could be shrunk for a mobile audience.

Stories are split over several pages - helps with download speeds and also boosts page impressions.

Next and Previous page links

Sharing

Unbelievably, there's no way to share stories. There's no send to a friend link and, worst still, the URLs are too long to send in an SMS. I also suspect they contain session keys.

What a long URL

Compare this to The Guardian...

At the bottom of each Guardian story

Text to a friend

...or the New York Times...

The New York Times has a range of sharing option

Send to a friend

How do you expect to build readership if your current readers can't tell their friends about your great content?

Customisation

This is one area where The Times outshines the competition. At the bottom of the front page is the invitation to customise the page.

Customise

This is a boon for people like me with no interest in sports. Here are my customisations...

All the different sections

...And the resultant section on the front page.

My Front Page

Search

The Times' search functionality is curious.  The input field is too narrow and the buttons are poorly placed.

Wherefore art thou, Shakespeare (yes, I know wherefore means why)

It also provides mobile friendly web searches - although the order seems rather spurious.

Random mobile results

Feedback

The site asks for feedback - curiously, they don't link to their mobile Twitter page. Again, their text fields are far too narrow.

Why does The Times hate hyperlinks?

RSS

They seem to offer mobile friendly RSS feeds, a great way for keeping people up to date with the site.

Mobile friendly RSS

Yet, for some reason, the link isn't clickable.

Conclusion

This has some awesome features - I love the customisable homepage, especially the keyword search.

There are some minor UI niggles which will no doubt be ironed out over time.

The lack of sharing is a severe mistake - without an easy way to send stories to people, you can't hope to organically drive traffic.

I look forward to more British news sites going mobile.

Post Script

The Times wish it to be known that...

we were mobile-friendly long before Guardian

Extract from The Times

The Guardian wrote about my experiences with energy monitors.

Extract from The Guardian

What struck me was the very different ways that these "Old Media" approached the "New Media" of the web.

I'll state my biases up front. I'm a tofu knitting, bleeding heart liberal who - if I were one of the dwindling number of newspaper buyers - would read The Guardian or the Independent. I also owe Kevin Anderson a beer. The Times has given me some free T-Shirts and its sister paper, The Sun, covered my wedding.

Let's see how the two compare...

Hyperlinks

The web relies on links. Hyperlinks are what separate the web from classical text.

The Guardian is extremely generous with linking.  Every name, every article, every unfamilar idea is meticulously cross-referenced. The Times has none. No links within the text. Even when the author writes out aitch-tee-tee-pee - still no link. They could link my name, link to my original twitter post, link to their own content - but they choose not to. This is obviously a newspaper article - designed to be read on paper. Perhaps my secretary is meant to type in the hyperlinks, print out the resultant pages and then fax them to me.

This is how The Times should have displayed the tweets

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Once upon a time there was a beautiful Princess. Something morally relevant happened. Then Disney fucked it up to sell toys. The End #TCTC

---

Guardian 1 : Times 0

Tagging

A folksonomy is an excellent way to categorise content. It's a simple and effective way to help your readers find your content. The Guardian offers several ways to see similar stories. It make effective use of tags as well as sidebar content. The Times has a few links at the side - but doesn't provide any contextual information.

Guardian 2: Times 0

Mobile

Like several billion other people around the world, I access the web via my mobile. What happens when I visit these sites using my phone's default browser?

The Guardian redirects me to the correct story on m.guardian and provides a pleasant mobile experience. There are a few problems with the speed at which articles are put on the mobile site - but it works.  The hyperlinks and images are sorely lacking - but at least it is a clear and easy to use experience.

Mobile Friendly - but feature poor

The Times doesn't have a mobile version. Or rather, it may do but didn't redirect me there. As a result I get a fairly messy page and a large bill for downloading heaps of data.

Mobile Unfriendly

Guardian 3 : Times 0

Paying

The Times, it would appear, wants to charge me for access to its websites. Based on the above, I find it hard to get excited about the idea of paying for such poorly executed delivery. The Guardian will let me freely remix its content via its APIs. It encourages free creation.

Guardian 4 : Times 0

Commenting

Both sites let me comment.  This is a great way to get feedback from your readers.  It also allows you to see where you may have erred in your original story.

The Times allows you to comment on any story - The Guardian seems to restrict comments to blog posts.

Both sites require registration - something I've always found a bid needless - but The Times has a single form whereas The Guardian's form seems to span several pages.  Make registration easy enough to encourage commentators - not put them off.

Guardian 4 : Times 1

Conclusion

The Guardian is the clear leader, but both sites have something to learn from the other.  Both are a long way from being perfect.  Journalists and editors need to understand all of the benefits of the web and make sure that they are making the best use of them.

You wouldn't use colour printing to display black and white photographs in your printed paper - nor would you make links unclickable on the web.

Once they make these changes to their mindsets - both will be in a strong position to take full advantage of this "new" media.