Two weeks ago, The Guardian‘s Martin Robbins took a hefty swing at popular science journalism, particularly that of BBC Online. The piece was pretty humourous, but astonishingly it accounted for 15% of all traffic to The Guardian that day. That’s a hell of a lot of people who could relate to the author’s complaint. So exactly what is so wrong with mainstream coverage of scientific issues?

Lots, actually. Thanks in the main to links provided by my scientifically inclined journalistic friend @martinjmckenna, I’ve been reading a bit about the issue. It seems like the scientific community as a whole is sick of journalists reporting new reserach in broad strokes and completely failing to comment on the value or validity of claims. As you can read in Robbins’ follow up article, the use of weasel words and ambiguity is driving readers of science journalism insane.

They’re called ‘Scare quotes’ and they are used by writers to distance themselves from the words inside, or to indicate paraphrasing – unless you’re a cynic, in which case scare quotes are a get-out-of-jail-free card that allows journalists to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the words mentioned.

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Posted by Dave Molloy in •Journalism •Tech
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I recently reawakened a relationship with an old flame of mine. For years, we’ve been on-again and off-again, since that time in college I thought I’d outgrown her. But we’re back together again, and she’s perfect. She’s silky smooth, reliable, and soaks up every word I say. And she’s currently wrapped in leather.

Her name is Paper.

See, I’m the type of person who needs to trick myself into working. I’d consider myself highly productive, but it’s not by nature. No, like many of us, I play games with my time, trying to make my calendar, my to-do lists and documents as fun as they can possibly be. Whether it’s my new favourite, the Pomodoro Technique, or the good old reliable Getting Things Done system, I’ve got an arsenal of anti-procrastination tools at my disposal that serve me well. And they need to be perfect.

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Posted by Dave Molloy in •Resources •Tech
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Geolocation, we’re told, is the future of social communication. But for anyone in Ireland who has tried using Foursquare, the location app that shares where you are with friends, it has likely been an enormous disappointment. Once you get past the novelty factor, the persistent questioning of non-smartphone friends (“what’s the point of it?”) begins to make a lot of sense. After all, there really isn’t even that much of a user base. Getting right to the point, Foursquare has no purpose in this country. There are no discounts for mayorships, and no local development officers to build the community. And your friends probably aren’t getting that much value out of knowing you moved from work to home. It’s a colossal waste of time.

But there is a geolocation service that offers real value to the end user, has a dedicated user base, and is tons of fun to use. And it’s the mobile version of the popular Yelp social reviews site.

This service provides value to the user by showing them top-rated cafes, bars etc nearby, nails the social element with weekly newsletters, check-ins and and tips/comments, and, best of all, is making a genuine effort with real live people to build a community. Which knocks the competition out of the park.

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Posted by Dave Molloy in •Business •Tech
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UPDATE: Content is all back up and categories are fixed. Images are uploaded but not displaying for old posts, comment previewing needs to be implemented, and a search template is missing, as is the RSS template. So we’re 90% functional, just missing a few bells and whistles.

If you’re looking for something, I’m really sorry if it’s not here.

We migrated hosting providers today, and also made the move from ExpressionEngine 1.6.9 to to 2.1, which has caused a few problems. The blog content needs to be uploaded, categories and comments are broken for the moment, and there may be a few kinks all around. All this will get fixed in a day’s time, so… please forgive our appearance while we renovate.

Posted by Dave Molloy in •Business •Tech
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