3rd Test, day one: England struggle against SA

Responding to the TMS report on England's poor first innings total at Edgbaston, I'm guessing Vaughan won't be dropped before the end of the series, that would be a big change, also remembering South Africa are probably the strongest side in the world at the moment. but if England aren't winning, then he needs runs to keep his place.

But Colly is surely sunk if he doesn't fire in the second innings. I just hope, Freddy can get stuck into the tourists early on day two and we can dig in for the second innings, so show some proper fight and give ourselves a chance of bowling them out to win the game, maybe Monty will be the man on days four and five?

Ambrose needs to hold all his catches and keep getting some half decent runs and maybe he'll get another series, we've chopped and changed so much since Stewart's retirement, we need to give someone a proper run, remembering Chris Read's treatment as a prime example. But Foster and Prior are ready and waiting for the call I'm sure, and clearly at least one will tour.

Sidebottom is Hoggard's successor, a solid, hard-working seamer, Anderson's still has to get important wickets under his belt to convince me.

Sidebtttom's role is not dissimilar to one-Test wonder Mr Pattinson whose inclusion ahead of Tremlett in the selected squad (let alone anyone else) was illogical and very much a hunch-based gamble.

Broad will be around for years to come, he's still young and needs to work on his bowling like anyone his age, his winter tour berth must be assured, as is Simon Jones's if he stays fit (fingers crossed), I think it's only right he proves himself for a full season.

I like Bopara, in theory a like-for-like replacement for Colly, but is he really strong enough to bat at 5 at Test level? And isn't Rob Key just another good county-level bully?

We have Cook, Strauss, KP and Bell all seemingly set, maybe it's time to find a younger proper batting prospect at 5 and let the keeper (?), Flintoff and Broad stiffen the early tail as part of a five-man attack?

Linking out from news articles builds trust

The web was built on links, the modern web is all about relevance and reputation, relevance to the user's interests, and relevance to the content on the page.

In journalistic terms it's a way of showing the workings of a journalist, backing up facts, showing sources, leading the reader on to their own points of interest.

All this enhances the originating website's reputation and the visitors trust of the publisher/brand. Leaving articles as dead ends can leave unanswered questions for readers, there's always plenty of other content online, so losing your audience's interest is like showing them the door.

As The SEO Company's study shows:

"a good number of online news websites are very good at crediting sources with the appropriate link... Offering useful links actually makes visitors more likely to return to see what other interesting websites they might find in the future, a model that sites such as Digg and Fark are built around."

In terms of search engine optimisation, it's great for the Google ranking of a page to link out to related, reliable and trusted sources.

Newspaper industry @ July 2008

Financially times were hard for newspapers even before the economy began to fall over, but Mark Potts' has some wise words for newspapers to remember:

"The printed paper should be a snapshot of what's online [at print time.]"
"Local news is the last unique franchise that newspapers own."
"Let the readers get involved at every opportunity."
"Aggressively offer contextual advertising.”

Jason Kintzler adds on the subject of hyper-local, e-hub style community sites:

there's a huge opportunity for newspapers to harness and distribute more news than ever before. Community newspapers could potentially become the source for everything local, and perhaps beyond.

Mugabe wrestles with the colonial chip on his shoulder

Just be thankful you don't have any oil Mr 'President', or America, and very possibly the UK may well have been in there years ago!

Thanks to Nigel Barlow for spotting this video. He also has an interesting post about a list of Tory MPs along with The Independent newspaper who are profiting from business in Zimbabwe - The pot calling the kettle black?.