Links for Wednesday 27 July 2011 (Phil Gyford’s website)

The End of the Open University As We Know It Â« The Thought Stash: Ugh, the OU is increasing its course fees by around 3.5 times. I only studied with them for a term but would have considered it again. Much. much less sure about that now. (via Preoccupations)
Backspace: Lovely blast from the past, the website of Backspace (a cybercafe on Clink Street, now a Starbucks) is still (or once again?) online, from 1997 by the looks of it. (via @cakemix)
Designing a big news site is about more than beauty » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism: Good thoughts on why designing news websites is hard. Maybe it’s impossible with one design: too many competing stakeholders and use cases. (via Daring Fireball)
Redesigning And Re-Thinking The News | Drawar: More new stuff on redesigning news websites. This is all part of a good discussion, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve moved on much. Yet. (via Daring Fireball)
Design View / Andy Rutledge - News Redux: For completeness, I might as well link to the post that started this flurry of digital news design posts, Andy Rutledge’s attempt to redesign a page of the New York Times.
4 key pieces of audience engagement missing from Andy Rutledge’s news redux: Also, Martin Belam’s good critique of Andy Rutledge’s unofficial redesign of a New York Times page.

27 Jul 2011 at Twitter

08:50am: @AlexBalfour2012 I misread that but I now want 2012-themed Cornish pasties. And pork pies. And scotch eggs. etc.

04:30pm: @realmonkeybear I thought it was well over - it's all 80s these days isn't it, if that hasn't passed already?

04:33pm: @hondanhon I had a nap and dreamed you were listening to some great drum'n'bass to get psyched up for a pitch. What was it? Ta. :)

04:34pm: @gwire Damn! I'll get rid of my authentic 80s outfits and buy in some authentic fake 80s threads.

06:35pm: @hondanhon Dammit, I’ve now listened to way too many Final Countdown remixes. No D’n’B but I think this may be “best” http://bit.ly/p8evsa

06:49pm: @mala Dustbin lorries and bin men where I am from. I think. When you start to think about these phrases they all sound stupid.

07:56pm: Eating like a king. A king who *really* likes sausages and baked beans.

08:49pm: @_hollsk He’s tweeting events during the day and then those events will appear at the end of the day when he writes his diary entry.

09:48pm: @scrivs Just read your news article. I thought you might like this that I wrote on the topic last year: http://bit.ly/aTymEn

Links for Wednesday 27 July 2011