A review of the usability of taps - avoiding arrest for getting my camera out in public toilets and showers - in order to see what lessons the design of everyday objects can tell us about web design.

Wolfram Alpha - the new search engine that gives access to systematic knowledge (ie it's a big database of curated facts) - has been variously hailed as a google and wikipedia killer. I've found the Wolfram|Alpha killer - the UK Ask A Librarian site.

We need a centralised database of reporting restrictions in general terms (ie not all the detail so it's like an issue of popbitch). Just what is the point of reporting restrictions if no one knows they exist?

The Telegraph has now dropped to result number 8 in Google for a search on MPs expenses.

The results from Google if you search for MPs expenses are rubbish. Last week they had pages from the BBC first and the Telegraph 2nd - even though the Telegraph is the primary source of all this material. Today the results are even worse: they're absolute garbage.

Google ran an interesting experiment - attempting to predict the results of the 2009 Eurovision contest based on search popularity. But while it got the winner right, the rest of its predictions were a bit poor.

Google has redesigned Webmaster Tools. Some of it's good. Some of it I hate. This is what I hate about the design (on top of that fact it's much slower than the old version).

Twitter is now using proper meta descriptions - the full tweet for tweets, and the bio for profile pages.

#fixreplies and #twitterfail 4 lessons to learn from Twitter's approach.

Ofcom probably thought it was a great idea to get Stephen Fry to one of its Digital Britain panel discussions. Sadly for them, he launched a scathing assault on the whole strategy, saying he was 'literally baffled' by it and he thought the whole thing pointless. Here's the transcript of what he said.

Ofcom and the Digital Britain Forum haven't learned the lessons from the Telegraph's problems with publishing unmoderated Twitter feeds.

Telegraph.co.uk gets an astonishing 8% of its visitors from social sites like Digg, Delicious and Stumbleupon, Julian Sambles, Head of Audience Development, has revealed to me. The figure's much higher than anyone previously thought.

Carousels (sliders as they're sometimes known) are a good way to promote several items of content without using up too much space on your homepage.

Here's a roundup of sites using them - and how successful I think they are. Having studies several, I think the best ones.

Some news sites get a last updated time stamp in Google - and some don't. It's a bit of information next to the URL that says XX minutes ago. Not all news sites get it - although I can't see any rhyme or reason.

The full text of the row that erupted live on Twitter between @shanerichmond (Communities editor and technology blogger at Telegraph.co.uk) and @charlesarthur (The Guardian's Technology editor).

Newspaper websites are failing in some obvious ways to make their stories readable. Too many are using small fonts, long off-putting paragraphs, no subheadings, no in-content boxes or pictures, and no in-content links.

There are several ways to make your copy readable on the web. Yet I see sites ignoring these simple tips, all the time - especially newspapers.
At the botom, you'll find this article repeated, breaking all ...

What makes a good Twitter avatar - with examples of good and bad avatars and lessons you can learn from them.

There are twice as many tweets about men (ie including the word 'he') as there are about women (ie including the word 'she').

Tweeting about beer and wine peaks at 2am saturday and then again at midnight saturday. Tweets about being drunk peak at 8am on saturday and sunday. Although they can't have been that drunk, or they wouldn't be up at that time tweeting.