This Week’s Top Ten Stories

1) A google doodle this week celebrated the 255th birthday of The British Museum established by Sir Hans Sloane in 1753 – read more. I particularly like this doodle as it features one of my favourite places ( and spaces ) The Great Court, at the heart of the museum.

The Telegraph, on the Museum’s top 5 masterpieces –

  • The Parthenon Sculptures ( Elgin Marbles )
  • The Oxus Treasure
  • The Rosetta Stone
  • The Lewis Chessmen
  • The Mummy of Katebet
  • read more…

This article from the annually marvellous Christmas edition of The Economist : Temples of Delight, looks at the increasing popularity and passion for museums around the world – Read More 

2) From Wired : Our golden era of Net Neutrality may be about to end.Perhaps not the most immediately interesting story out there, but this is a big deal – Net neutrality is the principle forbidding huge telecommunications companies from treating users, websites, or apps differently – say, by letting some work better than others over their pipes…and it affects the internet as we all know it. – Read More 

3) Lots of figures are showing the declining popularity of Facebook amongst the youth, 25-34’s are the most active group now – Read More. 

Younger age groups are trying out other platforms e.g: Instagram, Snapchat and a relatively new one – Whisper. Whisper allows people to post anonymous Whispers (photos with a line or two of text overlaid on them, in the style of a Reddit image ) which can then be “hearted” or replied to by other users. In this sense it runs in the same vein of briefer social engagement as Snapchat ,which only allows you to view received photos for a few seconds. This also chimes in with the simplicity and brevity of texting and underlines the bias towards briefer communication which is the modus operandi of this age group
– Read More 

4) Alex Proud on Why this ‘Shoreditchification’ of London must stop .He’s got a point here – Read More 

5) Why did Google just pay $3 billion for a thermostat company? – Why to get into our homes of course….. – Read More 

6) Twitter allows advertisers to tap into users’ email addresses to improve targeting – read more and Goldman Sachs’ recent valuation was so positive because they think Twitter is ‘the new Google’ – “The enhancements include incremental improvements in existing ad products and targeting capabilities similar to the evolution of Google’s Adwords platform –Read More 

7) I’m not a huge fan of figure skating , but there is something compelling watching a skater reverse into a jump at full pelt and wondering whether they are going to pull it off. This clip is of 19 year old Jason Brown , the new skating sensation from the States. Almost the best bit is the (over?) effusive commentating – Read More 

8) Weird weather. Very cold in the States last week – read more, now fog in New York – read more and the Chinese have had to bring the sun into smog bound Beijing – on a poster – Read More 

9) Really like this ( ht @neilperkin ) Hacking the Concept of Time – Read More – Part of the project involved filming New Yorkers standing on the platform at Grand Central station with a slow motion camera ( watch it full screen ). It’s strangely poignant.

10) At last a use for drones we can all agree with – This surfing video shot with a drone at Banzai Pipeline will blow you away – Read More