Putting on my hat marked Lazy BBC (since there isn’t such a blog), here’s a great example of BBC Views Online lazily re-publishing corporate puff dressed up as news:
Websites face four-second cut-off
Shoppers are likely to abandon a website if it takes longer than four seconds to load, a survey suggests.
The research by Akamai revealed users’ dwindling patience with websites that take time to show up.
It found 75% of the 1,058 people asked would not return to websites that took longer than four seconds to load.
The time it took a site to appear on screen came second to high prices and shipping costs in the list of shoppers’ pet-hates, the research revealed.
“Research by Akamai”? Now, tell me, just what is it that Akamai are well known for selling? Let’s have a look at their About Akamai page:
If you use the Internet for anything – to download music or software, check the headlines, book a flight – you’ve probably used Akamai’s services without even knowing it. We play a critical role in getting content from providers to consumers…
Our global platform of thousands of specially-equipped servers helps the Internet withstand the crush of daily requests for rich, dynamic, and interactive content, transactions, and applications.
Now there’s a surprise. I feel a Mandy Rice-Davies moment coming on: “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they”, although that appears to have escaped the fearless notice of our inquisitive BBC ‘journalists’ in their hurry to cut’n’paste the news.
Nice one Andrew.
In an earlier thread DifferentAnon posed a question to which my ten-point answer provides further insight into the lazy ways of the BBC and the British media. Here’s No. 7 from the list:
7.
The British media is incredibly unaccountable. U.K. newspapers and broadcasters repeat information and entire stories disseminated by the Press Association without any accreditation whatsoever. This is quite unlike U.S. newspapers, which carry whole pages of news reports accredited to their own agency the Associated Press.
For anyone interested in the full list here’s the link:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/116043227974617317/#318025
In a similar vein, just how many puff pieces have there been for the PS3 now ? Hey, I’ve got a PSone and ps2, I’ll probably get this one too, but even I can’t for the life of me see why we need content such as a ‘Factfile: PlayStation 3’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6132212.stm
Let alone alleged eye-witness reports from the first day:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6142782.stm
And all this about a console that won’t be out here until March 2007 (and just think what it’ll be like then).
Every day on the “technology” section there is some thinly-disguised press release. Once they even included the bit at the bottom saying it was a press-release.
Its very tragic anyway – the “tech” section. They even include computer games and sometimes new films to try and pad it out.
Aye. A real tech section would be covering the latest developments in the use of Sony’s “Cell” processor (which is used in the PS3) in massively parallel processing or virtual server applications, and how it’s being used in combinatin nwith blade server architecture in order to achieve that. They might also take a look at some of the potential problems the Cell has with regards to how hot it gets, and how precise its FPU actually is and how difficult it can be to program for it. Of course that’d require actual research and investigation…
Well done the Akamai Corporate Comms dept. I always found ‘research’ was a good way to get uncritical coverage from lazy journs.