Spannerworkers blog digest

Dax Hamman has been wondering recently who makes the perfect client. He was posed the question by a room of “smart people who were prepared to engage in debate about what [he was] saying rather than just sit and listen”, which got him thinking.

Dax described his ideal client as one who shares the same core values, because when this happens, it “allows us to have some fun and experiment with new ideas”.

Nilhan Jayasinghe has been talking about ad-supported videos, after the recent move by Google to extend their AdSense model to YouTube. He says that the move:

“Could mean content providers get a chance to monetize their content. Publishers get to make their sites more interesting and provide a better user experience. And Google finally get a [chance] to make money from YouTube.”

But he also wonders whether this could be a nightmare for brand and reputation managers, giving as an example the video of Louis Ogborn being strip searched at a McDonald’s in Kentucky, which currently ranks highly on a YouTube search for “McDonald’s”.

Simon Handby’s been blogging about the difficulty with using the internet to find quality news, with so many millions of sources out there. He says that “the big sites have proper editorial processes and policies” making them more trustworthy, but poses the question:

“How [can you] judge the objectivity and accuracy of a blogger you’ve happened upon through a search engine?”

Simon is particularly annoyed by Google News’ apparent failure to help us sift through unhelpful sources, throwing up results for more questionable sites alongside genuine news sources. However, a commenter asks:

“Is getting a skewed news agenda from Google really any worse than getting it from, say, the London freesheets?”

Meanwhile, over at Open, Antony Mayfield has convinced himself that he needs an iPod Touch to listen to The Archers, the latest BBC Radio programme to be made available as a podcast.