Maybe the tools to scan the low-cost airlines for the cheapest fares have been around for some time but I’ve never seen them and I am glad they are here. Think how much faster it will be to save five pounds on your ticket [The Times | Sky Scanner].

Also on the web, although apparently a few days old, my favorite quote of the year so far: “If so many spam offers weren’t totally bogus, Hotmail users would be incredibly well-endowed, slim people with plenty of hair who make big money working at home when they aren’t having great sex provoked by free porn and herbal Viagra” [Wired News].

On this day…

2005: Daily Links
2005: For The Love Of London
2003: Hooked on LBC
2003: In News

Good news for all of us that work in some kind of online media. Yahoo seems to be posting some positive news at the moment [Yahoo! Release]. I see this, perhaps optimistically, as a sign that the industry is slowly moving out of the stagnation of the past twelve months. There has been talk of a decline in online business and great revenue reductions but I think we’ll see 2002 as the year that stood still for many internet businesses. I am hoping 2003 will be better.

On this day…

2003: Our Radio Rocks

There are several interesting descriptions of weblogs around, but by far the most accessible and best introduction to the concept of the blog that I have read for some time has been put together by Phil on gyford.com

On this day…

2006: Brokeback Mountain
2006: Gotta Go Back In Time
2005: 2004 In 100 Pictures
2004: Hello Dermot and Mark Fans
2004: Oops, She Did It
2003: Jeremy Vine
2003: Poison Find

You say it here and it comes out here. Well, not really but the comments attached to the article on BBC News about The Pepys Diary site are interesting.

Actually, I am much more interested in the way products like Moveable Type are making personal publishing so much easier. The Pepys Diary site is quite complex and uses multiple blogs to string it all together. Even if I can’t work out the whole trackback thing, they seem to have it working there! There’s a little on the how it all came together here.

On this day…

2006: High Expectations
2005: It’s Those Real People That Make Films British

Are the diaries of Samuel Pepys really akin to a weblog? Well somebody thinks so and is turning them into a weblog that will update daily with a new diary entry and it’s all starting on 1st January. There’s even an RSS feed of the whole thing.

I love that the web can be used to link, comment, annotate and explain the diaries in a clear way. Even the site’s design is fantastically simple.

I’m not sure what Mr Pepys would have thought about it – they were written in shorthand as a private diary and a blog is a very public thing – but I think it’s a fantastic idea and I wish it had been mine. Now, I will read them in properly digestible chunks in a kind of weird real time. Somehow this reminds me about why I was first interested in the power of the internet as a communications tool. Occasionally, I need to remind myself. [via plasticbag]

On this day…

2005: Dress Code
2004: Amélie & The Italian Job
2003: Review of 2003: September and October
2003: Review of 2003: July and August
2003: Review of 2003: May and June
2002: The Lord of The Rings
2002: Year in Review

The Amsterdam real time mapping projects sounds, in theory, very interesting,

“Every inhabitant of Amsterdam has an invisible map of the city in his head. The way he moves about the city and the choices made in this process are determined by this mental map. Amsterdam RealTime attempts to visualise these mental maps through examining the mobile behaviour of the city’s users”.

Amsterdam RealTime

In reality, the maps seems a little dull. [via boingboing.net]

On this day…

2005: Flickr Christmas: Jamie Enjoys Herself
2005: Civil Partnership: Locally In Wandsworth
2005: Tribute To Atlantic 252
2003: Gay Dads

During one of my semi-regular trawls of the New Scientist website, I discovered (at last) why superglue does not stick to the inside of the tube.

On this day…

2005: Boxes Everywhere
2005: Civil Partnership: What’s It All About?
2004: links for 2004-11-25
2004: Celebrity T-Shirt Auction
2003: Coolest of 2003

Members of The Fire Brigade’s Union are going on strike as I type this. As a result, some London Underground stations are closing this evening – but not all. London Underground has an interesting piece on safety on the tube:

Under normal circumstances, with full fire service cover, the risk of death to a daily traveller on the Underground from all causes is around 1 in 150,000 per year. The risk from fire is only a small contributor (about 2.5%) to this overall risk. [Source: London Underground]

On this day…

2005: Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
2004: links for 2004-11-13
2003: Thoughts on Helsinki