http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4059291.stm

The term "blog" has been chosen as the top word of 2004 by a US dictionary publisher.

Merriam-Webster said "blog" headed the list of most looked-up terms on its site during the last twelve months.

Tonight I travel to London for the Student Radio Awards at the Shepherds Bush Pavilion. Surge is nominated for 4 awards this year including Station of the Year and best Technical Innovation. It’ll be fun - last year’s was excellent.

Since Hanni’s gotten me addicted to Flickr (a photo sharing service with more bells and whistles than you can shake a stick at), I’ve been fiddling with some of its features and come up with this page.

If this works, I’ll be able to send photos from my Nokia, via Flickr, onto this page. A live photo log of the Student Radio Awards. I know photologs/moblogs aren’t exactly new, but it’ll be the first time I’ve tried it. Keep an eye out on that page tonight (from 7pm GMT) for photos from the Svencam!

Nine things you probably didn’t want to know. I’m wearing gloves from now on. (from Planet Dan, via Woodge. 100% recycled links).

Google Scholar has just been released. It lets you search a subset of Google’s vast database, covering all sorts of academic documents. Rather neat - I could’ve done with this last year! (via Silicon.com)

Since I spend most of may days in front of a broadband-connected PC (something I’m becoming less and less proud of), I often can be found with Winamp running listening to my favourite stations.

Of the regular top ten at Shoutcast, Radio Paradise (listen) is my favourite. A great selection of music across genres, well-chosen and always a pleasure to listen to. I’ve yet to hear a single song on Radio Paradise I dislike.

Frequence3 (listen) is a French station. Much more modern than RP, but plays the more sensible chart songs from around the world (including quite a few French songs too, quelle surprise there).

Hitzradio (listen) is even more chart-focused, although it would be better if they didn’t play Destiny’s Child.

And of course I can’t avoid adding SURGE (listen), me ol’ station, to the list!

First time I’ve had to scrape ice off my car this evening. Hello winter.

FaxYourMP reached its 100,000th fax yesterday. For those who don’t know about it, FaxYourMP does exactly what it says on the tin. You enter your postcode to find your local MP, then you can type a message to send as a fax. The entire project is run as a non-profit by a small team of volunteers (two of whom I met yesterday). This milestone is a great achievement.

Can’t say I’m overly impressed by the tech preview of MSN’s new search engine. A search for Microsoft lists its Windows Update page as the top result. Other results are not much more promising. Still, it’s a technology preview and I ought to give them feedback as they request. (via babysimon)

Which side of the road do they drive on? "… an attempt to list which side of the road people drive on around the world, and to find some reasons why."

Quite fascinating actually. Unsuprisingly much is defined by the Brits and the French, but the page goes into much more detail, and picks out some very interesting bits and pieces. I also didn’t realise that in many countries there is a lane discipline for pedestrians - apparantly we British are quite good at seemingly random walking movements, using eye contact and gestures to keep us from bashing into each other. In many other countries however, there is an implicit (and sometimes explicit) convention for walking to the left or right.

Link via Presurfer

There’s nowt more annoying than finding a midget bathing in your cup of tea.