Media Commons

At last an alternative to the hated system of peer-review for academic journals is being developed in an experiment inititiated by Media Commons in co-operation with the Shakespeare Quarterly, which intends to use the principle of 'crowd-sourcing' rather than the existing 'double-blind' peer review.

Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education and on Media Commons.

What was that Programme?

BBC researchers have started work on a project to analyse thousands of archive copies of the Radio Times as part of a plan named "BBC Genome" which is intended to provide a comprehensive and easy-to-use online catalogue of the BBC's programmes, including when and where they were first aired. In September, the project will begin the massive task of digitising more than 80 years' worth of broadcast records, including approximately 400,000 pages of Radio Times covering 3m programmes and 300m words.

Read the full story on Digital Spy

The Rat Pack

A slide show of 25 "never-seen" photos of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Junior, Frank Sinatra and others - courtesy of Life Magazine

"He wears the mask of an armchair philanderer with bottles and broads on his mind and seven kids in his swimming pool — a character with obvious appeal for both sexes. Highball glass in hand, he always looks faintly surprised to find the camera upon him, and his first bleary, self-deprecating crack establishes that neither he nor his audience can be quite sure what he will do next." —From LIFE's review of The Dean Martin Show, 5/26/1967.

[thanks to Sophie Willard for the tip]