Over the past few days, London has been under siege from multiple rioting mobs of hooligans and thugs. GoSquared (based in London) has been enabling a number of sites reporting on the situation to understand how events have been unfolding in real-time.

London Riots Map, based on Google Maps was created when the riots broke out to chart the London riots from a first person perspective by plotting tweets with the hashtag #londonriots that have an associated postcode. Cravify, a service for mapping events has also been used in a similar way.

We decided to put together a simple visualisation of how the events in London have unfolded – both in terms of web traffic that we monitored on GoSquared (we provide real-time web analytics after all – perfect for events like this), and from our first hand perspective being based in London.

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Chances are you may have heard that the EU is introducing a few changes to legislation around cookies and internet privacy. Not everyone, if anyone, fully understands the new laws coming into effect, but we thought it’d be wise to share what we know and understand so far.

The uncertainty around these laws has caused the UK to delay enforcement for a year to fully comply. There’s a very useful document (PDF) provided by the UK ICO that helps explain what is changing in plain English.

What are the new EU cookie laws?

• EU Directive 2009/136/EC requires prior consent for “storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored” – Articles 5(3) and 6(3).
• Article 29 WP Opinion 171 states that all data read from a device is protected (3.2.1.): “Article 5(3) requires obtaining informed consent to lawfully store information or to gain access to information stored in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user.”

When do I need to start worrying about these new laws?

The new EU legislation was supposed to have been passed by all EU countries by 25th May 2011. The only countries to have responded so far are the UK, Denmark, and Estonia.

The UK has given site owners another year to get their sites in order before enforcing the cookie laws.

Enforcement of these laws in unlikely any time soon. However, as a precaution, it is encouraged that all sites review their policies on privacy and understand which cookies they are asking their visitors to store.

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Here’s some stuff we’ve been saying on Twitter, some of our favourite links, and some nice things people have been saying about us.

Don’t design for early adopters – brilliant piece by @chockenberry: http://bit.ly/cCSbkq

Apple seems to be as leaky as a sinking ship right now – at this rate we’ll be able to write Steve’s WWDC keynote for him.

Seth Godin at his best – The last 10%, that’s what people pay for: http://bit.ly/d9wFia

When the question being asked is “Windows XP or 7″ you know Microsoft screwed up horribly somewhere in between. (via @mattpat)

Facebook redesigns privacy centre: http://bit.ly/diyz2p

Another beautiful site using #LiveStats: http://thebrandingfarm.com/ Welcome on board @thebrandingfarm!

MobileMe Mail Beta, a Visual Walkthrough by @spiralstairs – beautiful: http://bit.ly/c1FHYs

It’s reassuring to see that even Steve Jobs has to deal with these kinds of email rants: http://bit.ly/cC9Zzn (via @sophiestication)

Loving how this modern software company have integrated Twitter into their sexy website: http://bit.ly/cJ3kuD (via @leigh & @Si)

New on Smashing – CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 Help Cheat Sheets (PDF): http://bit.ly/bA7Sx6 (That’s us! Thanks again @smashingmag)

“http://www.gosquared.com/ #canofawesome” – thanks so much @th3hamburgler!

An absolute abundance of quality, free vectors for download on @lovevectorfree: http://www.lovevectorfree.com/

Developing with #Wordpress? Get this awesome Help Sheet-as-a-wallpaper by @quicklycode: http://bit.ly/ax6Crw

Really liking the Lobster font by @pabloimpallari: http://www.impallari.com/lobster/

Beautiful piece of writing by @zeldman: http://www.zeldman.com/2010/05/11/life-is-beautiful

Follow us

@GoSquared
@JamesJGill
@TheDeveloper
@Floopily

We’re pleased to bring you the 3rd version of the GoSquared CSS Help Sheet, and a brand new CSS3 Help Sheet.

With the VI Help Sheet we released last week, we redesigned our Help Sheets for a much better result when printed on paper, while ensuring they still don’t look too shabby on the screen of your Mac, PC, iPhone or iPad.

We’ve put together a Help Sheet specifically for CSS3. We’ve covered most of the basic options now possible with CSS3, but there’s a ton more we couldn’t fit in, so we’ve linked to a couple of handy articles such as this post by 456 Berea Street on CSS Selectors, and this piece by Paul Irish on Font-Face.

So what are you waiting for? Download them. Print them. Stick ‘em on the wall and get creative!

New to GoSquared?

For those of you new to GoSquared – we help people improve their websites. GoSquared real-time web analytics enables you to understand what’s happening on your site right now. We run this blog, on design, technology and marketing to share our thoughts and content with wonderful people like you in the hope that you’ll also try GoSquared.

As always, if you find any errors or typos or anything like that, please drop us a note in the comments.

Get the CSS2 Help Sheet PDF (230KB)

Get the CSS3 Help Sheet PDF (221KB)

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We don’t often write about other sites, but this month on Elite by Design, there’s a series of interviews that are simply too good to miss. So to ensure you check them out – we thought we’d dedicate a post to them.

There’s a massive collection of interviews from some of the greatest, more influential designers in our industry right now including:

Elliot Jay Stocks
Adelle Charles
Jonathan Snook
Jon Hicks
Fabio Sasso

and over 50 more awesome designers.

Some of my favourites so far are the interview with Fabio for his advice on how to establish yourself as a designer, David Appleyard for letting us in on how he manages so many sites at once, and Jacob Gube for talking about his experience writing a book on Moo Tools while also managing the Six Revisions blog.

I don’t think enough people realise how much effort has been put into organising so many interviews with so many inspiring members of the design community. It’s like getting the top 50 music acts in the chart right now to perform live on your own radio station. Go visit Elite by Design and read a couple of these wonderful interviews – learn from their success stories and their mistakes and take all the free advice they’re willing to share.

Here’s a selection of some of our favourite design related books. Find out more or buy any of them on Amazon via the links on this page.

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We post a lot of links to some really useful, surprising, and sometimes just plain funny sites on Twitter. We want to share some of our Twitter chatter on Liquidicity. We know you’ll find (at least some of) what we share useful, so now you can pick up the best bits from the same place.

• Carsonified – 10 Vital Lessons for Web Start-Ups: http://is.gd/2oAT4
• Sketchbook specifically for iPhone UI design: http://is.gd/2oPyS
• Twitterrific 2.1 now available!
• Can you grill a bratwurst? – another extremely useful iPhone app: http://is.gd/2oRkL
• Walt Mossberg Mosspuppet lost in time warp (made me laugh): http://is.gd/2oT9s
• The Anatomy of a Corporate Site – by Build Internet: http://is.gd/2p06p
• HeyZap now giving publishers a cut of earnings – these guys are definitely going places: http://is.gd/2p4ln
• Wow is that what a Chinese lesson in Marketing looks like? http://bit.ly/2y9bNW
• Mark Boulton – new shoes, new blog: http://is.gd/2q4vk
• Beautiful typographic inspiration – from old signs: http://is.gd/2qfvH
• Listen to your music from an old school cassette? There's an app for that: http://bit.ly/LDets (itunes)
• Some laughable fake Apple tablets from TUAW: http://is.gd/2rUpY
• Can't wait for Rework – the new book by 37signals: http://is.gd/2rWPH
• A Showcase of Fantastic Footer Designs: http://bit.ly/neSOc
• Wow – look at all the different preference panes in Firefox (large image): http://is.gd/2s5HW
• Preview of the unreleased Coudal.com redesign: http://is.gd/2s7Yx (Click "Cornify")
• Some really nice icons and other tasty goodies to download here: http://is.gd/2sg4K
• Carsonified – 5 Advanced Photoshop Techniques for Web Designers: http://is.gd/2shO1
• Ramp Champ – beautiful promo page: http://is.gd/2sjhJ
• 50 of the best ever web design/dev/application icon sets: http://is.gd/2srHT
• Apple answers FCC's questions (qu 6 gives some juicy details on App Store approvals): http://bit.ly/S8mCP
• Pleased to release our latest set of 72 vector buttons – Monochromatic: http://is.gd/2szq1
• Wow this is an amazingly beautiful wooden chair – made from a single piece: http://is.gd/2sAQO (via @azaaza)
• Incredible vector drawing tool from 1963 – Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad: http://is.gd/2sD1Q
• Ajaxload – Pretty sweet AJAX "loading GIF" generator: http://is.gd/2sEA5
• Extremely useful article on Good Call-To-Action Buttons: http://bit.ly/AGKz
• 30 High Quality Paint & Pastel Textures: http://bit.ly/5mbQq
• Nice site – Quotes on Design: http://is.gd/2tzQN
• I check everyday for the Facebook 3.0 update. And everyday I'm disappointed. I should just assume it'll take 6 months to be approved.

If you found any of this vaguely useful, you may want to follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/gosquared

Stay up to date with the team:

James Gill (and all GoSquared news) – twitter.com/gosquared
Geoff Wagstaff – twitter.com/TheDeveloper
James Taylor (and the iPhoneFAIL blog) – twitter.com/iPhoneFAIL
Liquidicity (posts and news) – twitter.com/liquidicity

We know it’s been too long since our last icon set, but to fulfil your growing appetite for vectors, we recommend you check out Vectors on Fire, a new blog that’s got a nice line up of free vectors that I haven’t found on many other sites.

We like the site, and we wish them the best of luck in growing their worthy destination for vector resources. If you missed our iPod vector icons from a few weeks ago, they’re available on Vectors on Fire right now.

Introducing GoSquared’s latest world changing project – iPhoneFAIL.org. If you’ve ever suffered from a failing iPhone, a stupidly buggy app, or just come across an error that you thought was laughable, you can now share your angst with the rest of the world.

If you have an account with GoSquared (including Liquidicity) then you can sign in and comment with the same username and password etc. We like to make things easy for you.

All in all, we’ll let you check it out for yourselves – we’ve kept things nice and simple so you can just focus what’s important – the FAILs.

Hope you like it,

The GoSquared team.