As Shakespeare said… “[Blog posts are] a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Today Ofcom published the responses it had for its consultation on plans for the BBC to encrypt its HD broadcasts. The blogosphere went nuts! DRM? Not on our watch. Boing Boing mobilised its army of commentators, [...]
Oct 292009
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand statistics and those who don’t. ±8. Ever since I took GCSE and A-Level statistics, I’ve had a healthy appreciation for the way they are presented to the public. I vividly remember my grandmother shouting at the television one night. The news presenter had [...]
Another in the occasional series looking at mobile advertising gone bad. Who doesn’t enjoy a good, clean game of scrabble. After a busy day reading The Times, nothing takes the edge off the day like a word puzzle. Wait! What’s this? So far, so good. A clear, professional banner. It clearly emphasises that – although [...]
Oct 282009
What Are Twitter Favourites? Twitter allows you to mark certain posts as favourites. You may do this for a number of reasons – because you thought it was funny or interesting, because you want to reply to it later, or as a general bookmark feature They’re Private, Right? Wrong. You can see any Twitter user’s [...]
Oct 282009
In 1998, Douglas Adams wrote a essay about the de facto Universal Power Supply – the in-car cigarette lighter. He was half right. We’ve settled on USB as the standard – simply because it’s ubiquitous. A few days ago, the ITU finally caught up with the rest of the world and endorsed micro-usb as the [...]
It’s been a while since I last wrote about Mobile Badvertising. Although we’re constantly told that mobile advertising is going to be HUGE, you wouldn’t know it from looking at the adverts on mobile sites. Over this occasional series, I’ll be picking examples from popular UK sites. I’ve tried to avoid naming the sites in [...]
No. Learning a new skill is hard. Evidentially, twitter is too hard for some people. Robert Llewellyn was rightly confused when he saw this… What Had Happened? Turns out, the BBC had read a tweet to Robert Llewellyn and mistaken it for a tweet by him When Is A Retweet Not A Retweet? Look everyone! [...]
Oct 222009
Let’s Make It Happen So, assuming each story has a URL, how would that look http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/22/post-national-strike-begins Turning it into a QR code using my encoder… That’s probably a bit large for a paper – you could shrink it down or cut down on the error rate, but then it would be hard to scan. Luckily [...]
After my disastrous attempt to upload data under Ubuntu, I found a Windows laptop to upload my energy usage data. The good news is that Sam from Humm is actively working on making the Adobe Air upload application work under Linux. So, how does the process of uploading your data to the service work? The [...]
Oct 182009
One of the things I love about Private Eye is the columns I don’t read. Corners of the magazine dedicated to the gossip of the classical music world, the perils of modern architecture, positively incomprehensible reports about big business buying into football. I care for none of these subjects, but I’m immensely relieved that they [...]
Sousveillance (pronounced /suːˈveɪləns/, French pronunciation: [suvɛjɑ̃s]) as well as inverse surveillance are terms coined by Steve Mann to describe the recording of an activity from the perspective of a participant in the activity,[1] typically by way of small portable or wearable recording devices that often stream continuous live video to the Internet. When this London [...]
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