Archives for August 2005

Links for 2005-08-31 (August 31, 2005) Mark Thompson's speech to the Edinburgh International Television Festival 2005 "But the idea that, in the age of the i-pod, the public would not welcome the opportunity to actually buy a download of a piece of music they have...

Links for 2005-08-30 (August 30, 2005) Matt Locke does some black & white portraits of the usual suspects (plus Ted Nelson) at this year's Open Tech Webb comes off looking best, as usual. I look like a dribbling freak... The Dutch version of Big Brother...

Reinventing Radio: On Phonetags... (August 29, 2005) This post concerns an experimental internal-BBC-only project designed to allow users to bookmark, tag and rate songs they hear on the radio using their mobile phone. It was developed by Matt Webb and myself (with Gavin Bell, Graham Beale...

An archaology of weblogging... (August 29, 2005) A much more exciting title than post, I'm afraid. I've spent most of the afternoon battling through an installation of MT 3.2 that has thrown up more unexpected pitfalls and collapses than a solo walk to the North Pole. But...

What lies beneath 'gay' and 'straight'? (August 29, 2005) There's an article I'd very much like to write about in the Guardian today, except that it seems to be one of the only articles in the damn magazine not posted up online. And worse still, I wanted to take...

Links for 2005-08-29 (August 29, 2005) How to configure iChat for Google Talk Interesting question - everyone talks about how Google represent a challenge to Microsoft, but I wonder what effect they'll have on Apple... BBC plans to put BBC One or BBC Two out...

Links for 2005-08-28 (August 28, 2005) Pastafarianism makes it into the Times (London not New York) Thanks to Mr Jones for finding and Flickring it......

Links for 2005-08-27 (August 27, 2005) A Flickr API version of UK-obsession Sudoku done with any tagged pictures - this has got to have been absolutely everywhere One of the best uses I've seen for the API yet - which pushes the whole concept of...

A review of Joss Whedon's "Serenity"... (August 25, 2005) Last night - eight hours after landing back in the UK - I went to see a very special movie. In fact I went to see a very special preview of a very special movie. I went to see...

Links for 2005-08-25 (August 25, 2005) From the sublime to the ridiculous - recording background noise from BarCamp and distributing it over the internet... When Podcasts Go Wrong! - this evening on Slightly Bitchy And Feeling A Bit Guilty TV! Leonard has some video of...

Thanks for the dinner invitation, Heather! (August 22, 2005) I just thought I'd share this with the world, because it might be the coolest dinner invitation I've ever received in my entire life. Thanks to Ms Champ and hopefully I'll see you this evening!...

In which Foo blows my head clean off... (August 22, 2005) So the whole FooCamp experience has ended, and frankly it's been pretty astonishing. It comprised roughly a hundred and forty potential talks to go to across ten rooms, assembled in an ad hoc fashion on the Friday night. Some of...

Links for 2005-08-21 (August 21, 2005) Boing Boing's $750,000 Intelligent Design challenge for the non-Pastafarian "This brings the total purse for anyone capable of proving that Jesus is not the son of Flying Spaghetti Monster to $750,000." Interview with John Gruber in which he discusses...

Links for 2005-08-20 (August 20, 2005) On last year's FooCamp: When geeks go camping, ideas hatch Not sure what I think about the media-take on these things. Certainly the event has a reputation... There's a rumour that a major US player is about to buy...

A parking ticket comes and goes... (August 20, 2005) So I've already got a parking ticket - and paid it - which reminds me exactly how fast-moving America is. I'll have kids and a wife by the end of next week, and maybe my descendents will come to Foo...

In San Francisco, briefly... (August 19, 2005) Jet-lag equals brain death - I don't know how else to describe it. It's like the whole cognitive part of your brain is replaced with blind incomprepension. I get hungry at completely random times, go to sleep at random times...

Links for 2005-08-17 (August 17, 2005) "Newsreader Michael Buerk has said "almost all the big jobs in broadcasting are held by women" who "decide what we see and hear"." "All [men] are is sperm donors, and most women aren't going to want an unemployable sperm...

Introducing Schulze & Webb... (August 16, 2005) I have a new favourite website representing two of my favourite people, Matt Webb and Jack Schulze who have formed a new company developing expermental prototypes in "software, display, manufacture, computing, networks, graphics and fiction". If you're looking for clued-up...

Links for 2005-08-16 (August 16, 2005) Did the BBC spam Wikipedia as part of a marketing ploy for alternative reality game, Jamie Kane? This is the first of two posts on this subject over the last day or so - read the other before making...

The Daily Show's Indecision 2004... (August 15, 2005) I'm still running around like a chicken with its head cut off, so you're just going to have to bear with me. Well, maybe that's overstating it a little bit. I suppose I haven't been running around insanely all the...

Links for 2005-08-12 (August 12, 2005) An interesting - if slightly predictable - article about how Microsoft will die from an Apple website Bit old, sorry about that. Been a bit busy. You wanna make something of it?...

Quick thoughts about the Apple 'Mighty Mouse'... (August 11, 2005) I managed to sneak Mr Hammond over to the Apple Store after work today to have a fiddle with the new Apple Mighty Mouse. I have to confess I was disappointed with it. Of course it looks amazing, a beautiful...

In which I raise a weary hand and wave... (August 11, 2005) You may be wondering why everything's got a bit quiet around here. Unfortunately, the whole flooding situation with my flat is still occupying most of my attention. I only tell you this stuff so that you'll forgive me for not...

Links for 2005-08-11 (August 11, 2005) You see the thing about Ruby on Rael is that it makes it so much easier to get complicated things done... Like, er... Pick apples from high trees or um... Keep Sam Ruby from getting tired......

Links for 2005-08-09 (August 9, 2005) Top 10 dot-com flops "Few of these companies actually made enough money to recoup that cash, and when their investors fled to the hills, these start-ups died dramatic deaths. These are the celebrity victims of the new-economy bust." In...

After the Flood... (August 8, 2005) Day One was frantic panic and mopping up water and washing saturated clothes and trying to clear everything up. Day Two was all launderettes and friends coming around and newspaper and second order mopping up. Day Three is a day...

In which everything gets wet... (August 6, 2005) I'm having a bit of a sucky day today. I woke up early this morning to get ready for a thing that Mr Hammond was organising, stuck on the washing machine and went back to bed. Forty minutes later, I...

Links for 2005-08-06 (August 6, 2005) After Apple's Mighty Mouse, comes their new - and funnier - Danger Mouse Probably only funny for British people of a certain age......

Looking forward to the weekend... (August 5, 2005) Too much work to do, but lots of interesting ideas going on in the background which makes a nice change. I was interviewed briefly on BBC Essex yesterday morning alongside a pretty smart American lady from HitWise. It was a...

Links for 2005-08-05 (August 5, 2005) Yahoo! Search - Audio Search Now this is very interesting indeed. I'll be exploring this one a lot more over the coming days......

Links for 2005-08-04 (August 4, 2005) It's kind of been everywhere, but Apple have announced their new 'Mighty Mouse' product Interesting design decisions - electronics replacing mechanics, non-obvious physical interfaces - but still kind of compelling......

On the same day, but slightly grumpier... (August 3, 2005) You know actually, as I read the Evening Standard piece in its full published version, I'm a little less comfortable with it than I thought I was. It really does concentrate completely on the idea of weblogs as diaries, which...

On a couple of media encounters... (August 3, 2005) Bloody hell, everything's kicking off now a bit. Er. Where was I? So there are a few random quotes from me in an Evening Standard article tonight. The journalist has decided to focus on the few scant bits that I...

On a few interesting photos... (August 2, 2005) The big fun nerd news of the last twenty-four hours has - of course - been Flickr's interestingness pages which use information like how many people have commented or tagged or 'favourited' or viewed each image to pull out the...

Links for 2005-08-01 (August 1, 2005) Identity Cards? If you're not a fan, there's a Pledgebank thing you can sign up for. I'm getting more and more fascinated by Pledgebank, but I'm mostly fascinated by why no Americans seem to be using it. This could...