Archives for January 2006

Four things (for Heather) (January 27, 2006) I'm doing this for Heather and for anyone who ever reads this site because I've been too busy and too distracted trying to get some movement in various areas of my life to post here as much as I'd like....

links for 2006-01-26 (January 26, 2006) The Flickr logo-maker allows you to construct your own personalised logo in the Flickr style that we've all come to know and love it's potentially difficult to tell why such a device is so useful, given that the logo...

Links for 2006-01-24 (January 24, 2006) The West Wing has been axed - the last episode will air on May 14th 2006 I can't believe this - admittedly it went through a bit of a dull patch a couple of years ago, but it's been...

Links for 2006-01-23 (January 23, 2006) The Slanket is the best blanket ever - very large, very warm and with sleeves so you can change TV channels! If they hadn't sold out of these, I'd have already ordered one. They look toasty. How to trace...

Links for 2006-01-19 (January 19, 2006) Apple pulls past Dell's stock price and Steve Jobs is delighted Apparently a few years ago, Dell suggested that Apple should be sold and the money returned to its shareholders. This was before Steve Jobs' return to the business,...

Apple fix iTunes Ministore howler... (January 18, 2006) Presumably bowing to pressure, Apple have changed the way that their new integrated ministore functions in iTunes so that now it's 'opt-in' rather than 'opt-out if you can'. I posted about this situation in a subtly titled post a few...

Links for 2006-01-18 (January 18, 2006) Albert Hoffman, the father of LSD talks about his 'problem child' to the New York Times This is one that's lurked in my stash of 'things I must post' for a good few weeks, but as usual I'm not...

A del.icio.us design gripe... (January 17, 2006) I'm loath to complain in public about a service that I love so much, but I do not understand why del.icio.us' submission form doesn't limit the amount of characters that you can input into it. Instead, you're left to work...

Links for 2006-01-17 (January 17, 2006) The Million Dollar Homepage has sold every single bloody pixel Some of them are being resold by rather unscrupulous people, but what the hey. Obviously you have to hate the person concerned because he thought of it and you...

Preston to win! (January 16, 2006) Sometimes it's difficult when you're writing a weblog to know how to change tone - you've just written something trivial and flighty, and now want to talk about something real and serious that matters to a lot of people. It...

Links for 2006-01-16 (January 16, 2006) A New Scientist article describes the hyperspace work of Burkhard Heim that the Scotsman picked up on last week It's a more sober article than perhaps I was expecting, which points out the absence of peer review and the...

Links for 2006-01-15 (January 15, 2006) Google Video has a clip of The Worlds Largest Nuclear Explosion from The Discovery Channel The creepy bit is when it displays the effect it would have on London - with the city itself erased in the first blast...

On Metafilter's folksonomic subdomains... (January 14, 2006) I'm going to move on quite quickly back onto something way way less embarrassing and mainstream back into the boring semi-beating heart of one of my pet work-related fetishes, the folksonomy. In particular I thought I'd talk about a new...

On being on television... (January 14, 2006) Television is such a strange enterprise! I don't really know how else to put it. I get an e-mail in the afternoon from Tim Levell at Sky News saying that they're looking for someone vaguely clued-up to talk about weblogs...

Links for 2006-01-14 (January 14, 2006) "Music giant Sony is launching a venture aimed at promoting talented gay and lesbian recording artists." What a strange move. I suppose it makes some sense to have a team surrounding gay artists that can understand the issues that...

Potentially embarrassing TV appearance! (January 13, 2006) I'm a bit nervous about mentioning this here (just in case I look like a complete idiot) but for those of you that are interested, I'm probably going to be on Sky News this evening very briefly talking about weblogs...

Links for 2006-01-13 (January 13, 2006) The Bureaucrat in Your Shower Fascinating little article with a bit of a Libertarian perspective about how the US government stops Americans having proper showers like they had when they were kids... Internet is for porn (World of Warcraft...

Links for 2006-01-12 (January 12, 2006) Get back to work, George Galloway! "As Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow, George Galloway MP earns an annual basic salary of £61,708. Paid by you, the British taxpayer."...

Cynicism and stupidity at the iTunes ministore... (January 11, 2006) Yesterday's Apple keynote wasn't enormously exciting, but there were a couple of interesting products. I'm still expecting to buy myself an iMac, but now I'll be getting one of the way shinier and fast Intel ones. And the MacBook Pro,...

Links for 2006-01-11 (January 11, 2006) Channel 4's two-part series, "Root of Evil" sees Richard Dawkins talk about his understanding of the dangers of religious thinking I'm watching the show and - as usual - I'm stunned by what I see as the credulity of...

Links for 2006-01-09 (January 9, 2006) Mac Rumors do their rumour round-up before MacWorld on Tuesday... They don't know bloody anything this year! Or at least, I'm hoping they don't - because the stuff they're talking about at first impressions is all a bit meh......

Eagerly awaiting an Apple Media Hub... (January 7, 2006) While I'm on a roll and getting all my wanted-to-post-but-didn't-have-time stuff out in public, I thought I'd just put out my stall again with regards to what I think an Apple Media Hub should be like. With MacWorld only three...

Google become the latest to distribute TV... (January 7, 2006) A few months ago I wrote a piece called Will subscription media kill broadcast? in which I stuck on the internet my long-held belief that the six major players in the distribution of pay-for video content online (the long-term replacements...

On Charles Kennedy's resignation... (January 7, 2006) I'm not a great commentator on UK party politics on this site. That's not to say that I don't have strong political beliefs. Far from it - I have clear and well-established views on a lot of issues, I care...

Links for 2006-01-07 (January 7, 2006) expialidocio.us is a flash interface for viewing your personal del.icio.us tagcloud for any given period of time It kind of choked on the sheer number of tags I have, but still pretty cool. What I really want to see...

On the upcoming Carson Workshops summit... (January 6, 2006) Quick announcement - I'm going to be talking at the upcoing Carson Workshops summit on The Future of Web Apps on the 8th of February in London. It's a one-day conference for developers and web application builders that's going to...

Some thoughts on Brokeback Mountain... (January 6, 2006) I went to see Brokeback Mountain this evening with a lovely group of people, and I think it made an impact on all of us. It really is what the hype says it is - an intelligent and sensitive film...

Links for 2006-01-06 (January 6, 2006) Slate's astonishingly weird piece on Germany and 'Dinner for One' 'British TV executives see it as fit only for foreigners, or they would rush to broadcast it themselves. Why Germany finds it so funny and the British don't is,...

Links for 2006-01-05 (January 5, 2006) Ricky Gervais and Matt Groening have a little love-in as Gervais completes his first full Simpsons episode... "The Simpsons creator Matt Groening said Ricky Gervais did such a good job writing an episode of the hit US comedy show...

In praise of chocolate business cards... (January 4, 2006) Earlier this year I went to State of Play III and I always meant to write up what happened there, but I never had time. Too easily distracted by shiny new things and by the confusion of switching jobs and...

On the clumsy milking of mass amateurisation... (January 4, 2006) It's reading all this processed text that gets me so backed-up, I'm sure. I need a webloggic irrigation to get the flow back. But at the moment, every scant fragment is a movement in the right direction, so I'm going...

Links for 2006-01-04 (January 4, 2006) It's January, so it must be time for the Bloggie nominations! The only weblog awards thing that I ever participate in, the Bloggies are voted for by the community itself and have been going almost as long as my...

Links for 2006-01-02 (January 2, 2006) Mr Morgan cut all his hair off! This is almost certainly of limited interest to those of you who don't know early UK weblogger and notable grumpy bugger Mo Morgan. But for those who do know him, woyzer!...