The OAuth / App Anti-Pattern

By On 21/04/2012 · 13 Comments · In mobile, usability

OAuth was designed to combat an anti-pattern.

Typing your username and password into a third party site is bad idea. A really bad idea. I mean, you may think it’s a bad idea to give your bank details to a Nigerian prince but that’s just peanuts compared to giving away your password to an [...]

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Open Source Shakespeare (in MySQL)

By On 20/04/2012 · 10 Comments · In Shakespeare

My good friend Richard Brent has often complained that my blog has very little Shakespeare content. Despite the domain name, I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about The Big S. For shame! Fear not, my Brentish-Boy, this post is all about Shakespeare. And MySQL….

Ahem…

When I first started shkspr.mobi it was [...]

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Do In App Payments Piss Off Users?

By On 19/04/2012 · 1 Comment · In mobile

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BlackBerry PlayBook and Ubuntu Linux – HOWTO with Screenshots

By On 18/04/2012 · 2 Comments · In linux, mobile

Here’s a simple way to copy files to and from your BlackBerry PlayBook when you’re using Ubuntu. This should work with any form of Linux.

This is a step-by-step tutorial with screenshots.

On The PlayBook

Plug your PlayBook into your Linux computer using a USB cable. You may see this screen (or similar) you can [...]

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Context Specific Content Surfacing

By On 16/04/2012 · 1 Comment · In mobile, usability

In a mixed paradigm environment, how do you ensure content is surfaced which is context specific?

By which I mean – how do you make your content serve the user’s time-bound constraints?

What I’m trying to say is – serendipitous discovery must be restricted based on temporal imperatives.

Or, to break it down further, a [...]

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#TeaCamp – Social Media Guidance for Civil Servants

By On 14/04/2012 · 2 Comments · In politics

On Thursday, I attended my first TeaCamp. It’s a mini-meetup for UK Gov folk doing interesting digital things.

These are some random jotterings based on the discussions both at the event and at BeerCamp afterwards. All conversations were under Chatham House Rules.

Social Media is a problem for all organisations – whether public [...]

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Should <img> Deprecate “height” and “width”?

By On 14/04/2012 · 1 Comment · In mobile

Image adaptation and resizing is a hot topic at the moment. With devices of varying screensize accessing your site, how do you ensure that the crappy 240*240 phone gets a reasonable experience while still making everything look gorgeous on the retina-busting iPad?

One of the very first things we’re taught in HTML school is that [...]

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TfL QR Followup – 5,000 scans per month!

By On 10/04/2012 · 6 Comments · In qr

At the start of 2012, I revealed how many scans TfL’s QR campaign was getting.

A lot of comments on Twitter & Google+ dismissed these results as a success. A typical response was:

70 scans a day? In a city of millions? Rubbish!

This fails to address something that advertisers are conspicuously [...]

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The Reluctant Landlord

By On 09/04/2012 · 2 Comments · In /etc/

I am an evil, capitalist, unfair bastard of a landlord. At least, that’s what my worry is. I try really hard to be honest, fair, and uncuntlike as possible.

I never wanted to be a landlord, I wanted to be a lumberjack! but somehow I ended up as one.

Let me roll back a [...]

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A Year of QRpedia!

By On 02/04/2012 · Leave a Comment · In qrpedia

An email from FourSquare this morning reminded me what I was doing a year ago today.

I spent the morning at The British Museum doing the first public experiments with QRpedia.

This is a video of the historic occaision.

So, here’s a quick run down of what this volunteer-lead project has acheived [...]

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