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, the BBC published two blog posts which quickly filled up with comments, Facebook statuses were updated and all these links were retweeted until our fingers were worn to …
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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 said "20% of people polled - that's nearly a quarter..." Before she could finish, my grandmother loudly interjected, "Nearly a quarter? It's exactly a fifth!" The way people …
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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? Scrabble Banner So far, so good. A clear, professional banner. It clearly emphasises that - although it's an advert - it's endorsed by The Times; so you won't get scammed. Three mentions of the word "mobile" might be overdoing it though. Let's click... S…
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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 favourites - even if they've protected their tweets. You can't see the tweets of protected users. Here are my favourites http://twitter.com/edent/favorites You can also see who has m…
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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 standard for all phone chargers. Sam Manchin tweeted about now seeing USB charging stations in hotels. In Hotel USB For the last few years, every device I've bought has had a mini-usb charging …
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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 question, but sometimes it's unavoidable. The Lie Is that too good to be true? One of the reasons that advertising is dying is that we've become immune to its lies. When …
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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 Everything Electric SHOW & EXPO@Everyth1ngElecI think they should be on #BBCqt, I know the oxygen of publicity argument but I believe 90% of people will see the truth of their hate❤️ 0💬 0🔁 014:17 - Thu 22 October 2009Dave@dfliteReplying t…
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angusprune@mastodon.lol 🫡@anguspruneThe guardian should have qr codes so I can teeet what I'm reading in the paper❤️ 1💬 0🔁 010:58 - Thu 22 October 2009 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... The URL in QR form 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. …
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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? All in one The Application is a real "one click" experience. It autodetects your SD card, sees which files are there, and sends them straight to the server after you click the button. Here we…
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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 are reported on somewhere. The Guardian's Saturday edition strikes me as a long form version of Private Eye, but written by those who would never use a sentence w…
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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, typically by way of small portable or wearable recording devices that often stream continuous live video to the Internet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u804C65q_Jk When this London Underground employee (now thought to be Ian Morbin) had a bad day at work, he thou…
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I've been thinking about James Whatley's discussion asking When does Batman sleep? Here's the pull-quote... Sometimes Brian, I find myself stuck in front of the laptop at like 10pm on a Sunday night. The kids are in bed, the wife isn’t far behind and there I am answering customer care questions over Twitter with some guy in Geneva! This isn’t my day job. I’m a developer. My question to you is sir; when does Batman sleep? I find myself in a somewhat similar position. My twitter account, like th…
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