NA! BLO! PO! MO! It sounds like a Judoon war cry - "Na Blo Po Mo!" But rather than legions from the Shadow Proclamation, it is an amassed horde of bloggers poised to do battle with the enemy. Gentlemen - the enemy is us. I noticed that I had averaged a blog post every few days in October - I wondered if I could beat that and still retain some vestige of quality. During BarCampLondon I heard Abizer talk about NaNoWriMo - while I didn't think I could manage a novel, I was fairly sure I could…
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I first heard of Dans Le Noir? last year and have been itching to go ever since. Dans Le Noir? is a restaurant with a gimmick. You eat in the dark. I don't mean that the lights are dim; there are no lights. Mobile phones and watches with luminous dials are banned. There's not so much as the ethereal glow of LEDs from around the room. All is dark. You choose your meal in a dimly lit bar then, guided by your blind waiter, you are lead through a series of curtains until you are ensconced in total …
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Earlier this month, the lovely people at FreshCase sent me some boxes of wine. Alex Hilton wanted to know how easy it was to recycle. So, for your edification and delight, I present... Recycling The FreshCase Disclaimer These boxes of wine were sent to me for free. Enjoy alcohol responsibly. Do not attempt without adult supervision. …
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I feel a bit guilty about including NatWest's latest mobile advert in my Badvertising section - because it's mostly very good. But it shows exactly why you need to carefully examine every link within your site and see how useful it is for your customers. You may have noticed this animate banner as you wander around the mobile web. NatWest Advert Here it is in context NatWest Ad on Times Site So, what do we see when we click on it? The Good NatWest Mobile Site Now, this is pretty good! …
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America and Canada both celebrate a holiday called "Thanksgiving". Although, for complex reasons, the celebrate it at different times of the year. Outside of North America the holiday simply doesn't exist. Much like the US doesn't celebrate Guy Fawkes night - the British don't celebrate Thanksgiving. So, I was a little surprised to see this advert for #tweetsgiving on my mobile. What is tweetsgiving? For now, let's ignore the perils of assuming that your country is the entire market…
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I'm an Apathist. It's a funny sort of mix between the various flavours of Atheism and Agnostism. At its very root is the fact that I just don't care. Arguments about religions and their various gods are tedious; by their very nature there is no way of resolving them. So, lets take some points. See if you agree or disagree with my reasoning. There is no evidence of gods. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Pascal's wager shows (when corrected for high numbers of go…
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For the last four years, I've been using a chipped XBOX as my media centre. Running XBMC, it has managed to play everything I've thrown at it. Recently, though, it has had a real problem playing standard DVDs. Aside from percussive maintenance, the only way that I know to fix something is to crack it open and have a fiddle! I've opened my Xboxes several times before - if you're new to it, you'll need a TORX screwdriver set (Size 10 & 7 are the only two bits you actually need) and a regular…
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Ewan of Mobile Industry Review has published his weekly newsletter in which he is somewhat critical of Vodafone 360. The newsletter is not available on his website, so I'll quote excerpts of it here. This is a tricky blog post for me to write. I am involved in some aspects of Vodafone 360 (mostly My Web) but I certainly do not speak for my employers. I'm currently on holiday - and have been for the entire week - so I haven't had any contact with work colleagues before writing this. This …
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Seesmic, a service I've not tried before, have released a Twitter client for the BlackBerry. Is it any good? How does it compare with the features of Dabr or the usability of UberTwitter? Find out! Getting the client was fairly simple, but could be better. Simply visiting http://seesmic.com was enough to bring up a mobile friendly page with download instructions. However, scrolling down presented this mess. You simply can't rely on users to know what make, model or firmware version they…
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I get irrationally annoyed by things. Take a look at this festive stocking filler: Puzzle Cube While this would be a diverting little puzzle, it isn't properly a Sudoku. Getting each face to have 1-9 may be more challenging than a traditional Rubik's Cube, it doesn't have that beautiful arrangement that Sudoku has. Indeed, it's rather ugly as each row is 12 squares whereas there are only 9 digits to play with. To that end, I wondered if it would be possible to create a 4*4 faced puzzle…
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There are many reasons to love the BBC. In my opinion, one of the truly great things they do is offer free tickets to show recordings. Through the BBC tickets site and TVRecordings.com I've seen - for free - The Now Show, HIGNFY, The News Quiz, Mitchell and Webb as well as assorted TV and Radio pilots. Brilliant. An evening of watching some of the biggest names in comedy without paying a penny. The only thing they ask for is patience as they re-record all the bits which went wrong the…
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There now follows a quick run through of how you go about wirelessly updating your BlackBerry. The total process took just under an hour. This was a BlackBerry 9000 updating from 4.6.0.266 to 4.6.0.301. What's really annoying is that there's no automatic propt to tell you there's new firmware. I wonder how many people out there are cursing their BlackBerry without realising that a simple firmware update will give it a new lease of life. The process worked more-or-less flawlessly. Just m…
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