The Twitter Engineering Team have a set of text processing classes which are meant to simplify and standardise the recognition of URLs, screen names, and hashtags. Dabr makes use of them to keep in conformance with Twitter's style. One of the advantages of the text processing is that it will recognise that www.example.com is a URL and automatically create a hyperlink. Considering that dropping…
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While on the anti-Digital-Economy-Bill protest, I bumped into Denny de la Haye. I've known Denny virtually for a while - and he's commented on this blog a number of times. Denny is standing for parliament in Hackney South and Shoreditch. He is standing on a platform of Direct Digital Democracy. If he is elected, he will run an online poll for his constituents. Whichever way they vote, he v…
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On Wednesday, I attended the "Stop Disconnection Demo" to protest the Digital Economy Bill outside parliament. Protestors I've been on a few protests in my time. Anti-war, anti-nukes, anti-tuition fees and the like. This was one of the most cheerful protests I've ever attended. The protesters were friendly and erudite. Passers-by seemed happy to take our literature. The speakers - while hard…
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If you're outside of the UK, you will see adverts on the BBC site. This also happens on the mobile site. Here's a typical example. BBC Advert Intercontinental are a premium brand. No doubt their mobile advertising is really good. Right? First Impression Intercontinental Advert Page 1 We start off with a mobile friendly page. Almost. There are five flaws here. Large image. While vi…
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People have been very excited to see some new functionality in Dabr - the mobile Twitter client I develop for. But what is it and how does it work? @@ and geotag Reply to All The @@ symbol allows you to reply to all the people mentioned within the tweet. It only shows up on tweets which mention other users - so you should only ever see it when it can be used. Hitting @@ on the above tweet…
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Ada Lovelace Day is ... ... an international day of blogging to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do Last year I blogged about Delia Derbyshire and Helen Keegan. This y…
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Last night I went to the NESTA's "What's App?" discussion. You can watch the event at NESTA's website. .social-embed {all: unset;display: block;}.social-embed * {all: unset;display: revert;}.social-embed::after {all: unset;}.social-embed::before {all: unset;}blockquote:not(*) {all: unset;}.social-embed a {cursor: pointer;}blockquote.social-embed {box-sizing: border-box;border: .5px solid;width: …
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We all know and love the humble banner advert. That little rectangle of joy which seeks to distract our attention. It's a ubiquitous format on the web. It's a format that, for better or worse, has migrated to mobile. Here's the mobile Guardian showing off its latest advert for STA travel. A Normal Banner Ad? Or Much, Much More? This being a super-whizzy smartphone, the advert has a surprise …
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ARRRRRGGGGHHHH! Dead BlackBerry Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Due to a crazy taxi driver (are there any other kind) and a violent swerve, my BlackBerry Bold 9000 is no more. Bereft of life, it rusts in pieces, and other such Pythonesque metaphors. Arse. I truly feel like I'm missing an extension to my body. There's a symbiotic relationship which develops between a geek and his phone.…
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Well, it's been ages coming, but it's finally here. Elonex have released V0.47 of the 511EB software. V0.47 was released on 12th March 2010. The previous firmware (V0.41) was released on 18th January 2010. The next release should include note taking functionality. You may be interested in part 1 and part 2 of my review. This firmware update resolves some issues when processing very large…
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(Edit 2010-03-15 - Thanks to Mobyaffiliates for choosing this post as Carnival of the Mobilists post of the week!) I'm a long time fan of SpinVox - the Voicemail to SMS service. In my review of them last year I found seven ways they could improve their service. Due to SpinVox's rather beleaguered year, there have been no noticeable improvements or enhancements in the service they provide. …
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This morning, when I logged on to Twitter, I saw a user who I didn't recognise tweeting away in my timeline. I wracked my brains thinking about how they could have gotten in there before I realised it was a long-dormant friend who had changed their name and avatar. But, in thinking about how a spammer could infiltrate one's timeline, I think I came up with a fairly bullet-proof method to spam…
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