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 the "http://" represents 5% saving on Twitter's 140 character limit for messages, this is great. …
Continue reading →
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 votes. Why This Is a Dumb Idea The wisdom of the crowds relies on an informed crowd. Asking pe…
Continue reading →
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 to hear - spoke with knowledge ad passion. Even the police (!) were charming and even took some of…
Continue reading →
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 visually appealing, consider that not everyone has a fast mobile Internet connection. They may also h…
Continue reading →
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 will pre-populate the text box with "@topgold @whatleydude @dabr". It should remove any duplicates…
Continue reading →
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 year, it's... Rachel Armstrong I first met Rachel at BarCampAfrica UK. I thought she was barking m…
Continue reading →
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: 550px;max-width: 100%;font-family: sans-serif;margin: 0;margin-bottom: .5em;padding: …
Continue reading →
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 up its sleeve. Clicking on it doesn't take you away from the current page - it displays an overlay …
Continue reading →
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. It entertains me, informs me, keeps me on time and allows me to rapidly communicate with a variety…
Continue reading →
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 eBooks, word wrapping issues and some minor bugs with symbols. You can now mount the eBook on Linux - I…
Continue reading →
(Edit 20100315 - 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. (Edit 20100318 - SpinVox is now cancelling all individual users' accounts) SpinVox Cancelled Enter …
Continue reading →
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 Twitter users. I present this as an exercise in devious thinking - and also to show how our…
Continue reading →
