Terence Eden. He has a beard and is smiling.

Terence Eden’s Blog

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Dabr, Dabr, Everywhere...

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I contribute code to Dabr - a mobile twitter client. It's a great project to keep my hand in the world of PHP, APIs, SVN, and all the other tools that are essential to the modern online world. Dabr's strength for developers is two-fold Dead easy to install. Unzip the files, fill in your API key(s), upload, done. It's under an incredibly permissive Open Source MIT License. Essentially …

London Web Standards - State of the Browser

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Photo of me holding a microphone. I'm wearing a T-Shirt with the HTML5 logo on it.

Here's the introduction I gave to London Web Standards for their State of the Browser conference. Slideshare seem to have screwed up some of the formatting, but here are the slides. State of the Browser - London Web Standards from Terence Eden Full details of the day on Lanyrd. Thanks to Nick and the rest of the team for inviting me. It was an excellent day full of demos,…

Back to BlackBerry

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Photo of me taking a photo of my BlackBerry. My face is reflected in the screen.

This is a Necropost - rescued from AudioBoo and transcribed by AI because I'm lazy. 🔊 Back to BlackBerry boo🎤 edent 💾 Download this audio file. Hello there, AudioBoo. I'm just in the middle of another grand phone experiment. I'm moving back to BlackBerry. Yes, after about a year, year and a half of being an Android Boy, it's time to go back to BlackBerry. So I've picked up the Torch,…

Getting Images from a Foursquare Checkin

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Photo of a MacBook. The decal sticker is of Iron Man. His hand blaster is replaced with the Apple logo.

"Oi!" shouted Whatleydude, "Get Dabr to show images from foursquare checkins!" "Righty-ho sir!" I said. I started coding furiously. Of course, things are never quite as simple as I first thought.... So, how do we go from http://4sq.com/fgIWov to 1 Expand the URL Get your Bit.ly API Key. http://api.bitly.com/v3/expand ?shortUrl=http://4sq.com/fgIWov &login=YOUR_BIT_LY_USERNAME …

Stop Smoking With A QR Code?

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It looks like the Government is to force cigarettes to be sold in plain packaging. QR codes on packets of coffin nails have appeared before as concept advertising. I thought it would be interesting to see if QR codes could be used for good. Here's my attempt (I'm not a graphics designer!) Original image via WeMadeThis. The first QR code goes to Direct.gov.uk's mobile friendly Smoking…

How Do You Upgrade An eBook?

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As I've mentioned before, Jasper Fforde is one of my favourite authors. His latest book "One of Our Thursdays is Missing" is a brilliant work of fiction - but contains a rather worrying flaw. Well, I say a "worrying flaw" - I mean an error. All books contain errata - I think that's a given - but outside of academia, Jasper Fforde is the only author I know who offers upgrades to his books. …

Remote Storage: Ubuntu One vs Dropbox

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Logo for Ubuntu One.

I've been looking for a way to manage my backups. Burning DVDs and then leaving them around the house doesn't strike me as a sensible way to preserve my data any more. I just want a simple way to thrust my files onto the cloud with the minimum of fuss. The two big contenders I could find are Ubuntu One and Dropbox. Both allow me to map a drive and seamlessly sync my files just by copying them …

#O2Fail - What You Need To Know About Mobile Phone Content Control

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WARNING This article and pages it links to, contain information about pornography and sex education which may be offensive to Daily Mail readers. These are the hurried lunchtime writings of a chap with too much on his plate. So, O2 has apparently angered the Internet Gods by switching on its Adult Content Filter. This means anyone who wants to look at adult material on the web will have to…

Review: S16 Mobile Phone Watch

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Like many people, I no longer wear a watch. I've got a phone which tells me the time and data - why do I need something cluttering my wrist? The Evolution of the Watch I wasn't always this way, I used to love high-tech watches. Throughout my teenaged years I had one of those calculator watches - enabling me to add up my pocket money and write "5318008" for instant humour. In 1999, I…

RBS Treat QR Codes Like They Treat Our Cash

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Oh RBS! Is there anything you touch that doesn't turn to shit? You take our money, lose it, then pay it out to yourself. Still, at least your latest advert contains a QR code. Bet you haven't managed to screw that up. Oh... On the back page of the 25 February 2011 edition of the City AM newspaper, is this lovely specimen. Thankfully, City AM have placed their paper under CC BY NC. Let's…

Email Via QR Codes

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The Metro have been on quite a QR splurge recently - this is their latest effort encouraging people to write in to the paper. On the surface, it's quite a simple idea - yet Metro have needlessly complicated it. The Process The simplest process would be Scan Code Send Email That's not what Metro have done. By using Scanlife as an intermediary, they change the process to Scan …

Kindle Wallpaper: Books are weapons in the war of ideas

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A book towering above some flames.

I was reading this article on Armed Services Editions of books distributed during World War 2, when I came across this extraordinary propaganda poster. Original image is from The Boston Public Library on Flickr under CC BY NC. What strikes me is how detailed the poster is. The power of the quote. The sheer neutrality of the sentiment. Books - any book is a weapon. Whether it is The…