Well. That was an intense NaBloPoMo! I published a blog post every day in November - as I have for the last few years - but this was unlike anything that went before. I had over 50,000 viewers in a single day due to one of my posts, got hit by reddit and HackerNews, and […]
Continue reading →Is Samsung Spying on your Printer?
Compare and contrast... [The] Xerox 914 copy machine [...] was used in soviet embassies all over the world. The machine was so complex that the CIA used a tiny camera designed by Zoppoth to capture documents copied on the machine by the soviets and retrieved them using a "Xerox repairman" right under the eyes of […]
Continue reading →The Future Is Now - But Not Everybody Knows It
In July this year, I spoke at the 25th Privacy Laws Annual Conference. One of the things I most love doing is causing an audience to gasp with shock. I was asked about how businesses should best go about protecting the privacy of the customers - somewhat provocatively I replied "Why should they? Customers don't […]
Continue reading →Blue Screen Bat'leth
Last year, I quickly created a blue-screen cut out of a strange photo of the police. Today, I was alerted to this rather lovely photo. Apparently, some 6 years ago, the police confiscated this "deadly martial arts weapon capable of decapitating a man." Well, I couldn't resist! Perhaps this can become one of my blog's […]
Continue reading →Rewired State - UK Parliament 2012
This weekend, I went to Rewired State's Parliament hackday. I teamed up with amazing front end designer Max Bye and statistician par excellence John Sandall to create a data visualisation of Parliament's Demographics. Are the houses representative of the people in terms of gender diversity? Are the Labour Party younger than the Conservatives? Are the […]
Continue reading →Should you edit old blog posts?
The fifth anniversary of my blog went by without me noticing. I don't know if I'm a narcissist, but I quite often find myself re-reading old entries. Sometimes it's because I've Googled for the solution to a problem, only to find I helpfully blogged about it yonks ago - other times I'll read an article […]
Continue reading →What Twitter Can Learn From App.net's Developer Incentive Program
Twitter makes a lot of money out of me. At least, I assume so. The code I helped write, and the sites I run, are used by millions of Tiwtter's users. I've sent a tonne of traffic their way, and what has Twitter given me? Not even a "thank you." Seriously, no one from Twitter […]
Continue reading →I Don't Want To Be Part of Your Fucking Ecosystem
I was chatting with a friend who expressed what I'm finding is a fairly common opinion. Well, yes, I'd love to move to Android - but all my content is in iTunes. I discovered that it wasn't apps which were the problem - buying them again is a pain, but most are free. It's media […]
Continue reading →What's The Front Page of HackerNews Worth?
One of the things that jollies me along during NaBloPoMo (where I have to write a blog post every single day in November) is seeing that people are reading my blog. I like watching the visitor counter tick gently upwards. I also love to see people discussing, arguing, and commenting on the posts I write. […]
Continue reading →Hackdays - How Much Preparation is Acceptable?
I don't watch much TV. During the last episode of The Apprentice, my Twitter-feed was suddenly flooded with people talking about Nick Holzherr's app "Whisk". Apparently it was some kind of recipe / shopping / mash up thing called Whisk. Sounded good. Sounded familiar. Then I remembered this from CadburyHack Best use of APIs at […]
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