tl;dr - Excluding people, even with a "nominal" fee is exclusionary, and that can be a problem. Before reading this post, you may want to understand what I mean by "privilege". You should also understand where you are on The Global Rich List. The heavy-handed schmaltz that is Aaron Sorkin's Newsroom made an excellent point on its final episode. Voter registration which requires a driving…
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When giants fight, it is the grass which suffers. As the never ending patent wars between the the titans of the mobile industry rumble on, one thing is becoming clear. The technology world is stepping into an abyss from which even the mightiest empires shied away from. It is said that the only thing which kept the planet safe from all out nuclear war was the threat of Mutually Assured…
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Only fools make predictions. So here are my predictions on the future of social media. In the original days of computing, every user had their own computer. Well, Turing had his own computer... Then, everyone had to timeshare on a massive mainframe. Later, every user had their own computer. Now, we're back to mainframes. Sure, we call it "cloud computing" or "thin clients" but it amounts to…
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You may not have read the book Are Women Human?" Don't worry - neither have I. But the book sits on my shelf staring maliciously at me. The précis is simple: "Human Rights" prevent slavery, promote equal treatment, etc. Women are sold into slavery, are discriminated against, etc. Therefore, women aren't human. I'm a reformed 21st century kind of guy. I believe in treating women …
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Two years ago, a bunch of smart people told the BBC that its plans to build iPlayer for Android on Adobe Flash was nuts. We argued loudly, passionately, deployed logic and reason, and provided specific technical details. Naturally, we were ignored. Sure, Flash was only on a few high end devices now, but the BBC were confident that Flash would be soon be available on all Android devices and our …
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I've never been good at growing facial hair. When I was at university, I tried growing a beard for a play I was in. The play was a resounding success - my beard was not. Thin, straggly, patchy, and itchy. At the aftershow party, I put the beard's fate to a vote. All the men in the cast voted to keep my rugged pursuit of manliness. All the women voted to destroy the womp-rat nestling on my…
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I was recently interviewed in The Guardian talking about the use of mobile phone in cultural institutions - museums, libraries, galleries, etc. I was talking about the QRpedia project I co-founded. During the course of the interview, a phrase fluttered into my head - "The Engagement Economy." It wasn't a phrase I'd heard before - although Jane McGonigal wrote an excellent paper in 2008 with…
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After an entertaining discussion at BarCamp Berkshire about video games, I decided to treat myself to an Xbox 360. After several happy years with a Nintendo Wii, I was keen to see what the new state of the art was. I picked the current top pick console and, I must say, while the games are great the console is somewhat of a disappointment. I picked the limited edition Xbox 360 320GB Star Wars…
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Sixteen months ago, I climbed a rattly staircase behind a restaurant to a fairly typical "start-up loft". My first taste of InMobi. I was enthralled! I've spent the last year driving the developer relationship process in the company, watching as we've grown from 15 people in a small room to 70 people in swanky London offices on the Strand. InMobi has sent me all over the world - South Africa, …
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Regular readers will know that I think Woking Council's subsidy of curchgoers is ridiculous, illegal, and unfair. It's an issue I've raised with local councillor Carl Thomson in writing and on Twitter. A few days ago I entered into a discussion with him online about the issue. He has since deleted the tweets. But, as we know, the Internet has a long memory - so here they are. I've reordered a …
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This is a bit of a brain dump of how I got a 3G USB dongle working on the Raspberry Pi. Following on from getting the Raspberry Pi to send SMS. That's The Power Of Love The first thing to say is use a powered USB hub! I had lots of problems getting the modem working when it was plugged directly into the Pi. A 3G signal takes more power than the Pi's USB sockets can supply. In the above…
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I recently read about an innovative telephone call scam. A scammer rings the mark and asks for her credit card details. If the mark refuses, the scammer tells her to hang up the phone, then dial 999 and ask for "Sergeant Scammer of the Fraud Squad". The mark does so, and is connected to what they assume is the emergency services. However, because the scammer hasn't hung up at their end, the…
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