We're in a fairly mature phase of social networks now. Broadly speaking, most social networks separate out into a few main groups. Eyes - e.g. services like Flickr for pictures and YouTube for moving pictures. Ears - e.g. AudioBoo for voices and SoundCloud for songs. Feet - e.g. FourSquare for where I am now and RunKeeper for where I have been (running). Hands - e.g. Etsy and Github show what I am creating. Mind - e.g. Twitter and Facebook for what I'm feeling and thinking, and…
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For the last few years, I've been trying to opt out of having any postal mail sent to me. Wherever a company offers online billing - I sign up in a flash. My insurance company are now bored of me saying "rather than posting the policy - can you email it to me instead?" I've opted-out of receiving unaddressed mail and I've signed up to stop junk mail. Mostly, I'm pleased to say, it has worked. The only things dropping through my letterbox are small packages from Amazon, the occasional…
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Last night, I ran my second Code Club at Woking Library - teaching kids how to program using Scratch. We're following CodeClub's syllabus which has loads of kid friendly lessons. The first lesson was a great success. It was held before the Christmas break - so I was eager to make sure that interest hadn't waned. Far from it - we were over subscribed! We had 10 PCs and 12 kids - which lead to some sharing of equipment. Everyone involved seemed to enjoy it (including me) - so I thought it…
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English is a funny old language. That my mother tongue doesn't bother with internal consistency doesn't bother me much - except when it comes to Text-To-Speech. Using Google Maps to provide route guidance in the UK is a challenging affair. Driving through Reading, the computerised voice continually mispronounced is as "Reading". Err... that is to say, it should have said "ˈrɛdɪŋ" instead it said "ˈriːdɪŋ" - that is, "red-ing" rather than "reed-ing". Ok, hetronyms are a notoriously difficu…
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As I was driving to work today, I noticed I was being tailgated. The driver seemed distracted by some electronic gizmo and wasn't paying much attention to his surroundings. I started to take a note of the car's numberplate when all of a sudden the front grill exploded with flashing blue lights, a siren started howling, and the vehicle sped off. "Ah," I thought, "so that's what an unmarked police car looks like. I wonder if there's a way to tell if a car belongs to the police..." I suspect…
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My first QR code post of 2013! I'm a long term fan of QR codes. I know some people don't like the idea of augmenting reality with specific tags for computer vision - but I do. Some people prefer RFID/NFC. Others still prefer dedicated augmented video apps. As I've written many times before, QR codes have several substantial advantages over alternate technologies. QR is a free and open standard. Compatible with every phone with a camera. No need to build or use a dedicated…
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There are no words to adequately describe the horrific rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandey. I remember, several years ago reading a short piece of speculative fiction which postulated that China would go to war over access to women. Generations of female infanticide would leave the country with a severe gender imbalance. Hoards of men would be unable to find a wife, would become violent, and would lead their country into bitter conflicts with other countries in order to capture their…
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The Internet is "the world's most efficient copying machine" -- Cory Doctorow. This is a long and rambling blog post which asks two questions: Given that we can only read one book at a time - can we set up a "Kindle Stock Exchange" for our unused media? If so, what effect would this have on content producers and sellers who rely on artificial scarcity? This has been mulling over in my head for some time. Image from FreeFoto.com Transactional Friction One of the great advantages…
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I've moaned before about the crap adverts on social networks. Facebook has suddenly been getting a lot worse. Today they decided that it would be great to show me adverts for a steak restaurant. Which, would be fine, if I hadn't been vegetarian for the last 13 years... Facebook have been spamming my wall with all sorts of rubbish - dodgy share trading deals, timeshare scams, PPI reclaim cons, malicious Android apps - really bottom of the barrel stuff. So, as I'm too weak-willed to abandon…
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I've taken a bit of a break from the conference circuit. With my previous job at InMobi I was attending 10 different events per month (on average). Some were merely hosting, others were presenting. It got really tiring after a while. As much as I love the UK tech scene, it can be a bit repetitive to see the same faces and answer the same questions over and over again. It also took a toll on my personal and social life. It's rare that you take someone on a date to a mobile conference :-) …
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...or do I just need new glasses? I'm not a graphic designer. I find it hard to get into the mindset of excellence through beauty. I understand user flow, interactions, happy paths, delighting the user, humane design, and so on - but when it comes to the art of making something look nice I'm all at sea. I understand that, as Aral Balkan so perfectly puts it, design is not veneer - but that doesn't stop my confusion. This is a failing of mine - one which I'm trying to rectify - but recently…
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(Hopefully the last naval gazing post of the year...) I asked if using a WordPress theme to emulate the Svbtle theme was unethical. The results were mixed - you can see some of the discussion on HackerNews and AppDotNet. Broadly speaking, people fell into four categories. People who had never heard of Svbtle and didn't see a problem with using a similar theme. People who had heard of Svbtle and didn't like the ethos behind the platform, so didn't like the theme. People who were …
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