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…
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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. …
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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…
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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 sai…
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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…
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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…
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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 …
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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…
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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, …
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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…
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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…
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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 …
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