Another Google Privacy Flaw - Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information (Disclosed)


My wife likes to set reminders for herself in Google Calendar. Recently, she added a note to her personal Google Calendar reading "Email alice@example.com to discuss pay rise" and set the date for a few months from now. She'd had a discussion with her boss, Alice, and they'd agreed to talk about salary later in […]

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Billions of Tweets


The Twitter logo.

Numbers matter to some people. It's sometimes not important who did something first - but rather who did things on "milestone" numbers. Here are the billionth messages posted on Twitter. 1,000,000,000 annchan@annchan2「ほのちゃんに歯が生えた」のほのかちゃんがもう19歳て!あれから19年!http://tinyurl.com/5lrcjv❤️ 424💬 5🔁 005:49 - Tue 11 November 2008 Although Ann is still on Twitter, the website they pointed to is long since gone. […]

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Let's get the IEC Power Symbol into Unicode


I've just launched a campaign to get the IEC Power Symbol into Unicode! A couple of months ago, I asked this question on HackerNews I was looking for the electrical "standby" symbol - AKA IEC5009 / IEEE1621. You know, the circle with the line through it. The one that's on every single bloody piece of […]

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Newspapers Shouldn't Recycle Their Print Copy for the Web


I guess most newspapers use the same CMS to add articles for their printed edition and their web edition. It's mostly ok - but when a journalist (or copy editor) creates content, they should always think about all the ways it can be displayed. Even if they had inserted an image of The Attorney General […]

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Malicious Use of the HTML5 Vibrate API


There is a new API in town! HTML5 will (soon) let you make the user's device vibrate. What fun! Obviously, it's useful for triggering alerts, improved immersivness during gameplay, and all sorts of other fun things like sending Morse Code messages via vibration. At the moment, Chrome (and other Android browsers) ask for permission before […]

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The Hardest Problem In Encryption? Usability.


Nelson Mandela giving a lecture.

I have been reading a wonderful account of how The ANC in South Africa developed and used encryption to avoid persecution by the Apartheid regime. The article is a good 15,000 words and will take you some time to read. It is a fascinating account of how an ersatz encryption technology was developed by enthusiastic […]

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UI For Drunks


In app design, we often talk about designing for the user in context. For example, a taxi app can't rely on a perfect GPS signal in a crowded city, a user in the countryside may not have brilliant bandwidth, battery life is not infinite so we should limit certain features when power levels are low. […]

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Poor IDN Support From Major Webmail Providers


As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm sick of people not being able to spell or pronounce shkspr.mobi correctly. So I've decided to double down and start using my alternate domain 莎士比亚.org. It's pronounced "Sha-shi-bi-ya", if that helps. Getting my email account set up with my hosting provider was easy enough but it turned […]

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[SOLVED!] Why Are MessageLabs Blocking My Emails?


Updated - see end of post! I am not a happy bunny. Last year, while trying to buy a house, Symantec's MessageLabs decided to block my Estate Agent and my bank from receiving any emails from my personal domain. In the middle of a rather stressful house purchase, I had to swap my email addresses […]

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Reverse Stereo on HP Premium Headsets


I've started talking a lot more over VoIP. The microphone on my MacBook Air is basic, but serviceable - so I thought I'd treat myself to a new mic headset. I went with the HP Premium Digital Headset from Amazon. The headset is USB - and worked instantly with Ubuntu Linux: It even has a […]

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