tl;dr - If a mobile web browser recognises an Emoji, it should display it natively. If not, it should fall back to a supplied web font. Is this possible? When Android and iOS find Emoji in text, rather than display them as black-and-white fonts, they show them off in gorgeous colour. For example, the unicode smilie is ☺. Depending on your system, it will look something like this: From Tim Whitlock So far, so nifty! But here we hit a snag. Not every computer has a font which contains all t…
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I can only assume that on their first day at Google, new employees are given their Android phone, a ChromeBook, a self-driving car, and complementary Laser Eye Surgery. That's my theory on some of the problems besetting Android's Lollipop release. I've ranted about Lollipop before, and now I'd like to point out two particular problems. All of these tests were performed on a Nexus 4 running Android 5.0.1, and the most recent versions of the apps. Word Wrap I've spent two years moaning about …
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I don't get Google. I really don't. Some of my smartest friends work there - and yet, as an organisation, Google continually demonstrates an imbecilic attitude to quality. I've already shared some of my thoughts on Android 5.0 Lollipop - it's slow, buggy, and shows that Google either doesn't bother with testing, or simply doesn't care about quality. Let's take a look at a few examples - all taken from 5.0.2 (the latest release at time of writing) on the Nexus 7. Widgets The "Power control" …
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It's been a full year since we had solar panels installed on our semi-detached house in Oxford, UK. By coincidence, the panels were switched on during the Winter Solstice - the shortest day of the year. So, how have they performed? Tracking Solar Performance - The Easy Way The solar panels have a generation meter. It tracks every kWh the panels produce. As of today, it stands at 4,061kWh. To put that into perspective, the average electricity usage per household in 2013 was 4,192 kWh -…
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Oxford's Bodleian library makes high resolution scans of Shakespeare's First Folio available under a Creative Commons licence. Pip Willcox tells us more. 🔊 Pip Willcox and the First Folio🎤 Terence Eden 💾 Download this audio file. About A Minute is an amuse-bouche for podcast listeners. No long intro and outro. No waffling on. No adverts, competitions, arguing, or begging for iTunes reviews. You get to listen to an interesting person chat for about a minute - that's it! Intro …
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Talking to Kerri Russell about the Oxford Corpus of Old Japanese. 🔊 Kerri Russell on Ancient Japanese🎤 Terence Eden 💾 Download this audio file. About A Minute is an amuse-bouche for podcast listeners. No long intro and outro. No waffling on. No adverts, competitions, arguing, or begging for iTunes reviews. You get to listen to an interesting person chat for about a minute - that's it! Get About A Minute as soon as each episode goes live. Stick this Podcast Feed into your pod…
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As part of the Shakespeare Hackday I attended a few weeks ago, we discussed some interesting analysis which can be done on the text. Certain forms of analysis are hampered due to the archaic and inconsistent spelling. I wondered if that could be mined for anything interesting. For example, in modern UK English we use the word "honour". In modern US English, it loses the "u" to become "honor". So, how was it spelt in Shakespeare's day? I downloaded the XML representation of all the plays…
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Student Paula Clerkin has just run a successful conference for Women In Technology. Read about how she organised the conference, check out her blog, and follow her code on GitHub. 🔊 @kerpowla and InspireWIT🎤 Terence Eden 💾 Download this audio file. Get About A Minute as soon as each episode goes live. Stick this Podcast Feed into your podcatcher Or you can Subscribe on iTunes Intro music "Gran Vals" performed by Brian Streckfus. Stopwatch Icon by Ilsur Aptukov from The Noun P…
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As part of the Shakespeare Hackday I attended a few weeks ago, we discussed some creative uses of social media. Could we find people tweeting rhyming couplets from the sonnets, for example? I decided, in the limited time available, to create something much simpler. Because the Bodleian Library's scans of the First Folio are under a generous Creative Commons license, it's possible to share the images freely. And quite right too! I decided to place the archive onto Twitter. This account -…
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Once again I'm joined by Rosie Clarke. Today we talk about the artist Amy Sharrocks. 🔊 Amy Sharrocks sea-fall experience🎤 Terence Eden 💾 Download this audio file. To learn more about Amy Sharrocks' work, visit the Museum of Water and follow her on Twitter. And, as a special bonus, here's Rosie talking in a bit more detail about the Sea-fall. About A Minute is an amuse-bouche for podcast listeners. No long intro and outro. No waffling on. No adverts, competitions, arguing, or…
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Chatting with Oxford University's Kerry Russell about their Shakespearean Hackfest. You can access all the data from the Bodleian library's digital First Folio. You can also read about my Hamlet Audio Hack. 🔊 Kerri Russel and Digital Shakespeare🎤 Terence Eden 💾 Download this audio file. Get About A Minute as soon as each episode goes live. Stick this Podcast Feed into your podcatcher Or you can Subscribe on iTunes Intro music "Gran Vals" performed by Brian Streckfus. Stopwa…
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(These bugs were responsibly disclosed on 7th December 2014, and were reported fixed on 9th December 2014. I sought & received permission to make these findings public.) I love the idea of Keybase.io. It's a site which takes a lot of the hard work out of encryption. I've discovered (and responsibly disclosed) a minor vulnerability with their web service. It doesn't lead to anyone's details being exposed, or point to an underlying flaw with their services - it's just a slight lack of…
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