Episode 29: The Pod Delusion Strikes Back!


After five long years, The Pod Delusion is back! This is a quick chat with host & producer James O'Malley. 🔊 💾 Download this audio file. You can listen to back-episodes at https://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/ and I thoroughly recommend sticking it in your podcast app. …

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The Usability of Unboxing


Home Signal Box.

I review a lot of tech kit. It is amazing just how bad the consumer experience is when you have a brand-new box in your hands. It can be as simple as difficult to open packaging, to the existential horror of a poorly translated manual. The first time a customer holds your product in their hands should be a moment of joy. Something to reinforce the notion that they have been wise with their investment. I'm going to walk through an example of a poor unboxing usability, in the hope that it will…

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Book Review: Do No Harm - Henry Marsh


A boring book cover.

What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut through the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? How do you live with the consequences when it all goes wrong? Henry Marsh reveals the exhilarating drama of surgery, the chaos and confusion of a busy modern hospital, and above all the need for hope when faced with life's most agonising decisions. I disliked this book. It has a smugness born out of a total lack of self-awareness.…

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Book Review - Sherlock Holmes vs Dracula


Sherlock Holmes stands smoking his pipe - a bat flaps in the background.

After a mysterious schooner runs aground in an English harbor with no human passengers -- only the dead captain, drained of blood -- a series of bizarre nocturnal crimes takes place in London. It can only be the work of Count Dracula, and only one man can save the city: the world’s greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes. This is a very silly book! I recently watched the amazing film "Batman Vs the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". It was exactly what I wanted to watch when I was 12. The plot is …

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Is LogMeIn leaking email addresses?


Fraud alert warning signs.

Like all security minded people, I use a unique email address for every service I sign up to. This week, I noticed I had started receiving spam to an email address associated with my Join.me account. Join.me is a screen sharing service now owned by LogMeIn. I signed up for a trial of Join.me back in 2012(!) and as far as I'm aware, never used it again. Checking my records, this piece of spam is the first email I've received to that address in 7 years. The email address in question does not …

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