WordPress has a built in media player. Chuck in an .MP3 or other sound file, and it will play directly in the browser. Nifty! The only problem is that is looks a bit... dull. 🔊 Celeste🎤 Alex Fitch 💾 Download this audio file. (From Alex Fitch's Eola) It works, but it's not exactly what you'd call gorgeous, is it? Wouldn't it be nice if we could have something like this? Well, the…
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I have a childhood memory of my father having a blazing row with a census-taker. It must have been around the 1991 census, the person collecting (or perhaps dropping off) the forms was determined to find out my father's name. "But you must have a Christian name!" He cried. "And I tell you that I don't!" Said my father, stubbornly. "Of course you do, everyone does! You have to tell me for the…
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I like to tinker. My wife picked me up the new Raspberry Pi Zero. It's an ultra small and ridiculously cheap computer. How small and cheap? They give it away free on the cover of magazines... Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentIf you hurry down to WHSmith in Oxford, there are still a few @TheMagP1 copies left.❤️ 3💬 0🔁 208:10 - Fri 27 November 2015Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentReplying to @eden…
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Another day, another bug! LetsSaveMoney.com is a "money saving" site. It offers discounts on a wide range of products and services, and is financed through affiliate marketing. Links removed, because the site has disappeared. My Trade Union, Prospect, has just launched a white-labelled "Members' Rewards" based on LetsSaveMoney - that's how I came across this bug. It's a depressingly familiar…
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It's always interesting to read over older Sci-Fi books and see what they got right about their future. I was re-reading Cory Doctorow's excellent "Makers" recently, when I came across this passage: Now the place was *spotless* -- and what's more, it was *minimalist*. The floor was not only clean, it was visible. Lining the walls were translucent white plastic tubs stacked to the ceiling. "You …
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I'm really enjoying driving the BMW i3. I'd love to have it tweet its driving efficiency, or upload its location to my server, or let me turn on its air-conditioning when the temperature gets too warm - there are a hundred interesting things to do with the car's data. The official app has some of these features - but is slow, ugly, and a pain to use. BMW used to have an API available for…
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Nominet has, after much prevaricating, launched its latest money grubbing venture plan to revolutionise the UK Internet industry. Rather than having fusty old example.co.uk or example.org.uk businesses can go straight for example.uk - Mind = BLOWN! There are, of course, some obvious downsides to this plan. It's always been the case that people could register misspellings of domains and…
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The good folk at THZY-UK have sent me a gadget to review - the YHDO Security Camera with Night Vision. I'm comparing this to other cameras I've reviewed in the past - including Y-Cam and Sercomm models. The first thing to note is that this is one of the cheaper cameras on the market. At around £40, it's a third of the price of the Y-Cam models. But does that low price means it …
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One of the questions we frequently get asked at work is "would you recommend the company's products and services to your friends and family?" It's a question which I've been asked in just about every company I've joined - and it's getting increasingly harder for me to answer. Obviously, if you work in a B2B company making industrial blast furnaces, it's unlikely you're going to recommend Aunty…
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In every company I've worked for, the Intranet has been where good ideas are sent to die. Outdated org charts, canteen menus which are updated sporadically, attempts to write an FAQ for the antiquated expenses system, and a maze of links dedicated to the Byzantine HR process. One thing I've never seen was information which could in any sense be considered confidential. Don't get me wrong,…
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Regular readers will know that I take a keen interest in Twitter spam. It seems the more popular a network gets, the greater the propensity for spam. A shame, but it seems to be the way of the world. Recently, one of my Tweets which mentioned SoundCloud was retweeted in rapid succession by a variety of accounts. Take a look at the mugshots below and see if you can spot a pattern. Ok, let's …
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There's a meme which makes its way around the 'net whenever a popular service makes a significant change. I've seen this said about Reddit, imgur, Twitter, Facebook, Xbox, Spotify, FourSquare - and just about every other modern product. It imagines a Product Manager thoughtfully contemplating the future direction of their service. In the 1990s, I was a teenager and my parents gave in to peer …
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