Last year, I wrote about how to extract Location History from Google. Once again, Google have changed their URLs to make it even harder to get one's current location out of their data-greedy hands. It used to be the case that Latitude gave that information - but they killed it. Then they promised it in Google+ - but never delivered. Now they offer you a data-dump which they will email to you. …
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Train companies in the UK are uniformly awful. Because they are privately run but endure no meaningful form of competition, we get to see just how hostile corporations are to customers when left to their own devices. I am a long-suffering passenger on First Great Western. The line between Oxford and London regularly suffers from delays. According to their own statistics, journeys on that line …
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Twitter, as part of its never-ending quest to alienate users and appease the rich and powerful, have shut down Politwoops accounts. Politwoops monitored politicians' Twitter accounts and noted when they deleted a tweet. Most of the time deletions were done for the same reason we all deleted content - mispellings, broken links, etc - but occaisionally they caught politicians attempting to flush…
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As I get older, I begin to lose neuroplaciticy. I get angry and confused when I don't understand things. I get frustrated when I have to change my behaviour. It happens to all of us, to some extent, and it's one of the major reasons you should design your apps in a clear and consistent manner. I've been using Android - Google's mobile OS - it since before it was launched. I now love and…
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Virgin Media, the UK's semi-national cable broadband provider, is rolling out a WiFi sharing service - although it's not quite as altruistic as it may seem. Here's the email being sent to subscribers - followed by some commentary on what this means and whether it's a good idea for you to opt-out. Let's ignore them mispelling my name - and concentrate on the technical details. From September, …
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My solar panels deliver pure Direct Current electricity into my house. All my house has Alternating Current circuits. Therefore, I need an inverter to change the DC to AC. This is inefficient. Most of the electronic devices I own are powered by DC. So I plug little wall-warts into the AC sockets to convert back to DC. This is also inefficient. One of the DC devices I'll be getting soon is…
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Google have just announced their brand new WiFi router - OnHub. It promises to make WiFi connectivity a breeze, increase speeds, reduce buffering, and clean your carpets. Nestled at the bottom of the annoucement is this curious specification. That seems... low. Doesn't it? I did a quick tally of all the devices my wife and I have which use WiFi. My phone Wife's phone My ebook …
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My good friend Dan Appelquist recent wrote a fascinating blog post on solipsism as a design decision. He has a set of Lifx Internet Controlled Lightbulbs. They're great fun, but have some seriously screwy ideas about how people live. One key design of the app is to allow you to automatically switch off all your lights when you exit your house. That's pretty nifty, right? I am still…
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Journalist Dave Lee pointed out a disturbing new spear-phishing attack on Twitter. The phony account looks for people who are Tweeting their dissatisfaction with Lloyds Bank - one of the largest and oldest banks in the UK - and sends them messages urging them to log in to a fraudulent site. The tweets have some realistic touches - such as ending with "^LY" to signal the initials of who is…
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Like a lot of you, my Facebook feed often fills up with dodgy adverts for discount sunglasses. In this case, Mark's account has been hacked and the spammers are tagging lots of his friends. The post then shows up on my feed as "look what your friend is up to!" Annoying. So, here's how to stop it. There's a slightly obscure FB privacy setting called: Review posts that friends tag you in…
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I'm working on a new project which, unless UK copyright law radically changes, will only be available if you pop round my house :-) Yesterday... In 1960s the predominant form of music recording was in mono. Indeed, The Beatles weren't involved in many of their stereo mixes. If you listen to some of those early tracks, you'll get an idea of how stereo worked back in the day. For example,…
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Notes to myself! Suppose you want to create a surround sound file using Audacity. The app is a little obtuse, so this may clear up some confusion. When exporting, Audacity defaults to mixing down to stereo. You must adjust these settings: Edit → Preferences → Import/Export → Use Custom Mix Lay out your audio. Keep each track as mono. You can have as many tracks as you like and then downm…
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