4g mobile · 7 comments · 500 words · Viewed ~1,140 times
(The author currently works for Telefonica - but these views are his own) Do you remember when mobile phones were in their infancy? The frequencies allocated to Racal's Vodafone and to BT's Cellnet were mutually incompatible. You couldn't simply switch your SIM to another handset, you had to specifically make sure that it supported your carrier's frequencies. As the mobile market matured, "dual …
Continue reading →android hp mobile Windows Phone 7 · 3 comments · 900 words · Viewed ~234 times
So, a year after throwing the baby out with the bathwater by dumping its Palm WebOS software, HP has decided it wants to get back into the smartphone game. HP's position isn't quite as perilous as Nokia's "Burning Platform" was, but there are definite similarities. Apple sells more iPads than HP sells PCs, their traditional market for printers is drying up, its share price is on the wane, and a …
Continue reading →panasonic review tv · 1 comment · 900 words · Viewed ~1,928 times
After a crappy experience with an LG, I decided to go for a slightly more reputable manufacturer - Panasonic. I went for the cumbersomely named Panasonic TX-L37ET5B 37-inch Widescreen Full HD 1080p 3D LED TV with Freeview HD. Looking at the TX-L37ET5B's specs it's a close to perfect TV. Four HDMI ports Enough miscellaneous ports (PC, scart, component, composite) to be able to plug…
Continue reading →flounce twitter · 28 comments · 750 words · Viewed ~13,654 times
It's the height of self-indulgent wankery to blog about why one is flouncing away from a social network. So, here's my rant. There are many like it - but this one is mine. Let me start by saying something which I hope is obvious. Twitter belongs to Twitter. It's their game and they can take their ball home any time they like. Therefore, all whinging and whining by jilted developers ought to…
Continue reading →app.net Open Source php utf-8 · 200 words · Viewed ~1,233 times
So, I stayed up bashing my head against a brick wall all last night! PHP's string functions aren't (yet) UTF-8 aware. This is a replacement for subtr_replace which should work on UTF-8 Strings: function utf8_substr_replace($original, $replacement, $position, $length) { $startString = mb_substr($original, 0, $position, "UTF-8"); $endString = mb_substr($original, $position + $length,…
Continue reading →app.net javascript Open Source twitter · 350 words · Viewed ~738 times
In 2009, Kosso and I petitioned Twitter to allow us to search for Tweets by their "in reply to" ID. The idea was that developers could created a properly threaded view of conversations. Of course, Twitter being ultra-responsive to developers, did absolutely nothing. Skip three years into the future, and App.net is providing all the API goodness that Twitter doesn't. This means that we can…
Continue reading →adn app.net appdotnet Social Media · 11 comments · 600 words · Viewed ~481 times
tl;dr - Excluding people, even with a "nominal" fee is exclusionary, and that can be a problem. Before reading this post, you may want to understand what I mean by "privilege". You should also understand where you are on The Global Rich List. The heavy-handed schmaltz that is Aaron Sorkin's Newsroom made an excellent point on its final episode. Voter registration which requires a driving…
Continue reading →3 comments · 450 words · Viewed ~365 times
When giants fight, it is the grass which suffers. As the never ending patent wars between the the titans of the mobile industry rumble on, one thing is becoming clear. The technology world is stepping into an abyss from which even the mightiest empires shied away from. It is said that the only thing which kept the planet safe from all out nuclear war was the threat of Mutually Assured…
Continue reading →Social Media Social Networks social objects · 2 comments · 550 words · Viewed ~238 times
Only fools make predictions. So here are my predictions on the future of social media. In the original days of computing, every user had their own computer. Well, Turing had his own computer... Then, everyone had to timeshare on a massive mainframe. Later, every user had their own computer. Now, we're back to mainframes. Sure, we call it "cloud computing" or "thin clients" but it amounts to…
Continue reading →feminism · 8 comments · 950 words · Viewed ~1,754 times
You may not have read the book Are Women Human?" Don't worry - neither have I. But the book sits on my shelf staring maliciously at me. The précis is simple: "Human Rights" prevent slavery, promote equal treatment, etc. Women are sold into slavery, are discriminated against, etc. Therefore, women aren't human. I'm a reformed 21st century kind of guy. I believe in treating women …
Continue reading →Adobe android BBC flash iplayer mobile · 3 comments · 400 words · Viewed ~401 times
Two years ago, a bunch of smart people told the BBC that its plans to build iPlayer for Android on Adobe Flash was nuts. We argued loudly, passionately, deployed logic and reason, and provided specific technical details. Naturally, we were ignored. Sure, Flash was only on a few high end devices now, but the BBC were confident that Flash would be soon be available on all Android devices and our …
Continue reading →beard hair me · 4 comments · 500 words · Viewed ~678 times
I've never been good at growing facial hair. When I was at university, I tried growing a beard for a play I was in. The play was a resounding success - my beard was not. Thin, straggly, patchy, and itchy. At the aftershow party, I put the beard's fate to a vote. All the men in the cast voted to keep my rugged pursuit of manliness. All the women voted to destroy the womp-rat nestling on my…
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