I've been pretty disgusted with how the Tories are treating equal marriage, so I decided to put the case to my local MP. Here's my letter and his somewhat disappointing reply. Dear Jonathan Lord, I understand that there will shortly be a free vote on the issue of equal marriage. Some politicians have insisted that this is an issue which is not a priority for the electorate. I disagree -…
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I love Android, I really do. I'm chuffed to bits with the Galaxy Nexus I won recently. I've had a dozen Android phones before that - stretching all the way back to the HTC Magic. But it's getting obvious that Android has a serious design problem - even with the gorgeous new "Holo" theme for ICS. The issue is one of consistency. Users have limited cognitive surplus and often rely on muscle…
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Another brilliant event from Over The Air. The perfect mix of lectures, hacking, and relaxing in a country manor / museum. And, to top it off, my hack won a brace of prizes! The Wifi just about held up. Although I think it's fundamentally impossible to provide decent connectivity to 200+ people. Especially when they're geeks. Dan Benton@dogsbodyorgIt's people like @edent that break…
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Last week I attended Google's Big Tent event. I may write about some of the panels later, but I want to focus on how I flummoxed the Minister for Universities and Science - David "Two Brains" Willetts (Photo by Paul Clarke) I posited to the Rt Hon Gentleman, that student loans were crippling the high-tech workforce of the country. When I graduated, I was unable to get a bank loan for a…
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Regular readers may know that I'm not a big fan of Valkee - the magic light you shine in your ears to improve your mood. Back in September, I complained to the ASA about the Valkee website. I felt that it was making unfounded claims, was confusing testimonial with science, and was generally misleading. In December, the ASA referred it to their counterparts in Finland for investigation. Today, …
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Before Cadbury's inaugural hackday began there were a number of rumblings on the blogs about the extact nature of Cadbury's intentions. See Thayer Prime's and Emma Mulqueeny's thoughts on the subject. As it happens, after a bit of gentle poking, some of the terms were clarified. The event itself went rather well, but I'd like to point out a few points where it didn't quite live up to the Hack…
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The argument over the nano-SIM is a distraction. It's a sleight of hand designed to catch the industry off guard and fool it into doing something really stupid. The SIM is designed to do a number of things; encryption, address storage, hold SMS, etc. Most importantly, it's designed to be swappable. With GSM, you can choose your phone and your network provider separately. Want the iPhone? Hate …
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I've already blogged about the Leveson Inquiry's disturbing habit of releasing evidence as scanned in PDFs. I had a suggestion from digital journalist Kevin Anderson Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentGah! The #leveson witness statements are photocopied & scanned in levesoninquiry.org.uk/evidence/?witn…Disastrous for open justice - shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php…❤️ 0💬 0🔁 110:12 - Fri 11 May 2012Mr And…
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I had a chance to play with Senseg's feelable technology today - here's a quick video showing it off. The guys are (naturally) cagey about their product launch, but here's what I was able to glean. It will be multi-touch compatible. The tablet appeared to be Android - that's just the demo unit though. Developer tools will be available. Consumer launch in the first half of…
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The entire premise of Red Dwarf rests on this one scene: Lister's cat is discovered because he takes a photo of the two of them and has it developed in the ship's photo lab. In 1988 - when Red Dwarf was first aired - nothing in the world seemed more natural than to get a photo developed in a lab. Today, however, the very thought is laughable. It seems as archaic as posting a letter, ringing…
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Did you know that you can to link to a specific Tweet on Twitter? The URL looks like this: https://twitter.com/#!/edent/status/197967209459499008 Pretty obviously, that's the user's name and the ID of their tweet. Simple, right? Not really, click on that link and you'll see this: That's my name in the URL bar - but the Number 10 Press Office's tweet on the page. What's Going On? Have I…
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For reasons best known to themselves, certain sections of the entertainment industries seem to believe that bolting the stable door shutting down The Pirate Bay will stop all piracy. It's as though they think that people won't be able to use a proxy, circumvent the Cleanfeed block, or simply use a search engine to find another torrent site. Build Your Own Pirate Bay? Proxying is a very simple…
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