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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Last week, I posted this tongue-in-cheek suggestion. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentPrediction*: iPhone5 & Samsung Galaxy S 3 to have IDENTICAL hardware. Battle of the OS / ecosystems!*Well, wishful thinking!❤️ 0💬 0🔁 008:22 - Thu 26 April 2012 Wouldn't it be great if there was a proper show-down between the two major players? You could really compare which OS was best given the same hardware. …
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You cannot fail to have noticed that in most American films and TV shows, all the phone numbers start 555. This is a reserved number in the North American Numbering Plan. It means that it's a number which will never connect to a real person or service. So you can avoid the situation where a number is spoken on a show, or in a song, and everyone tries to call it - much to the annoyance of the…
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This was the sign that greeted me as I made my way into The Camden Head for the first Museums Showoff... Now, I've no idea why I was the headliner - but I certainly wasn't going to complain! Museums Showoff is a spin-off from the popular Science Showoff. The idea is that ten speakers come along and show off. They chat about what they're doing, things they've made, stuff they've built, or…
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I've been listening to the Leveson inquiry. A large part of the exchanges seem to go like this: Jay: Turning to page 51. Witness: Which bundle? Jay: 1606. Witness: 1660? Leveson: No, the page after. Jay: Paragraph 7. Witness: I don't have a paragraph 7. Jay: Ah, I have an earlier print out. Leveson: You'll find it in tab 15. Witness: Is this Volume 2? And so on, ad nauseum. Surely there's no…
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No, I'm not talking about Masabi's innovative technology, but of this rather odd bit of advertising found on the back of a train ticket. There's no specific call to action - but there's not much space to play with. Let's give it a scan... sigh A non-mobile site. With an Adobe Flash plugin in the top right which won't work on any iPhones. Why on Earth do marketing companies insist on pointing…
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OAuth was designed to combat an anti-pattern. Typing your username and password into a third party site is bad idea. A really bad idea. I mean, you may think it's a bad idea to give your bank details to a Nigerian prince but that's just peanuts compared to giving away your password to an untrusted site! So, that's why we use OAuth. Rather than handing details to a random site, we authenticate…
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My good friend Richard Brent has often complained that my blog has very little Shakespeare content. Despite the domain name, I don't think I've ever blogged about The Big S. For shame! Fear not, my Brentish-Boy, this post is all about Shakespeare. And MySQL.... Ahem... When I first started shkspr.mobi it was intended to be an easy way to get Shakespeare on your phone. At that time, there…
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We live in a world of our own creation. This means we can find it inconceivable that outsiders don't know the acronyms we use daily. How can anyone possibly live without understanding what we do? Customers don't understand your company's acronyms, processes, or business model. It's worse than that, though - most users don't even recognise your company's name! Here's a great example. In Zinio's …
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