Saturday was a bit of a Busman's Holiday for me. The Mobile Tech 4 Social Change Camp was held in the London offices of Vodafone. Certainly an interesting venue for a BarCamp - not quite as plush as the Guardian venue for #BarCampLondon09, nor as hip as Wallacespace for SMCLondon09, but surprisingly good for a smaller camp. It's certainly given me a new appreciation for the office space in w…
I've been fairly happy using Blogger.com to compose and publish my blog posts. But it's become obvious that it's an old and outdated platform which isn't receiving as much love from Google as it should be. I've been persuaded by Torgo and others to play with Wordpress. All I knew about it before today was that every blogger on twitter keeps moaning about it - so I really wasn't quite sure what …
There has been much discussion recently as to whether the BNP are becoming more acceptable to mainstream voters. Are people really happy to let the world know that they support the BNP and their policies? Will they publicly show their allegiance on a social networking site like twitter? Do you know how many of your twitter friends are racists? There are two ways to tell: Directly. You see …
Don Norman wrote a fascinating article on the Toilet Paper Algorithms I've long been intrigued by the central premise of the "Design of Everyday Things" that the basic interactions with normal objects - from teapots to motor vehicles - leaves a lot to be desired. It's something which is also picked up on in Edward de Bono's book "Simplicity. So, I was in a toilet when I happened upon this…
Recently, I've seen a lot of people retweeting content that I've already seen."How very annoying," I thought to myself, "I wish someone would do something about that."So, like any self-respecting geek, I rolled up my sleeves and got on with it :-)My PHP is a little rusty, but luckily the twitter API is fairly easy.My first pass was an abject lesson of inefficiency and illiteracy. Here was my…
I'm continually frustrated with Nokia. They make truly excellent hardware but always seem to produce the most disappointing software. The N95 & the N810 are perfect examples of this. Powerful and innovative computers let down by shoddy software. So, when I heard that some clever hackers had ported Google's Android OS to the N810, I leapt at the chance to reinvigorate my sadly neglected…
I am greatly enjoying playing Zynga's Mafia Wars on the Cadbury's iPhone. There are two fairly interesting UI flaws which I'd like to point out... The first is the screen which allows you to alter your stats - this is what it looks like. However, this is what most people will see. Can you spot the subtle but important distinction? Proximity implies relation. The word "Energy" is nearer to…
I want to ignore the debate about whether it's right or wrong to "censor" books based on the sexuality of their subject matter.It doesn't matter, at this stage, whether Amzon's deranking of LGBTQI works was a glitch, policy or the work of trolls. What matters is the action taken by the "online community" and Amazon's reaction to it.Firstly, why would anyone take the word of an Amazon CSR as…
Bob-The-Taxi is a warmer, friendlier take on Marrion & Geoff.Bob, a down on his luck ageing reprobate is reduced to ferrying around his rich & famous former friends in his decrepit old car.Watch as his simple minded questioning makes his guests unintentionally reveal more about themselves than they ever expected.Staring Ricky Gervais as Robert Llewellyn.You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll want to…
I'm very happy being a vegetarian. There are, however, some highly annoying problems that all vegetarians encounter. The first is, when going to a Michelin Starred restaurant, only having a single menu choice. Usually it's cheese salad. Or mushroom risotto. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to have a single item suitable for my dietary preferences, but would it kill restaurants to give us veggies …
This was a talk I gave at Social Media Camp London in 2009. In it, I describe my experiences working with user-generated-content, pornography, and other adult material. This was one of my earliest BarCamp talks, and contains several ideas which now seem quite outdated.I was attempting to warn people about accepting UGC - not only the danger it posed to their sites, but also to their sanity.The…
