arblognot: February 2006

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Encyclopodia - wikipedia on your iPod

Encyclopodia is a free software project that brings the Wikipedia, which is one of the largest encyclopedias on the world, on the Apple iPod MP3-Player. It has been successfully tested on a third-generation iPod and on an iPod mini, but it should also work on other iPod generations.

More toys for boys (and girls)

EQO - Skye from a mobile phone

Fortunately it's still being developed!

What if Microsoft re-designed the iPod's packagaing?

It's a video - and beautiful too..

pop-soc to your heart's content

For you pop-sociology geeks out there:

Malcom Gladwell's blog

(I see we've been reading the same sources, Mr Bond!)

Move to dismiss against RIAA

Move to dismiss against RIAAAmongst other things they are citing:

The RIAA's attempt to recover $750 per song, while its actual damages are only 99 cents per song, is unconstitutional;

The mere act of making sound recordings available online does not constitute an actionable infringement.

e-bay buyers a stupid

e-bay buyers a stupid:

eBay sellers can boost profits by setting a low opening bid price and charging higher shipping charges, according to recently published research by Haas Professor John Morgan.

Buyers prefer a $5 item with $6 of delivery to a $10 item with free shipping.

Own Your Del.icio.us Links! - SlashLinks

Own Your Del.icio.us Links! - SlashLinks:

SlashLinks is a tool developed by Eyebeam R&D for automatically mirroring links from the popular social-bookmarking service del.icio.us to your personal or institutional website. Posting, tagging, and management still occur within the del.icio.us interface, but design and layout can now be fully customized on your mirrored site. The tool also adds blog-like year/month/day archives (similar to Kottke.org's remaindered links) to the typical del.icio.us or flickr style tag browsing.

Do you idolspize?

Do you idolspize?:

Those of superior beauty, character, talent and intelligence and, if friends, who are never less than loyal, supportive, generous and kind.

For this we loathe them.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Brilliant Button Maker

Brilliant Button Maker by LucaZappa.com

How marvellous...

Sunday, February 26, 2006

A very cool travel website

SkyScanner.net - Cheap flights - low cost and budget airline specialist in UK, Europe & Australasia

Compare prices on cheap flights with the major budget airlines in UK, Europe and Australasia.
SkyScanner is the No.1 resource for budget, discount and last minute flight information.

Check the month view to see a graph of the cheapest days to travel.

Friday, February 24, 2006

Ikea game

Not for the faint-hearted this one! Or Adrian perhaps.

guess the product for the name...

List of fictional expletives - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of fictional expletives A List of fictional expletives it does contain actual expletives as well

Quantum computer works best switched off

New Scientist Quantum computer works best switched off - News

"A non-running computer produces fewer errors," says Hosten

Skype and Vonage: thank you, and goodnight

Skype and Vonage: thank you, and goodnight The Register

(Next in the queue, Nokia...)

It's small, it's boring and won't turn any heads - but it probably spells the end of the road for Skype, Vonage and any other hopeful independent VoIP companies. It's Nokia's 6136 phone, which allows you to make calls over your home or office Wi-Fi network, as well as on a regular cellular network. UMA, or unlicensed mobile access, is the mobile operators' answer to the threat of VoIP - and now it's reality.

The real reason Skype isn't as good as it was

The real reason Skype isn't as good as it was The Register

... by inspecting the packets as they are transmitted through the network. Voice calls can be detected by their "signature" and when too many people are doing Skype or Vonage or Free World dialup calls, the ISP can set limits.
After (say) 100 sessions are started, "we can disconnect, or block new ones, or even slow down the rate they are transmitted," said Sandvine. "With customers who use this technology, we've got the traffic from 70 per cent to 20 per cent," he boasted.
One reason ISPs like doing this, is to encourage their customers to use the company's own VoIP system, rather than a rival's. If the packet is void, and is detected as from the cable company's own product, it is optimised - sent through faster than normal. Other packets are allowed to take their place in what's left of the queue.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Brilliant short interview with Steve Wozniak about Apple

What the other Steve is saying about Apple's striking resurgence

After being all but written off by the tech industry in the mid ‘90s, Apple Computer Inc. has made a startling resurgence. But that doesn't mean its latest strategies sit well with Woz.

and

Mr. Wozniak was in New Zealand recently for a four-on-four polo tournament played on two-wheeled, self-balancing Segway gyroscopic scooters.

of course he was.

Google Page Creator

Create your own web pages, quickly and easily.
Google Page Creator is a free online tool that makes it easy for anyone to create and publish useful, attractive web pages in just minutes.

British Trading Standards get upset with FireFox

Who could possibly be upset with the Mozilla Foundation for giving away its Firefox browser?

A great story about a trading standards getting upset with firefox for not being upset when people sell their free stuff.

Interesting article from the BBC about time

Time out of mind

We can't touch time, or smell it. Yet it is utterly inescapable. But, research shows, time is - at least partly - something we control in our heads.

It's about time...

Couple turn waste bags into fashion

Couple turn waste bags into fashion:

A couple in India have found a solution to the problem of plastic bags littering the streets of the country's capital, Delhi - by turning them into fashionable handbags.

Going it alone in business

A book about enterprise and making a business work - might be good!

Go it alone online

information grazing

A geeky article about finding information.

The Evolution of Information Grazing

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Protesting in favour of animal testing?

The pro-test protesters

Until now, animal rights protesters have made all the noise in a dispute over a new research lab in Oxford. But this weekend the city's famed academics are planning to hit back just as loudly, as pro-testing campaigners hit the streets.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Is your MP working for you in the UK's Parliament?

TheyWorkForYou.com: Is your MP working for you in the UK's Parliament?

TheyWorkForYou.com is a non-partisan, volunteer-run website which aims to make it easy for people to keep tabs on their elected representatives.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Google throws out US data demand

BBC NEWS Technology Google throws out US data demand

"Google has formally rejected a demand from the US government to hand over a week's worth of search records."

Don't be evil, indeed....

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Nice foodie blog

Chubby Hubby

I love burgers. Part of my fanaticism is my mother's fault. When I was younger, she made some pretty amazing cheeseburgers—chopped sirloin patties with American cheese on toasted Thomas' English Muffins. Even today, when I think about some of my best times as a kid, many of them involve me sitting at the kitchen counter, burger in hand. And in the mouth.

Google's justification for China

Official Google Blog: Testimony: The Internet in China

My name is Elliot Schrage and I am the vice president for global communications and public affairs at Google. My role is to help shape and explain the decisions Google makes as a company in its efforts to provide global access to information as quickly, conveniently, usefully, and comprehensively as possible.

I'm here today to answer any and all questions you might have about how we are attempting to do business in China. I certainly don't – my colleagues certainly don't – expect everyone to agree with our decision to launch a new service inside this challenging, complex, promising market. I hope my testimony will help explain how we came to our decision, what we're seeking to accomplish, and how we’re seeking to accomplish it.

Madonna has operation for hernia

Madonna has undergone a procedure to correct a hernia, the singer's spokeswoman has confirmed.

Amazon Plans Music Service To Rival iPod

In recent years, Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos has explained his company's deliberately paced approach to the digital-music business by saying he wants to avoid simply imitating the dominant player in the field, Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store.

Now Amazon, the world's No. 1 online retailer, is in advanced talks with the four global music companies about a digital-music service with a range of features designed to set it apart. Among them: Amazon-branded portable music players, designed and built for the retailer, and a subscription service that would deeply discount and preload those devices with songs, not unlike mobile phones that are included with subscription plans as part of the deal.

A 3.5" disk with 10 petabytes of data for $750

Colossal Storage Corp. - The "Atomic Switch" A Worlds First !

Just wait until 2009.

Write your biography by answering questions

The Remembering Site

A site which asks you a thousand questions. Takes your answers to these questions and turns them into a narritive structure for your autobiography. eg. I was born in London, Engerland in the Summer of 1968 it was a rainy day.

RIAA now say that copying your cd to your iPOD is illigal

creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use - from first para page 22

Babies get abstract with maths

News in Science - Babies get abstract with maths - 15/02/2006

Even before babies learn to talk they have a bit of a grasp of maths, according to new research concluding that infants may have an abstract sense of numerical concepts.

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | Licence warning over watching TV on computer or mobile phone

Guardian Unlimited Technology Technology Licence warning over watching TV on computer or mobile phone

Interesting. They should probably just scrap the licence fee really...

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

The Top Ten Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed

The Top Ten Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed

(Spark up the debate...)

So the news came out that the Half Life movie directed by Quentin Tarantino is destined to join the list of the greatest science fiction movies that were never actually filmed. It has damned good company...

The Top Ten Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed

Info Graphic linking 300 brands

Corporate Connection v.2, 2003 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

What is the connection between 3 celebrities, 35 corporations, 40 subsidiaries and more than 300 brands?

Completely free CRM?

vtiger - Open Source CRM, Customer Relationship Management

vtiger CRM is an Open Source CRM software mainly for small and medium businesses. vtiger CRM is built over proven, fast, and reliable LAMP/WAMP (Linux/Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) technologies and other open source projects.

A page of utilities that help you do stuff you want to Web 2.0 applications

I want to - a page of utilities that help you do stuff you want to Web 2.0 applications

"I want to..." or "I need to" or "How do I?" These are all questions we all ask all the time. This is a small collection of resources that will help to answer those questions. It is not complete, nor will it ever be. I will be adding to this on a regular basis, so feel free to bookmark it and come back and visit. Now listing over 300 applications.

Microsoft tastes sweet, sweet open source CRM | The Register

Microsoft tastes sweet, sweet open source CRM The Register

Interesting CRM and that

Google Baby anyone?

For the new born Googlers we have these baby creepers in 4 sizes to grow with your baby.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Valentine special: what is love actually?

Anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of "Why We Love," studied the brain circuitry that makes falling in love the intense, passionate emotion it is. She found that the brain sees romantic love as a reward, stimulating activity in the same areas that light up when a person seeks any kind of a reward, whether it's chocolate, money or drugs.

Good design on a tv network?

mediabistro: TVNewser

CNNI said the new on-air design is a "radical move away from the cluttered screens and heavy graphics that currently prevail in today's rolling news and business networks..."

Blog Breakups of 2005 from the Tate

Run Mac OS 10 on a PC?

What this means is that Apple’s best attempts to secure their OS have, ultimately, failed. For its best efforts, the company is unable to lock OS X to their hardware. Without doubt, this will have profound impacts on the company’s future as running OSx86 on a PC becomes less a hacker’s trick and more mainstream. When all it requires is the downloading of a DVD, that’s certainly the future we’re looking at.

In Rare Briefing, China Defends Internet Controls - New York Times

Chinese authorities are determined to stop "harmful information" from spreading through the Internet, but the controls it places on Web sites and Internet service providers in mainland China do not differ much from those employed by the United States and European countries, a senior Chinese official responsible for managing the Internet said today.

He cited, for example, statements on Web sites run by The New York Times and The Washington Post that reserve the right to delete or block content in reader discussion groups that editors determine to be illegal, harmful or in bad taste. Chinese media Web sites are also monitored in that way, he said.

A new machine which washes, dries and irons

Devon | Design may be housewives' choice

"A friend's father said he wouldn't have got married if I'd come up with this sooner," said [the inventor].

Celebrating last-place finishes at the Olympics. Because they're there, and you're not.

Nigerian 419er jailed for 376 years

419er jailed for 376 years

A Nigerian 419er was last Friday jailed for 376 years by a Lagos court for "stealing, forgery, impersonation and conspiracy to obtain money by false pretences" contrary to the Advance Fee Fraud Act

If Tarantino had made...

b3ta.com challenges

(I particularly liked Ronnie Darko...)

Listible!

Listible! Quick way to get resources

Lists, as you might imagine, of useful stuff, which go up the list (of lists) if you vote for them...

Robot moved by a slime mould's fears

Robot moved by a slime mould's fears:

A bright yellow slime mould that can grow to several metres in diameter has been put in charge of a scrabbling, six-legged robot.

Next Gen iPod to be called "Mobile Me"?

Apple’s quietly preparing something huge.:

[an iPod with] Bluetooth, and an always-connected “modem” service that will connect your iPod (and probably your iMac, your Laptop, your Desktop Mac) to iTunes (to start with) and to the net, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

London Tube Map in anagram

Monday, February 13, 2006

Skype don't even pretend not to be evil

Intel's mantra: Let's make a deal | CNET News.com

Would you avoid buying a PC with an Advanced Micro Devices chip inside because it wouldn't let you host an Internet conference call with six of your friends?

If you watch one episode of Top Gear ever

Watch this one: The boy's version of the winter olympics

BBC - BBC TWO - Top Gear

What's the point of being second. That's like driving around in Buzz Aldrin

This is almost certainly a very bad thing to do to a fish

This is almost certainly a very bad thing to do to a fish:

Goldfish + Mountain Dew + 9 Volt Battery = Lives - Google Video

A goldfish gets its bowl drained of its water, then the water gets replaced by Mountain Dew and the goldfish dies. The Mountain Dew is then drained and replaced with water. The goldfish is still dead, but is ressurected with a 9 volt battery.

What if Microsoft Never Existed?

This piece is the first in a series of articles that seeks to answer two basic questions: Where would the computing world be if Microsoft never existed? and Would the computing world be better off without its 20 years of influence

Watch the million dollar homepage evolve

the million dollar homepage evolve

TIME - In Search Of The Real Google

TIME.com: In Search Of The Real Google:

An inside look at how success has changed Larry and Sergey's dream machine. Can they still be the good guys while running a company worth $100 billion?

old article: On Google, Microsoft and Trust

but interesting to read again now:
On Google, Microsoft and Trust:

What all of this says, I think, is that Google is nearing a crossroads in determining its future path. They can take the Microsoft fork - and face the same scrutiny Microsoft does, or they can learn what the folks from Redmond have: trust is hard to earn, easy to lose, and nearly impossible to win back.

VOIP Startup Isn't Spyware, But It's Close

VOIP Startup Isn't Spyware, But It's Close:

A startup called Jajah launched its new VOIP service this past Monday, making telephone calls as easy as loading a Web page. But in doing so, customers may essentially be granting Jajah sweeping access to watch and even listen as they chat and surf the Web.

One In Two PCs Won't Run Vista's 3D Interface

One In Two PCs Won't Run Vista's 3D Interface

The fault, Peddie reported, was that the low-cost integrated graphics controllers customers have chosen process the 2D windows of Windows XP and Windows 2000 just fine, but lack the bells and whistles necessary to process the Windows Desktop Compositing Engine used in Vista. About 63 percent of the 203 million PCs sold used an integrated graphics controller, JPR reported.

Beyond CRM

http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/02/13/beyond_salesforce_crm/
With its winter release you can build three types of application – pure Salesforce.com applications; composite web applications that mix site code with your own and third-party applications; and client applications that use the Salesforce.com service as a backend.

First simultanious release of film in cinema and on web?

Web 'first' for Guantanamo film:

A film by British director Michael Winterbottom is to become the first simultaneous cinema, DVD and online release, it has been reported.

Wheels Of Light

Wheels Of Light:

The Audio Turntable LTD. ELP Laser Turntable addresses this issue, using modern audio technology to resolve the problem. The ELP LT essentially uses 5 separate lasers to scan, track and read the bumps and grooves on the record, so the only thing ever touching the vinyl is focused light.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Company requires RFID injection

Two employees have been injected with RFID chips this week as part of a new requirement to access their company's datacenter.

Microsoft Anti-Spyware Deleting Norton Anti-Virus

Security Fix - Brian Krebs on Computer and Internet Security - (washingtonpost.com)

Microsoft's Anti-Spyware program is causing troubles for people who also use Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus software; apparently, a recent update to Microsoft's anti-spyware application flags Norton as a password-stealing program and prompts users to remove it.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Online Lemmings - never work again

Online Lemmings - never work again Sound plays when you hit this page - probably not worksafe!

StockDigg

StockDigg

StockDigg is a financial website that provides investors access to major financial news as well as user-submitted stories (e.g. stock picks and analysis) and individual stock rankings by investors. With StockDigg, users rank stocks and submit stories, which are reviewed (i.e. ranked and tugg) by other investors. Only the most timely, relevant, and valuable stories go to the front page.

IE7 preview

It's in beta:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/default.mspx

And this is what it does to a nice site (www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thewatchmakerproject/93740682/in/set-72057594057081981/

13 reasons for purchasing a ukulele

A little light relief

http://www.simplebits.com/

Google's quote of the day today

'My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared.' - PJ Plauger

Tsk - Congress changing Wikipedia

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4695376.stm

Sony Revolution Video - Darlugo.com

Sony Revolution Video - Darlugo.com

The coolest thing ever?

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

GMail code hints at coming domain feature

Google's GMail has been firing on all cylinders, but it could be on the verge of getting even more horsepower. Based on information found buried deep within the javascript source, we can start to see the bigger picture for GMail — what else could they possibly add to this mail client?

Babies' Cells Linger, May Protect Mothers

While some people are paying the £166,000:

NPR : Babies' Cells Linger, May Protect Mothers

Some scientists have proposed that when a woman has a baby, she gets not just a son or a daughter, but a gift of cells that stays behind and protects her for the rest of her life. That's because a baby's cells linger in its mom's body for decades and -- like stem cells -- may help to repair damage when she gets sick.

Songbird: aka the Firefox of media players

Songbird Nest

Songbird is an open-source media player that aims to be a powerful and viable replacement for current media players. It is built on the same platform as Firefox, and aims to give users more options in web integration with their music experience.

The server is having a few overloading problems as it was launched today.

BBC NEWS | England | Manchester | Husband eats 50-year-old chicken

BBC NEWS England Manchester Husband eats 50-year-old chicken:

A man celebrated his golden wedding anniversary by eating a 50-year-old tin of
chicken.
Les and Beryl Lailey, of Denton, Gtr Manchester, were given the
chicken in a hamper on their wedding day in 1956.

A system which measures how good charities are

Should English charties welcome or fear this?

Charity Navigator - America's Largest Charity Evaluator:

Need reliable data on America's Charities for your next marketing campaign? Charity Navigator can provide you with a list of potential clients at an affordable price.

Chessboxing

Blogger Help : What is BlogThis! ?

Blogger Help : What is BlogThis! ?

Useful 'bookmarklet' thing

Web Fire Escape

Web Fire Escape

The Web Fire Escape is a simple device which has been designed to allow readers of weblogs to instantly replace a Web Fire Escape equipped blog with an alternate work-safe site or a fake word processor or spreadsheet application. When you see a weblog with the Web Fire Escape equipped button you can be sure that career salvation is only a click away should a work colleague or manager approach your desk whilst you are catching up with your daily blogs.

kids, eh?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4467154.stm

It costs on average £166,000 to raise a child from birth until age 21, according to Liverpool Victoria friendly society.