Archive for February, 2007

Time for an MP3 change?

It’s time to try Rockbox, I think. I very much want to do playlists on the run. That’s part of my reason for playing music on shuffle - random discovery of good stuff.

Badgers 1, Hockey 0

This is the sort of story Caroline might send me.

Online add-ons

There’s going to be an enormous “alongside” industry of people selling add-ons to online experiences. You can easily blow $100k for a chunk of Second Life and I like the fact that people are selling “fab friends” to funk up your MySpace.

Go the next to be cracked?

Looks like computing power is creeping up on the game of Go. Which I must get back to playing - it is great fun, but bloody hard.

Fairtrade

Is Fairtrade fair? I’m really not sure, but it certainly is difficult to tell. The timing of the certification process certainly seems to be out of kilter with reality. Alternative models such as GoodAfrican must be a valuable addition to the market. My instincts must be leaning against it now.

Wiltshire and Swansea

Wiltshire is still bouncing back and forth in terms of one council or not - but look at the savings - 244 to 98 councillors.

And in separate news, it looks like Capgemini / Swansea is bubbling over again. An outsource that will end up going back in-house?

X-ray specs

We must be pretty close to X-ray specs, now. Coming to an airport near you in the next few years.

Seven virtues

Lovely indexed describing the 7even virtues.

UK Urban Exploration

28 days later is a lovely site detailing its members forays into places you aren’t supposed to go. Lots of sewers, the post office train system and other fun and games.

Meetings are convergers

It’s hard to get divergent opinions at a meeting – research is beginning to back this up. Which is why we use our post-it wander around sessions as often as possible to get information out of individual heads.

24 torture is wrong

We’ve been finding the recent episodes of 24 a little heavy on the torture. And now we find that it is all rubbish anyhow. How can we trust another US series again?

Russian maps

Amazing quality Russian cold war maps of the UK. Just how did they do it. Were our parents all spies?

Google Apps

Google already has some big hitters on its application suite. Good reasons to use it: have a thin client accessing the web and suddenly you can give all of your teams (even shop floor staff) email accounts and access to documents. $50 including tech support? Pretty good value.

Consumer power

The Indy summarises key consumer activist activities. It’s both heartning (standing up to excessive bank charges - I’d rather pay for current accounts than be stiffed for overdrafts, for example) and depressing (not flying isn’t the best way to prevent global warming). Time to write my book on decision / rationale trees.

eBuyer - one to avoid?

I’ve found a couple of low prices on eBuyer recently. Let’s hope their practice of scalping other retailers won’t result in me not getting my stuff.

Morgan M

We had a nice but “blah” meal in Morgan M a couple of years ago. Sounds like it hasn’t changed hugely. £5.50 for a bottle of Badoit. Sheesh.

IE7 add-ins

If you are forced to use IE7 (shame), here are some sensible add-ins to make it feel better. Well, I don’t mind IE so much, but Google Browser sync rules for me.

PowerPoint gone sensible

I have always been a proponent of the “tell a story in your headers” school of PowerPoint authoring. I haven’t always been able to do it for various reasons. Finally some intriguing research suggests we might have been on the right lines all along.

PowerPoint gone mad

Extraordinary to think that tens of thousands of troops were committed to Iraq from a slide deck so brain dead as this.

TiddlyWiki

TiddlyWiki looks very clever. Not sure where I’d use it, though. Get your starter one to play with.