Just for info – for the terminally curious – there have been a few minor tweaks made to this blog. Mainly some new plug ins have been installed (Gravatars for example) and the del.icio.us feed set up. All in all nothing major 🙂
If you can think of anything else we should try out, let us know.
This is really just to see how easy or hard it is to make entries over wap (actually gprs but never mind)
while it is actually quite easy, entering long text on this phone will cripple me.
I think blogging is still best done by key board.
Well here we are in the year 2006 and well I remember the hype of the late 1990s when the “paperless office” was the next big thing! (Dont get me started on that web 2.0 nonsense). Towards the end of the decade every one was getting scanners and it seemed a certainty that in a short time everything you would ever need would be available electronically.
Now, everyone who remembers these years will no doubt remember the “joy” of 28.8k dial up modems and internet access that was billed by the minute. However, this did little to deter the online pundits from proclaiming that books were dead and the future was online.
Now, fast forward to today and what do we have?
Has anything changed?
Not really, no. High speed internet connections are almost commonplace. Almost everyone who isnt a luddite or lives in a remote hill farm community has access to upstream speeds of around 8 meg. Amazing. Despite all this, has anything really changed?
Well, MP3 has obviously made its mark. If you listen to the record companies the file sharing demons are destroying the music industry (this has the potential to be come a major off topic rant so I will drop this here) and most people in the developed world have at least 1 mp3 track. Its a good bet that everyone in the west, under the age of 20 owns an MP3 player of some description (phone, iPod etc).
This says to me, that the predicted uptakes of MP3 was spot on. It is great. Instead of a crackly old Walkman with 60 minutes of music on, now we have iPods with 20gb of data (around a millions years worth of music isnt it?). How great is that. Now we can have more songs on an MP3 player than we have time left alive to listen to it!
Anyway, dragging this back on topic.
My question is, why havent we done the same for books? While I have no real “love” of Adobe, the PDF format is great. Even if you hate them you can get millions of books in .lit or .djvu either free or paid for. Almost all new software has its manuals as PDF, magazines give away their back issues as PDF. What a fantastic electronic world we live in.
Except it isnt.
I can listen to my MP3 player on the bus, on the train, on the toilet, in bed, in the gym, ANYWHERE. Yet when it comes to PDF files I am tied to my PC or at best the laptop. The laptop is handy, however its hot, heavy and eats batteries like a demon. Imagine being forced to listen to MP3 like that.
Why on Earth, can’t I walk into a high street retailer and buy a sensible sized eBook reader? Surely its not so hard. I am not talking about a mini thing the size of a watch either, it needs a readable screen. The size of a paperback is excellent for reading, so why not have something about the same size, mostly screen, which lets you read PDFs where ever you are?
Does something like this exist? If so, it needs to be marketed better. If it doesnt exist, then the idea is now my copyright. If anyone wishes to explore developing this let me know. 🙂 I am sure, using something like a transmeta chip, linux and basic text readers / PDF readers this could be a device for under £150. Volume will make it even cheaper.
Can anyone think of anything wrong with this idea?
Coming soon there will be a peice here on “free will” debating if such a thing actually exists.
Basically, the concept of Free Will is fundamental to most organised religions and plays a big part in the concept of good and evil and the conflict between the two. Despite this, the actual existence of free will is an often debated topic. There are some philosophers who claim we have complete free will and control of our destiny and other who argue the opposite.
Well, it seems congratulations are in Order for Alex Tew as he had made his goal of selling all the pixel-advertisements he had space for on his home page.
It is good when someone actually makes a sucess of what is basically an excellent, innovative idea. The whole principle of it had that element of simplicity that, when you hear about it, makes you kick yourself for not thinking of it sooner.
Showing that he has some hard core instincts for income generation – Alex Tew appears to have auctioned off the last 1000 pixels on eBay (see http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2006/01/alex_tew_works_.html)
Interestingly enough, it seems like the million dollar home page is down at the moment……. Can people demand a refund for their advertisements?
Just a reminder to every one before the weekend excesses cause some brain damage. Set your video (DVD-recorder etc) timers to keep an eye out for Channel 4 on Monday night when Richard Dawkins continues the documentary about religion being the root of all evil.
In the first episode of this two part documentary he spent a lot of time interviewing what could best be described as raging nutcases. If you were unlucky to have missed this episode there is a chance you can find it electronically for p2p systems like eMule or you can wait for Channel 4 to repeat it.
I would suggest though, that you ensure you dont miss part 2 on Monday 16 January 2006. If you dont live in the UK – unlucky, try p2p 🙂
Technorati Tags: Ricahrd Dawkins
Leading on from the previous rant about people trying to divert attention from the real issue in debates, this months .net magazine gets a look at.
In the “the Big Question” section it outlines a quote from the Wall Street Journal which quotes Peter Sealey as saying he knows of “no other industry where marketers knowingly introduce a flawed product.” Now Mr Sealey is currently a marketing professor at UCSB and was the chief marketing officer at Coca-cola.
Overall, the “talking heads” (typing heads?) who reply give a reasonable description of the issues involved. None really justify the eternal-beta some software companies live in (can you hear this Google?) but one is interesting. Continue reading
Well the latest .NET magazine is out now and in it you can see the 12 winners of the 2005 .net awards.
Not much to surprise anyone – 1&1 won the best web host (again) which is more than acceptable as that is who this domain is ultimately hosted with … 🙂
All the others were standard names – BBC, BlueYonder, Blogger, Faceparty, Amazon, Motley Fool, Cheap Flights etc.
Just in case you are curious, there is a cron job that changes the logo for this site at 1900 hrs and 0700 hours each day (based on the server clock).
Just a general muse now. We have asked the kindly compuskills web design team to set up a google site map to help get this blog noticed by the all mighty, all seeing Google and it got me thinking about how do we get noticed by “blog indexes.” Continue reading
What rights do people have in western democracies? Are some rights more “Important” than others? Does the provision of one right mean the sacrifice of an other? Is sacrificing one right for another every justified? Can you sacrifice a “right?”
I have no idea what the answers to these questions are, however as I read through the news it seems more and more important to think about it. The UK was awash with news about ID cards last year. Generally speaking this should be abhorrent for a western democracy, however in most debates about the subject the “right to life” and “prevention of crime” were most often bandied about. Is this valid? Does this justify the loss of an assumed freedom.
Well, it looks official now. Charon (Pluto’s moon) has no atmosphere.
Why any one thought it actually had any is beyond me, and probably no longer open for debate…, however as reported by the BBC.
By watching as Charon eclipsed a distant star last June, they were able to determine that the speed the light (from the star) was cut off signalled the lack of any atmosphere.
You can read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4588628.stm
Well, quite soon after this blog comes online we are offered a wonderful example of how people can twist debates.
A common tactic when people come under criticism is to turn it round and attempt to refute the comments by making (an often personal – also called ad hominem) attack on the original.
This is flawed logic. It does in no way show the criticism to be flawed, and to an extent is a subconcious reaction to the criticism being correct. Continue reading
At the moment, this blog is using a slightly modified theme downloaded from the main word press site. However it really is far from ideal and there is a very good chance that over the next couple of weeks quite a few modifications will be made!
If you have any suggestions or comments or tips as to what you think looks good, remains accessible and remains valid XHTML please let us know. Continue reading
Although its quite old now – having been published in 2003 – the book “Bad
Thoughts” by Jamie Whyte is a fantastic introduction into philosophical
logic and common fallacies.
If you are interested in this book it can be found on places like Amazon if
you do a search for its ISBN – 0954325532, and new it was going for around
£8.99.
Throughout the book Jamie Whyte uses logic to expose the common fallacies
that surround us day to day – ranging from the false authority given to
victims of tragedies through to sheer evasive lies from the rich and
powerful.
Overall – a great read to say the least.