Cash Gordon proves Tories need Twitter lessons

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

God bless the Tories, and their attempts to be the Web 2.0 wonderkids, with WebCameron, iPhone apps and their latest digital venture – a social-media attack on the Prime Minister called Cash Gordon.

This “campaign” urges you to spread the word about the Prime Minister’s close links with the Unions (this is news, apparently), using Facebook and Twitter to spread the poison.

And just to prove they’re really living on the bleeding edge of web technology, they’ve incorporated a Twitter feed directly on the homepage that publishes any tweet – yes, any tweet – using the #cashgordon hashtag. With rather predictable results…

When will these people learn?

UPDATE AT 2:32PM: It now appears the Cash Gordon site has been redirected to a story on the Conservatives’ homepage. It seems they learn fast.

How to fix online surveys

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

Now it’s true that you can subtly influence the results of surveys by the questions you ask, but Virgin Media appears to have taken a different and more ingenious approach here…

If it’s taken you a little time to spot the “error”, as it did me, take a look at the options to the right. Thanks to Stuart Downs for sending that in!

What’s that eggy smell in the server room?

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Working in close proximity with a team can be a very personal matter. There’s a fine line between acceptable office banter and touchy subjects: You can safely discuss brands of car, football teams, and who should get booted out of The Apprentice, but there are topics that are very firmly off the agenda, even once you allow for the massive variations in office cultures.

I have clients who see nothing curious about coming to work and spending their day in a cape; clients who freely discuss their weekend metrosexual exploits every Monday morning, and clients who don’t even know one another’s first names.

Part of the burden of consulting is to remember the acceptability envelope of the various cultures you’re working with, but this week I think I’ve found a new area of delicacy. One that crosses pretty much everybody’s boundaries.

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How to change the default template in Word 2007

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

After more than two years with Word 2007 I’ve finally snapped. No, Microsoft, when I create a new document I don’t want to use the Calibri font, I don’t want huge margins and I absolutely, positively NEVER want an extra break after every paragraph. It’s not how I format my documents, and it never will be.

So today I did what I should have done a long time ago: I fixed the default template. Having cursed it for more than two years I’m almost embarrassed at how easy it was. (more…)

Book review: Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are two of the leading lights behind 37Signals, the development company responsible for the phenomenon that is the Basecamp project management tool, amongst other services. A few years ago they self-published the book Getting Real which describes their philosophy and the techniques they use to develop their software. If you only ever read one book on software development, make it that one.

Rework: Change the Way You Work Forever does for business what Getting Real did for software development, shining a 21st Century light on the running of a business. In truth, the advice contained in this book is more applicable to information, software development and online service businesses than more traditional bricks and mortar operations, but there’s something here for everyone. (more…)

Panorama parents deserve their file-sharing fine

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

This week’s Panorama “investigation” into internet file-sharing delivered nothing new for anyone who’s been keeping even half an eye on this issue. Record labels think it’s killing their industry; Billy Bragg and TalkTalk think they’re talking out of their Supergrasses. Part of the reason it revealed diddly squat was because it wasn’t fronted by a journalist who knew what they were talking about, but by a DJ who didn’t, although that’s an argument for another time (that time being mid April, when you can read my column in the next issue of PC Pro).

However, one thing the show did throw up was the abject attitude of one set of parents to their childrens’ file-sharing habit. The program followed a family with four kids from Manchester, in a bid to prove how teenagers were stuffing hard disks with dodgy downloads, unbeknown to their poor parents.  Lo and behold, Panorama’s “computer expert” (bloke who can read filenames) finds that the teenage sprogs have indeed been giving Pirate Bay a good hammering, filling the family laptop with more suspect albums than the Status Quo back catalogue.

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Google and BT offer free website service to British businesses

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Getting British Business Online is an initiative launched in February by Google, BT and three government agencies with the aim of getting 100,000 more British businesses online at no cost.

The service includes the free  provision of a .co.uk domain name for two years along with a website created using the Google Sites service. Hosting is also free.

The business owner simply fills out a browser-based wizard with setup information, selects a domain name and, after accepting the terms and conditions, their basic website is up and running. (more…)

Lords’ last chance to protect broadband customers

Friday, March 12th, 2010

On Monday, the House of Lords will have one final opportunity to rescue something from the rubble of the Digital Economy Bill.

Lord Erroll’s amendment 9A demands that Ofcom establishes a scheme to oversee the timely and effective repairs of people’s broadband connections, so that consumers are no longer left hanging  for two months – the time it currently takes the Ofcom-approved “dispute resolution schemes” to even consider a complaint when BT and a broadband provider blame one another for a fault.

“Ofcom has a duty to look after the consumer,” Lord Erroll told me last night. “There’s a feeling that Ofcom is not paying proper regard to it.”

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Extreme handwriting recognition on the Dell Latitude XT2

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

This is my first and possibly only handwritten blog entry…

that’s because ‘an in a cramped airplane._ seat and the ride is d little bumpy. that, and everyone who can see what lam dough watching me avidly’ The XT2 uses windows7 pen extensions and as a long ten fan of the concept of pen computing I touchscreens and the business of handwriting instead of keyboarding.

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12 surprising things that Wolfram Alpha knows

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Last May I wrote a blog post entitled “9½ things Wolfram Alpha doesn’t know”. It was meant primarily as a bit of fun, but I had a serious point. A few months earlier, Wolfram Alpha had been announced amid a tremendous buzz of excitement and expectation. With its new computational approach, it had seemed it might even usurp Google as the default gateway to online knowledge.

But when the service went live, it became apparent that Wolfram Alpha was a specialist tool for scientists. Though ingenious, it was all but useless if you just wanted everyday information about everyday topics.

Now, nine months later, the fuss has died down and Wolfram Alpha has settled into its scientific niche. It hasn’t acquired a database of Eurovision winners or CPU die sizes, and that’s fair enough. But while tinkering with it myself recently I’ve been pleasantly surprised by some of the things that Wolfram Alpha does turn out to know. To be fair, I’ve seen occasional reports of Wolfram Alpha “Easter eggs” in the past; but the examples below are all responses I’ve recently found through my own experimentation. And I’m certain there are many more gems just waiting to be discovered… (more…)