Month of November, 2007

Here's the perfect way to slow down those doggone kids in their noisy pocket rockets, invading the neighborhood at high speed without regard to the peace and personal safety of the local inhabitants. This Deutch-speaking dude has created an unusually powerful gadget that will teach those whippersnappers a lesson.

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Click on a window to turn the lights behind that window on, click it again to turn the lights off! A total of 9 windows can be switched on or off, as well as two hanging rope lights. Now with queueing system to prevent last year's disaster: (http://www.digg.com/hardware/
Guy_allows_whole_world_to_control_christmas_decorations_on_h
is_house). Enjoy!

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From faulty satellites nearly causing World War III to the Millennium Bug, poorly executed IT has had a lot to answer for over the years.

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I've just been reading this article from The Register about how badly the BBC have messed up the iPlayer . The author writes about how the "iPlayer is of a multi-million pound failure that took years to complete, and was designed for a world that never arrived". I first wrote about the iPlayer back in July, two days before its launch. Soon after the launch I signed up to the beta and was accepted however my username and password never worked. After a couple of un-responded emails to the BBC I gave up. The press coverage since July had been minimum until The Register's article was featured on the front page of Slashdot yesterday.

I thought it would be worth giving the iPlayer another chance to see if it was really as bad as The Register said it was.

After visiting the iPlayer website for the first time you need to install some software - note you have to be in Microsoft Windows XP using Internet Explorer - if you are using a Mac or Firefox it wont work (also it wont work if you are one of the 600 Linux users out there either ;-)).

Installation doesn't take long and you can select what you want to watch through your browser.

Once finding something to watch and clicking download the application launches and the TV show starts to download. This took forever, I only have a 1mb connection but this 46% (125mb) took two hours before I got bored and just decided to finish this article. Whether this is the BBC's fault or BT's aggressive traffic filtering at peak times I don't know.

Anything downloaded in the iPlayer will only last for 30 days, this is because the DRM (digital rights management) attached to each TV show disables the video after this time (and stops you from doing other stuff like copying it to DVD). Why the BBC have done this I'm not sure, with the current backlash to DRM in the music industry at the moment it seems odd to do the same to video.

Broadcasters like Channel 4 are paid for advertising they sell in between shows, the BBC on the other hand is funded by UK license payers. Why would then the BBC need to protect something that has already been paid for by license payers? This makes the BBC's decision to restrict access to TV shows seem bizarre. Whether a technology sales man has sold DRM to the BBC or its poor management I don't know.

The iPlayer is not a bad application, it works and albeit a bit slow you do get to watch shows for up to 30 days after broadcast. The problem however ultimately is not the program but the reason for its existence in the first place. There are plenty of other easy ways to watch video online - Flash (YouTube, Google Video etc) and Bit Torrent (The Pirate Bay, Mininova etc) being the main two delivery methods. So why would the BBC invent their own content delivery method when there are perfectly good/better already available?

This leads to the only reason for the BBC iPlayer and that's DRM - a reason we have already pointed out is irrelevant because of the unique way the BBC is funded by license payers. It annoys me as a license payer because it seems the BBC have invented a problem, then spent almost £5million solving it.

How many times you have felt like kicking your computer or just throw it away because of the BSOD the famous Blue Screen Of Death i guess at least once if not many times.

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Any true Macfan should have a mailbox like this.

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I found this cool site that lets you create your own South Park characters. You can choose from thousands of different body parts and accessories. I created myself below:

Even with the crown.... ;-)

I sold my first item last night through Facebook Marketplace, my iMac G5. I would have most likely listed it on Ebay if Adam hadn't suggested listing it on Facebook first. The market place itself is a lot simpler than Ebay and has no security or buyer/seller protection but it is free.

Recently I've become more frustrated with high Ebay fees, in general 10% of the total cost of the item goes to Ebay in some way through listing fees, final value fees and PayPal fees. This would be close to £50 for my iMac. Facebook Marketplace offered an alternative that was free so I had nothing to lose by listing my item.

It was about a week before someone contacted me for some more information about my iMac which I was happy to provide. We bartered a little and he decided to come pick it up and pay cash (it was his first Mac as well). I will admit this is not normally how Ebay works and could be down to the testament of Facebook's perceived value of being a friendlier (safer?) place.

The transaction went smoothly, he had my iMac and I had money towards a new one. I'm not sure how good Facebook would be for other items - are people really searching there for mobile phone chargers or antiques yet? Perhaps this is all still to come, Facebook's demographics are in its favour as well, with the average user being better educated and earning more than users from other social networking sites such as Myspace and Bebo.

As for an Ebay killer well its too early to tell, but as I've seen over the past week the process certainly works. Has anyone else sold items on Facebook Marketplace or might give it a try after reading this? Any bad experiences?

If this is real I would have to be paid alot of money to be working for I.T. there.

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Whoop!, originally uploaded by Avicado.

Whoop, there it is! Whoop, there it is!
The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!

Christina Aguilera went out to dinner and showed off the twins

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If the Bush administration succeeds in its latest request for funding for the war in Iraq, the total cost would rise to $611.5 billion, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonprofit research group. The amount got us wondering: What would $611 billion buy?

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I will admit I've done it, I get a newsletter I don't want to read and either its not easy to unsubscribe or it requires too much downward scrolling so I've just hit the 'Report Spam' button in Gmail. I know its bad tricking the spam filter into thinking something I most likely accidentally signed up for is spam but its just too convenient.

(Is reporting spam too convenient?)

Everyone hates spam, and I love the fact Gmail does a good job in filtering out the junk but it seems everyone sends newsletters now. I booked a holiday online with some obscure company last year, now I get weekly emails from them asking where I want to go next? I once booked a dance event tickets through Ticketmaster, now I get emails asking if I want to see Bon Jovi - not even targeted advertising.

It goes on and on and on, some make it easy to unsubscribe others not so easy. The most recent culprit to Gmail spam has been Facebook, I get daily emails asking if I want to be super poked or if I want to turn my friends into Vampires by biting them. It all gets too much, Facebook does provide a link to find out about not getting these emails but it simply goes to the application overview - hardly useful.

Here are some examples:

1&1 want me to visit their site, find my log in details, navigate to Newsletter Settings then unsubscribe - is this too much to ask when Report Spam is just one click?

When trying to unsubscribe from Nectar emails, they want my email address and account number - shame I cant memorise my account number.

Trade Doubler write their emails in such a small font that its impossible to read the unsubscribe part (I believe it says something about logging in and going to settings - account information - mailing options.)

Not everyone gets it wrong:

Ebay give you multiple ways to unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from box.net you just click the link which sends you to a page saying you have been unsubscribed - easy.

Has anyone else been tempted just to click report spam instead of actually unsubscribing to a newsletter?

A list of six of the most interesting business cards

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Everyone likes to be uniquely different among the crowd and some even go to the extent of making their houses really 'stand out'.

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Talk about a die-hard fan.

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Perhaps the most amazing thing I have ever seen. 100% amazing.

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Since Fox will not be airing a new season of "24" due to the writers' strike, they plan to air this version, originally filmed in 1994.

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Glad this didn't happen on IE6

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stairs are generally pretty boring.

don
’t get me wrong: if the staircase gets me from one level to another, it’s succeeded as a design. i just wish they were a bit more exciting.

here are a few examples that might actually keep me amused for a few minutes before i realise i’m wheezing.

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Love the Wobbly Dryer and the Microwaved Melon.

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Well all I got from this is that "Hema" is selling stuff...and that I'm way too clumsy.

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The Porn Genius explains why Apple's new operating system is the best OS for all your carnal needs. (Imagine how many more units Apple Inc would sell if they advertised this?) :P

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Getting into the porn industry is very very difficult if you are a man. You must be able to get it up, keep it up, and then cum within 2 or 3 minutes of being asked.

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My roomate's TV broke, this is who Philips sent. Mind you they are in Los Angeles, a tech-busy area. If you click on the flag it plays a song!

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“She was using the word ‘like’ all the time. She sounded like a Valley Girl,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.

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The power of simplicity versus the portal mistake.

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A 10 MB hard disk for only $ 3398.

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A number of website value calculators have sprung up on-line recently that calculate how much your site is worth based on search engine and Alexa rankings.

The CyberWire Calculator valus ImAFish at $1565 (about £750) with the following data:

Alexa Ranking: 733,509
Google Page Rank: 5
Yahoo Backlinks: 0 (not sure why as we have a lot of pages indexed in Yahoo)
Altavista Backlinks: 1550
All the Web Backlinks: 1530

I'm not sure how accurate this data is and I certainly wouldn't sell ImAFish for only £750. The calculator also predicts how much your site could make through advertising though this figure is not accurate in the case of ImAFish.

Google.co.uk is worth: $57,996,230
news.bbc.co.uk: $106,263,437
thesun.co.uk: $1,096,125
ebuyer.com: $295,650
itn.co.uk: $32,646
channel4.com: $954,510

In the case of ITN the calculator predicts they can only make $240/month on text link advertising which hardly enough to support a news site. Surely this figure would have to be ten times higher to support such a site?

Remember this value is based purely on search engine data and Alexa rank so in the case of Ebuyer I'm sure the actual site value would need to include sales data.

I'll be interested to hear how accurate anyone else found these online calculators for their website worth or predicted advertising revenue to be - let me know!

Timing really is everything, whether it comes to hilariously tragic sports pictures or amazing images from nature. Check out these 25 awesome examples of perfectly time photographs from a variety of genres, from sports and people to war and the environment. Don't look now but I think that cat at the bottom is about to kick your ass!

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WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO. "It was really frightening. But in the end all we really worried about was the dolphins."

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Some dudes recreated the box art for the original Halo inside the Halo 3 engine. Cool stuff!

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