Stupid legal threat of the young century – Boing Boing I'm sure loads of people will have done something like this, and you're bound to have seen the link, but essentially, lawyers for a website called Academic Advantage are sending websites that contain the words "academic" "advantage" and "scam" cease and desist letters claiming "There is absolutely no helpful reason for the website to have the words 'Academic,' 'Advantage' and 'Scam'". I disagree. There's a very helpful purpose – letting people know when the lawyers they retain engage in legal bullying that is completely groundless, and bring their client's name into disrepute.
Confused by Constellations? Find out about your new star sign! You may have seen reports on the internet about some sort of change to star signs caused by some kind of science, and you may be wondering what this means for your horoscope. Because I am a basically helpful person, I have put together this site, to help people who are confused by the whole thing. Please spread this link far and wide, as I would hate for people to be confused by astrology.
A List Apart: Articles: A Simpler Page Discussion of laying out text for ipads (or similar) on the web, and a library to to the rendering. Particularly like the three modes – bed, knee and breakfast pretty neatly describe all the ways I use my device.
Come out of your comfort zone, disability living allowance cuts are relevant to all | Society | guardian.co.uk An excellent article on the cuts to DLA. Cannot quite believe that even this government of utter shits would essentially say "one in five people who have previously been assessed as needing help now won't get it". And yet they are. There's no suggestion that the previous tests were flawed. There's no (credible) suggestion that fully one in five of disabled people are OK, really, and just scrounging. They're hiding behind "we can't afford it". Which makes my blood boil. Surely, even in a time of national austerity, the one thing we should bend over backwards to afford, the one thing we should scrap all manner of other things to pay for, is caring for the most vulnerable members of our society.
The Best Cover Songs of 2010: #50-41 » Cover Me I've been meaning to get round to checking these out, but I don't suspect I'll get there any time soon, so I'm just noting this so I can come back to it later.
russell davies: Ted Hughes on thinking Ted Hughes was a man who knew about thinking. And dead pigs. Well worth a listen. Russell's observation re: YouTube is also trenchant and a pleasing thing to think about.
How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed — Deer 342 — bmj.com This needs to do the rounds in a very big way. You know all those vaccine scares that are picked up by the easily swayed, and used as an excuse to endanger the rest of us through lack of vaccination? Well, it's not just the case that (single) study they're based on is a bit fringe – it's an outright, deliberate falsehood perpetrated by a man with malicious intent and a profit motive. If you know *anyone* who has a small child and is contemplating not vaccinating it, you need to make sure they see this.
Ninth Art: for the discerning reader Minor pleasure of the day: getting 9A back on one of it's original two domains. If the person who jumped on ninthart.com the instant that ISP incompetence cause it to lapse is reading this: please can we have it back? There's still hundreds of links pointing to your site that are dead. I will buy you the domain of your choice in exchange?
Android Isn’t About Building a Mobile Platform | TightWind Solid analysis of Google's behaviour and strategy in respect of Android and the bigger picture. It's why I tend to call bullshit on their mantra a bit re: their evilness, because I would prefer to be the customer, not the product sold. I will admit that for a company set on selling me as a product, they provide a much better service than most in exchange, but even that's not all good, as it means they tend to blow away paid-for competition that does stuff (or might do stuff) better than they do.
What the Goldman Sachs Facebook investment really means Yes. This. I do not believe that "ad supported" will keep Facebook running forever, or even much past the end of this year. The user engagement metrics just don't support it. They need some actual revenue streams, and that's where the wheels are going to come off their wagon, I suspect.
Kieron Gillen’s Workblog » Tracks of The Year 2010 Mr Gillen's tracks of the year are always worth a listen. Well, some of them are, but you have to listen to them all to find out which. But more importantly, the list is a fun read.
The Blast Shack Catching up on some of links I turned up over the break. This one pre-dates it by a few days, but I only had the time to read it once work stopped, so here it is – Bruce Sterling on Assange and wikileaks. Absolutely required reading on the subject.
Hacker Culture: A Response to Bruce Sterling on WikiLeaks | Atlantic Mobile And here's the best of the responses I've seen to Sterling. Contains talk of the forthcoming OpenLeaks projects, which I strongly encourage you to learn more about, as I think it points to where the movement toward a more transparent society might usefully go (there are links withing this article, if you are interested).
Facebook vs Twitter: By The Numbers [Infographic] Interesting breakdown of some numbers around the two. Facebook is more popular, and more frequebtky used, but Twitter's users are more engaged with the entities they follow. Which is about where my intuition was, but it's nice to see numbers.
Royal Pingdom » The most reliable (and unreliable) blogging services on the Web Another one with no big surprises, but nice to see numbers. Tumblr's very clearly in the midst of it's difficult second album, but I still reckon it's currently the best blogging service on the market, and once the growing pains are over, I look forward to seeing where it goes.
The Perfect Vodka Martini I'm not sure the gents at Dukes (my favourite place for Martinis) would agree with everything here, but this is a man who’s clearly put time and effort into producing his version of perfection, and I can respect that. Will have to give his recipe a try myself.
When’s the Best Time to Publish Blog Posts? Some useful numbers on blog posting for optimum circulation. Short version: publish in the morning to get the regular readership, and tweet notifications in the late afternoon for maximum activity boost/retweet value. Publish a minimum of one post per day, ideally more, in order to build an audience.
Comic Sans Criminal – There’s help available for people like you! I am going to send this to anyone I catch using Comic Sans inappropriately. Anyone continuing to misuse that sodding font after reading this is actively evil, and should probably be removed from the human race for the good of all.