-
This guys work has been doing the blog rounds today. That's because it's ace. When his store re-stocks, I will buy a thing from him.
-
SLight annoying french spelling aside – if their iphone app is half as nice as their web app, and if they expose an api at some point soon, then I think Things may have been supplanted as my favourite to-do list manager. This is bloody lovely.
-
Essentially: whenever any of your friends posts an app, the developer of that app get all the data about *you* that they have access to. Facebook have completely fucked your privacy in the bin. I will be deleting my account at the end of the month, if they don't change it. (The only reason I'm not deleting it *today* is that I don't want to fuck people's social planning in the bin.) For refernce, after a bit of digging about in the privacy settings, despite the fact that I have my privacy locked down, under the new settings, here's what my friends were authorised to share about me, regardless of my profile settings: Personal info (activities, interests, etc.), Status udates,Online presence,Website,Family and relationship,Education and work,My videos,My links,My Notes,My photos,Photos and videos of me,About me,My birthday,My hometown. These setting were buried, and required extra password validaton to alter – they had gone out their way to make it hard. I'm done with them.
Category: Digitalia
Links For Tuesday 8th December 2009
-
A clutter free text editor that blocks out other distractions and saves as plain text by default. I like and use Scrivener, but honestly, it's got more power then I need for something simply like, say, writing a blog post. So I'll give this a go, and see how we get on.
Links For Friday 4th December 2009
-
I'm in two minds about whether to use them or not. But it's good that there's a DNS provider I can fall back on if my ISP's DNS goes tits up that isn't sodding OpenDNS.
-
Heh. I have an absolute *stack* of unwatched TV, and yes, it is daunting, to the point that basically, I'd rather rewatch an odd episode here and there of something I've already watched, than crack open the start of five seasons worth of something else. Starting a totally new show feels like a serious time commitment, whilst rewatching something old is a way to pass a spare 40 minutes. And mostly all I have is the odd spare hour here and there that needs filling up.
Links For Thursday 3rd December 2009
-
OK, this might actually give non-techy users a reasonable chance of using Ubuntu – they've made it behave more or less like the most popular version of Windows. I shall have to experiment, and see what's what.
-
Here's a nice dissection of how one of the major music players is handling digital stuff. The answer is "shamefully badly", and this article explains why. For what it's worth, this dovetails very directly with my experience of working at a record label – that they could do things well, and there are probably some people there who know how to, but that there is a such a culture against digital in the rest of the business that they are ignored, and the improvements they suggest actively held back by people who like the sloppy, incompetent status quo. (Also worth it for the explanation of advances toward the end, just in case you hadn't heard that little injustice before, either.)
Links For Tuesday 1st December 2009
-
Clary Shirky on the future of the bookstore. I think that the local bookstore probably has a longer future that the local record store did – I think it'll take a generational shift or two, until we've got people who are more used to reading on the screen than they are on paper, but I think he's right that they're going to need to make massive practical changes in the way they do business – perhaps becoming hubs for local POD services…
Links For Monday 30th November 2009
-
My god, this is just superb. Work of total genius. Combination of the ubiquity of the digital age with the sense of magic and wonder. Utterly brilliant. I want to give these to everyone.
-
Oh, look, you all know what I'm going to say by now. I'll just restate this: free/cheap public connectivity is far more important to Britain's future prosperity than the existing business models of the content industry are, and cases like this endanger that connectivity. I would like it very much if we stopped fighting the future because of a short term threat to the wallets of some rich people, and got on with embracing it so that we can have all new rich people.
-
Then number of times I've written, re-written, googled for, and generally had to implement one of these is verging on the insane. This one looks good, so I am noting it so I can come back and find it whenever this comes up again.
Links For Friday 27th November 2009
-
Why does Peter Mandelson favour the Analogue Economy over the Digital? | Technology | guardian.co.ukDoctorow writing in the Grauniad about why the DEB is a bad idea on a social and economic level.
Customer Communications
I spend a lot of time at work thinking about ways to improve the ways our clients communicate with their customers. This can mean things like how we assemble emails, what sorts of subject lines we use, it can mean making sure that unsubcribe links are clear, and that the customer feels in control of the communication they recieve, it can mean lots of different things, but the end goal is the same – making sure that the user feels like a valued customer, who has a relationship with our client’s brand. (You’ll have to forgive the lapse into marketing speak there – it’s quite hard to talk about the less directly technical side of what I do without sounding like a bit of a cock.) Because if we make our clients customers happy, they spend money with the client, and then the client spends money with us, and I get paid. So I spend time thinking about digital communications, and how we can use new technology to improve things.
I have just been blown away by one of our suppliers. They’ve put all my work in the shade with a five minute job. We use 37signals Basecamp as our project management tool of choice, and we have done for almost as long as the company has existed. And they’ve just sent us a personal note to thank us for it. A hand written, personal note. We’re one of their longest standing commercial customers, and one of them has taken the time to sit down and write us a personal note to thank us for that.
One worth remembering, I think.
Links For Wednesday 25th November 2009
-
"I'm making a list and checking it twice. Ha! Fuck that. Drinking and playing it by ear." "I like how everyone thinks Rudolph did shit. Fact. Rudolph is an oh-look-at-me-I-have-a-red-nose diva fuck." and similar gems.
Links For Tuesday 24th November 2009
-
A lawyer takes the Digital Economy Bill apart.
My own idiots guide to the DEB is at 1500 words and counting, and I'm not sure I'm even halfway through yet. So: serious question – if there anyone reading this who feels it would be useful for me to produce said guide? Is a guide that tries to use short words and explain the whole business practically from absolutely first principles worth it, or are you all going to go "tl;dr" and skip blithely past it? Who is there round these parts that feels like they don't know what's going on on this subject, and would like to?
-
Dammit, these actually *are* that interesting. An absolute mine of weird crap that illustrates that the world is a pretty damn splendid place, when you get right down to it.
-
I will have absolutely no need of this kernel patch at any point.
-
This would violate my EULA. Obviously, I would not wish to do this, because once I have legitimately purchased something, it is completely reasonable that that manufacturer dictate how I use it.
-
Tools for writers/people who generate text, rather than code, to apply more or less automatic version control to something you're working on, with tools to provide context on what was going on in your head when a given automatic commit happened.
-
ZOMG! (As I believe the young people say.) Someone has made a website with gifts specifically for me and all my friends!
-
Gosh, couldn't have guessed this would happen.