Social media Chinese Whispers and thoughtless retweets tend to be more innocuous than tales of crazed gunmen, but they can still be annoying: a few days ago otherwise sensible people were retweeting “an actual letter that was sent to a bank by a 96-year-old woman”, a newspaper humour column that has been floating around the Internet for the last 12 years.
Still, it made a change from hoaxes claiming that X person had died in a hangliding/gardening/snowboarding accident: this year’s crop already includes Justin Bieber and Nelson Mandela, both of whom are very much alive.
Author: Carrie
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You can’t trust tweets
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i (the newspaper), reading on the iPad and a few words about Kindles
Before getting my iPad, I promised to dump my expensive newspaper habit. It didn’t really work, because I missed the serendipity of a printed newspaper. So I came up with a compromise. I’d get a daily paper again, but instead of the full-fat Guardian I’d get i, the abridged Independent.
From tomorrow, I’m back to the Guardian.
i is a nice idea, but it’s not the paper for me. There’s very little comment, which I’ve come to realise is something I really want from a paper. It’s good for exactly 20 minutes of reading, so it’s not something you return to throughout the day – which, again, is something I want from a paper. And some of its supposed innovations are a pain in the arse, such as wasting two pages to tell you what’s in today’s issue (along with a daily “Ooh, this paper’s great, isn’t it?” editor’s letter), quoting tweets from ten randomly chosen people, having a “from the blogs” section that crams the entire blogosphere into 150 words or a TV guide that fails to answer the question, what’s on the bloody TV?
The other problem with i is that if you get it delivered, you’re probably paying more than the cover price for delivery. My newsagent charges 27p; i‘s cover price is 20p. There’s something enormously annoying about that.
So I’m back to the Guardian, for now at least. Financially it doesn’t make sense – it’s £1 a day for something I can get for free online – and there’s the constant danger of encountering an article by Tanya Gold, but I’ve definitely found that I read differently in print and on screens. For all its joys the iPad has a screen and reading on it feels like work: I speed-read, and pop in and out of apps, and look at Twitter, and…
Print doesn’t have that, and I think that’s a big plus. When I need to read, I read on a screen. When I want to read, I want to read without distraction.
That’s one of the things I like about the Kindle. Its additional features – its web browser, its MP3 playback – are rubbish enough that I don’t want to use them, so it works as a pure reading device. I do hope Amazon resists the temptation to add extra features in the next version.
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Major record labels in “sensible move” shocker
Sensible doesn’t mean timely – this should have happened about ten years ago – but at long last two major record labels have wised up: they’ll no longer release records to radio months and months and months before anyone can buy them.
David Joseph, the chief executive of Universal Music, said: “Wait is not a word in the vocabulary of the current generation. It’s out of date to think that you can build up demand for a song by playing it for several weeks on radio in advance.”
Better late than never, eh?
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More sadness
I think about a lot of things before I share online. But here’s one thing I never think about:
The unthinkable.
Daniel Miller didn’t think of that either. So he shared photos on Facebook and Flickr, wrote anecdotes in his blog, and managed his finances using Mint. And then his one year-old daughter died.
And the machine wouldn’t turn off. Every now and then he just wanted to take his mind off his grief and focus on something happier. But he was constantly reminded of his daughter by the sites and tools that were so integrated into his connected life.
Daniel explains what he calls the “infinitely connected triggers of her memory and the dumb machinesâ€Â in a blog he writes to share experiences related to his family’s loss.
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Thoughts on the proposed Firewall For Filth
If you haven’t heard, communications minister Ed Vaizey is asking ISPs to consider adopting an opt-in system for online porn. Essentially ISPs will filter unless you specifically ask them not to.
There’s some awful stuff out there, and I don’t think kids should see it any more than I think The Human Centipede should be shown on cBeebies.
I think I’m pretty consistent on this. I don’t think seven-year-olds should play Call of Duty: Black Ops, and I don’t think Frankie Boyle is the best choice of entertainer for your four-year-old’s birthday party.
The problem, I think, is that attempting to filter out porn isn’t going to work. Any attempt to create a national firewall is both doomed and dangerous.
And of course, there’s the biggest problem of all, the hole in the digital dyke nobody can plug.
Other parents.
As a parent, I’m well aware that it’s my responsibility to keep my kids away from filth. The problem is that I can’t ensure that you keep your kids away from it.
I can’t help thinking that the first couple of commenters are missing my point.
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An iPad app to captivate children and make their parents cry
If you’re a parent you’ll know Oliver Jeffers: he’s the writer and artist who created the sublime Lost And Found. And now, one of his books is an iPad app.
Narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, the iPad version is a digital delight. And as it’s about death, it *will* make you cry.
The app is currently £2.39. More here (itunes link).
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Who’s on the phone? THE FUTURE
You know how I’m often to be found banging on about augmented reality and its potential for awesomeness? Check this out.
It’s real and it works. Astonishing. More here.
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Digital data insurance, or: don’t let your memories die when your hard disk does
My Apple Time Capsule packed up yesterday. One minute it was working fine; the next, it sounded like a washing machine full of hammers. The hard disk is gone, which is a pain – it had my iTunes library, three years of home movies and ten years of digital photos.
I had a backup, of course, so it’s just a pain in the arse rather than a complete disaster. But if I’d put my trust in my Time Capsule, if I hadn’t assumed that it would pack up eventually, I’d be up Shit Creek without a boat – and quite possibly divorced. Losing every single video of your daughter is not the sort of thing that makes you popular with your better half.
I can’t stress this enough: hard disk failures are more common than you might think. I’ve had two in the last six months. If you don’t have a backup of all your irreplaceable files – the digital photos, the footage of baby’s first steps, the novel you’re going to finish this Christmas – Murphy’s Law says that sooner or later you’ll lose the lot.
So I’m down to a single external drive, which leaves me with a choice:Â buy another external drive to mirror my libraries (my MacBook Pro’s hard disk is too small for iTunes, iPhoto and videos; even an upgrade would run out of room pretty sharpish), or sign up for a remote backup service.
I’ve gone for the latter: Mozy. It looks good, it’s reasonably priced, it’s encrypted, it’s offsite and it does incremental backups (so you’re not hurling tens of gigabytes around the place every time you update), so it appears to tick all the boxes. More to the point, at just under five quid per month it’s a pretty cheap way to protect priceless files.
I’ll let you know how I get on. I just have to upload 282 gigabytes of data first.
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Gratuitous Half Man Half Biscuit references in tech columns
I’m writing about unlimited mobile phone data plans today.
This is not, it’s safe to say, an industry famed for putting customers first.
If the other operators decide to follow Three’s lead and get rid of their monthly data caps without small print or weasel words, I’ll eat my iPhone.
I hope I don’t end up regretting that last sentence.