Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • Politicians and the Internet. It’s never good

    Hello. Sorry if I’ve been quiet lately – Baby Bigmouth was a bit unwell last week so it’s all sleep deprivation around these parts. Not that that’s stopping me from getting angry about tech things. Far from it. Here’s my take on the government’s latest ISP-related idea.

    Rather than, say, reining in Google or telling Facebook to get a grip – something the European Commission thinks the UK doesn’t do properly, which is why we’re being taken to court by the Commission for failing to comply with EU privacy rules – the government wants our ISPs to start censoring.

    I can’t stress this enough: we’re not talking about illegal information here. We’re talking about information that allegedly breaches somebody’s privacy, or that “is inaccurate”. Bye, Facebook! See ya, Wikipedia!

  • How many people will Google’s car kill?

    A fascinating post by Jean-Louis Gassée on Google’s self-driving car:

    The hardware and the software will fail, no question. The real riddle is determining the socially acceptable failure rate. Today, there are about 40,000 car fatalities per year. Note the euphemistic “car fatalities” or “car accidents”, as if the drivers weren’t to blame. You can imagine the news headlines when the first self-driving car fatality happens: Killer Robot! Killer Software! (A literal killer app?). Isaac Asimov, the author of the Three Laws of Robotics will spin in his grave.

  • Windows 7 isn’t right for tablets

    Stating the bleedin’ obvious it may be, but Lenovo says Windows 7 isn’t right for tablets and that Android 2.2, aka Froyo, isn’t ready for them either.

    Lenovo’s director of new technology Howard Locker, explained it this way: “The challenge with Windows 7 is that it’s based on the same paradigm as 1985—it’s really an interface that’s optimized for a mouse and keyboard. It has to be optimized for touch. How do you do that?”

    I think the – really rather impressive – Windows Phone OS would be a better fit for tablets, and Android won’t be tablet-focused until version 3 comes out next year. On that basis I think it’s madness to buy a non-Apple tablet right now.

  • How Nokia lost the plot

    Reviews of the new Nokia N8 are coming in thick and fast, and they’re not good: the consensus is that it’s a great piece of kit hobbled by not so great software. Via The Guardian, here’s a piece in the Helsingin Sanomat that attempts to describe the problems facing Nokia and what caused them. I can’t help thinking of Microsoft when I read it.

    Hit mobile phones emerged and went into production. Devices that many people remember even today, such as the 2110 or the 6110, with its infra-red port and menu icons.
    Then along came 2000, and thereafter a decision was taken to increase the number of available Nokia handsets.
    “Two new models a year was no longer enough, but there was a perceived need to bring out as many as 40 or 50 models a year.”
    “An utterly terrifying number.”

  • A good book you can have for free

    My friend Chris Mitchell runs Spike, a most excellent books-and-interesting-things site on the Internet. And now, he’s put together a most excellent ebook version with some of the best bits from Spike’s last 15 years. And a few things I’ve written too.

    It’s a lovely thing to look at and and to read, and it’s free. Here’s who’s in it:

    Chris Abani Peter Ackroyd Douglas Adams Scott Adams Keith Altham Paul Auster Tom Baker J.G. Ballard Iain Banks John Battelle John Baxter Samuel Beckett Bellow Thomas Bernhard Maurice Blanchot Jorge Luis Borges Angela Bourke Michael Bracewell Charlie Brooker Charles Bukowski Julie Burchill Jason Burke Bryan Burrough Albert Camus Paul Celan Bruce Chatwin Annabel Chong E.M. Cioran Diablo Cody Douglas Coupland Quentin Crisp Mark Danielewski Don De- Lillo John C Diamond Stephen Dorril Patricia Duncker Nic Dunlop The Fall Stefan Fatsis Tibor Fischer Mark Fisher Michael Foot Franz Ferdinand Athol Fugard Anna Funder Alex Garland Harry Gibson William Gibson Allen Ginsberg Graham Greene Peter Guralnick Half Man Half Biscuit Keith Haring Bill Hicks Tom Hodgkinson Gert Hofmann Nick Hornby Michel Houellebecq Gary Indiana Derek Jarman Linton Kwesi Johnson Ed Jones Gabriel Josipovici Kevin Kelly Naomi Klein Rem Koolhaas Kruder And Dorfmeister Andrey Kurkov Emma Larkin Abby Lee Wyndham Lewis Jack London Leo Marks David Markson Gabriel Garcia Marquez Bertie Marshall Cedric Mims Alan Moore Morrissey Patricia Morrisroe Cookie Mueller Ben Myers Jeff Noon Cees Nooteboom Angus Oblong Will Oldham P.J. O’Rourke Lawrence O’Toole Chuck Palahniuk Tim Parks Arvo Part Ulf Poschardt Richard Powers Thomas Pynchon Matthew Robertson Bruce Robinson Jacques Roubaud Robert Sabbag Peter Saville Alberto Sciamma WG Sebald Will Self Tupac Shakur Mark Simpson Iain Sinclair Michael Marshall Smith Sonic Youth Ralph Steadman Suicide Damo Suzuki Swans David Sylvian David Thomas Hunter S. Thompson Colm Toibin Amos Tutuola Stuart Walton Alan Warner Evelyn Waugh Belinda Webb Irvine Welsh The White Stripes Tony Wilson

    If you download it — which you should — and you like it — which I think you will — Chris would be very happy if you could share the download link with others.

  • iPads are ace, but we still need netbooks

    Me at Techradar: there are still areas where netbooks are better than iPads.

    … [Adobe] Flash. Sure, there are reasons to loathe it, but in my house my wife matters more than Steve Jobs, and many of my wife’s favourite sites use Flash. Until they see the light and switch to something else, the iPad isn’t a fully functional web browser.

    It’s not just Flash, either. Some things simply don’t work, either because of overzealous browser sniffers that don’t recognise Mobile Safari (“Your browser is old or strange! You can’t come in!”) or because of a lack of testing. For example, I’ve found many sites that use RBS Secure card authentication don’t work on the iPad because the box that asks for your password doesn’t display at all.

  • Orange owners, meet T-Mobile. T-Mobile owners, meet Orange

    Orange and T-Mobile customers can now roam across each firms’ networks, although for now it’s only 2G (ie. calls and texts, not Internet). You’ll need to sign up for it.

    If you’re on Orange, you need this link.

    If you’re on T-Mobile, you need this one.

  • The problem with books: they’re too quiet

    Books are rubbish. They just sit there with their words and their plots and their characterisation and their background detail. Where’s the fun in that? What books need is… 3D audio clips!

    From the press release:

    Pan Macmillan Marketing Director Becky Ikin said:

    ‘We wanted to celebrate the phenomenal global publication of Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants with a genuinely exciting digital offering that built on Ken’s unique ability to take readers back in time to the sights and sounds of his period – in this new epic, World War I. 3D sound is something the games industry is beginning to dabble in, film is investing in 3D visuals and we think it’s exciting for the book industry to be experimenting in this way. So far books have looked at video or audio to sit alongside or after the main text (they force you to switch from reading the book) but this is a genuine ‘enhancement’ and far beyond the usual audio experience. It just hopefully fires your imagination alongside the author’s words.

    There’s an iPad version too, where “sound files have been embedded into the ebook”. Personally I can’t think of anything I’d like less, but if you’re interested the website is over here.

  • Keep taking the tablets – iPads, PlayBooks and Galaxy Tabs

    Want to know the key differences between Apple’s iPad, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and BlackBerry’s PlayBook? You do? Well, looky here then.

    You won’t be able to buy a PlayBook until well into 2011, and by then Apple should have iPad 2 ready to roll. The second generation iPad may well address some of the apparent weaknesses in this company; we’d certainly expect more memory, a faster processor and a camera or two to appear in Apple’s 2011 tablet. And of course, Apple isn’t the only firm making tablets. The next few months are going to be very interesting indeed.

  • Maybe Nokia needs to buy in some software

    And I don’t mean a few copies of Microsoft Office. Symbian is looking increasingly isolated, so perhaps Nokia needs to kill it.

    [hardware bossing the software guys about] wouldn’t be such an issue if specs were all that mattered, but in smartphones the reverse is true. In hardware terms the iPhone was and is rubbish compared to its much better specced – and priced – rivals, but superb software saw it fly off Apple’s shelves.

    Windows Mobile 6.1 didn’t fall out of favour because the handsets weren’t good enough, but because the software wasn’t. And people aren’t excited about Windows Phone because the handsets promised hitherto unimaginable kinds of hardware heaven.

    We know that Nokia can make awesome hardware, but can it make awesome software too?