Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • What if bandwidth is the new oil?

    Forgive the self-promotion, but I enjoyed writing this what-if for PC Plus:

    Of course, bandwidth isn’t controlled by sheikhs or delivered in trucks, and we’re pretty sure that the US won’t invade a sovereign nation to seize control of its cable TV network – but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t striking similarities between oil, gas and bandwidth.

    While I’m thinking about it, dear readers, what’s your take on self-promotion? Would you prefer it if I didn’t link to individual articles? Should I do it more? Could you care less?

  • You too can maik money bye writing artickles

    This brilliant website appeared via an ad on a journalism forum, which promised a sure-fire way to make money from freelance journalism:

    as more and more companies and entrepreneurs have turned their attention to the Internet, the competition has made finding fresh, original content more difficult than ever before. 

    This situation has created a dire need for writers who can create content for various websites all over the Internet – and it doesn’t have to be great content, or even good content for that matter

    If you sign up now, you’ll get other valuable tips:

    I will explain what I do and show you exactly what you must also do to make more money than you probably ever dreamed possible taking pictures and uploading them onto the internet!

    And:

    Did you know that their are companies (large and small) out there that are willing to pay you to take surveys, participate in online focus groups, watch movie trailers, go shopping for products (you get to keep the products too), and even to drive your car! That’s right, there are even companies out there that are even willing to pay you to drive your own car with their advertisements on them!

    If you order today you will get access to our comprehensive list of over 300 online companies that are all literately “begging” you to take surveys online for cash, drive your car for cash, participate in online focus groups for cash, and to complete simple offers for cash!

    But that’s not all!

    I’ll also tell you how you can make a very profitable living through the Internet’s hottest “new thing” – blogging!

    As one delighted customer puts it:

    The first 15 pages is worth the money!

  • Coming back to Google Chrome

    My old Powerbook is knackered – six keys no longer working, and I suspect the culprit may be baby food – so I’ve dragged out my arthritic Acer Aspire, which “runs” Vista. It’s basically a desperately underpowered laptop that struggles to get out of bed, let alone actually do anything. So hurrah for Google Chrome, which runs beautifully on it.

    Chrome isn’t perfect – it still isn’t extensible, and there’s an issue with Hotmail where you can read but not write emails – but it’s still a cracking wee browser. I’d definitely recommend it for everyday browsing on underpowered Windows kit.

  • Should blogs link to the leaked BNP membership list? Probably not

    Linking to defamatory material isn’t a good idea, and as Matt Wardman writes:

    this scenario exists in the case of the BNP Membership List if a single person is on there by mistake: links will be to a post alleging that x, y or z is a member of the BNP. Bearing in mind that BNP Activists are posting that the list is out of date, and that the current membership is of the order of 6,000, linking to a posting suggesting that 10,000 people or so are BNP members looks a touch perilous.

    Anybody else searched for namesakes in the list? Just me, then?

  • Fighting piracy by shooting yourself in the foot, #3124

    Ars Technica:

    High Definition Content Protection (HDCP)—you can’t live with it, but you practically can’t buy an HD-capable device anymore without it. While HDCP is typically used in devices like Blu-ray players, HDTVs, HDMI-enabled notebooks, and even the Apple TV in order to keep DRMed content encrypted between points A and B, it appears that Apple’s new aluminum MacBook (and presumably the MacBook Pro) are using it to protect iTunes Store media as well.

    Engadget:

    the problem comes in when you realize that the new unibody machines don’t offer a VGA / VGA-to-component output, meaning that you have to connect it to an HDCP-compliant display if you want to see anything. We know, one word in particular keeps coming to mind to describe this fiasco: awesome.

    As one Engadget commenter puts it:

    Seriously, if you pirate it, it JUST WORKS. No need to spend extra to comply with DRM/HDCP crap.

  • “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”

    Not everybody in marketing sees the entire world as an advertising opportunity, it seems. According to Silicon Alley Insider, Procter & Gamble’s GM for interactive marketing and innovation, Ted McConnell, isn’t keen on Facebook ads.

    Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.

  • Newspapers: firing the wrong people?

    There’s an interesting piece by David Carr in today’s New York Times about (US) newspapers’ latest cost-cutting wheeze: firing their best writers.

    Right now, the consumer has all manner of text to choose from on platforms that range from a cellphone to broadsheet. The critical point of difference journalism offers is that it can reduce the signal-to-noise ratio and provide trusted, branded information. That will be a business into the future, perhaps less paper-bound and smaller, but a very real business.

    …Having missed the implications of the Web and allowed both their content and their audience to be scraped away by aggregators and ad networks, newspapers are now working furiously to maintain audience, build new ad models and renovate presentation. But they won’t stay relevant to readers with generic content ginned up by newbies with no background in the communities they serve.

    I’m inclined to agree with this bit too:

    I have always thought of journalism as more craft than profession and tell students that it is the accumulation of experience and technique that makes a journalist valuable, not some ineffable beckoning of the muse.

  • Dead Space (Xbox 360)

    I’ve mentioned this game a couple of times now, but now that I’ve actually finished it (on the easiest level, naturally – I’m rubbish at games) I thought I’d do a quick review. Why? The timing of its release was terrible: instead of shining like an oasis during the summer games drought, a period so bad that people (well, me) spent hard-earned cash on crap such as Fracture because there was sod-all out, it came out just as big hitters such as Gears of War 2 and Fallout 3 were on their way to the shelves – which means there’s a good chance it’ll be overlooked. That’d be a shame, because it’s the most fun I’ve had with a game for ages.

    Reviews have said it’s derivative, which it is: a lot of Alien, a bit of Doom and a soupcon of Prey. They’ve said it flags a bit in the middle, which it does. They’ve suggested that the story is a bit rubbish, which it is. And they’ve said the scares are of the simplest, open a box, AAARGH MONSTER kind. Which is a wee bit unfair.

    There are indeed plenty of open a box, AAARGH MONSTER scares in the game, but what Dead Space is really good at is establishing a constant feeling of dread. Imagine your testicles were filled with explosives, and the explosives were really quite volatile, and you’re on a bus being driven by an idiot, and it turns onto a cobbled street, and there are lots of holes in the ground, and the driver speeds up, and you know that sooner or later your balls are going to blow up. You know it’s going to happen, but you don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen.

    Dead Space is a bit like that. But with AAARGH MONSTERS instead of balls.

    It’s not a 10/10 game by any means, and it’s not a 9/10 either, so if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t buy anything unless Edge has okayed it then you might not bother. But it’s worth getting hold of pre-owned, or when it hits the bargain rails, or on eBay, because it’s about ten hours of solid entertainment. It’s the game I’d hoped Doom 3 would be – dumb, derivative, gory fun.

  • George Saunders: The brain-dead megaphone

    “…the nightly news may soon consist entirely of tirades by men so angry that all they can do is sputter while punching themselves in the face, punctuated by videos of dogs blowing up after eating firecrackers, and dog-explosion experts rating the funniness of the videos…”

    I think I’m going to enjoy this book.

  • HD video cameras: as long as tech is this confusing, we’ll need people to cut through the bullshit

    A while back, I mentioned that taking baby steps into “proper” photography made me weep hot salty tears of frustration and rage, until a bit of informed advice and a few magazines cheered me up and translated the crap into plain English. It turns out that the world of digital photography is the simplest thing in the world compared to video.

    It’s entirely academic at the moment – I’ll probably have to mug some schoolchildren at lunchtime in order to afford a pint or two tonight – but at some point in the near future I want to buy a video camera. I’ve learnt from my previous mistakes – best summarised as “don’t buy on price” – and I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I want.

    It’s not complicated. I want a camera that has these features:

    * High definition, because if I’m going to shell out on a camera I might as well get one that’s reasonably future-proof.

    * Card storage, because I hate DVDs and like the security of being able to carry a few spare cards around.

    * Mac compatibility.

    And naturally, I don’t want to pay a million pounds for it. Even window shopping is suffering from the credit crunch.

    So off I trot to the wonderful world of manufacturer websites and product spec sheets. And what a confusing load of crap it all is.

    In no particular order, here are some of the things you need to know about:

    * HD means different things depending on what you’re looking at. This camera here is HD, with 720p HD! This camera here is also HD, but it has 1080p HD! But this 720p one has better pictures than the 1080p because it has better fps and that one is better than the other ones because it is not interlaced and over here this one is the very bestest camera ever because it has magic space pixies that live inside it!

    * The jargon around video cameras is even worse than with still cameras. In addition to all the f-stop stuff and JPEG profiles you’d expect, there’s CMOS and CCD and 3DDNR and BIONZ image processors and X many frames per second and face detection and AVC/H.264 and DIS and OIS and OMGWTFINEEDALIEDOWN.

    * It’s not enough to go “no, Sony, your memory sticks are evil” and plump for something that uses SD cards. Different cameras have different levels of SD support, so some max out at a particular level of storage, others are utterly pointless unless you get SDHC cards. And of those, some of them don’t really work unless you go for Class 4 HD cards. Class what?

    * Mac compatible doesn’t necessarily mean Mac compatible, because the combination of the highest HD resolutions and the AVCHD format used by some cameras isn’t yet supported by OS X software such as iMovie (although this may have changed by now. I’m too confused to keep looking).

    Kudos to Techradar*, T3**, the Guardian*** et al for trying to explain all this stuff sensibly in reviews and product comparisons, but I can’t help thinking that this is the best option:

    * Instead of buying an HD camera, take lots of still photos, print them out and wave them around really, really quickly.

    * Vested interest: I write for it, albeit not about video cameras
    ** Vested interest: I’ve written for it, albeit not about video cameras
    *** Vested interest: I’ve written for that too, albeit.. you get the idea