Author: Carrie

  • Why let an author’s death put an end to a series?

    Following on from the news that Eoin Colfer, best known for the Artemis Fowl books, will be writing the next book in the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, I have my own announcement: I’ve been commissioned to write the sequel to James Joyce’s Ulysses. Obviously I can’t say too much about it, but I can promise that it’ll feature more car chases than the original.

  • Techno arse

    Great post on Broadstuff:

    If you read Techmeme, the aggregator of news in the Technosphere, you may not have noticed that the world’s financial markets nearly collapsed yesterday and that the world is again looking at a 1930’s style Great Depression scenario. You would not know that artist Damien Hirst flogged off £70m of “fine art” including the Formaldehyde Shark above – nor will you know that art prices nearly always reach top levels at the same time that commercial property development hits the point where it implodes, which is the guaranteed signal of recession.

    You will, of course, be very well aware of the latest Apple, Blackberry, Google etc shiny shiny stuff though.

  • Plastic Logic’s e-book reader: I want one

    Details and video at TG Daily.

    Manufacturer’s blurb:

    Differentiated by a stunning form factor (the size of 8.5 x 11-inch paper), the Plastic Logic reader features a big readable display. Yet it’s thinner than a pad of paper, lighter than many business periodicals, and offers a high-quality reading experience – better than alternatives of paper or other electronic readers on the market today.

    The Plastic Logic reader supports a full range of business document formats, such as Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and Adobe PDFs, as well as newspapers, periodicals and books. It has an easy gesture-based user interface and powerful software tools that will help business users to organize and manage their information. Users can connect to their information either wired or wirelessly and store thousands of documents on the device. The reader incorporates E Ink technology for great readability and features low power consumption and long battery life. The Plastic Logic reader is scheduled to ship in the first half of 2009.

  • Fan hits the shit

    You might think I’m only linking to the YouTube clip of Noel Gallagher being attacked on stage so I can use that headline.

    You’re right.

  • It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I’m thinking about iPods

    Later today the boffins at CERN will switch on the Large Hadron Collider, which will – depending on who you believe – usher in a brave new era in physics, turn the planet into Swiss cheese, or open a portal for Satan to come and enslave us all. Which may well overshadow the latest iPod.

    iPod Nano 4G
    iPod Nano 4G

    It’s a really nice upgrade, I reckon, but I do wonder where the iPod can possibly go from here. Pico-projectors that enable you to show video on nearby walls or bald people’s heads? Integrated kazoos?

    Tangent: during the keynote Steve Jobs made it clear that he wasn’t too happy with third-party accessory firms leaking supposedly secret products, as happened with the nano. I wonder if pre-release access to Apple’s plans is going to be more restricted now. Why help add-on manufacturers get to market quickly if they’re going to blow your big reveal?

  • Got a Sony Vaio? Don’t like fires? You should probably read this, then

    Sony’s recalling a whole bunch of Vaio TZ laptops because of an unfortunate “burny burny” feature that’s slipped into some of them. The recall includes these models:

    • All model numbers beginning “VGN TZ1” (e.g. VGN-TZ11XN/B)
    • All model numbers beginning “VGN TZ2” (e.g. VGN-TZ21WN/B)
    • Certain model numbers beginning “VGN TZ3” (e.g. VGN-TZ31VN/R)

    Full UK details here. [Via Engadget]

  • What your taste in music says about you

    Pointless but amusing survey via the BBC:

    Indie: Low self-esteem, creative, not hard working, not gentle

    Chart pop: High self-esteem, not creative, hardworking, outgoing, gentle, not at ease

    Jazz: appalling taste in music, ugly shoes

    I may have made one of those up.

  • Thoughts on using Apple’s Time Machine as a remote wireless hard disk

    Nope – at least, nope for iPhoto and iTunes libraries. This is a job for Captain Ethernet.

  • Google Chrome: that’s no moon

    Google’s much-anticipated operating system turns out to be real – but it’s built into a browser.

  • “Like those yucky strings of poo sometimes seen dangling from goldfish”

    A nice contrast to blog evangelism: PC Pro’s Dick Pountain on why he doesn’t blog, and why he thinks blogs are bad for writing.

    Publishers, being straightforward capitalists, have a duty to maximise their profits, and one way to do this is to pay writers less or pay fewer writers. To them, the blogosphere is starting to look like a huge open-cast mine of free copy, and the fact that it’s neither researched nor necessarily true is beside the point: that just means they can fire the research department too…

    Lacking any quality control mechanism, blogs easily sink into a Hobbesian state of nature – rule by the loudest and the nastiest.