Author: Carrie

  • Selling my phone on eBay. Third time lucky? Don’t be silly

    Another week, another attempt at selling my phone on eBay. This time the winning bidder is in the UK. Or is he? Let’s see what happens when we contact the winning bidder in Cold Norton, Essex! “Hello Mate, How are you doing today,It a New Year,Let Thank God one could see a New Year,Well i…

  • Return of the Snap previews

    I know you were all devastated when the redesign meant the disappearance of Snap link previews, so I’m sure you’ll be overcome with joy to see that they’re back. I’ve gone for a less intrusive option than before, though: to see a preview you’ll need to mouseover the Snap icon next to a link. If…

  • Frocky horror

    Writing in today’s Guardian, Hardeep Singh Kohli reckons it’s high time men abandoned their trews in favour of skirts. Why is it so very wrong for a slightly overweight Glaswegian Sikh to wear a retro-kitsch Diane von Furstenberg wraparound dress? Or perhaps an Etro skirt in a marled russet wool-and-cashmere mix with brocade detailing, cut…

  • NetNewsWire 3 sneak peek

    It’s not even a beta yet, but you can play with the next version of the excellent OS X RSS reader NetNewsWire right now. Despite the warnings it seems perfectly stable on my ageing Powerbook, and it comes with goodies including a shiny new interface, Growl notifications, preview thumbnails and Spotlight searching. NNW is already…

  • How not to win magazine competitions

    Over at All Talk No Action, Paul’s published a chat transcript that shows how not to win magazine competitions. The reader’s rock-solid reasoning amused me immensely.

  • Why not be a writaaaaaargh?

    The “Why not be a writer?” ads are everywhere, and while most of the success stories are crap – “I’ve had three letters published in Bathwater Collector Monthly!” – others are more impressive: sign up for this course and you could get a £25K advance for your novel! Many such claims, though, seem to be…

  • Lad mags in decline

    Remember when lad mags ruled the world? Those days are gone, it seems: the latest circulation figures show massive declines almost entirely across the board. According to UK Press Gazette, the big losers include: FHM (down 25.9% in the last half of 2006) Loaded (down 29.9%) Maxim (down 29.3%) Arena (down 29.9%) Zoo (down 21.5%)…

  • UK “get a Mac” ads backfiring?

    Apparently so: Since the ads began playing on TV [in the uk], consumer buzz about Apple has fallen from +8 to +4, according to a survey of 2,000 people. It seems the ads featuring David Mitchell (PC) and Robert Webb (Mac) are attracting criticism as the latter’s portrayel is see as being “a little too…

  • The enemies list, Feb 2007

    In no particular order: eBay, whose debt collectors – Intrum Justitia – sent me a nice letter about the listing fees that are nothing to do with me promising they’ll either “instruct solicitors to take legal action” or “instruct our local collection agent to make a personal visit”. Cocks! Domain Registry of America, whose official-looking…

  • Conspiracies, anti-virus and eBay

    One of my favourite conspiracy theories goes roughly like this: anti-virus companies would go out of business if their products were 100% effective, so they have a vested interest in keeping computers insecure. Depending on which version of the theory you subscribe to, the conspiracy means they either deliberately make insecure products, or they do…