Author: Carrie

  • HMV has a cunning PS3 plan

    HMV’s offering 5,000 people the opportunity to pre-order a PS3 online – provided they also buy a PSP and some games, bringing the total to a very reasonable £674.99. Apparently if you order this bargain bundle you’ll take precedence over other HMV online customers in the PS3 stakes – although there’s no guarantee that if…

  • Scots are soap-dodgers, Aberdonians are the worst

    If a survey says so, it must be true. Scottish people have been hailed as the dirtiest in the UK, according to a new study. Aberdeen was named as the most unhygienic city, closely followed by Edinburgh and Glasgow, with the average Scot only washing three times a week. Soap dodging is so rife north…

  • Sugababes vs Girls Aloud

    Oh dear, it’s terrible. And the guitar riff’s wrong too. Popjustice has the video, if you’re feeling masochistic. / falls into deep depression

  • Hollyrood regulates rock

    Well, not quite. But amid some fanfare this month, the Cross Party Group for Scotland’s Contemporary Music Industry (Live Music Section) will launch a code of conduct for promoters, venues, musicians, artists and performers. Politics and the performing arts have a fairly uneasy relationship, whether it’s the Scottish Arts Council’s often-controversial funding decisions or the…

  • Liberate Wi-Fi, go to jail

    Engadget’s posted about the Wi-Fi Liberator Toolkit, an open source toolkit for Apple laptops that enables you to “liberate” paid-for wireless networks and make them available to others for free. The project says: Most of these “closed” networks are deployed in “waiting” areas with the promise of “convenience” to allow pedestrians or commuters access to…

  • 2.19 million reasons to stay off the road

    It’s not just Citroen Picasso drivers that are actively trying to kill you: a truly terrifying 2.19 million UK cars aren’t taxed and therefore aren’t road legal – and it also means the sods can sail past speed cameras without getting done, because their cars aren’t on the system. But that’s a minor niggle. There…

  • An electronic magazine that doesn’t suck

    I’ve been having some interesting chats on the .net forums about the future of print magazines in an increasingly webby world, and one of my big moans is that the e-magazines so far have used really annoying technology – so for example I’m not a big fan of pages in PDF or solutions such as…

  • Work is cancelled for the foreseeable future

    Woo-hoo! [Thanks, David]

  • Using photo library images without permission? Expect a big bill

    There’s a good piece in today’s Guardian Technology about image libraries’ attempts to enforce copyright, and the scary bills resulting from unauthorised use. If someone’s building a site for you it’s a very good idea to make sure that the contract makes them, not you, liable for any nicked pics – or better still, make…

  • Windows Vista: do a clean install with the upgrade editions

    I was talking to David yesterday about Vista, and he’d mentioned an irritating thing about Windows Vista upgrade discs: you need to run an upgrade install rather than a clean one. However, there’s a workaround. Not the quickest thing to do, but it apparently works.