Category: Hell in a handcart

  • Could the iPad save publishing? Not if publishers have anything to do with it

    From the Turkeys Voting for Christmas department, or rather AdAge, via Business Insider: Consumers who think iPad editions should cost no more than print editions and perhaps should cost less — given all the money publishers save on paper, printing and distribution — are going to be disappointed. I suspect the correct version of that is:…

  • Schemes o’ mice and men

    BBC Scotland’s showing a new documentary programme, The Scheme. If you’re in the UK you can watch it on iPlayer here. I’d love to know what you think of it. For those of you who don’t speak Scotland, a scheme is a housing estate. This particular one is in the Onthank area of Kilmarnock, about…

  • Ash clowns

    I’m just back from a short holiday, which went a bit like the General Election: we booked Portugal, but got Aviemore. The culprit was, of course, the volcanic ash cloud. There’s not much you can do about an Act of God, but it’s quite exceptionally frustrating when you’re also dealing with the Acts of Sods.…

  • Life, death and the Digital Economy Bill

    The Digital Economy Bill gets rushed through Parliament today, potentially leading to whistleblowing sites being blocked. I’ve written a wee bit about it: The bill doesn’t include anything about banning sites politicians and the military don’t want you to see, but it doesn’t need to. By including a clause that could enable the blocking of…

  • Something kinda ewwwwww

    I have no idea whether this is real or not, but it certainly isn’t safe for work. As Metafilter puts it: The Joydick is a wearable haptic device for controlling video gameplay based on realtime male masturbation. Heyho’s comment cracked me up. I’m comforted by the idea that any guy who’d be interested in this…

  • Other people’s privacy

    I meant to blog this earlier and completely forgot: it’s a typically incisive piece by Nicholas Carr on Google, Facebook and privacy. Reading through these wealthy, powerful people’s glib statements on privacy, one begins to suspect that what they’re really talking about is other people’s privacy, not their own. If you exist within a personal…

  • Keep taking the Apple tablets

    Time for a rumour round-up! So what do we really know about the most anticipated bit of technology since the USB lava lamp? Come with us as we filter the River of Rumour for the Shiny Nuggets of Truth.

  • Ticketmaster and Live Nation: spot the difference

    October 2009: The Competition Commission’s provisional findings on the multimillion-pound merger, published today, said that the deal would make it harder for new entrants to break into the ticketing marketplace. The commission also warned that combining the two major players in the music market could mean the price of tickets went up, or result in…

  • Climate change and shouting down questions

    I’ve always assumed that people who question climate change are in the same camp as creationists and people who believe wireless networks are cooking their brains. Maybe that’s because that’s how they’re painted by the media, or at least the media I consume. Squander Two has put an interesting post together on the subject: I…

  • Oh come on, you’re not even trying

    Blatant PR crap masquerading as editorial is nothing new, of course, but you’d think the Metro might at least *try* to conceal it. Nope. Here’s a story about bras. John Lewis revealed that sales of point bras are up by 33 per cent compared to the same time last year. The department store has seen…