Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Category: Technology

Shiny gadgets and clever computers

  • Paying for girls’ attention? Isn’t there a word for that?

    I’ve written a wee piece on Techradar about GameCrush, the frankly bizarre new service that will enable you to play videogames with girls, for a fee.

    Paying women to talk to you? Isn’t that what the ads for HOT GRANNY ACTION in the back of movie magazines and men’s magazines are for?

    Apparently not. GameCrush’s ethos is much purer than that. It’s designed to engage the brain, not engorge the groin. That’s why the girls can choose to offer chats ranging from “flirty” to “dirty” or, if they’re feeling particularly empowered, “flirty and dirty”.

  • How iPad books might look [video]

    Penguin’s been showing off some iPad-related ideas, and I think it’s fair to say they’re amazing – particularly the kids’ books.

  • And this is why everybody loves Valve

    Valve, makers of Left 4 Dead, Half-Life and various other gamer favourites, is bringing its steam platform to the Mac – and to make people aware of it, it’s been sending teaser images to a bunch of websites. The images include a parody of Apple’s famous 1984 ad, a parody of the Mac versus PC ads, and my favourite: a parody of an iconic Mac ad. This one was sent to Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

    The copywriting’s superb (click the image for a bigger version), especially if you’re familiar with the advert they’re parodying.

    Meanwhile, there’s also an Easter Egg hunt going on for PC gamers that suggests either Portal 2, a new Half-Life episode or both, and the reaction I’ve seen on various games sites is absolute delight.

  • Unintended consequences: why Windows’ new browser choice screen will only help Chrome

    Me at Techradar:

    What we’ve got, then, isn’t a case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted: it’s a case of locking the stable door after the horse has evolved opposable thumbs, learnt to drive cars and driven through the stable in a Challenger tank. It’s far too late for Netscape and Microsoft’s browser share will never recapture its near-total control of the internet.

    It’s not going to make much difference to the minority browsers, either.

  • Could Spotify work for ebooks?

    As long term readers will know, I’m amazed by the way in which the music business spent more than ten years missing every business opportunity the Internet brought them, effectively handing their entire business over to the pirates. Services such as Spotify should have turned up a long time ago.

    Could the same kind of thing work for ebooks? Is there enough ad money to go round? Do book readers want to social network?

    we have real-world equivalents for both its free and subscriber services. Libraries give books away for nothing – or seem to; in reality authors get a little bit of money in the form of Public Lending Right (PLR) royalties, a gap that online ad revenues could easily plug – while book clubs have offered heavily discounted prices to subscribers for decades.

    Could similar ideas work online?

  • Stop insulting the elderly with crappy technology

    It’s Tuesday. It’s Techradar time…

    Sagem’s Cosyphone is aimed at the over-50s. Not only does it have really big buttons and numbers, but it has near field communications technology, too. Need to call somebody? Why not wave a big picture of them in the air, like a simpleton? “It uses cards, which can be customised with a photo or other information and pre-programmed with the number of the doctor’s surgery, or a friend or relative. To make a call, the user simply “waves” their phone over that card to speak to that person or send a text message.”

    Remember, this is a phone for the over-50s, a group that includes such drooling basket cases as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Gates and Chuck Norris – people who continue to do amazing things and who can kick your face off if you look at them funny

  • This looks shopped. I can tell by some of the pixels and from having seen a few shops in my time

    Photoshop is 20. Happy Birthday, Photoshop!

    From whitening teeth in billboard ads to foisting yet more lolcats on the world, its influence is enormous.

    Inevitably that influence has been bad as well as good. In the right hands, image manipulation can be undetectable, but all too often Photoshop falls into the hands of the overworked, the shoddy and the idiotic.

  • Microsoft gets Windows Mobile right, at last

    Me, on Techradar:

    Hopefully this is part of a bigger trend. For years, technology has become more and more complicated, often for no good reason. I do a monthly radio surgery where listeners phone in with their technology troubles, and more often than not they’re being driven daft by something that should be simple, but isn’t. Far from being an enabler, something that helps us get things done, technology can become a barrier, a binary bouncer that stops us doing the things we want to do.

  • Facebook is the budget airline of tech

    A year ago today, I said that Facebook had jumped the shark. Now, I’m eating humble pie. Sort of.

    So, Facebook is brilliant, I’m a great big numpty and everything in social networking land is groovy.

    Not so fast.

    Facebook isn’t popular because it’s good. It’s popular because it’s popular.

    Facebook is the budget airline of tech.

  • On abusive comments

    Hi! How are you? Also: up yours! Screw you! Get stuffed!

    Welcome to the wonderful world of web comments, where telling somebody to get bent is an acceptable way to say hello.

    A wee piece by me over at Techradar about Engadget switching off its comments system due to “trolls and spammers”.