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Me at Techradar: In many ways Android is a bit like Windows. The first version of Windows wasn’t up to much, but Microsoft refined it, refined it, refined it a bit more and then used it to take over the Earth. Google’s doing the same. [more]
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A new post on Techradar, based on one blogger’s unhappy experiences of accessibility – both online and in the real world: “What will it take take for Deaf and Disabled people to be a real part of so called Digital Britain?” Smith says. “Why do we have to fight for our access needs so much?… [more]
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It’s the best Windows yet, we’re told, but the reviewers said the same thing about Vista. Can we trust them? What’s different about Windows 7? …unfair or not, people did criticise Microsoft – again and again and again and again, until the man on the street believed that Vista was as desirable as a six-month… [more]
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I went to see Massive Attack last night and they were good. [more]
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Probably… Income tax was introduced in 1798 to fund the war against Napoleon, and as you might have noticed he’s been dead for quite a while now. Technically, income tax is still a temporary tax – the government has to renew it every year in a Finance Act – and we’ve got rid of it… [more]
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Me on Techradar: I’m gutted. A gadget that cost me over £300 has packed up, and it’s taunting me with a flickering LED. I called the manufacturer and they’ve told me that since it’s out of warranty, it’s going to cost me money for an engineer to look at it – and if I’m right… [more]
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Sorry I’ve been quiet: still ill. But not too ill to predict doom! DOOM! in order to exist, Spotify has to pay the bills – and you can be confident that it’s paying rates that the BBC would laugh at. By all accounts the going royalty rate for streaming music is around 1p per stream,… [more]
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iTunes 9 is out. It does some interesting things. Still crashes a lot though. Here’s a review I’ve written. iTunes 9 feels snappier, the column browser is a much-needed improvement and the Home Sharing feature works very well, although on our Mac at least iTunes 9 doesn’t seem any less crash-prone than its predecessor. [more]
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Symantec has published a survey about kids’ use of social networks, suggesting that they don’t know or have forgotten that what they put online can hang around forever. I think Symantec is wrong. They do know. They haven’t forgotten. They just don’t care. Young people do lots of dumb things, but it’s not that they… [more]
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Here’s a pair of pieces I’ve written for Techradar. First, Snow Leopard versus Windows 7. Which is better? It’s a bit more complicated than that: So which is better? We think that’s the wrong question. Snow Leopard is better than Leopard, and Windows 7 is better than Windows Vista. If you aren’t planning to buy… [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
