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There’s been a bit of controversy over Digg.com’s DiggBar, which shortens URLs and provides Digg-specific features. The main criticism is that you get the bar if someone sends you a Digg-ed URL, but it’s also annoyed website owners because it frames their content. Digg announced some big changes to the bar yesterday that will address… [more]
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It’s Tuesday! Over the weekend, Twitter exploded with anger directed at Amazon.com. The bookselling giant had effectively blacklisted GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) books by blocking them from search results and sales rankings. We’re not just talking about explicit books, either. The affected books included scholarly works, award-winning novels and even Brokeback Mountain. Depending… [more]
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The teachers’ union ATL wants Wi-Fi to be ripped out of schools because of its evil brain-eating properties. Amazingly, I have an opinion about that. Techradar: Our kids are growing up in a confusing world. Marketers use pseudo-science to flog their products, online misinformation abounds and newspapers are all too happy to run scare stories… [more]
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The Windows Rookies campaign is really quite cute: [more]
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It doesn’t exist. So I’ve invented it! Your web browser is probably the most important thing on your computer – and you almost certainly spend more time with it than you do with family or friends. It’s no wonder, then, that browser battles cause so much controversy. Some browsers don’t render sites properly, others don’t… [more]
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I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but one of my pet theories is that you can tell the shape of consumer technology by going to the supermarket. Supermarkets care very much about making money, so they don’t stock what they don’t think they can sell – so for example Blu-Ray is still conspicuous by its… [more]
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Opinions? I gots ’em! Me on Techradar: The problem is that far too many online services haven’t a clue how they’re going to make money, and in many cases the business plan appears to be a single sentence: “Get bought by Google”. Twitter arguably falls into that category, because it’s yet to find a way… [more]
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Er, probably not. MP3HD is a lossless format, which means it delivers a perfect digital copy of the original audio – but it manages to do it more efficiently than WAV or AIFF files, which can be massive… We’ve been here before. Nearly eight years ago Thomson announced a new, higher quality kind of MP3… [more]
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Me, on Techradar: GhostNet is a wake-up call. Upgrade Windows or switch to Linux. Compromising old Windows boxes is like stealing candy from a baby. Compromising Linux boxes is more like stealing candy from a baby that’s locked away in a subterranean vault with armed robot guards, packs of savage Rottweilers and lots of Indiana… [more]
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Techradar: Starter Edition is essentially Windows 7 with a completely arbitrary three-application limit. This restriction is “designed to ensure that users get the best possible performance” from their netbook. That’s kind, isn’t it? Why not go the whole hog and slap the Windows 7 logo on MS-DOS? That’d go like lightning! [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.
