Category: Columns & Opinion
Opinion: Judgements against spammers are a waste of time, try educating users instead
MySpace has “won” around £120m from two spammers who used their network to send junk mail to members, but it has little chance of seeing the cash.
It’s no surprise that Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines (who apparently are real people) failed to turn up in court — it’s likely no-one even knows where they live…
OPINION: It really doesn't matter what Steve Jobs reveals in June
Because every Apple fan and gadget fashionista will automatically buy it anyway. As long as it’s sleek and expensive enough to brag about on the internet.
Even if Mr Jobs pulls a solar-powered calculator (iAddsUP) out of his shirt pocket and announces it goes on sale – tomorrow! – for a mere $699 for the 8-digit screened version and $799 for the 10-digit screened model, it’ll be a smash.
Apple fans will now buy anything from Apple. Not only that, but Apple’s become some sort of global fashion icon. People just have to have its new stuff, regardless of if it actually…
VIDEO: My Video Life, by Gary Cutlack, aged 34
Hello everyone. Don’t panic – this isn’t another battery review! Instead, this is my entry for the Shiny/Cisco My Video Life competition.
The idea is you make a video about what video means to you, whack it on YouTube, then someone gets the honour of being described as A WINNER. Imagine that. Imagine the feeling of being a winner! Here’s my attempt at winning. I doubt I will be feeling the feeling.
You should enter. Any video will do, even just one of you watching telly while eating sausages filmed on a mobile phone. if that’s what video really means to you, there’s no arguing with that. There’s £500 worth of stuff…
OPINION: Forget Vista, XP and Linux – Firefox is now my #1 operating system
I had some sort of religious dawn last week. Some kind of personal discovery, a moment of clarity, if you will. I used a Mac – and it was fine!
Now, I pretty much hate Macs. I’ve only ever used old Macs, rubbish ones from the distant past that are unable to cope with newer operating systems. So I associate Macs with PAIN.
But I just used one and it was fine. Because the only thing I use is Firefox…
Opinion: freesat confusion and secrecy is hurting the brand and stifling competition
freesat, the free-to-air satellite service due to launch in a matter of weeks, is a great idea and one that many people are looking forward to, but the organisation is behaving as if the pre-launch phase is a covert military operation, and that’s hurting the brand.
Last week we wrote about the launch of Hauppauge’s USB2 tuner that should be able to receive the freesat signal via a compatible satellite connection. That’s not how freesat sees it…
Opinion: I really hope my laptop breaks soon…
Gary Cutlack writes…
Today might be the day my laptop finally breaks. I hope it does. The bloody thing cost me £850 about two and a half years ago but is now little more than an embarrassment and liability.
So if it breaks, I’ll be able to buy a new one for half that amount. One with three times the power and enough memory to open up several applications at the same time. And it’ll be smaller and lighter. Please break, laptop. I don’t love you any more…
Opinion: Super fast broadband via the sewers is fine, but ISPs need incentives to improve
Ofcom has decided to conduct a survey of Britain’s pipework to test its suitability for carrying fibre-optic cabling for use in high speed broadband networks.
Bournemouth Council has already tested broadband via the sewers, so it’s possible, but the main problem is that most ISPs don’t have a real incentive to roll out faster services.
Two issues — the growing use of mobile Internet, and Internet users’ skyrocketing demand for Video on Demand and other bandwidth-intensive multimedia — were never envisaged when the Internet was born.
Opinion: BBC Internet 'guru' Ashley Highfield wasn't spectacular, all he did was give cyberspace a 'play' button
Jonathan Weinberg writes…
It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have much money. The best innovators often produce the most fantastic efforts when they’re doing it on a shoe-string. Look at Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, he didn’t have millions of pounds when he started it, he simply had passion, drive and a simple idea for something he believed would work.
So the news today that the BBC’s New Media boss is to stand down and move to launch an on-demand video service for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 strikes me as interesting. Ashley Highfield has been feted as one of the most important people on the Internet. But he controls a budget of £74m a year. Surely even a chimp in a tutu could do some decent work with that kind of cash to fund it.
The plan is that “Project Kangaroo” (dumb name for a start) will become the Freeview of the Internet offering more than 10,000 hours of programmes. Now I’ve nothing against that, I love TV. In fact, I’m an addict as my friends will tell you judging by my preference to stay in and watch rubbish on the box rather than going out with them.
Cocaine users bragging about it on Facebook – what else is lurking on FB?
Gary Cutlack investigates…
Spurred on by media reports of pro-cocaine groups INFESTING the beast that is Facebook, I thought I’d have a look around and see what other shameful activities are listed on the social networking hotspot.
This is no mere blog update – it’s fierce investigative journalism that could bring the Facebook house of cards CRASHING DOWN!
Here are the top ten most shameful Facebook groups I’ve dug up today.
1. “People who like to sit in baths full of champagne whilst wanking and eating truffles and caviar and filling in forms for Job Seekers Allowance”
Sadly no one has uploaded any videos, which leads me to believe this may be a fake. I have signed up anyway, to, er, investigate further.
2. “If Kate Moss does cocaine, it should be legal”
Probably not entirely serious, this one, especially as it has the tagline “Cocaine is still illegal. Even with Kate Moss as their spokesperson.” Still, it’s all you’d need to hang a story off if you were a News of the World reporter looking to brand Facebook a SICK DRUGS DEN…
Top Five Gadgets From The Skies Above America
Anyone who loves gadgets and lives in the UK will know of the Innovations catalogue. Sadly it no longer exists, it went out of business a couple of years ago, but it was often found dropping through your letterbox inside the Sunday newspapers.
And what you’d find within its pages were some of the most weird and wonderful gizmos in the world. All the stuff you never really needed (ever) but bought from your hard-earned cash just in case – and because it looked “interesting”. I wasted a fortune back in the days of Innovations and was horrified when it bit the dust.
So imagine my joy last week when I caught an internal flight from Orlando to Miami in the States on American Airlines and found a copy of the SKY MALL catalogue in the pocket in front of my seat. It’s Innovations US-style and I’ve picked my five favourites
over the jump. Best thing about it, even those in the UK can order from it!
