January 19th, 2010
Within minutes of setting up his account and posting a few tentative tweets his follower count started taking off. He would certainly have to be one of the most interesting folks to follow, particularly considering his focus now on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Really looking forward to following along with his work.
January 12th, 2010
This is big. Google have just published an amazingly frank blog post about their future in the China market. In the wake of recent cyber attacks on their infrastructure and the apparent link to the invasive monitoring of human rights activists they are seriously considering pulling out altogether. Read the rest of this entry »
December 23rd, 2009
At work this Christmas we’ve spent a bit of time thinking about how to help a few good causes, and one cause I’ve been introduced to is the New Zealand branch of the Disabled Surfers Association. Disabled Surfers was started in Australia about 20 years ago, and New Zealand is the first international branch.
The goal of the DSA is all about giving people of any disability the chance to experience the thrill of surfing. They run events each year over summer, where participants are teamed up with experienced and trained surfing instructors with the equipment needed to help them actually catch a few waves whether lying down tandem, sitting, kneeling or standing. Typically the ratio of particpants to instructors is 1:6 so it is a totally safe and supportive enironment. Pretty cool really.
The DSA is a not-for-profit association relying on volunteers and donations to fund it’s activities so particularly if you are based in New Zealand check out the local branch. Any kind of support would be gratefully received. As a new organization in NZ they are hard at the fund raising right now so they can afford to get more of the equipment they need.
December 21st, 2009
I only just noticed these updates to Google Suggest where they now put the info I am looking for right inside the search box…before I have even finished typing the query. Take this example where I start typing “weather in auckland”…
Try typing in a flight number and you get flights status info. No doubt there’s lots of other queries where Google can be reasonably confident of your intent and can give you the info right up front. In some ways it is kind of an obvious extension to Google Suggest, but it does seem still more magical.
I reckon a better name for Google Suggest would be Google Pre-cog.
November 25th, 2009
Pic credit: Kelsey Supersonic
Happy Thanksgiving to all my US readers. Hope you have a good one.
September 28th, 2009
It’s well known that you can access complete WSJ articles via Google News which you can’t access directly when navigating their own site. Not quite sure of the rationale for this but to make it easier to access complete articles you can use the following bookmarklet to find the URL for complete articles on wsj.com…
Find WSJ article <– drag this link to your browser bookmarks bar
How to:
Really makes you wonder about the purpose of ‘hiding’ the full article in the first place. With all the talk they’ve been making recently about the paywall I fully expect them to close this loop hole anytime.
June 24th, 2009
My son is nearly 5 and like most boys his age he’s really into Transformers. We won’t be taking him to see the new feature film, but he and I did check out the online trailer and a few online clips from the first movie tonight.
June 12th, 2009
Banksy takes over a big chunk of the Bristol Museum for his biggest exhibition ever, a secret installation entitled ‘Banksy vs. Bristol Museum’. BBC segment below.
April 29th, 2009
I love watching skating, and this is one of the best video segments I’ve ever seen. William Spencer skateboards with a circus stunt attitude…
Read the rest of this entry »