An online notebook
Dave So, another Labour government, albeit with a much reduced majority. Probably the best result all round.
Here are some interesting snippets from The Guardian‘s coverage this morning.
The BBC also provides a rather funky Flash-based map with details of all the results, here.
This from John Naughton is priceless!
Ho, ho! The Pentagon released a heavily-censored PDF version of its report into the shooting, by US troops, of the Italian secret agent who was escorting a freed hostage to safety. But it turns out that you could make the blacked-out paragraphs in the classified document, containing top-secret details (such as the name of the soldier who fired the deadly rounds of ammunition) reappear by cutting and pasting them from the site into a Word document! More exquisite details from Corriere della Sera here.
Interesting post on Microsoft Monitor about the future of Windows:
What Microsoft really needs to do is transcend the traditional user interface and fundamentally transform how people interact with the operating system. But not in some newfangled way that would require effort akin to learning a new foreign language. Apple is off to a good start, assuming the company really understands what it’s got.
I’m talking search as the user interface. Back in February I suggested that maybe the best future of operating system interfaces is a step back to the command line. Search as the user interface makes lots of sense, and it is familiar because of how people use the Web.
Over the weekend, I stopped into an Apple Store to ask questions about QuickTime 7 High-Definition support. An Apple employee said that he had a 1080i short of BBC clips on one of the Macs. Rather than go to the file folder where the clip was stored, he clicked on the Spotlight search icon in the upper right-hand corner, typed BBC, found the file in about one second and started playback in HD. I’ve spoken to a few Mac users that are going through a kind of transforming behavior, where Spotlight quickly is becoming the main way through which they interact with the operating system.
Right now, Windows is stuck in the past.
I see desktop applications like desktop publishing and spreadsheets as driving the first wave of PC purchases. The Internet spurred the second wave of sales. Digital content could drive a third wave of sales, if vendor focus shifted from processing power and other tired feature and performance metrics to real user benefits. Search is a potentially strong user benefit, because it can remove an obstacle–the tired file folder structure–to making more out of digital content. I wonder in a teacher’s survey of a third-grade classroom how many kids aspire to be a file clerk when they grow up? Probably none. So how many people really aspire to filing stuff on their computers and then actually trudging through the file folders looking for it?
Since installing Google Desktop Search and Picasa I now never use the traditional My Documents file browsing. I just bung in what I am after into Desktop Search and move from there. Likewise on the web, with Google as my homepage I simply don’t bother with bookmarks any more – does anyone? It’s far easier to just type what you want into the search engine.
Thought it might be of some interest to share details of what software and services I use on a regular basis on my PC. Then again, it might well be incredibly boring. Here goes anyway.
I use FireFox most of the time. Tabbed browsing and the speed are the two plus points. I have three tabs set up as home pages: this blog, Gmail and Palimpsest. I sometimes use IE for things like online banking, and when I need to visit Microsoft webpages for things. For email, I use Gmail almost exclusively for my day to day emailing. I’ve never used a webmail client so useable. I have the Notifier tool running, which alerts me when new mail comes in, so I don’t need to be refreshing my inbox evey two minutes. I also regularly use Thunderbird for other email accounts for domain names I own, such as this one. I don’t touch Outlook Express with a bargepole. On the blogging side of things, I use WordPress to run this blog and would recommend this to anyone who has their own domain and database available. Otherwise, I would eschew Blogger, despite its nice integration with tools like Picasa, Hello and the Google Toolbar, because I find it slow and unreliable. Instead, I would recommend using MSN Spaces which is quick, fully featured, pretty customisable and easy to use. I use Filezilla as an FTP client and the new version 7 of the MSN Messenger IM client.
I read blogs offline with FeedDemon which is remarkable for being a piece of software I have actually paid for. It also integrates seamlessly with BlogJet, an offline blog post writing tool, which I have also shelled out the readies for. I don’t always use it though and sometimes good old Notepad comes in handy for quickly writing a post or note. I really wish, though, that ~ctrl-backspace~ would delete a word, rather than inserting a fairly useless character. There are no doubt plenty of free alternatives out there, but all the ones I have ever tried complicate things too much.
Occasionally I read blogs online with BlogLines which is a super service. PubSub and Technorati are useful blog search engines. For web search, it’s Google UK for me, though I do give MSN Search a go now and again. Google News and the BBC News sites are regular visits. WikiPedia likewise. The Guardian provides the best online content of any British newspaper, in my opinion, in terms of accessibility and depth.
I use Picasa to track my digital images on my PC, and wish it could integrate with blogging tools other than Google’s Blogger. These closed practises Google is developing pee me off sometimes. I usually host my pictures using a free account at Flickr and have downloaded their uploading tool, which works well. For other graphics work I use the Gimp – mainly because it is free. If I need to do any editing of websites, then I use 1st Page 2000 which is pretty comprehensive and (more importantly) free.
My choice of office suite is (perhaps obviously) OpenOffice.org, which does everything I need it to. I am not convinced that it is anywhere near as good as MS Office, but for my needs it is perfect value. For security, I run the ZoneAlarm firewall, AVG anti-virus, Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy. Am considering downloading the MS Anti-Spyware package at some point too.
I listen to music with ITunes as I have an Ipod, and watch DVDs with InterVideo WinDVD which came installed and seems to work quite well. For online media content I have Windows Media Players, RealPlayer and Quicktime all installed.
I think that is everything. Will update/correct links as necessary. Let me know if there is anything I should try out.
Really thoughtful article here from the BBCs Stephen Sackur on his return to the UK after 15 years of foreign jaunts.
Until I was 18 years old, I had never met a black man or woman. Nor, knowingly at least, a Jew nor a Muslim.
I was a farm boy born and brought up in Lincolnshire – among the whitest of white English counties.
I remember the stir in my primary school when a family of Vietnamese refugees was housed in Toynton All Saints.
We stared and we prodded and we mimicked because these were people with whom we could make no meaningful connection. They might as well have come from Mars.
They were not threatening, they were not aggressive, but to us they were overwhelmingly weird.
For the past 15 years I have been living far away from my homeland – in Cairo, Jerusalem, Washington and Brussels. And while I have been gone I know that things have changed.