Technovia

Pheer my reach!

I am, apparently, the 15th "most heard" voice on the interwebs in the UK, sandwiched between Andy Murray and Robert Peston. Ummm, go me! I think?

There are plusses and minuses to online newsrooms

Investigative journalism to make an online come-back? | Blog | Futurismic.

"The problem being that, currently, online advertising doesn’t provide enough income to run a proper newsroom, even with the lower overheads of the straight-to-web model. But will that always be the case? I’d be a lot more tolerant of internet advertising if I felt I was getting decent content as a result of it."

This is worth saying, repeatedly, to those who claim that there's no problems with moving news online.

New Mac OS X malware - OSX_LAMZEV.A - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

New Mac OS X malware - OSX_LAMZEV.A - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).

"Many Mac OS X-based malware seems to be similar in nature, requiring users to actually launch the installer and give it permission to install the payload. Unlike Windows-based malware, you shouldn't need to install any anti-malware apps to annoy you and slow down your Mac. Just make sure to follow the basic rules of Internet safety -- don't install applications that aren't legitimate or visit Web sites that you don't trust."

The same is, of course, true of Windows malware. Check out any of the lists of top ten current malware threats for Windows, and you'll always find that all of them require someone to download something and run it.

Switched to TypePad Connect

I've switched comments over to TypePad's news Connect service, and away from Disqus - Disqus is great, but I want to see how the Six Apart service goes.

If you're looking for an old Disqus comment, you can find them at the Technovia Disqus community page.

Testing, please ignore

Testing, testing.

Lame improvements in iPhone 2.2

iPhone 2.2 is disappointing. There's no other way to put it, but for two reasons, it's a let down.

Podcast download. Yes, you can download a podcast direct from the iTunes store. Hurrah! But what you can't do is subscribe to a podcast. That means I'm still stuck with Apple's 20th Century "vision" of the PC/Mac as a "digital hub". This is silly: my phone should stand on its own.

Street view. So to get to street view, I have to drop a pin. And tap on an icon which only appears in the bubble for that pin. What? That is about as counter-intuitive as you can imagine.

Sorry, Apple, but this one is a miss. 5 out of ten.

Ubuntu Tweak

Here's a quick recommendation for anyone getting to grips with customising Ubuntu for the first time: Ubuntu Tweak. This is a simple application which lets you change lots of settings, add useful repositories, and much more. Recommended.

(Via TuxGeek)

Technorati Tags: Ubuntu, Linux, Ubuntu Tweak

So I bought a new computer

I bought a new computer. It's not a Mac.

It's a Dell. It runs Linux. It didn't cost me £1400.

And I love it. I'll write some more about why I decided to switch later, but so far I've had it a week, and the only reason I've picked up the Mac again is to get copies of some files which aren't supported by anything other than Mac apps and save them into something sane.

Best. Tech. Discussion. Evah

Read it. Go on. You know you want to.

Buying a movie should not give you less quality than pirating it

And yet, as this example shows, thanks to copy protection systems it usually does:

"When my friend John, a high school teacher, attempted to play Hellboy 2 on his classroom's projector with a new aluminum MacBook over lunch, he was denied by the error you see above [an HDCP error]. John's using a Mini DisplayPort-to-VGA adapter, plugged into a Sanyo projector that is part of his room's Promethean system. Strangely, only some iTunes Store movies appear to be HDCP-aware, as other purchased media like Stargate: Continuum and Heroes season 2 play through the projector just fine. Attempts to play Hellboy 2 or other HDCPed films through the projector via QuickTime also get denied. Other movies that don't work include newer films like Iron Man, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and Love Guru, but older films like Shawshank Redemption are restricted as well."

Studios and other content companies should start to realise that this kind of stuff only discourages legitimate customers from paying for their products, and encourages them to pirate it.