- Chris Anderson’s brilliant piece on PR people getting blocked from his blog I imagine he has to deal with at a whole other level of stuff to me. PR people are sending unsolicited commercial e-mails. It is spam! And they’re trying to commandeer the conversation. It may be inevitable, but it’s also repulsive!
Author: Tom Coates
- Nice Splashcast interview by Chris Valance of Cory Doctorow on whether ISPs should be responsible for identifying copyrighted works that go through their servers Good, solid bits of argument in there. Cory speaks extremely well on these matters, clearly and without umming or ahhing. Unlike myself!
- Lovely Robot Overlord t-shirt by Tony Aguero on Threadless Beautiful and awesome. Unfortunately it’s not on the really nice t-shirts so I’m not so sure I want to buy it. Grr.
- Simon Batistoni’s guide to relocating to the US is proving invaluable to me at the moment It’s all bloody terrifying, and quite badly timed. A fair few sleepless nights at the moment.
- Part two of Simon’s relocation blog posts. This one seems–if anything–even more terrifying than the last one… I’ve probably got less than a month in the UK now. This is basically the first time I’ve written about it on my site. Hum. Probably makes it real then.
- The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web One of my favourite books applied to the web by Richard Rutter and Steve Marshall. I feel like I ought to help them out in some way, it’s such a good idea.
- Fascinating move by Electronic Arts to say that they’d be interested in standards being adopted for gaming platforms I wonder if someone would always try to get a run on the next generation of technology by creating something future-facing. Could be all commodity stuff in the end – buy a new console because existing games look better on it?
- Interesting post on URLs over on jerakeen.org, which I think misses the point a bit It’s easier if you think of URLs in two types – either referring to a specific first order data object (in which case it doesn’t need much nesting) and then lists, where the cuts and stuff make much more sense. Calcify the common paths, leave the rest.
- JK Rowling says Dumbledore was gay, and I couldn’t be happier about it. I’ve seen too many gay characters recently in films and theatre and TV that are filthy old stereotypes for an audience to find amusing, like pets… I saw Stardust yesterday and loved it. But I hated that the gay character in it was obsessed with women’s clothes and dancing around. I saw Spamalot and I loved it. I just hated that the weak girly man was gay, and the butch gay man liked disco… Idiots.
- Loving the ratings joke on the Radiohead “In Rainbows” review on Pitchfork Media Just in case you wondered, the actual rating is 9.3 which is pretty good…
- Kevin Rose on cover of new Captain America comic? Certainly there’s a figure wearing a Diggnation T-shirt. Some evidence, at least, that what happens on the net doesn’t stay on the net, even if it may be popular with our nerdy selves…
- Screw Getting Things Done, my brains’ completely plotzing over “Consider it Done” It’s like a PA service for tedious or bureaucratic life-management jobs like sorting out your expenses, finding all the documentation for your tax return, paying bills. Good bit is you only employ them for a few hours a week.
- ITunes Plus appears to be dropping its price around the world to be inline with normal iTunes songs Difficult to know why anyone would buy the other ones really. To be honest, it’s probably easier for them to just get rid of the Fairplay versions completely.
- Are you angry that the threat of terrorism has been used to sanction human rights abuses in our own countries? Then visit the Amnesty International ‘Unsubscribe Me’ campaign It feels a bit like you’re just saying ‘not in my name’, but that’s a start right? Saying that you don’t want to be complicit with this activity – that you abhor it?
- Google are acquiring Jaiku and with it, presumably, the lovely Jyri and Ulla Well done guys! I’m assuming this has something to do with the fabled GPhone?
- Serious Eats posts on the wonderful Stichelton cheese available from Neal’s Yard Diary You can get it at Borough Market too. I’ve persuaded the chocolate shop chaps to explore putting it in a chocolate!
- Mr Hicks has proposed a nice informal cover design contest for the Radiohead ‘In Rainbows’ digital download Not a lot of transformative insights yet, but quite like the idea and would be delighted if someone came up with something dramatically better than the finished official version…
- Has anyone got any idea of how many people are actually using the iPlayer? First talked about in 2003, supposed to be publically launched to everyone a really long time ago, and still–frankly–quite a bad idea, particularly in the context of Joost, is there anyone out there who’s actually using it?
- Ce Matin Un Lapin, rediscovered… The old URL stopped working. To alleviate your anxieties about the lamentable shortage of rabbits with guns, I have posted the new URL.
- Kevin Kelly’s review of Scan Caf√© is interesting for those of us who have considered bringing all our old photos into the 21st Century… I think I’ll give them a go once I’ve finally made the move to the US.
- I got interviewed (briefly) about my petition to get market research organisations to have to abide by the Telephone Preference Service… Not a particularly high profile story, but if it gets it in front of the people who are undertaking these things maybe it’ll start to influence them a little. You can still sign the petition if you want. There’s a link further down…
About eighteen months ago a couple of friends of mine started a chocolate shop in Islington and I wrote about it on plasticbag.org. Today–in about half an hour in fact–they’re opening their second branch near Bank tube station in the Royal Exchange! If you’re in the area you should definitely go and see how they’re doing. Say hi from me! The address is: 20 Royal Exchange, Threadneedle St, London EC3V 3LP and their official website is paulayoung.co.uk. I offered my help in getting the place together on Sunday night, but to be honest they didn’t need me so I just sat around taking pictures of the chocolate-making process and letting my belly gurgle instead. You can see a couple below or go and see the full set over on Flickr.
Yum! Obviously, standard disclaimers apply: They didn’t ask me to write about them and I wouldn’t have done had they asked me to. They’re obviously friends, so I’m predisposed to like them and want them to do well. However, they really do make terribly nice things and I honestly feel that I would be remiss if I didn’t require you to go and try the Sea Salt Caramel. If you went along, tell me what you thought…