The Flicker Blog and Podcast

Hmmm. One of my favourite websites, with a load of personal data volunteered by it’s users, bought for the obvious commercial benefits entailed. I guess it had to happen, but I am a little surprised at the buyer.

Am I alone in thinking that TV is enjoyable for being a passive activity? Still, a great way to build a platform for interaction. Ta to Ian for the link.

Ethan Zuckerman on how human rights activists are finding Twitter to be a highly useful and efficient communication platform.

John Naughton giving a wonderful example of how Google AdSense (despite it’s intelligence) can be woefully tactless.

Great talk. The electrification of houses was driven entirely by the desire for illumination. Sockets for appliances arrived in response to the innovators, who had started using the light fittings to power their ‘new-fangled’ devices. There’s a nice parallel drawn with the current state of the web, and how sites are sharing the landscape with utilites and applications that use the underlying infrastructure.

Chris talks about predicting the future, the hype cycle and the four stages of technological evolution: price thresholds, market share, the displacement of incumbent technologies and finally, ubiquity.

Very hard not to admire the craft of Yukio Miyamoto’s amazingly realistic illustrations. The question for me however, is when it would ever be economically viable to commission them?

I’m not sure if this is something to get excited about or not. The number is certainly higher than I would have expected, but I wouldn’t yet say that we’d reached a tipping point.

According to Nielsen, 18-34 year old women constitute the largest online demographic in the UK currently. Interesting enough, but why do these attention grabbing articles never show the full table of results? Which group came second? And what was the differential? The headline is interesting enough in itself – but does this group really ‘dominate’?

It’s been live for about a week now, and I’ve not found the time to comment. A truly beautiful design – elegant, un-cluttered, and (mercifully) not afraid to expect it’s users to scroll. Strangely, I can’t see why the masthead logo hasn’t been updated to reflect the print publication yet – it would seem to be a trivial task compared to rolling the new design out across the rest of the site (which I’d expect to be happening later).

Who’d have thought it – the contents of your LCD display could be picked up via a radio, and then re-constituted elsewhere. Still, there is one consolation – there are far easier methods available for nefarious types to spy on what you do with your PC already, so if you’re the type to worry, this is just one more thing (albeit on the horizon) to be paranoid about.