"A report shows the rate of ozone destruction declining for the first time since CFCs were banned."

Phew! Me? I don't believe it for one minute.

"...in 2008, 40 percent of the 21 million Western Europeans who own business-centric mobile phones, 8.4 million users, will access their e-mail over their handsets. This figure is a considerable jump from less than 1 percent currently. Over the same period, the annual mobile service revenue generated by e-mail will increase from €49 million in 2003 to €2.9 billion."

Spam's gonna piss people off then, as paying for spam, rich in porno images is going to cost quite a bit to download.

1217 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 10:05:05 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Firms to spend big on mobile e-mail

Someone from Scotland is looking for bloggers to take part in an experiment, for his PhD thesis about writing styles in blogs.

"I am going to be looking for trends in style, as the relate to the character of the author. By style I mean linguistic features such as those used by the stylistics community for authorship attribution, such as sentence length, word bigrams and trigrams, and parts-of-speech. And by character, I mean just that."

 Source: owrede_log; 31/07/03; 8:04:21 am.
1216 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 9:58:22 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: English speaking bloggers

Mac's got a nice new pick me up!

Changing the server. Here Mac bashes the old hard disk out. We would have done the job pretty quick had we the room to put the fan in. As it is we'll either need to rob a new case or hack saw a gap large enough for the fan.

1215 Also posted to: cybersaps , serviceBF . At: 3:23:36 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Upgrading a server

And so it happens. She's nearly grown up and left home. At the tender age of 4 years 317 days she's in her first school uniform. Bought this very day. The first thing she said when I opened the door to her was, "Daddy, I've got a school uniform. Mummy, can I try it on now?" And during an argument with Bradley, she started to bawl, I said, you can't do that you're too old now, you're in a school uniform." And she stopped!

1214 Also posted to: personal . At: 3:17:49 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Growing up in school uniform

I think we could have stayed here forever, listening to the small brass band in Telford's Town Park. Eating lollies, just letting the day take charge.		I managed to skirt past several other rides, as their owners were reaching out to Bradley and Esme to 'come on board.' I love waving to them every time they go around. And even though it must me boring for them they too like to see me waving, Bradley in particular thinks it a great wheeze, and chuckles every time he whizzes past his waving old man.

1213 Also posted to: personal . At: 3:11:28 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Back from hols to the big park

The day after coming back from holidays. Where do you think they wanted to go? Over the road onto the pub's car park, to ride their bikes. Bradley doesn't go very fast on his trike, a little bit faster going down this path, but not much, still he seems quite happy, well, he would, he's only just worked out how to peddle properly, been only a few months. I'd like Esme to try without stabilisers, but stupidly I said, 'you will crash.' Now, I meant... Well, she won't take them off. I'll have to wait till she forgets.

1212 Also posted to: personal . At: 2:57:20 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Back from hols - riding bikes

I've been trying to backtrack ping an article on MiFi, and damn, I've managed to spam their trackback four times.

How'd you manage that Steve? Well, It appears that you can only send a small amount of excerpt to MiFi as a track back or you'll get an error page from SQL like this. So, I figure that I'd try cutting down the size of the message, which worked but I still found an error message in my message table (see the image below). But this was because MiFi is sending back a general information page if you actually go to the ping URL stated for, I guess, any article. So I tried four times, then decided to make sure none had squirreled their way through... Arggg! FOUR! Oops. Gonna have to be more careful with this trackback melarkie. Soz Mat Howie ";->" Though I see others reporting the same.

1211 Also posted to: cybersaps . At: 4:45:03 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: 4 TrackBacks, oh no!

BBC: "The Pentagon is to set up an online trading market for bets on future terrorist attacks or major political developments."

They're talking about the Policy Analysis Market, which isn't open till 1 October. The Iowa Electronic Markets seems to be the well thought of prior art. "Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information," says the Pentagon.

The discussion over at MiFi sounds supportive, mainly.

More background from bloomberg.

I think the logic's pretty good "using the expertise of the open market instead of relying on government agencies". Though whether it'll be ripped off, is IMO open; by betting that somebody would be assassinated, and then assassinating them... Not sure if this would be insider trading or market manipulation ";->" But they're only allowing 1,000 traders, by the look of it, so I suppose they'd be vetted (10,000 by 01/01/2004). And the medium sums involved are more sport than retirement to the Bahamas.

But what if unusual trading warns an enemy that their plan (aka "specific potential events of interest") has been rumbled? Or, rather, no unusual trading tell them that they haven't been rumbled! Well, just like the site says, "should prove as engaging as it is informative."

 Source: BBC News | Technology | World Edition; 29/07/03; 12:45:16 pm.
1210  At: 3:24:47 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Pentagon plans online terror bets

BBC: "Electronic mail is playing such a key role in companies that most people start to get annoyed after just 30 minutes without e-mail access, the study found.

But spare a thought for the techies in computer support. About a fifth feared for their jobs if they did not get the e-mail system back up and running within a day."

When fellow workers come up to the sys admin with distorted faces, to complain, then the best method of dealing with them is to mirror their feelings of loss and woe, and to pull faces back at them. So says, my insider who's recently been confronted just so.

1209 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 2:57:17 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Loss of e-mail 'worse than divorce'

"Uday and Qusay Hussein had $100m in cash with them when they were killed by American forces in northern Iraq, a report says."

US-based news magazine Newsweek is not sure if it was for their own rescue, or to finance a guerilla war.

 Source: BBC News | In Depth | Conflict with Iraq | UK Edition; 28/07/03; 10:45:48 pm.
1208  At: 2:50:48 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Saddam sons 'found with $100m'

4.) "The cool factor. These tablets evoke the future of hardware and easily wow the technology challenged in a meeting. As consultants and designers, that kind of mystique is as good an accessory as the black turtle neck and German accent."

Made me smile, had to blog it.

1207 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 2:40:55 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Forth reason for recommending tablets at Frog design studio

"Parser Loading Error Exception parsing: {E301} The value of attribute "dc:description" must not contain the '<' character."

Been testing my trackbacking, trying to ping Bill Kearney's article (see below), but find that there's an error in his RDF in the trackback data in his page. All because he started off the item with some angle brackets.

1206 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 1:58:42 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RDF Validator Results

Perhaps this may help me understand the power relationships in UK Governmental quangos.

Bill Kearney: "Here I'm making several statements. I'm saying that the 'wkearney99' node is a member of this group. I'm then going on to say that the wkearney99 node is known to the group via an SHA1 hash of it's e-mail address and that it has a FOAF file of it's own at the seeAlso URL. It's also saying the group has it's own URL. This helps if something else using the group wants to confirm things about the group"

Dan Brickley: "...We could come up with properties like 'chair' that relate groups to people"

I'm trying to understand the relationships and positions of all the people involved in the West Midlands (UK) Regional Innovation Strategy. There's two A4 pages in the back of the report full of names and contact details. They should mean something to me, but don't, and as I trawl through more brochures like this, I'm going to see both repeated and new names, new organisatons, new titles for the same people. Wouldn't it be lovely for me to be able to study the relationships, as if in a organisational chart, or family tree, one that uses my icons, colours etc., Which mixes in this group of quango boffins with this board of civil servants and so on. Then I could see who were likely to be the people I need to approach, possibly.

For sure, these people aren't going to be interested in doing this for themselves, not any time soon, at least. I suppose if I had the time I could make the FOAF files myself. But, alas the app that would make the visual sense for me is not yet written. I can see the day when these quangos HAVE to produce their FOAF files, so that we, the ordinary geezers, can see who the hell is writing this stuff. Long time off though.

1205 Also posted to: bis , cyberSaps . At: 12:35:00 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Foaf groups and Governmental quangos

"...Will provide support for... new projects aimed at promoting innovation and developing sectors within 10 market facing clusters. These will include projects identified by the Regional Innovation Steering Group, Business Growth Task Groups and others involved with the implementation of actions identified within the Regional Agenda for Action."

Promoting innovation? Blogs promote innovation, don't they? Market facing clusters? Which are those? Can't find much info about these (shadowy) steering/task groups.

These websites are so light on real help and heavy with the acronyms, and jargon.

1204 Also posted to: bis , cyberSaps . At: 2:52:19 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Regional Innovation Fund

Bloody useless I'm trying to discover the point of some of these new UK Government quangos. This one seems interesting but I'm not clear on what the hell it's for. Hardly any information within the site, out of date events pages, with wrong dates, anyway. Crap, 'quango' speak, that means everything and nothing. I believe they are a way to get money out of European and UK coffers, but where and what the money does after that is not clear, far from it. Walk with me through the site as I try and figure it's purpose: "...a two year initiative offering regional individuals and organisations a unique opportunity to experiment with the development and delivery of public support promoting economic development. " What's public support?

"...the programme has been designed by an extensive local partnership to help identify untapped regional knowledge, encourage innovative new ICT use and embed leading edge innovation practices in the public, private and 3rd sectors." What sort of regional knowledge? Peas and ham? Heavy metal bashing? What's a 3rd Sector? Google digging: apparently, it means the voluntary sector. "It will provide funding - on a competitive basis - to support innovative, different and imaginative projects. Projects will need to deliver significant advances in innovation or knowledge, have the potential to be influential in regional economic development or provide important lessons in partnership development." "Different" is a weasel word. But, this does seem to be the right project aims for a 'million Midlanders blogging.' Blogging with a more studious approach, rather than the teenagers angst squealing about boyfriends, can be deeply knowledgeable, and certainly a learning environment for all concerned.

1203 Also posted to: bis , cybersaps . At: 12:19:34 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Knowledge Management in West Mids' (UK) cranky quangos

"Amazon.com provides a style sheet for producing RSS, but there's no reason why you cannot provide your own. The Web Services Developer's Kit explains how to do this. One reason to provide your own style sheet is to embed your Amazon Associate's identifier in the permalinks."

Pretty clever. More micro payments for your own content (in blogs.)

1201 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 9:31:12 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RSS feeds at Amazon

"Jason Brome's RSS feed feed button on your web page. Just roll your mouse over the example above, and you'll be instantly greeted by one-click subscription links to the most popular aggregators."

Think I'll have a go with this tomorrow, looks neat. I'm surprised by the large number of RSS readers. NetnewsWire isn't there though, and to my mind it's the premier app, though only OS X,

1200 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 8:47:50 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: quickSub: making feed subscribing easier

I've found an odd error on trying to ping an MT blog: error 1, Need a Source URL (url). But, stupid me! I go to their trackback url in the browser, and I get the same response! How can we look in the html for "<rdf:RDF" if that's all they're sending back. I deem her trackbacking bust. Bust I tell you! Well, maybe not, still looking.

1199 Also posted to: cybersaps . At: 2:57:59 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick post

It's my feed, I'll show you it, how I like. You don't like that? Go away.

And so you should, or look or ask for another type of feed.

I want to dress up some items, and put all sorts of HTML in there, it renders fine, as I test my own dog food in the Radio Aggregator, in NN7. So I release it. Not many read my RSS 2.0 file though, but I do.

"Should people style their RSS feeds? Should news aggregators give users the option to strip styles from posts when they're displayed? What is too much style? If there's an image with a post, it's nice to let that wrap right or left as the author intended, but should you draw the line at font changes?"

To draw the line is to unsubscribe. Do it if it disturbs you IMO.

1198 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 2:02:47 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Styling RSS Feeds? Yes please!

"The first section will describe the RDF model, which is its fundamental syntax. The second section will present the semantic aspects of RDF, the concepts and the corresponding vocabulary."

Where am I digging all this RDF stuff up from? Resource Description Framework: Applications and Projects.

Anyway, back to the gripping print out...

1197 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 1:12:31 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RDF Tutorial

"The MusicBrainz Metadata Initiative is designed to create a portable and flexible means of storing and exchanging metadata related to digital audio and video tracks. The MusicBrainz Metadata Initiative is a content description model for audio and video tracks on the Internet."

Everybody's shaking it, all about, yeah, yeah. RDF.

I like the extensions: "such as contributors, roles, lyrics, release dates, remix/cover information, etc."

1196 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:57:59 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: MusicBrainz Metadata Initiative 2.1

"RSS 0.94/2.0 to RDF converter"

Burningbird's description of this: "Mozilla's mbox-to-RDF API proves that you can reap the benefits of RDF (using those 20-odd tools of yours) without recasting the format itself as RDF. Ditto Sjoerd's RSS2-to-RDF XSLT ( http://w3future.com/weblog/2002/09/09.html#a129 ). Those who want RDF can have it, but they should pay the RDF tax (by creating, maintaining, and executing the transformations from the simpler syntaxes that the rest of us want to use, into the RDF that their tools can understand)."

I forget about the translators. Just been reading the SSR background. A simple addition to RSS2.0 to make all sorts of wild and weird data formations, patterns and display. I love ODB scripting at the best of times, but this stuff just takes the biscuit.

1195 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:46:00 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Sep 2002: Sjoerd Visscher: RSS2.0 to fancy graph images

"The major difference between this syntax and RDF 1.0 M&S is that RDF edges correspond to elements, and RDF nodes are implicit. It is basically as the M&S syntax with parseType=resource is a default."

There's some heavy pattern making in here. [Out of the Semantic Web's Tool Box.]

1194 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:09:00 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Strawman simpler syntax for RDF

Describing and retrieving photos using RDF and HTTP I do like the idea of being able to pull thumbnails up like this, that would be so cool. Been talking in Radio's list re a photo tool for Radio with gheil. And my major concern was the descriptions or as they've described so minimally here: content schema. Nevertheless, I get the drift. I think that abouts wraps up the final jigsaw, pun intended. I don't think there's a need to embed it in the actual pic is there? I've got my contextual information about my kids' pictures, which is the only thing I care about categorising. Though trivial to write it in, I don't like the idea of having it in two places, the blog item, and the pic... Hmm, has to be in there too <slaps head> The blog item sits in the description, Dublin Core, and all that old chap.

. Here's a window in BBedit, with the nice colours, and the original

gheil also said: "PhotoMechanic http://www.camerabits.com/ is a good tool in the $ bracket. It manages database stuff (and hands editing over to PS), but has some annoying miscues in its DB i have not worked around yet: can't get the date to flow through, on either xml output or text output :-( " Photomecanic looks pretty damn good actually. $150 OS X, Classic, and Win. Writes some stuff in to the correct parts of a JPEG, but seems to be based on a competing standard at least something else, more about news: "Digital Newsphoto Parameter Record (DNPR) version 4 -- This is the lower level file format for encapsulating digital news photographic data. It allows for editorial and technical information to be carried in the same file." Well, I suppose, my kids are news to me, and the family that read that category. Interesting to know this stuff. Maybe it's slipped me by. FOAF I got well into a tool to build FOAF files in Radio, the other day, love to finish that off. Here's my very first. I'm Johnny no friends at the bar, eek!

1193 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 10:13:42 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RDF in thumbnails e.g. Verdon, Moustiers, France

Family's back tomorrow, gotta clean and get this pig shit dump looking like I haven't lived here on my own for two weeks. Air fresheners out, laundry put away, washed, beds changed, the whole kitchen floor gig! I find out this, has been knocking about in our bedroom for well, since we moved in. Finally, I put it up. I think it'll mean something in years to come, so I mention it here. She was the first fully naked babe I'd ever seen. I'd just turned 18, and found myself in Cardiff Art College, doing a foundation in art. Our group of 90 wonderfully pretentious, naive teenagers were first into the fabled, life drawing classes. Delicious.

1192 Also posted to: personal . At: 6:29:20 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Clean and tidy art school nudes

34 days 21 hours 26 minutes . I gave up smoking. Still going strong, at times, I almost forget about it.

<For split seconds 4 times an hour, I could murder a fag. I'd need to build another macro to multiply the above by (4 x 24 hrs) to find out how many cravings make a cold turkey. I've been lucky that those split seconds have not turned into the dancing cigarette hallucination. Not too many of those, in this trip to cleaner life.>

So have I missed them? Nah! <Deceitful sideways look.>

1191 Also posted to: personal . At: 5:35:50 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick post: non fag up date!

I notice that some shortcuts aren't being added from weblogData.shortcuts.personal to user.html.glossary when they're brand new. Still have to find that code that marries up these shortcut tables, think it's at start up... Anyway, I've added another call to processMacros, this time with the shortcuts in weblogData.shortcuts.personal directly ref'd. If you're using the back log RSS tool and rely on shortcuts in your feeds, this fix will be important. Update your tool.

1190 Also posted to: cybersaps . At: 1:14:42 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Further shortcut processing in Radio RSS feeds

Cat Schwartz is one of the cute girls on TechTV. She posted some pictures of herself on her blog. Due to an obscure bug in Photoshop, she also inadvertently posted pictures of herself nude. [Via mFilter] Family's back tomorrow from their hols... Been alone too long...

1189 Also posted to: sexblogs . At: 12:09:19 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Photoshop lets it all hang out

"Here's a link to one of Steve Hooker's posts."

Last test before I go to bed!

Screen of the XML returned to my message table.

"Here's a link to one of Steve Hooker's posts." The good Dr. David Davies! Catch dis ping, yu all. So this is trackback is pretty cool. I don't have to copy a url - paste it in anywhere, all I need is the permalink, and it'll auto discovery... That's very nice! I'll have to be aware, though that the first few lines that are visible in the other site's trackback page, cannot be changed!

Here's a test post for the man. ";->" Weeeeeee!

Testing out Jake's ping in Radio's Trackback. I still don't know what all this means you, know ";->"

I'll go look for some reading and bring back the links here... BRB
How TrackBack Works
A Beginner's Guide to TrackBack
Trackback in the UserLand environment

1183 Also posted to: cybersaps . At: 10:14:07 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick ping me post!

"While the newspapers I read are telling me nothing new in the dirty dossier saga (see below), David Stevens has revisited the blog correspondent Andrew Gilligan kept during the Iraq war.

Stevens derives 10 points about Gilligan, the most important of which are his sourcing is "a bit dodgy" and "Gilligan never apologises."

The British Politics weblog has provided a truly valuable service by posting a pithy, comprehensible roundup of the dirty dossier saga. I agree as well with the anonymous author's analysis, which he scrupulously posts separately."

Wonder if Lance's got trackback switched on in his Manila site?

"The subpoenas are flying, and we're naming names. Are you on the list?"

Pretty strange to see a list of people. Kinda like they died in battle against the evil RIAA.

1181 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 11:21:32 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RIAA Hit List

Do I know what track back is? Nope! But determined to use it in my site. I'll have to transfer my comments and trackback to my own Manila machine... Should do that by mid next week... Still much to do.

1180 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 11:10:59 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Trackback testing

"It is just too easy to make fun of Bush and Blair these days. This is the one of the funniest flash animations I have seen since this Osama classic. Simplier but just as good is this Bush2004 cartoon."

1178 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 6:50:43 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Green peace points to funnies

"Robb's Law: NEVER (under any circumstances) publish a weblog to a domain that you don't control."

Tee Hee.

1177 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 6:35:59 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: J Robb's Law

"...The more rapidly the black hole was growing, the faster the surrounding galaxy itself was growing by forming new stars.
Like the chicken and the egg, neither black hole nor galaxy can be said to come first -- each is necessary for the other."

1175 Also posted to: Space . At: 2:36:39 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Missing link discovered in our own cosmic backyard

"Beginner's guide to trackback. Old news to most here, but with even Radio Userland now implementing the technology, trackback has the potential to be another kind of spam, with gratuitous self-links popping up all over the place. When everyone can blog, will the Blogosphere be the next victim of Usenet's neverending September? Whether providing "community support" or "publishing tool", how long before popular bloggers are forced to implement Bayesian trackback filters?"

I remembered the never ending September: they were called Assholes On Line.

I haven't really been into Trackback, what I've seen hasn't been that useful. I don't switch on comments on my site because I don't want any comments from the great unwashed cluttering up my site. Though I'm looking forward to TrackBack in Radio, as a way of me, continuing a discussion, I guess I'll just have to suck it and see. I'll have power to delete those that contaminate the purity of my site, but that'll piss people off. Hmmm. Oh! The Angst!

 Source: MetaFilter; 22/07/03; 9:46:35 am.
1174 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 10:28:24 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: mF: Trackback to Guide Beginners

"Search by source, source location, headline, URL, or date."

 Source: Google Weblog; 21/07/03; 10:54:03 pm.
1173  At: 11:38:25 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Google Advanced News Search

"News about Manila, Frontier and Radio UserLand"

Awww! That's nice, I'm mentioned in dispatches. Damn nice tool though, well, the Feedster service is really the point.

Not only that but Dave Winer also points to the "I'm a cool tool!" Such a nice chap, and I've always said so. ";->"

Doh, and I missed Dr David Davies' link on Saturday, never mind here it is.

1171 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 1:23:03 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: UserLand Product News and my new tool

"Growing numbers of married people are turning to chat rooms for sexual thrills, say US researchers."

No problems here. "Be careful out there," people :-)~~

 Source: BBC News | Technology | World Edition; 21/07/03; 10:45:16 am.
1170 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:59:03 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Cyber sex lures love cheats

And a quick test of Trackback for Radio. Here's a site I should link to.

1169 Also posted to: cybersaps . At: 12:05:52 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick post

Just testing a post from a mobile phone... Nothing to worry about, move along now, nothing to see here.

1168 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 10:08:50 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: A phone message

I think I'm very happy with Blog Patrol. I've moved off Radio's web bug because it was slowing down page loads. Blog Patrol's got a lot more stats too. As well as top 20 referers, last 10 referers (prefer last 24 hours), top search words, last 10 searches; OS, screens... Not bad.

Time to roll it out across all my pages. A whole site render, well there's a few new things in the templates, like a Feedster search, which is very useful for me to find past posts. All due to my new tool, Back Log RSS.

And, I've finally moved all my blog reads from the tabs of NN7 into Radio's aggregator. Lets see how good it is.

1167 Also posted to: cybersaps . At: 11:01:33 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Radio's web bug V Blog Patrol

"The investigation has resulted in the most comprehensive study of the distribution of dark matter in a galaxy cluster so far." "The map reveals that the dark matter drops sharply with distance from the cluster centre, which is what astronomers expected." And those stars are galaxies! All a matter of scale. Makes you feel quite insignificant, eh?

"The nightmare is not that New Labour's targets for putting government online will not be achieved, but that hitting the targets might make very little difference on the 'modernisation' front. Already, for example, over 50 per cent of services are online, but only ten per cent of the population have ever used them. The Inland Revenue has built a magnificent system for online filing of tax returns, but only 70,000 people (out of a possible 8 million) use it.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that those people who have most need to interact with the state (because of being poor, elderly or ill) are precisely the groups who feel most uneasy about using unfamiliar, online, channels. The battle to put government online has been won. But the battle to put citizens online has only just begun."

The digital divide, as it's called. This is the biggest obstacle, and to my mind, blogs are the answer. They're addictive for those who fall for them, involve life long learning, are a great communication platform for those who are ill, the elderly could blog to the past, building up a life of memories...

1165 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 7:23:47 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Is UK eGovernment full of holes?

"There's a real surge of women entering the sex industry and of sisters doing it for themselves."

"Everybody uses sex to sell their product, yet for style- and fashion-conscious women, there was no sex brand. We had this idea that there was a gap in the market."

1164 Also posted to: sexblogs . At: 7:12:55 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: A woman's touch

"We're going to get a new TV, with wide screen and surround sound and castors so we can wheel it into the dining room on holidays."

"It was still not clear when and how much crude could be exported to market because of political sabotage in the north and economic sabotage of oil facilities in the south."

To the victors, the spoils of war. Maybe if there had been clarity in the reasons our attack on Iraq, the world may have helped more, as I suspect in what I'm reading that the rest of the world looks on at Iraq, not so much with a "I told you so" tone, but more resignation to the very long fuck up that Iraq is going to be.

And maybe that was one of the reasons for attacking Iraq, the distraction of the Muslim fundamentalists, moving their focus to Iraq.

1162 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 6:21:27 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Iraq Plans Third Postwar Oil Tender

"in 2008: Scandinavia and the Netherlands will dominate the ratings (40%+); German-speaking Europe, Belgium, Finland, and the UK will form a second tier (30-25%); and Southern Europe and Ireland will continue to lag. "

South Korea: " The Korean government plans to spend over US$10bn to deliver VDSL or fibre to over 80% of the Korean population by the end of 2005"

VDSL goes up to 54Mbps. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

1161 Also posted to: Broadband Britain . At: 12:49:26 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Forrester names Europe's lower tier broadband nations

If anybody asks, about my new tool tell them it's late here, I'm pissed and going next door for 'summore.'

Please reply on the Radio thread, I'll pick it up there in the morning. Of course, you can email me... But wait till the English afternoon for my hang over to go and me to answer.

Hey, Lisa said it was amazing Now, that's worth all the tea in China. Cheers kitten.

1157 Also posted to: cybersaps . At: 10:20:47 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick post

"If you want Feedster to index your entire weblog, all you need to do is generate a new RSS feed with everything you've ever blogged"

It's a bit late this evening, well very, very late. But this is such a nice idea. I'll get a script sorted 'toot-sweet.'

1156 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 2:20:47 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Feedster total RSS search engine

I've number of birds to kill, hopefully with the one stone. So, I'm out lunch, meetings and to the servers all day today. If anybody emails, better to SMS, if urgent.

1155 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 11:34:45 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Out of office most of today

Amanda and the kids are at the beach. Why oh why am I stuck here?
Anyway, I just spoke to Esme and Bradley at the beach about their sand castle, they were full of holiday excitement!

At the end of their conversation:

• Esme says, "kiss, kiss, cuddle, cuddle." In a wiggle, wiggle sort of way.
• Bradley makes a kissing sound and says, "awww," in a affectionate hug sort of way.

I'm beach sick. I think I'll be going down there sooner than I expected.

1154 Also posted to: personal . At: 3:08:51 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Family's away for another 11 days

The most interest I had was at the pub, later. Mind, I guess I went to mix and network, so perhaps that's why I felt that the actual debate was humdrum. There I found several 'consultants' who were there to 'find out' about blogging and how they could profit from it. Though talking to some they were seemingly pretty clueless when it came not only blogging, but also technology. But then, that's what I thought of the night. There's me down from the sticks, grass still behind my ears, and the seat of power without an email address for the Prime Minister nor WiFi anywhere within. OTH, I was naive about the business that fed off politics. I mean did you know that the Government had earmarked £2.2 billion for broadband access for their rural operations centres, and that nobody had asked for any of it? Here's some background, not sure when from. It seems the Gov is full of angst, and indecision. The usual debate where technology is concerned. "Shall I wait till next year when the computer will be cheaper and more powerful or get it now?"

Stephen Timms, e-commerce minister according to Hansard (Dec 2002): "The Department of Trade and Industry has made available £30 million to the RDAs and Devolved Administrations for pilot projects to extend broadband access. Several of the recipients have used this fund to enable small businesses to access broadband via satellite technology. For example, the South West Development Agency, East Midlands, Development Agency, East of England Development Agency and Advantage West Midlands are collaborating in the Remote Area Broadband Inclusion Trials (RABIT) programme to trial alternative broadband Internet access to small businesses in rural areas using wireless and satellite. The scheme has been operating since September 2002. Some £700 is made available to each company. By the beginning of December, 264 applications had been approved, of which 75 per cent. to 80 per cent. involve satellite trials. About 1,800 to 2,000 companies are expected to participate in the programme to December 2003." From what I know about the RDA here (Advantage West Midlands) they are terribly risk adverse, and from what I gleaned last night this is endemic in e-biz sections of local Gov and quangos across the country.

Stephen Timms, e-commerce minister according to Hansard (Nov 2002): "My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced yesterday that the outcome of the Spending Review 2002 shows that a total of approximately #6 billion will be invested in electronic governmentÑincluding £1 billion towards high-speed broadband connectivity. Existing funds for regional economic development (and RDAs will have £1.8 billion in 2003Ð04 for this purpose) can also make a contribution where lack of broadband is a barrier to economic development. That is why I announced in June the intention to establish a regional broadband unit to use the public sector's spending power to boost availability and take-up in rural areas." Fuck loads of money! And fuck loads of reading about Rural Broadband Services. And loads to read on the Remote Area Broadband Inclusion Trial. And more here: Wired-up Communities. Have to say I'm not so interested in wiring up remote locations, not personally, more interested in the blogging opportunities for SMEs and blogging as a bridge across the digital divide and as a means of life long learning.

1153 Also posted to: cybersaps . At: 2:28:47 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The money in politics

Above: Tom Watson, the UK's first blogging MP. Lance Knoble who I met for the first time interviewed him a few weeks back. (I didn't think his site very interesting then.) Be both agreed that he was brave to start one. After all, and Tom brought this out several time, he could rant about something, and a few months or years down the line, people could say. "Oy! You said this then, now your saying the other." Well, that's blogging for you. I've changed my opinions several times, we're fickle people bloggers, just like everybody else. Though I guess MPs aren't like everybody else. Like I said, I'd been bannned from taking pix, "anywhere in the building," so I felt pretty rebelious taking this, surreptitious picture. Later, I saw a few others taking more blatent pix. Obviously, they hadn't been previously told off. Some of the things that were mentioned: about the MPs constituants and the blogging MPs readers. Readers in Toronto (Canada) aren't going to get the geezer re-elected in West Bromwich (UK). apparently, some one reading Tom's blog had become policitised about picking up litter, then politicised about a million other things that he would rant about some geeky geezer mentioned wikis a few others liked the statement, "if blogs are the answer, what is the question." social capital, participation, legitimacy were terms that the political business people thought were important. nobody discussed class and the digital divide, which surely is important to Labour blogging MPs.

The meeting itself, wasn't too exciting. I hadn't been to such a debate before. So maybe they aren't. As Lance said: "Truth to tell, the fact of the event was far more significant than anything actually said on the evening. An important discussion was started, and for Britain at least weblogs emerged from a slightly weird, fringe activity into a kind of political limelight." I was trying desperately to think of an earth shattering question to liven up the debate, but I think many people did ask such questions, and surely they were earth shattering to them, but my mind wasn't so much on the job, the questions or statements were not very new. Most of the stuff flowing aboout my brain was about the rise of RSS, 35 million AOL bloggers, how popular writing, and thinking has become and will become, for everybody and anybody, anyhow. To hear the word blogging in the House of Parliament was surprising enough, thank you.

1152 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 12:15:37 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The business of political blogging

I've not been to Westminister since I was maybe 9 years old. Gang of Four: At home he feels like a tourist He fills his head with culture He gives himself an ulcer There's me competing with the other sightseers for the best shots, this one of the London Eye, with Big Ben was a popular spot. We were jockeying and elbowing for the position.	An exciting trip. Amazing to see Big Ben up so close, and it's smaller than I thought. The whole place seems smaller, than you see on telly.

Wonderful to walk past all the people queuing to go into the public gallery to watch the debates. Like I was very important. My old anarchist mates would have been disgusted with me. Queuing, then to be searched with other - who knows, what sort of powerful or opinion leaders. Little old me, grinning from ear to ear.

I was banned form taking pix inside by some police, but after the meeting, once alone in the toilets, I had to take a picture of the bogs, I was struck by the modernity of them. After wandering down unlit corridor, with someone opening their phone to shine the way, we found the toilets.

The houses of Parliament are so old, that I was expecting some old "Adamant" brown, boozer, type urinals smelling of old pee. These just seemed much too modern, totally incongruous considering the type of building. Far too wine bar.

1151 Also posted to: personal . At: 10:36:22 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: A day out to London's heart of 'power'

Anybody asks, I'm off to the Houses of Parliament.

Storming the citadels.

1150 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 2:20:07 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Off to London

"Falsehoods ranging from exaggeration to plain untruth were used to make the case for war. More lies are being used in the aftermath."

Disgusting. Bush's ratings are dropping, Blair is looking more like the poodle everyday. Both will be gone soon, I'm sure.

1149 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 12:49:42 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: 20 Lies About the War

"About 2,000 professional astronomers from around the world are gathering in Australia for two weeks of debate about the state of the universe."

This should be on every TV screen around the world. Maybe it'll prove that there is no god to some.

"The "blogosphere" may never be the same after America Online releases free blog-publishing software to its 34 million members this summer."

1147 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:15:32 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: 'AOL Journals' To Bring Blogs To Millions

" The MIT folks are building a system which will collate all publicly available information about all public officials in the US.

We could do the same for the UK. Imagine a site that would automatically collate information about MPs' financial interests, voting behaviour, Commons attendance, speeches, publications, campaign literature, friends, attentiveness to constituents etc and make it available on the web? Later we could extend it to cover corporate bosses and the quangocracy. "

Sounds a pretty bloody boring site. You still need journalists and bloggers to sift through that stuff to give it, life.

1146 Also posted to: cyberSaps , warBlog . At: 11:58:05 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Don't get mad, get political

Wired Oct 2001: Osama has a new friend

"Abdullah Azzam, the chief ideologue of the non-Afghan militants and a spiritual mentor of bin Laden, used 'al qaeda' to describe the role he envisaged the most committed of the Muslim volunteers who had fought the Soviets playing once the war in Afghanistan was over. In 1987 he wrote: "Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward and to put up with heavy tasks and enormous sacrifices. This vanguard constitutes the strong foundation (al qaeda al-sulbah) for the expected society."" It's a deeper concept, than the simple, foreign nickname we call it. ""England is your favourite team and you are about to blow yourself up in the jihad against kufr (unbelievers)?" "Politics is one thing. Football is something else."" The interview with the captured suicide bomber is revealing, of how he is indoctrinated. Out of a Kurdish teenager's lack of direction, comes a believer in paradise. "...The "war on terror" has so far done nothing to eradicate the reasons for the volunteers wanting to travel to the training camps or to deal with the grievances..." This is true from my view point. There are no TV programmes explaining the Muslim world and how they view themselves while watching the latest Hollywood block buster. (Further reading: The Impact of Western Hegemony on Muslim Thought.) I wish the world was freed of the tyranny of religion. "...Increasingly, and this is a trend that is accelerating, the extremists are no longer perceived as the "lunatic fringe". Instead they are seen as the standard bearers. And their language is now the dominant discourse in modern Islamic activism. Their debased, violent, nihilisitic, anti-rational millenarianism has become the standard ideology aspired to by angry young Muslim men. This is the genuine victory of bin Laden and our greatest defeat in the "war on terror"." Blair's cock up in invading Iraq with no real justification has lost us the moral higher ground, now we are no better than the terrorists.

1145 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 11:15:56 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: What is al-Qaeda?

"American forces have launched a fourth major offensive against insurgents in central Iraq to blunt expected attacks against U.S. soldiers during upcoming holidays marking historical events of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, military officials said." That's where DebkaFile (below) says Saddam' s hiding in 'vast underground cities.'

Map used by Rumsfield in his recent testimony before the Senate.

1144 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 10:50:21 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: U.S. Forces Launch Operation Ivy Serpent

"It is estimated that between 12,000 and 14,000 men have begun drawing salaries against Saddam's account. "Since the underground complexes contain vast amounts of military equipment and munitions - enough to sustain months of fighting - it must be admitted that some of the elite units we thought had scattered may be under arms again," said the source."

I don't know who or what to believe anymore.

1143 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 10:44:34 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Saddam Hussein in Iraq - more than a taped voice

Another Labour bod, this time a local councillor starts blogging, about local issues: "when opposition councillors start realising what he is writing about them, they will set up weblogs of their own - but only if they can master the technology. "

And a prophesy: "within the next 18 months he reckons 200 councillors will have started a their own weblog, and within five years the numbers will have "snowballed" to 5,000. "

More power to Monday's Houses of Parliament blogging conference.

1141 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 5:09:21 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Blogging for better bins, councillor blogs

"...If they had been presented to me in a way which didn't irritate or annoy me then I might well have looked at them properly."

Only ads I use are Google ads. When I'm searching for something, they can be quite useful. But now they've spread elsewhere, and I don't find them useful at all. They're not in context, nor am I looking for further linkage.

1140 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 4:59:07 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Why online ads do not work

"The new finding means not only that planets may be more abundant than expected throughout space, but that life may have started far earlier - and had more of a chance to spread - than had been thought possible. "This means that 13 billion years ago, life could have arisen and then died out" on this distant planet." I don't like it being called "Methuselah" after the biblical patriarch who lived to the grand old age of 969. I'd prefer it had nothing to do with the bible. I'd like those crazy religious people who are causing so much trouble to be shown this sort of information, to prove that there cannot be a 'god.'

"At the moment, U.S. forces in Iraq are straining every nerve to find, capture or kill Saddam Hussein."

The UK and US sexed up the reasons to invade Iraq. Bush and Blair were wrong to do that. Sure he's a tyrant, murderer, and I'm glad he's gone, but to have cheated to do it leaves me with a bad taste. We need to show lesser developed countries that we are a source for good, and just. Good it may have done (that's yet to be decided), just it certainly wasn't.

1138 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 4:29:31 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Find Saddam, dust him down and apologise

BBC: Senator Joseph Lieberman, another Democratic presidential hopeful, said the controversy "breaks the basic bond of trust we must have with our leaders in times of war and terrorism".

BBC (10 July): ex-Prime Minister John Major: "We are in the middle of the war against terror and nobody knows what our troops may be asked to do next.
"It is essential that the word of government and the intelligence services is readily accepted by Parliament and the public."

BBC (11 July): Former cabinet minister Clare Short said the prime minister had seen himself as "a kind of higher mortal than the rest of us" and had decided it was acceptable to "slightly fool" the public in making decisions over Iraq.
He had been guilty of "half-truths, slight deceptions, exaggeration" in the run-up to the war.

1137 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 4:06:22 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Pointing the finger at high lies

John Pilger (June 3): "Such a high crime does not, and will not, melt away; the facts cannot be changed. Tony Blair took Britain to war against Iraq illegally. He mounted an unprovoked attack on a country that offered no threat, and he helped cause the deaths of thousands of innocent people. The judges at the Nuremberg Tribunal following world war two, who inspired much of international law, called this "the gravest of all war crimes"."

Today the Iraqi civilian body count has risen past 6,000 despite the smart, precision weapons.

Sure, Saddam was killing thousands too, but that wasn't the reason I supported the war.

1136 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 3:59:33 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: WMD will be on Blair's political headstone

Remember the second, so called dodgy dossier in February 2003? The one that was plagiarised for a student's thesis in the internet? Well, this is a about the first September 2002 dossier...

"The plagiarised documents in the first dossier included mention of ballistic missiles, unmanned drones, nuclear programmes, "dual use" of civil material, maps showing how British bases in Cyprus were within range of Iraqi missiles and Saddam's supposed plan for regional domination."

All lifted for the internet and two years old.

I could retch, I'm so pissed off with Blair. He's really fucked up. Bye bye Blair, too clever for your own good. Thinking he could lie to the UK (and the world, and me) and get away with it. If we want to keep the Labour Government in, which I do, he has to go as Clair Short says, "Quit before it gets nasty."

1135 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 3:32:46 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Revealed: first dossier also dodgy

"...The Office of National Assessments -- Australia's top intelligence analysis agency which reports directly to the prime minister -- said it knew of doubts over the claims Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, but had not told Howard. "

Australia's dragged into it too. When are we going to hear from Spain and Italy?

1134 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 2:33:38 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Howard: I Didn't Mislead Australia on Iraq

BBC: In his January address, Bush said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." From Tenet's full text... "In the fall of 2002, our British colleagues told us they were planning to publish an unclassified dossier that mentioned reports of Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa. Because we viewed the reporting on such acquisition attempts to be inconclusive, we expressed reservations about its inclusion, but our colleagues said they were confident in their reports and left it in their document... " "...From what we know now, agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct, i.e. that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa. This should not have been the test for clearing a presidential address. This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed." Newsday.com: ...The CIA had tried unsuccessfully for months to substantiate the British allegation on which the claim was based Bush considers the matter closed, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "The president has moved on," he said. BBC: Tenet apparently singled out to be the fall guy. And via dailykos: CIA directors make poor fall guys.

1133 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 2:28:24 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Tenet's complete statement on uranium claim

Still going, not one drag in 20 days 18 hours 1 minute . That's nearly three weeks to the day.

Cravings are getting less, and less "shall I / sharn't I." But at least once a day I have arguments with myself, the "just one" thoughts. They are the most dangerous, in the past I've given into them.

I've yet to go to a pub and get drunk with smokers. That'll be the hardest.

1132 Also posted to: personal . At: 2:10:32 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Non smoking report

The Rocket. I've been trying to get them to go on this for a while now, but they always say, "when I'm bigger." Usually it's packed with kids. But yesterday, after school, around 6:30pm it was empty. I had to go up the first few times and lift Bradly up the very first step. But they soon got the hang of it, and Bradley, in his excitement, while I was off in the roses with Esme having a pee, managed to get up that first step.

[Update:] Bradley's been stopped going down the curly shoot. He's too small, and gets thrown about, coming out head first and upside down, rubbing his head.

Funny poses, seems to be the name of the game these days.

The thing is full of little layers connected by small ladders, too small for me.

Hmmm. As ever Bradley is the first to do down. He's younger and more easily persuaded by Esme. Or, is that manipulated?

It's a big black hole! I get them to scream on the way down, that way I can have an idea where they are.

It's big, very big!

1131 Also posted to: personal . At: 1:43:49 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The Rocket slide in Telford

Strange dancing kids. I think it was Esme's idea, as usual, to do the silly dancing. We were in the garden part of the Telford Town Park, where the fishes are. I'd just shot this, when someone called out "did it work?" It was the parkie, about to close up the garden. I thought we had the place to our selves. Felt a bit self conscious taking a pix of me (and strange dancing kids).

1130 Also posted to: personal . At: 1:40:37 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Strange dancing kids

Again silly poses. Here's the two outside their day school. Two days a week, but they get a good start to their education.

As soon as Bradley sees me he runs into my arms saying, "I missed you." Heartbreaking! Twice a week every week.

1129 Also posted to: personal . At: 1:39:06 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: School two days a week

You may notice some weirdness with my font sizes for a few hours as I 'live' mess around with them.

[Update:] nearly fixed it. Just MSIE 6 on PC that's not making my menus each the same size. And the line spacing between my buttons. On the Mac MSIE's buttons aren't showing the text. Fed up now, going to get some breakfast.

1128 Also posted to: cybersaps . At: 9:34:19 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Bloody stylesheets

Easy bits and hard bits... I've been trying to add more combinations of stylesheets to my templates. Right now, I can move the menus to the, left, right or make them disappear.

But, I want to add text sizes. However, I can't, well, not the way I want. I can swap individual stylesheets, or even groups of stylesheets, or make one style sheet out of several.

I want to be able to select say the 'left' sheet, then the bigger fonts sheet. And for that to be persistent in cookies. I can, with the method of loading the @Import but this would require a new page load.

I thought I could write two cookies, one for the menus, one for the text. I'm not sure if that would work (if I spend hours on it) as it seems that the selection of link sheets is a either this or that, not some of these, one of those and an other of this. You cannot pick and mix, only pick.

Mark Wilton-Jones has a solution to select two sheets, but the rest are switched off. So, I'd have to have a user select, 'left, big' or 'left, small' and 'right, big' or 'right, small' and so on. But, when I want to throw in 'red' and 'orange,' I'm going to get into dumbass stuff.

How can I pick and mix from hundreds of tiny little stylesheets? I'll have to sleep on it.

1127 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 9:11:16 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Style Sheets in HTML documents

"Yahoo said the figures reflected the continued popularity of its sponsored web searches, which mention advertisers' names in conjunction with certain search results.

It also credited strong sales of fee-based services to consumers and small business users.

Sponsored web searches, introduced last year, have proved a runaway success with small business advertisers who cannot afford larger online promotions."

I've been wondering about Google's adsense. My mate put them on his football site for 4 days and scoped $175. But some of his click through rates were around 33% which is waaaay too high. So he's been kicked off. OK... Fair enough, though he's pissed off, obviously.

But, he wondered, well demanded, to me and I guess to Google in writing, that he be paid his $175.

I wonder if they will. I wonder also if it's the advertisers who paid, sometimes up to $2 for each click, who'll be paying or Google? I bet it'll be the advertisers.

I don't think Google adsense will last that long.

1126 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:22:58 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Ad sales double Yahoo profits

"Cut it with the bling bling and do something for the community, man"

They've also added some promo for next Monday's meet at House of Commons. I bet it gets packed out now. Lucky I put my RSVP in early.

1125 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:02:00 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: BBC catches the Westminster blogger

I love the colours in this pic. Looks like an old master's oil painting, something heroic about Hector.

Madness in the garden yesterday. Big Amy, our regular Wednesday morning baby sitter, came back from the park with two kids who wanted the pool filled. Up. So I get the hose pipe out... Fun with hose pipes. Esme kept coming into the kitchen wanting hot water, then when I'd go the hot tap fitted up (with luke warm water) she wanted that switched off. 15 time she came up to me with the same type of requests... Meanwhile Bradley's spraying everything and anyone who come too close. I think that's more the reason she wanted the attention. Played the classic standing on the hose pipe joke with Bradley. Esme was co-conspirator, at first telling me to get off the pipe, then after I shush her and with my mischivious smile, then looking on, expectantly. Bradley started to complain, "Uggg, Daddy, no water..." "Look down the pipe, Bradley." To receive an eye full of water. Esme and I pissed ourselves, and Bradley joined in the laughing. "Again!" He says. So we do it again, and again, and one more time, but I'm fed up, so to his calls of "Again!" I disappear inside. Jokes and kids. Pa! The self timer isn't happy with the exposure... Oh, well.

1124 Also posted to: personal . At: 11:34:35 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The hose pipe gag, and self timer of me

"Its purpose is simple: produce HTML documents that can be addressed at the paragraph level. It does this by automatically creating name anchors with static and hierarchical addresses at the beginning of each text node, and by displaying these addresses as links at the end of each text node."

I found this on Mark Canter's blog and apparently, some people have it working in Blosxum and MT. Looks quite interesting, this purple stuff, and from two years ago. Never heard of it before.

I'd like to add this to my Radio. And currently thinking it through. It's the versioning that could be the problem. If I create, say, a story, and add purple links to the paras. Fine. But later I move paras around... There's some info on the purple page about versioning... Hmmmm. Interesting

1123 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 10:50:57 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: An Introduction to Purple

That's a nice bit of fun. With my stylesheets re written to be left or right. Maybe tomorrow I'll make some different colours, or maybe with some completely different designs.

I used the style switcher at A List Apart. Haven't tested it on all browsers/platforms yet. I know there's problems with NN4 but, well, the stylesheet I'm using has problems with that old browser anyway.

1122 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 11:05:26 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Left or right stylesheets

"It is vital we realise this and move on."

1121 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 10:54:22 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The internet is shit

"Whereas in 2002 PDAs' main use was as a personal organiser, this year the top function is as a business diary."

1120 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 10:33:10 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Careless PDA users threaten corporate security

"Why Should Businesses Blog?

Simple. No one listens, anymore, to sanitized marketing messages."

There you go. Real gossip is far more interesting than wading through marketing speak. If you write marketing speak then you're scared of writing anything interesting. Maybe because your boss will tear you apart, maybe because you think your customers will tear you apart. Oh, the angst!

1119 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 10:27:20 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: 5 key questions to ask about business blogs

"A chip makes it tough for the cartridges to be refilled.

Epson's microchip is known as 'Intellidge' and has become the norm for all new Epson printers. There are several versions of these chips, in different cartridge designs. Meanwhile, numerous companies are selling chip resetters for Epson cartridges, which programme the chips to factory specs, showing full ink levels and providing the same number of cycles as when the chip was new, but they are costly. "

You will be assimilated.

1118 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 1:39:44 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Do not to buy Epson inkjet cartridge printers

"People love things for free, and free is a hard price to beat,..

Games are heavily branded and not readily substitutable."

Ads in Opera, Eudora don't seem to be the answer to me. Offering a better product and better support seems like a good one, at least that's what I'd pay for.

1117 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 1:22:12 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Making software pay

"The Guardian is also planning a first for web-publishing - an advertising-free version of its site, which users will be able to view for £20 a year. Annual subscription to the Guardian will cost £98.57 a year or £10 a month."

That sounds quite expensive. Even though I read the Guardian, nearly everyday, It's too much at £99 a year. £20 is OK.

""The realities of web publishing mean that we also have to seek opportunities to maximise our revenues," said Emily Bell, the editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited."

In other words we spent a boat load on a content management system, and the fees and up keep of it is way too expensive, so we need to cream our readers a couple of £million a year to pay for it.

Oh, if only they had gone for a cheap blogging system.

1116 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:42:35 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Guardian to begin online charges

Q: Is all psoriasis alike?
No. There are various forms of psoriasis. Plaque psoriasis is the most common. Other forms are guttate, characterized by small dot-like lesions; pustular, characterized by weeping lesions and intense scaling; inverse, characterized by intense inflammation and little scaling; and erythrodermic, characterized by intense sloughing and inflammation of the skin. Psoriasis can range from mild to moderate to very severe and disabling.

I think I've got all of them.

From The Guardian: Stress, smoking and drugs such as beta blockers, may all trigger a flare up. Up to 5% of the population has psoriasis, a condition that causes scaly areas as the skin cells develop too quickly. Psoriasis may run in families, it is never infectious and it tends to be a lifelong condition which waxes and wanes. Use aqueous cream as a soap substitute several times a day to keep the skin calm. Add Polytar to your bath and get a combination cream from your GP that contains a bit of steroid - Alphosyl HC or Trimovate. Use the combination cream twice a day.

CentreDaily: Many drugs put a strain on the liver or kidneys and can't be tolerated for long. Others are too much of a blunt instrument, causing unnecessary, widespread immune suppression.
The new drugs are called "biologics," and are made up of specially crafted proteins that cripple only the specific immune cells driving the disease. When the first biologic received approval for general use this year, the Psoriasis Foundation hailed the development as "the most significant advance in psoriasis care in 20 years."
Treatment for one patient may cost as much as $26,000 a year.

Some South African health site: A study appearing in the June issue of the Archives of Dermatology finds that people with psoriasis who worry a lot don't respond as well to certain treatments as do people who worry less.

Hmmm. Looks like this is difficult. Luckily I ain't got much, just a bit on my face.

1115 Also posted to: personal . At: 10:38:16 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Psoriasis is there a cure or non-crank treatment

"We have a new room for the event, which holds up to 100 people."

One hundred red bloggers!

1114 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 9:43:19 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Voxpolitics Seminar @ Houses of Parliament

Rob Henerey posted how he creates a news item on the Radio discussion list. So, I thought I'd explain how I do it here:

It all starts here I'm normally putting together little stories about me and the kids. Normally, Radio isn't running, and I'm editing, colour enhancing, cropping anything from 2 or 3 to 50 or 60 pictures from my digital camera. It's only a Digital Dream 1.3MB (£87.00) but I won't pay any more that £100 for a camera. So, I'm saving pix into the folders directly from Photoshop. I've become good enough that I know what size I want them to be, and which will go next to each one. I mentally draw the news item post up in my mind. Each folder is a width size for the thumbnail. I could create any size I wanted. All I'd need to do is create a new folder, call it a number and that would be the size of the thumbnail. I don't want too many though, these have sufficed for a few months now. Anymore and I think things would look confused. In this illustration, I've dropped an image into the asis folder - that's "as is" or same size. With this special folder, there is no thumbnail, and all I get is the image ref, no javascript double thumbnail jobbie. It's a tabbed folder, it's always available so I can drag images from websites directly to it. I've also set up Default Folder so there's a keyboard short cut to it too from any application. I'm using a customised version of Dave Winer's myPictures tool. Now, it only works with Mac Classic. I don't know enough about scripting apps on OS X nor Windows. Each image in my tool is thumbnailed by using clipToGif. I need help with this little tiny part to make it work on Windows and OS X.

Getting the image tags Up pops the Thumbs for whatever window. (I don't know why I called it that.) This is the window that pops up when Radio is restarted and there's images in the bits to upload folder. Or, if I drop an image into my bits to upload folder. If there's a load of images in this folder then there's a corresponding amount of images in this window. You can also see there's a shortcut of the image (highlited in black). I'm having trouble with shortcuts being processed in some places, and as I like to be able to edit the image tags, the hspace and maybe the valigns I have it raw too and usually use that version.   If it's thumbnail then it's 'orrible javascript as above. They usually are, and all the ones of my kids are JS. BTW: I've got a bit of javascript in my headers in each page to make this work. I've also added it to all my manila sites, to make them work when I cross post to manila sites.   I see it as HTML in Radio, looks a lot easier to understand. That is, underlined links in blue, as above.

Quick post menu item Now, to create a post. I pull down my myRadio menu, this is my myRadio menu, nothing to do with Userland. I decide which category the post is going to be. I post everything into the front page as well. This post is going to be a cyberSaps post. I don't always create posts this way. Sometimes I use the aggregator, or the bookmarklet for Mike Krus's Radio Express when I'm out bear backed blogging. I then open up with the menu command: last post to outline, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

Fresh empty post Here's the fresh empty post. To edit the title, I double click on the title bar, where it says weblogData.posts.00001112. And the containing table pops up (see below).

Edit the title By default my menu creates a title Quick post Or at least that's what the cyberSaps menu does, other menus, like the service message create titles with the date and time in. Anyway, I change the post to be something more useful. And, if I want, I can add more categories, or take it off the front page.

Add one of my boilerplates With the fresh empty post, I add a table. I've got plenty already made up in my boilerplates. Ah, there's some other scripts and bits in this menu, I guess the most used is the Copy Address no GDB and the sweetest, is the Squish and save. The rest are of the type, "paste this stuff in the clipboard and do this to it before." And the others are the menus that I've cribbed from elsewhere in Radio and put here. Then I've just tidied up my bookmarks to scripts and places and stories and stuff.

Start editing my post To the left is the fresh post with the boilerplate. I just open it up arrange the table cells with the images and text, as you do. Here's me editing my post, this post. It's a thumbnail, just click on the image and the bigger, full sized on will open in a new window. I check back and fore with the local version of the page, just to make sure what I see in the outline is what I get in the web browser.

Publish right now! OK, so I'm happy with the lot. And I want it upstreamed now. Now! I said. This menu builds and upstreams immediately. I can pick which category I want to upstream, and I don't need any new news posts. This menu item will upstream the front page of the category regardless.

The only other thing to do is make sure your full text news items in your RSS 2.0 remove the javascript nonsense. I've a call back for that.

1112 Also posted to: cybersaps . At: 5:36:28 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick post about quick posting

"When you remove the key-critical behaviour of search, you have moved from pull to push marketing, and everyone knows which of these is most powerful: pull"

I don't think Google will be able to keep this up for very long. I've clicked on several ads in Google's results pages, the ads have been useful to my search. But, so far the ads I've seen on blogs haven't been useful, so I haven't clicked.

I don't know if 'inventory owners' bloggers to you and I are paid for impressions or only clicks. If so, it's good for advertisers, as they get free eye-balls. Fraudulant clicks are not allowed either, and the click through is anything from a few dollors to 5¢, depending on the keywords.

I'm looking into this for me to advertise, and for me as 'inventory owner' of a blogging community - well, part owner. More a, sometimes, sysAdmin. If we can raise some dosh for a new machine all the better.

These are the ads that Google may use on the Villa blogs, looks like public (read cheap = 5¢) ads. Me? A socialist ad exec putting ads on blogs, never?

1110 Also posted to: cyberSaps , serviceBF . At: 1:06:48 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Does Google's AdSense Make Sense?

"14th July, 5:30 - 7.00pm
Committee Room 20
Upper Committee Corridor
Houses of Parliament

Drinks and Food Provided"

It's been a long time since I was last there. Possibly, 20 years. I fell asleep after a long party the night before, a long bus trip down, and a boring talk by Bruce George the Labour MP for Walsall. Something to do with the Humanities course my mate was on.

Anyway, free food and some chance to meet up with, I guess, some nice lefties, who want to change the world with their blogs!

Deffo, I'll be there. Anybody else wanna go, add your name and email them to RSVP

1109 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 11:44:36 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Bloggers storm the citadels

"The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site."

Oooo! I'm going to do that I don't want to be cached. Like the page says, if I want to delete stuff from my site I don't want to find that within google. Or have to wait what could be 60 days.

So, I add the tag to my #prefs at the top level.
<meta NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="noarchive">

But I don't mind Daypop so it'll just be google that I'll stop.

So my prefs is looking like this these days...

1108 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:42:51 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Google as Big Brother

Still going strong! Though I'm still having cravings. Now: 16 days 21 hours 16 minutes .

Much easier to keep out of the way of other smokers. I did give up 10 years ago, and noticed that I'd changed my friends. True!

I was sitting in the bar in the local, when I had a deja-vu. I remembered sitting there a few months back, and everybody was smoking, the ash tray was full, we were all drunk and laffing... This, time we were all pretty sober, no ash tray, and all my mates were different.

1107 Also posted to: personal . At: 5:26:13 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Still not tabbing!

"Tony Blair: "There couldn't be a more serious charge, that I ordered our troops into conflict on the basis of intelligence evidence that I falsified, I take it as about as serious an attack on my integrity as there could possibly be. The charge is untrue and I hope they will accept that.""

Well, Tony, someone is telling porky pies, and as you're at the top, unless you find out who lied to you, then the buck stops with you.

Someone invented the 45 minute idea. Someone sexed up the dodgy dossier. Someone lied to me.

"Robin Cook says of Alastair Campbell: "He has handled the last two weeks brilliantly, in that he has managed to convince half the media that the foreign affairs inquiry is into the origins of his war with Andrew Gilligan, not into the war with Iraq."

He is also critical of the September dossier. "There aren't any weapons ready for use in 45 minutes; there was no uranium. There were no chemical production factories rebuilt; there was no nuclear weapons programme."

Something very bad is happening at the top. It must have the reasons for the resignations of Robin Cook and Claire Short. Now, to cover up the crap, their covering up the crap.

This is deadly serious.

When Blair says, "erm, look we have a problem with North Korea..." I won't believe a word. He must think the great British unwashed are thick.

I used to admire Blair. Looks like power corrupts.

1105 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 10:25:01 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Governors back BBC in row over Iraq dossier

"Both chutes blew away from Stephen Hilder's harness when he tried to open them, leaving him helpless as he fell 13,000ft to his death."

1104 Also posted to: personal . At: 10:03:04 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Skydiver killed by sabotage

Cricket's a funny old game. Bradley had a present from Francis's party. Two bats and a rubber red ball. Four stumps and a bails.	Esme soon gets the hang of it, and hits two sixes and one four.
	Bradley's not so into it. He's not hitting my bowling, and prefers to somehow, place the ball on a the bat and push it to me. But this tricky act takes a while to set up and both Esme and I soon become bored. It keeps them busy for a while.

1103 Also posted to: personal . At: 10:23:56 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Cricket's a funny game

It's shocking how old she looks sometimes. Only yesterday, it seems she was a babbling baby. Now look at her. Nearly five years old, and looking ever more the teenager. When I see pix like this, I look ahead to when she is a teenager. She's going to be heart breaker. Temperamental red head too.

1102 Also posted to: personal . At: 10:22:58 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: My little prom queen

After a visit to Tescos, where we must be heard from one end of the store to the other - boy, have I got loud kids. "Daddy! I want this!" We have a lotta fun. But I get a stiff back picking Esme in and out of the trolley, she's getting too heavy for this.

Bradey's having a bad hair day. But there's nothing I can do. He won't let me do it, and won't do it himself...

Anyway, after Tescos comes the clean out of the fridge where I find some sorry looking strawberries. I say we'll plant them in the pots. "Why?" Says Esme. "Why?" Repeats Bradley. And this is what we did. Bradley kept holding his dirty hands up and saying, farmers have dirty hands. Esme says after Bradley's 5th time that he's said this before, so he repeats it again, and again.

1101 Also posted to: personal . At: 10:18:10 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Farmers have dirty hands

I painted the shed while they were at the swim party. A few beers shared with the neighbour, Darren, as he does his ex-wife's car.

They like screaming, or shouting at the top of their voices from the roof, I guess it's because they've a good view.

1100 Also posted to: personal . At: 10:10:43 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Roof children

"When the product does come out later this year, bear in mind that it's a 1.0, there are other new features on the way, and it's built for the AOL user in mind. That said, I'm not one who shies away from speaking my mind. There are some really cool features in the product at launch. RSS support will be in 1.0, along with a bunch of other stuff that I'm not going to tell you about. Ok, I'll tell you one - you can send an IM to a bot and have it post to your blog with rich text support and other cool stuff (like add titles, etc). "

We knew they were coming. I seems that this will be called journaling rather than blogging.

I think that there still lots of room to play in this area. JRobb thinks they spent $20m on this! And that's so far!

1098 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 11:17:30 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: AOL coming to blogs

"They found that men with a good mix of genes were most likely to have been ranked as attractive."

Do you have a good mix of genes? How the hell could you find that out?

1097 Also posted to: personal . At: 10:58:27 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Cheeky clue to male sex appeal

There was a log in the word doc version of the WMD dossier, apparently 4 people edited it. Now the UK Government have wised up...

"Perhaps coincidentally, he said, many of the older Word format documents on the 10 Downing Street site have now been removed and replaced with PDF versions."

The BBC are really having-a-go at Tony's crack-pots. Deservedly.

1096 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 10:50:10 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Tools reveal secret life of documents

"Earlier in in the year, JVC announced the GR-HD1, the first camcorder to capture video in high definition TV standard."

I use my little 1.3 megapix digital dream to shoot little snips of video. I've a 64 meg card (I could go up to 560MB or so) and I can shoot maybe 15 minutes, I've never yet filled this new card!

Sure the quality's not so good at around 350 x 285 pix, but for handiness, and that I've always got it in my pocket, I cannot fault it. I've VHS-C camera too, but that's only for special occasions, not the little snippets of life that I like to shot.

One day soon, stills, video, video conferencing, phone, email, web, mp3, probably even editing will all be in one tiny device. We all know this. In the meantime the makes are trying to guess what's important to a demographic and squeezing two or three functions into a small enough device.

Now, why video cameras haven't a sim card hole for a phone, I don't know. And I don't see much in the way of Bluetooth in this article or in many others I've read so far. Why-oh-why can't we yet Bluetooth these devices together?

1095 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 10:39:03 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Uncertain future for the camcorder?

"It is almost certain that Saddam ordered the weapons dismantled or destroyed some time in the 1990s. Sanctions had seriously impeded the Iraqi efforts to obtain materials and equipment for their WMD programmes."

More background sniping: American intelligence has shown itself once again to be woefully inadequate.

Has he, did he? I really think Bush does know by now. Sure he has enough people working on this, or rather he had enough, now he's probably nobody working on it, just some media people working on the smoke screens.

1094 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 10:17:53 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Saddam 'destroyed weapons in 1990s'

"The US government "remains concerned" that Microsoft is making it difficult for rivals to access Windows despite being ordered to open up its software." It's the rates, and royality structure, that's under question, plus the fact that they're dragging their feet. And some people are saying Microsoft has changed. Bollocks.

1093 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 9:58:56 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Judge may have to force open Windows

I was a concerned with the mention of religion, and took issue with it a little. It seems that the head is a religious man as it is he who takes the bible crap in assembly and there's a deep link with the Central Telford Ecumenical Partnership whatever that is.

Esme's new school. Ladygrove Primary, about quarter of a mile walk away, in a nice quiet part of Dawley, well off the main road. We had a meeting there with the head and the reception teacher one Miss Susan Linforth. We were told about all the comings and goings we had to do, the new wind turbine that was being built soon, it all sounds rather fabulous, and both Amanda and myself were suitably impressed.

Looking at the Ofsted report (35 pp pdf) I guess it's up to the parents what sort of education they get. School can only do so much. But this was from 5 years ago. There's computer white boards in every class, and a computer, not that Susan can work Powerpoint very well, top her own admitance. There's also 20 computers in the ITC room. One thing that struck me, was the colour! The grass, the trees, everything did nothing to remind me of my schools. I had tarmac as a play area, worn, old hard cover books on the shelves. To me, now, my school was black and white.

1092 Also posted to: personal . At: 9:21:17 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Esme's new school, Ladygroove Primary, Dawley.

These pix are from last Sunday at the kite festival. We first went Saturday and today the wind was up. This time it was only the three of us, however.

How'd you teach a two year old how to put sunglasses on? Here Bradley, again puts them on not over but from under. This is two kids loving kites, at last the wind is up! And so are the two kites, no need for running or father input, just stand there and hold tight. Soon this looses it's appeal and once more I'm left with crotchety children picking fights with each other and wanting me to 'do' something. Oh well.

She doesn't look like a 4 year old in dem specs! Here's one of the kite shops. If only I had enough time I'd spend hours in each shop. But our collective attention spend is only 3 minutes, if that.

We buy another rocket game. It keeps them occupied for a bit, but there's arguments over who's turn it is next, with cheating, and winding up. As one would prepare to jump on, the other would remove their rocket and put their's on. Now if it were me, I'd jump regardless, but they must only jump when their rocket is on the launcher, winding the other person, who's winding them. It gets ever so complicated, and, eventually, I can't referee.

1091 Also posted to: personal . At: 9:06:30 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: More pix Shrewsbury Kite Festival

"The First International Love Hotel Moblogging Conference," Doesn't look like it took off very well, but still some very nice pictures there.

1090 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 4:47:06 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Tokyo Tidbits - Love Hotel

Stopped smoking :13 days 17 hours 2 minutes .

I still get the cravings, but luckily not many of the blinding dancing cigarettes visions. And I know they'll pass in a minute or two, and they're gone. Pity I caught a cold off the kids though, otherwise I may be able to smell things and taste my food once more.

Wasn't any health reasons to do it, just stopped. Yay!

1089 Also posted to: personal . At: 1:11:39 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Non smoking report

"When you display the permanent link for a post. You should link the title of a post which presumably contains words which indicate what the post is about instead of a [#] or the word permalink or, common amongst Blogger users, the date and time."

"Use the meta tags to help the Googlebot index only your permalinks, not your constantly changing front page. To do this, use:
this <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" > on your front page
and this <meta name="robots" content="index,follow" > in archives"

Two nice little tips there for me to clean up my Google. I've a nice robots.txt anyway but fear that my home pages are still being indexed. And I'll take a look at sorting out my permalinks, maybe using the title of the post for them.

1088 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 11:20:38 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Help the Googlebot understand your blog

And from a blog advertising company, Henry Copland writes: "Each product started out as a twinkle in the eye of some deranged entrepreneur, then got tested on the entrepreneur's friends and family and finally got popularized through -- cover your ears Steve -- advertising."

And these days, with the growing popularity of blogs, I think that entrepreneur will find his product becoming a meme, if it's worthy enough.

And I am not a bleedin' civil servant, I run my own business, have done for 20 years. I've built brochures and advertising campaigns, and know the half truths, and misrepresentations they contain. I work in sales too, and know what it takes to get the sale.

One line I didn't cross - I never slept with any clients. I nearly did, just to keep the project, but thought better or it. Was it principles or that she was 45+ and I was 24? I think it was that she'd want more, and I couldn't keep giving.

No, I won't run ads on my site. And I'll be suspicious of anybody that does. I don't put ads on my car, have them on the walls in my kitchen, I dislike fashion labels, though sometimes I'm tricked into thinking the cut is better... It's a tough world. My blog is my house. No ads.

[Update: nice guy Henry emails:] Ads has some weird and hard-to-define social value that goes beyond utility (Google Adsense) or price aggregation (eBay) and comes closer to the signalling value of a peacock's tail. Like the elaborate tail, they often seem like a waste of color and energy, but the market would work a lot less efficiently without them.

I like that description, but still, I don't want someone else's cocky tails in my house!

1087 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 4:53:15 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Blogads weblog: comments

After my yesterday's post re ads on blogs, Biz consultant: Rick E. Bruner: "Moreover, I honestly do believe ads play a worthy role in the consumer's decision process. Customers are increasingly savvy enough to see through most of the "trickery, slight of hand, bending the truth." "

If one works in sales/marketing/advertising, one knows that's not true. Some are, most aren't. That's why we have, in this country, The Advertising Standards Authority, and Trading Standards, where one can complain to.

He goes on: Give them a little credit.

No! Punters are stupid! If you buy from an ad, without checking from friends, or others, then you are stupid, and deserve to be burnt. This is why I think, and hope that one day, ads will cease to exist, utopian it may be. I get interested by what others say about a product, more, much more, than by the seller's sales pitch. Recommendation is far superior than direct marketing, and blogs and other FOAF/social networks will boost this. Sure, ads will always go where there's eye balls, but they'll become less and less important to the sales process.

And: In fact, where I see the industry going in the future is increasingly towards what I refer to as "invertising" -- ads that consumers seek out and opt to see, such as "advertainment" and "edutainment" (the ads on TiVo that people opt not to skip), search ads that correspond to users seeking out information, opt-in email retention programs, Ultramercials (e.g., Salon's free-pass for premium content in exchange for impactive ads), and so on.

Rick, my old mate, my old mucker, you live in a differnet world from me. MacDonalds does these things, damn, the kids like the place too much. Their quizzes, colouring in things, toys etc... I see through it, my kids don't and that pisses me off. Ads go for the lowest common denominator, the biggest bang for buck, if the business owner can get away with less and get more, they will.

Blogs don't survive like that.

1086 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 4:50:46 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: In Defense of Advertising

"al Qaim on the Iraqi-Syrian border. Still a place of mystery, this region’s deep canyons has been intensively explored by American, Australian and British commandos, but US intelligence believes that undiscovered corners still hold secrets."

WMD in Lebanons Beqaa Valley? Saddam in Syria, Minsk (Belarus) or Lybia?

1085 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 11:34:15 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Where is Saddam?

"European businesses will be worse off as a result because US companies hold the majority of the patents and the patent know-how."

Software is different from drug patents. It's built on prior art and to have to spend £300,000 fighting one's case is a non starter for any small company.

1084 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 11:27:15 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Patents to kill small and open source software?

"The ultimate goal would be a reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle (HCV) ... capable of taking off from a conventional military runway and striking targets 9,000 nautical miles distant in less than two hours. The unmanned HCV would carry a payload of up to 12,000 lbs and could ultimately fly at speeds of up to 10 times the speed of sound."

Saddam's gone, but there still are WMD in the world, and new ones coming soon. Well, 7-22 years.

1083 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 11:22:25 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: America to build super weapons

"US Presidents have been waging politically motivated wars almost since the country was founded"

I wonder. Iraq's a very big place, and Saddam, ruthless. Could his WMD yet be found? Were there any. Are there any?

1082 Also posted to: warBlog . At: 11:16:53 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Are We Feeling Duped Yet?

Paolo Valdemarin: "Putting ads on your blog would suddenly make the monetary terms important as well. Will this influence the relationship between bloggers?"

Though I have a degree in graphics and advertising I've always been against advertising. Just my socialist background finds them distasteful. It's whoever can spend enough money fooling people that their can of beans is best, not that that can is best for the person. Trickery, slight of hand, bending the truth, that's what ads are for. Though the text ads on Google are quite handy. I don't really mind the ads on metaFilter they seem fairly harmless.

If ads start to plague blogs, the near-utopian world we have right now may disappear. The point of blogging is not to make money from eye-balls, not IMO. It maybe to make money from thought and intellect or reputation sure, nothing wrong with making money. But CPMs are eye-ball traffic, lowest common denominator.

Jeff Barr of Syndic8 rejected adult text ads. His site wouldn't suit such ads, for sure. But if he became desperate, if he was offered a deal he couldn't refuse... Say that to the common or garden blogger and soon, I see the day that blogs will become like so many tawdry sites trying to capture as much small change from ads as possible. That's not why I blog. Or, why I mainly surf around blogs.

I don't think I'd link to sites with ads. Or, I'd think twice about it. Anyway, what if I'm reading a blog through it's RSS feed? I'd never see ads, or would I? Ooooo! That would piss me off! Unless I wanted RSS ads.

1081 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 5:00:15 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Weblog advertising