I received a marvelous bit of spam and followed the link to a badges site in Pakistan, beautiful. I once did a brochure for The Birmingham Mint for badges, just the one, before they sold the division.

Looking at these, wouldn't it be lovely to produce a theme for Radio or Manila using imageMagick.

1409 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 8:56:52 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Badges site in Pakistan

Initial thoughts about layout.
Add a little colour...

Work them up a little, first idea.

Second idea in different colourways.

Make the first idea look like the second.

And finally... In black. Three images. Each month the image will change being something seasonal.
And finally... In grey.

1408 Also posted to: cybersaps , gowm . At: 4:41:39 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Government Office of the West Midlands: the visuals

Definition of wellbeing: as a state that allows someone to thrive and flourish. "It's a result of things going well and the cause of things going well. It's thinking, I'm getting better and life is feeling better. I'm getting better at what I do, whether it is being a friend, a lover, or a worker. I'm enjoying life."

"What we've found is that if someone is happy with life, they are more popular. We all like hanging around with happy people. They are also more productive, healthier and live longer.

"If you're optimistic and you think life is going to get better, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You will involve yourself more, you'll put yourself forward more, you will take more care of yourself. You'll figure that if you do more exercise and not booze as much, life will be better."

All we have to do is spend time mulling over all the things that have gone right for us, rather than dwelling on what has gone badly.

"You have to thank your lucky stars about what goes right on a daily basis. Whenever you get the feeling of being negative about things, just take a moment out and remind yourself of the stuff that has gone well. It could be anything from a conversation to your garden looking nice, or that it didn't rain on you when you were out on your bike. It's an extremely powerful technique."

I'm a terrible optimist. Too optimistic? Nah!

Things are always getting better IMHO. I must start to teach my kids this. Maybe I do already, someone, probably my parents taught me.

1407 Also posted to: personal . At: 12:54:00 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Why do some people enjoy life and others don't?

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) found that UK productivity could rise by 2.5 per cent by 2015 - the equivalent of workers toiling for an extra hour each week.

Not only would people benefit, CEBR reckons that government borrowing would be down by £13 billion by 2015 through lower public sector spending and extra tax revenues from a faster growing economy.

The magic bullet? Bollocks! Broadband is simply the means to the end. It's how people use broadband that really counts. Whether they use the internet or let it lie, getting dusty in the corner. Sure it's more fun, fast.

And looking a dozen years into the future, it'll be the way people share, communicate and mingle, that really counts, not forgetting by then, we'll all be on broadband on our phones too.

[Later:] I take it back. Looking at the speeds they're offering in Japan now 26Mbps and only at £20 a month. This really makes my proud 2Mbps pipe look anemic.

If we were all on that type of speed here in the UK, then surely we would be hitting those targets mentioned above. Think of those video conf calls. Web sevices, like I can only dream of. Many, many more web shoppers... Like it says on the BBC article, "a utility like gas or water that is simply there." And, "it seems clear that speed - or the lack of it - as a restraining factor is but a dim memory, and rather it is what you can do that matters."

Bring it on!

1406 Also posted to: Broadband Britain , cyberSaps . At: 12:41:19 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Competitive broadband could add £22bn to UK economy

"AOL has teamed with Systemax and Sun to ship a PC for $299, if the consumer is willing to commit to a year long $23.90 per month AOL subscription. The box runs on a 1.7GHz Celeron processor with 256MB of memory and a 40GB hard drive. Microsoft's Windows XP Home Edition is there as expected, but what should come as a surprise is the AOL Office - powered by Sun. The system also ships with a monitor and a Lexmark printer." My dead reckoning brings that to £344.87 a year (or $585.80). Or £28.74 a month. Yip, I could do with two of those, one for my daughter and one for Amanda. Maybe Bradley (3 years) would like one too? Prefer to do without the AOL stuff, bringing the price down by half to £14.64 a month. This is just the start of the commoditisation of 'puters. It's not only businesses that need more and much cheaper PCs.

1405 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:30:06 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Sun and AOL form StarOffice pact for cheap desktops

"Response rates to bulk commercial email is less than 0.005 per cent. That means that a typical email message appeals to 50 people and annoys 999,950."

A new report (pdf) tells it like it is. "It might seem that the miniscule response rates would doom the spammer to failure. Quite the contrary, email is so cheap that they can make money even with almost no click-through."

1404 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 12:16:55 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The economics of spam