The unveiling of Google StreetView UK is being met with that uniquely British mixture of outrage, amusement and derision that I can never quite get right (much like the intricacies of the English language I suspect, but I digress). On Wednesday the village of Broughton in Buckinghamshire blocked the StreetView Read more…
Yesterday was World Day Against Cyber-censorship [insert snarky comment about the abundance of “Days against X” here]. To celebrate (is “celebrate” the right word?), Reporters Without Borders has released a report on the state of internet control and surveillance. The report labels 12 countries as “enemies of the internet”, claiming Read more…
It is a bit tired to say that Google’s stranglehold on the search engine market seems unshakeable. To offer a couple of ironic factoids, I found the accompanying image using Google Image Search, and this blog is published in Blogger, a Google-owned service. Many people have been warning us about Read more…
(via Cedric Manara) The European Court of Justice has decided on a case in which it calls for a balance to be struck between intellectual property rights and the protection of personal data. Enter Case C-275/06, Productores de Música de España v Telefónica de España. This is your average P2P Read more…
Times Online has a report on new office surveillance software being designed by Microsoft. The software will monitor worker’s performance by wireless sensors that measure “heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure.” Even more interesting is the fact that the technology is the subject of a patent Read more…
While this blog has achieved decent readership figures, the comment function is still rather under-used. There are several reasons for that: in my experience there seems to be a critical mass of readers vs comments, which I have not reached yet; Blogger’s interface does not encourage comments; and also most Read more…
(The cast of GikII visit Jeremy Bentham on their way to the obligatory pub visit) As I mentioned earlier, last week we held the second edition of GikII in London. PDF versions of the presentations can be downloaded from the site so that you can wonder at the geek’s superior Read more…
Yesterday I woke up to this message on Facebook. Profiles are now available from Facebook’s main page (the one you get without being logged in), and soon the listings will also make their way to browsers such as Google. It is possible to change privacy settings in order to place Read more…
The Times Online reports on the use of Facebook to enforce some of Oxford University’s strict regulations on post-exam celebrations. I have it on good authority that students post pictures of drunken shenanigans on Facebook, some of which fall foul of existing rules. Staff have used those pictures to warn Read more…
Faceless is an unusual film for many reasons. The plot, apparently, talks of a world where everybody’s faceless due to calendar reform (huh?), but one day a woman wakes up and finds she has a face (Terry Gilliam meets Kafka). What makes the film truly unique is that it is Read more…