Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 12:14 pm. 0 comments
I realise most spam is done by mindless machines, but if any of those mindless machines are reading this then please, realise that I’m never going to approve your comments and give up. The only good spam has dubious entertainment value.
Otherly, why have car manufacturers not caught on and put 12v cigarette lighter/charging sockets on the top part of the dashboard? When I want to plug in my Garmin Nuvi I’m forced to have the cable trail down, round the instrument binnacle and to the socket near the gear-lever. A second socket up on top of the dash would avoid all that. Sort it out, guys!
Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 11:57 am. 5 comments
It’s funny what catches people’s attention these days. There’s been a lot written about information overload and how we process the ever-increasing amounts of data thrust before us, but who would’ve thought that in the space of just a few days we’d have two examples of how best to grab bloggers’ attention.
First off is Robert Scoble, now firmly ensconced in his new role as “Sir Mix-a-lot” of the blogosphere. For all his high-falutin talk of best-new-site this and that, turns out all you need to do to get into his link blog is post a picture of a cute cat. Meanwhile everybody’s favourite crotchety uncle, Mike Cane, reveals himself to be a quivering, paranoid wreck with a curious “I will screw him in the ass” obsession, apparently.
Reminds me of a piece of spam-filter navigating prose so beautiful that I kept it myself:
“Dude, this is also unenviable, because you might be facing a girl who has all sorts of baggage and she needs to unload it somehow. The project is a collaboration to create an original anime and participants will share in the profits. If you do like it, look at what you found out. All I could think of was the round, firm globes of her megaboobsand ass, and my thoughts were totally scrambled as she licked her glossy lips. Destroy target creature. Do not strap the ‘Groupware’ albatross around your neck! Pantheon High”If I only had super powers. Die nun auftauchenden Karten finde ich unter dem Blickwinkel auch nicht schlecht”
Reasonable advice not to strap that pesky ‘Groupware’ albatross around your neck, though I’d go one stage further and say you shouldn’t attach large birds to any part of your body. Just a safety precaution.
Right now, if you want my attention you’ll post about Tablet PCs. My trusty tc1100 appears to be giving up the ghost, or more specifically the graphics card has decided that on most reboots I’m more interested in seeing red blotches than my desktop. So it’s time to invest in a new PC, and what better than a rinky-dink convertible tablet. The Lenovo X60t is a stunner; shame the UK site doesn’t let you customise. That’s a deal-breaker.
Posted 1 year, 5 months ago at 5:04 am. 0 comments
At the risk of sounding like some sort of Faustian soothsayer, the world appears to be slightly off-kilter. One isolated incident I’m content to write off as an anomaly, an acid-reflux hiccup in the pattern of our dreary lives, but in the words of the great Bonnie Tyler “oh shit, here it comes again”
First off, there’s Joel Johnson and his anti-tech beration of all the gadget world holds holy over at Gizmodo. Now Joel has been called the grand doyenne of those hallowed pages, putting in a two year stint of biting apathy and growing horror reporting on the fabulous breakthroughs in the world of consumer electronics, and currently runs Dethroner complete with beard and attitude. I’m sure he won’t mind me saying that he’s proved himself there a harsh, sarcastic SOB with little time for feckless whelps and dregs, and built an adoring audience because of it.
Continue Reading…
Posted 1 year, 5 months ago at 9:57 am. 0 comments
You can generally rely on Robert Scoble to stir up a little discussion in the blogosphere - if I didn’t know better, I’d think he enjoys being the centre of attention! This time it’s about the Big Boys in the tech blogosphere and the perception that they don’t link out to other, smaller sites. Whether or not Robert is right - and his comments are full of vitriol in both directions - it’s good that the topic has been brought up; plenty of people criticise sites like Engadget and Gizmodo for the amount that they do and don’t refer people onwards.
Information crediting is always going to raise tempers. SlashGear is certainly smaller than either Engadget or Gizmodo (though we’re growing every month), and yet we have our fair share of credit upsets. Sometimes it’s because people assume we read news at their site, and yet have pointed the via link elsewhere; sometimes it’s our own content (images or text that’s obviously been lifted from our site) that gets rehashed elsewhere with no link back to us. While I’m sure we get fewer tips than the headline sites do, there’s still a regular flow of links sent in; as Ryan from Engadget says, we all make editorial decisions over whether those submissions should make our front-page. Are the tipsters pissed if we don’t use their ideas? Probably so.
The root of it is pride, I think; pride in the words, pictures and video we produce and pride in the amount of research we have to do beforehand. Anyone who puts their work online is saying “look, this is my opinion” and to be told - through lack of response - that it’s not interesting or unique enough to feature is a slap in the face. I still have a hiccup of pleasure when I see a SlashGear article linked to on another site; the message is that I was either the first to talk about it or that I said something noteworthy enough to get picked up. There are thousands of tech blogs out there and so you need to stand out somehow, whether that be by specialising in a particular topic, getting more news-breaks than anyone else or having an engaging writing style.
Incidentally, did I link to Robert’s video of Intel’s new 45nm chip fabrication plant? No, although I meant to… and then IE7 crashed and all the “blog about this” tabs went with it. Sorry Robert, though if you want to help you could speak to your old colleagues and get them to sort out their missing-in-action Session Saver!