The kids are alright: Round-up of the past few days’ surfing

November 27th, 2006

A few links to prove the world’s still going ’round and people are still doing their thang…

  • Need to stock up on plonk for Christmas? Thresher is offering 40% off all wine and champagne from 30th Nov to 10th Dec. Print the voucher and pass it on to your friends! Viral marketing at its simplest.
  • The ban has finally been lifted on the Griffin iTrip and similar short-distance FM transmitters. Common sense prevails!
  • Amy Winehouse is a bit too drunk to sing on the Charlotte Church show. Now, I’m a fan of Amy’s albums, but everything I’ve seen of her live so far makes me quite happy I didn’t bother to go see her live in Cambridge a couple of weeks ago. I think I would’ve fallen out of love, just like I did with LAL last year.
  • I’m getting incredibly antsy, waiting for delivery of my brand new Macbook. It should arrive within the next few days, and hours seem to stretch the closer it gets to delivery date. Unfortunately, it’s not stretching my hours of sleep.
  • Ouch. The Zune gets a poor review from Andy Ihnatko at the Chicago Sun-Times. Anyone bought one? I’m interested in seeing some opposition’s reviews as well.

How to ruin your day in one easy step

August 2nd, 2006

This sounds like the alarm clock from hell.

Clocky the annoying clock“Hit the snooze button on this carpet covered Clocky and it will scoot off on its pram wheels, seeking out a suitable hiding place (which will inevitably be right under the bed). When your snooze time is up, Clocky’s alarm will make merry hell under you, panicked and disorientated, locate its hiding place and switch the alarm off.”

I don’t use the snooze button much (usually set the alarm for 6:45am, and get up at 6:50 when the first snooze ends), but it doesn’t sound like a nice way to start the day. Might as well wash your face with hot chilli oil and brush your teeth with toilet cleaner while you’re at it.

Plus it kind of looks like a poop on wheels, which can’t be a selling point, really! ;)

[Found via Katie at Shiny Shiny]

Shiny Shiny’s new tech columnist

July 14th, 2006

Shiny ShinyI’ve been itching to tell you about this for a while, but wanted to keep it under wraps until it was really happening. But now, I can officially say it – I’ve started writing for Shiny Shiny: A Girl’s Guide to Gadgets.

First post about women and gadgets went live this morning, so have a look and tell me what you think! And have a look at all the funky gadget reviews on Shiny, there’s some good stuff in there.

Ye gods it’s so hot!

June 12th, 2006

Today was one of the first truly sweltering hot days of the week-we-will-call-Summer in Britain.

little piggy USB fanAs somebody at work pinched my desk fan, will one of my faithful readers buy me this USB piggy fan, please? It’s just too cute! “The fan/tree bit wobbles from side to side, swaying in the self-made breeze, while the little piggy acts as an on/off sliding switch,” says Shiny Shiny. It may not compete with a proper full-size blow-your-head-off desk fan but it’s got a little piggy which makes it all better!

Ok, I think the sun is getting to my brain (or maybe it’s the margaritas…) We now return to our usual posting, sorry for the distraction!

Web 2.0 en français

May 26th, 2006

TechCrunch in FrenchCe matin, j’ai découvert que TechCrunch, un blog sur Web 2.0 et les PME en technologie, existe aussi en français. Alors, pour ceux qui préfèrent leurs nouvelles techno en français, certains des articles publiés sur TechCrunch anglais sont aussi traduits.

Il reste à voir si certains articles sont écris avec le public francophone en tête ou au sujet des PME Web 2.0 de langue française, mais ça fait plaisir de voir que cet excellent site est disponible dans plus qu’une langue!

SmackBook Pro

May 25th, 2006

So the MacBook Pro comes with motion sensors… What purpose does that serve, other than protecting your hard drive in case you have the misfortune of dropping it?

Someone has written a script to make use of the motion sensors on the MacBook Pro, so he’s developing in what looks like Eclipse (correct me if I’m wrong!) on one screen, then switches to the “other one” to view the work he’s done!

How cool is that!? (As long as you don’t get pissed off at your code and start whacking it a bit too hard!)

Watch it for yourself:

[Found via TheRegister]

New service for today’s busy spy

April 18th, 2006

Haven’t got time to scan the secret documents you just stole? ScanR can turn your phone’s camera into a scanner – Take a photo of a document and it’ll return a searchable PDF.

It’s a free service so I fail to see how they expect to make their money, but TechCrunch has all the details (and some examples of the returned results, not bad!)

Ok, forget the spy idea. It could come in handy for those meetings where there’s so many whiteboard scribbles, you wouldn’t know where to start to jot those down in sensible notes!

[Edit: Reason #1 ScanR sucks - It takes ages to send your image back. It's been +36 hours since I sent mine, not received anything. And no it's not in my spam folder, I checked.]

The programmers’ Java Cookies

March 7th, 2006

The hungry programmer has the option to either learn to make this recipe or to work with me.

Because I’m nice. And I make cookies for my team. Sometimes, anyways… Maybe Thursday if they’re good boys (and girls).

PS – find the three errors for me, I couldn’t write a line of code to save my life, let alone spot the errors the author points out at the bottom of the post!

(Found via Digg BBC JP at work…)

Nokia N70 – My new gadget!

March 5th, 2006

I’ve had the same old phone for a couple of years, the Nokia 6100, a simple but sort of featureless little phone. It did me well, but I desperately wanted a camera phone as a way to spice this blog up a bit (and to quiet my mom down about not sending enough photos home ;) ).

So I treated myself to a Nokia N70 (warning, god awful minisite, just go look at the specs), as it had the 2 megapixels camera I wanted and plenty of funky features like Symbian OS, mp3 ringtones and an easy-access upgradable memory card.

Vero on SundayI haven’t had a huge amount of time (or sunlight) to try the camera in different lighting conditions but so far so good. It does video as well, but I can’t imagine that’ll come out too well!

Otherwise, it’s also got a highly addictive version of Snakes. Ok, I know most people don’t care, but I’m easily entertained, especially when sitting on the bus to work when it’s either playing mini-games or watching miserable people fall asleep.

At this point in time, the N70 comes highly recommended if anyone’s looking for a new phone! More photos on the way!

Why Lego rocks

March 5th, 2006

TechEBlog presents the top 10 strangest Lego creations. I suspect my dad would love the Lego harpsichord, but the Pinball machine is the one that does it for me. I have a hard time believing someone would manage to put a working Pinball machine together using only Lego, but it’s a pretty cool (and brave) idea!

Lego Pinball Machine

Special mention to the USB stick is well deserved! I mean, if you’re going to lug a USB key around, might as well make it interesting and unusual! :)