Saturday, February 28, 2009

Diigo Tags 02/28/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Friday, February 13, 2009

IB Continuum Blog Video

The IB recently held a series of continuum presentations for staff in their Cardiff Office news of this appears in the IB continuum blog. Following the presentations a group of (victims*)volunteers were asked if they would be willing to have their responses to the series of presentations recorded......


For further information about the IB Continuum follow this link.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Diigo Tags 02/12/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Friday, February 06, 2009

Diigo Tags 02/06/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Diigo Tags 02/03/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Value your tweets!


An app called TweetValue ( click on the image above) will allow you to enter your Twitter name and will give you a response which is the worth of your Tweets in USD$ based on an apparently secret formula - by taking the number of tweets etc and crunches numbers to give your value ( from TechCrunch 02/02/09) As the article states this is similar to Twittad and also a Twitter Grader (see below) which I like because it gives you some good stats about you, twitter profile info about your blog - plus I love the TweetCloud. You can also check out your rank by local town, county and country...... cool if somewhat chastening!
I am sure that this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as twitter apps are concerned but these are fun starters

UKSnow GoogleMaps mashup

A Twitter mashup called UKSnow enabling twitterers to 'tweet # uksnow followed by the first the first letter and digits of your postcode ( #uksnow np7). The result is that the Google Map mashup designed by Ben Marsh will log your postcode tweet ( and a Twitpic if you can post one) will appear on the overlay snow flakes on the UK map. See below my tweet on snow in NP7
my guess is that this map will build as the snow continues in the UK. It also shows the power of social networking and mashups.


Sunday, February 01, 2009

'Smart Phones'??

Today as we are expecting snow during the week I thought it would be fun to take the Blackberry and G1 phone our with me for a wander around our local lanes and paths planning on using the audio recording and camera facilities of the Blackberry.... the immediate problem with the said 'Obama phone' was that I couldn't upload pictures or audio directly to 'the cloud' , the only option was to MMS or email - as a result I carried on saving pictures onto the phone while MMS'ing the audio captures to the G1.
The incoming audio was in .amr format......... which of course a WinPC cannot read! One download of a .amr converter and then taking each of the emailed clips to the converter and saving the results.
While this was going on I was busy trying to upload the picture file onto the pc ( time taken copying the picture files into one folder on the Blackberry to keep the time down (alternative would be to email them directly I guess)....... this caused the poor phone to slow down of course with the egg timer constantly playing!!!The overall result of this is that I finished my walk 2 hours ago and as yet the above image is the closest yet to having any part of my walk uploaded to the net!...... hold on that 2hours and 15 minutes and I finally have some images ......

However I still have to convert the audio files - so this first version of my walk is one with a commentary recorded here at the laptop on my return....... by the way for all of those currently in warmer parts of the world, the grey snow clouds have finally appeared here and the snow flurries have begun....!
And finally at 5pm with the snow clouds gathering the Blackberry sound files have been edited to the photographs taken earlier and here is the result...


I would humbly suggest that these particular smart phones are in some respects a step back from other less illustrious mobiles which thanks to tie in's to blogger or wordpress allow direct photoblogging and indeed in some cases the direct upload of video - both sadly lacking in the smart phones on show here..... I certainly hope that the next generation of smart phones (Nokia obviously pretty well there already I think!) will get this sorted for the dedicated mobloggers!

Apologies for the delay in completing this post....... our phone line went down earlier today meaning that my final upload of the soundwalk is now at 8.52pm and it has begun to snow here in South Wales suggesting a snowy version of the soundwalk could happen very soon!!!
The final part of what turned out to be a long process was the final podcast being processed and posted on the podomatic site.
I believe that sound posts to Utterli along with uploaded photographs would have been a more efficient way of postingt this story 9.53pm end of process....... good night all!

Diigo Tags 02/01/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

As my colleague Mr James Forbes Keir said....... only in Wales!!!!!! ( from tweet by JFK 28/01/09)


Dear reader please be advised only click on the above link if you are over 18 and not of a nature to be shocked by nudity!

“A Heap of Trouble”, a short film by Steve Sullivan, featured on Future Shorts.
UPDATE: YouTube has removed the video, I guess they don’t like Welsh comedy films featuring full frontal nudity. You can watch it in full on Steve Sullivan’s website.
On his website Steve mentions this titbit:
Interesting fact: - The still image of A Heap Of Trouble is currently banned from being posted within the 5 boroughs of New York, by order of the Staten Island Post Office due to its ‘erotic’ nature.
Originally posted on the laughing squid blog

Diigo Tags 01/28/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Monday, January 26, 2009

Tweet Tweet!

Apologies for this awful post from Monday 26th January - it was posted form the Eeepc and appears to have become a bit garbled!
The post was related to the gradual rise and rise of Twitter and related to 2 BBC News items extolling the virtue of Twitter :
Stephen Fry's interview outside the BBC prior to ( or after) his appearance on the now returned Jonathan 'Wossy' Ross. It was discussed briefly in the programme but not being a fan of Ross I will avoid posting that entry.... Twitter is growing in its usage in the UK.
While it also has impact in the US following major news stories which were 'reported first by 'citizen journalists using Twitter and Twitpic.
The BBC appear very keen on Twitter I guess no surprise when keeping a close eye on Twitter feeds can point to a rising news story amongst the chaff!

This post will now be Tweeted by pj23harry is this irony??

Friday, January 23, 2009

Diigo Tags 01/23/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Overheard in an electronics store today..........

I just happened to be in a Comet electronics store today rummaging for bargains (looking for a good quality widescreen monitor today) when I caught a conversation between a store salesman and a couple looking at netbooks this is the part of the conversation I heard.......

"(man)Which system should we go for then?
(salesman) I would go for the XP version that is newer, that Linux is an older type you won't want that, better go for the XP one.
(man and woman) OK, we prefer the newer XP we'll have that then please"

I just wonder who trains these people...... and why windows is seen as good?

Linux rocks :-) as does Apple now it uses a Linux back end for its OS!

Friday, January 16, 2009

The battle of the swivel headed touchscreen notepads

                   ( image from http://i.gizmodo.com/5124948/asus-t91-your-1+inch-thick-convertible-eee-pc)

With the unveiling of the new Asus T91 swivel screen touchpad mini notepad (no price as yet!)at the  Consumer Electronics Show last week I sense a new benchmark appearing for mini netbooks for 2009. The battle ground  in UK schools will be joined by the Intel Classmate with an in school price of around £260.
Both use the battery saving intel atom chip.
The T91 :

The T91 comes with a swiveling 8.9″ touch screen monitor. It runs an Intel Atom Z520 processor with 1 GB of RAM built in. Asus built both solid state and hard drives into the T91 for a combined capacity of 52 GB.

Asus also included a few first-ever features in the T91. The netbook will be the first to offer both GPS and a TV tuner card built in.

The T91 will ship running Windows XP home and is expected to support Windows 7 once it’s released. Asus has stated that a Linux version is possible, but has not said definitively whether it will offer a Linux version. (tech.blorge.com)


The Intel Classmate :

CONVERTIBLE CLASSMATE AT A GLANCE
Screen swivels 180 degrees
Touch screen
Water-resistant keyboard
Built-in rotating camera
Rugged outer case
60GB hard-drive
512MB memory
Pre-loaded software

Source BBC Technology
The classmate as you would expect looks to be more robust and will stand up well to a hard life in the classroom, while the Asus is an unknown quantity on that score - however previous Asus models have been a hit with both teachers and kids.... let battle commence

Are EV’s here to stay?

 I used to play a game while on one of my favourite walks. I would go up onto a footbridge over the nearby A465 and time how long it took fo...