I’ve had this story marked since Wednesday but haven’t had a chance to post it. As eBay were preparing to hold their annual conference in Boston last week, Google decided to invite attendees to a party for Checkout, their rival to eBay’s PayPal. eBay didn’t look kindly upon this and promptly cancelled all their Google [...]

“For decades the internet has kept pace with our demands on it. And demand continues to grow.”
BBC Click Online looks at claims that the Internet may eventually collapse under its own weight. However, despite data use growing rapidly over the last decade - and increasing in jumps with the wider use of pictures and then [...]

“In an age of rampant globalization, when consumers across the world increasingly seem to crave the same sort of products, from Coca-Cola and Harry Potter novels to Starbucks coffee and Louis Vuitton handbags, you might think that a food company with annual sales of $80 billion would be eager to join this push towards standardization [...]

I meant to post this ages ago but I don’t think I did. The Mobile Opportunity blog has an interesting comparison of mobile phone use in Europe and North America, including vocabulary, culture and use, design, text and instant messaging, signal strength and coverage, brands, and consumer opinion. While it mostly appears to be based [...]

“For better, and for worse, Hong Kong’s future is tied to China’s … Though hugely different in scale, the two learn from, depend on, influence and to an extent intimidate each other. Each needs the other to prosper, yet each also sees the other as potentially harmful.”
Ten years after Hong Kong was given back to [...]

From bLaugh, here.

“The United States is waging an undeclared financial war on Iran as part of efforts to persuade the Tehran government to abandon alleged plans to acquire nuclear weapons.”
The BBC reports on the US Treasury Department’s increasing influence over banks and other companies, not just in the US but around the world. For example, HSBC in [...]

I had my call played on CNET’s Buzz Out Loud podcast today, which excited me no end because I’m a total geek. It has, however, served to emphasise that I hate hearing recordings of my own voice. Anyway, my point was this: Apple are rumoured to be planning a movie rental store, which would require [...]

“Maybe it’s time to face the truth. Maybe I really do belong to Google. Maybe I’m just Google’s ‘biatch.’ “
The Republic of T has a really interesting article on the rapidly expanding Google empire. From being able to dredge up years-old spur of the moment comments to giving in to censorship in China, many questions [...]

The Fosfor Gadgets blog compares Firefox 2.0 and the newly-released Safari beta for Windows. I’m aware that there have been quite a few reviews since, but this was the first one I saw and they all seem to say the same thing. By the sounds of it, Safari still has a long way to go [...]

“Following debates on Third World development, and on Africa in particular, can be like watching a particularly skilled conjurer … It is a bit like a magician pulling a scrawny, emaciated rabbit out of a huge and elaborately designed hat. Yet without watching closely it can be hard to see how the trick is done.”
From [...]

Death Piglet reproduced by kind permission of Johan. Original here.

Crystal meth dealer “Nick” made $813,600 tax-free profit every year, working only 15 hours a week; of the drug company Pfizer’s $48.4 billion annual revenue, 60% is profit; the Yorkville Common Pantry soup kitchen serves 4800 meals every month, making no profit but spending 37% of its budget on rent and utilities; and the Babeville [...]

“And by 2012, so-called ‘off-line’ media like posters will universally offer a far more interactive, animated canvas for marketing to people of all ages, he [Dan Clays] says.”
The BBC discusses the reaction to the newly-unveiled London 2012 Olympics logo, an embarrassing 1980s-style mess of colours and geometry. While the logo’s terrible, it’s interesting to note [...]

“A US military judge has thrown out charges against two Guantanamo Bay detainees, casting fresh doubt on efforts to try foreign terror suspects … Both cases collapsed because military authorities had failed to designate the men as ‘unlawful’ enemy combatants … The BBC’s James Westhead in Washington says the rulings deal a stunning blow to [...]

It has been revealed that American Andrew Speaker took at least 7 commercial flights between the US and Europe while infected with a highly infectious and drug-resistant strain of TB. While he maintains that he did not find out the seriousness of his illness until in Italy, US health officials appear to contradict this. Either [...]

” ‘Of course, I am a pure and absolute democrat,’ he said. ‘But you know what the problem is – not a problem, a real tragedy – that I am alone. There are no such pure democrats in the world. Since Mahatma Gandhi, there has been no one.’ “
Putin, it seems, believes he is the [...]

“Like Vietnam veterans a decade before them, the 14,000 or so Argentine soldiers, mostly poor and working-class conscripts with little education, were associated with an ignominious defeat and an unpopular government.”
The LA Times looks at the similarities and differences of the consequences of the wars in the Falklands and Vietnam. Article here.

I found this on Flickr and found it incredibly powerful and moving. Posting this image is a very brave and personal thing to do. Sincere thanks and condolences to Sighmon, who gave me permission to publish this photo of his grandpa. The picture is on Flickr, here. Found via Flickr Blog, here.

“Carson is both idolised by environmentalists and demonised by those concerned about the continuing devastation caused by malaria in the developing world.”
James Woudhuysen writes an interesting article about Silent Spring author Rachel Carson, asking whether her landmark book on pesticides did more harm than good - a point of view not often publicised. From Spiked, [...]