As the Olympics near, converns over the effects of pollution in China’s capital are growing. Air pollution has been on the agenda for some time, with the authoritarian government resorting to drastic measures and mobilising armies of farmers to seed clouds, and planning emergency factory closures at a moment’s notice. But the New York Times [...]

From the most excellent xkcd, here.

“Yesterday I was talking to someone about their experience at the GPs - the Doctor googled their question in order to answer it.”
David Evans blogs on the BCS website about the way in which healthcare information will be stored and accessed in the future. I find his thoughts about a web 2.0 collaborative system, which [...]

News.com reports on the case of two US teenagers, who posted a malicious “fire in the hole” video on YouTube. In it, they ordered drinks at a fast-food restaurant, then threw them over the attendant as she gave them their change. In addition to clean-up costs and 100 hours community service, the judge sentenced them [...]

“The upshot is that if Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, or so on received a wiretap order for text or voice flowing through their IM networks, they could (and would) be able to comply because the services are centralized … [Skype couldn't] Which means that it’s the most privacy-protective mainstream method of communicating through voice or instant [...]

As I said in my recent post, I’m intending to get a proper review of the BarCampLondon4 sessions I attended written up tomorrow. In the meantime, if anyone’s interested I’ve uploaded my [slightly rough-around-the-edges] presentation on “The Geography of Technology” to Slideshare.

It’s not great as a standalone presentation - rather, it was more framed as [...]

The Guardian reports on the Treasury Select Committee’s recommendation that, after 2011, census data should come from government databases rather than manual form-filling. While on the face of it it may seem a sensible, time-saving proposal, this raises many questions - both about technical and feasibility aspects, and surrounding civil liberties and data protection. Regardless [...]

Better late than never, I’m back to blogging after going to BarCampLondon4 at the weekend. Somewhat ironic that I was possibly surrounded by the highest concentration of laptops in the world, and yet I’ve only just got round to writing this Anyway, in a nutshell, I had a great time - met lots of [...]

This is cool! This is the first ever live ad shown in the UK - a group of skydivers spelling out “Honda”. I particularly love the “Hello Mum”
Video from YouTube. The official “Difficult Is Worth Doing” site is here.

BBC News reports on the EU’s Directive on Unfair Business-to-Consumer Commercial Practices, which outlaws practises such as setting up fake blogs simply to promote products, or companies reviewing their own products on ratings sites. In theory, a great idea - these advertising tactics are bad for the consumer and underhand on the part of the [...]