The BBC has been reporting from SXSW this week and today was reporting on how email use is being replaced with status posts to the like of Facebook. While I agree with the premise of the argument I don’t agree with the reasons given.

This shift in communications is, I believe, more of a generational thing.

My grandparents were of an age where they wrote letters and if the message was urgent or time bound then they would send a telegram. We have, for example, a telegram sent from my Grandfather to my Grandmother during the second world war but … Read the rest

Sometimes working from home shows things that I would have been unlikely to have seen had I been in an office – principally because I wouldn’t have been stood staring out of the window! Anyway, I was, and I saw this car driving down the road. Realising the significance of it (and that we live on a cul-du-sac so it had to come past me again) I rushed to get my camera, getting this picture as it drove away.

What you see here is a car equipped with a series of cameras mounted on the roof for the (probable) purpose … Read the rest

So the web has turned twenty, happy birthday to it. That means it came to life in 1989 so I have known it for 60% of its life and I can safely say in that short time it has revolutionised my life. If you want to read more about the beginnings of the WWW ITPro has this article Photos: The web turns 20.

Also if you are wondering about the picture on the left it is, apparently, the computer that Tim Berners-Lee used at CERN.… Read the rest

It is being reported on the BBC today that Microsoft are going to extend the life of Windows XP once again – this time until the end of May 2009. This is almost certainly due to two things: the public’s dislike of Vista and the huge take-off of netbooks, which use either a variant of Linux or XP. I have been using XP on my netbook for the last few months and think that it is perfectly suited to the job and so I can see the workhorse that is XP being extended once more if netbooks continue to sell … Read the rest

Stories that caught my eye this week – 8th November 2008:

• Google – do you speak the Queen’s English?
  

• Xobni Adds Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Skype, Hoovers, And The Kitchen Sink
  

• Google catches downsizing fever
  

• Google’s Mobile App Uses Undisclosed Proximity Sensing System and Why You Should Care
  

• Google SearchWiki Launched
  

• Get to Google Docs from Gmail
  

You can see the rest of my reading list here.… Read the rest