Archive
forSeptember, 2006 | back to home
14 September, 2006
According to a new article by The Economist (subscription required to read), “bets in Britain have grown rapidly, from £7 billion in 2000 to £32 billion in 2004 and an estimated £50 billion or more this year.” Internet betting accounts for 15% of this, and half of the bets are placed by foreigners (leaving half to be placed by our own citizens). Regular readers of my blog will know that I am horrified by what amounts to a de facto voluntary tax on the poor and if you are in the UK I encourage you to sign a petition against super-casinos here.
13 September, 2006
Just found out that the reason my wife’s PC wouldn’t connect to the Internet is that I had entered the WEP password wrongly. But Intel’s software reported a good connection to my router! Would it have been so hard to code in a “physical connection good but password is wrong please try again” dialog box? Billions of blue blistering barnacles!
Later And to compound the annoyance, I nearly thought my connection had broken again but then I realised that if you fix the password on one user account it doesn’t fix it on any of the others. Mightn’t it be a good idea to allow administrators to change all the passwords for wireless access to a given point at the same time?

I just found out that The Avengers was called in France Chapeau melon et bottes de cuir - bowler hat and leather boots. Which if you think about it is probably a more descriptive name. I know at least one person who probably only ever watched it for the leather boots…
Media
(Daily)
BBC
News Online
bookforum
(Weekly)
lifehacker - but I only look at their top these days.
The
Economist (I listen to the audio edition)
Arts
& Letters Daily
The
New Yorker & its cartoons
(Monthly
or more infrequently)
Wired
magazine
Prospect
magazine (if you think The
Economist is dumbed down)
Maisonneuve
magazine
The
Walrus
First Monday
- an Internet-only peer reviewed journal of Internet studies
Gnovis
- peer-reviewed journal of Communication, Culture and Technology
Journal
of Computer-Mediated Communication
...and various other journals you can't access for free.
Virtual
Communities I belong to
The
Well
Brainstorms
from Howard Rheingold
CIX
the UK's "Well" for over 15 years
I'm also on Facebook
Comics
Doonesbury
Dilbert
Multimedia
US Public Radio
Day
to Day NPR daily topical feature
show inc. Slate
content
BBC Radio 4
- archived for a week after broadcast
BBC
Radio Drama original drama and
serialised books
BBC7
radio dramas and comedy from BBC archives
The
News Quiz
BBC World Service
Analysis
Assignment
Off the Shelf
(serialised books)
Other
non-podcast multimedia
The
Daily Show biting American
political satire.
Odd Todd
periodically updated amusing Flash cartoons
Tales
of Mere Existence excellent
Quicktime animated short vignettes.
Guardian
- monthly Cybercinema roundup
OneWord
Radio audiobooks and author
interviews
Podcasts
News/Current Affairs/Factual
Thinking
Allowed weekly interviews with
academics
This
American Life superb storytelling
LSE public lectures
The
University Channel guest lectures at major US universities
The Guardian's Podcasts
Slate's
podcasts
From
Our Own Correspondent
Fiction/drama
Escape Pod
- SF short stories
Librivox
- volunteer readers read classic fiction.
Craphound - Cory Doctorow reads his works
NPR
book reviews
Digital Planet tech radio programme
with emphasis on the developing world (now being podcast)
(also see the Go Digital special
Digital
Destinations) and
Bill
Thompson's
thoughts about recent Digital Planets
IT
Conversations: Blogging
(broadcasts from conferences - other topics available)
NPR
has a weekly tech roundup
Useful
stuff
Various
handy free/cheap Mac apps
(updated regularly)
Online
virus scanner
Free
anti-virus software
Dave's
Quick Search Toolbar Google
taskbar on steroids
Workrave
Free RSI prevention software
Powermarks
Superb Windows bookmark manager ($25)
Netvouz
This may be the most full-featured web bookmark manager around.
Endnote
($239 ) Great software for managing academic citations (or try one of these)
snipurl
lets you share long urls easily
Mailwasher
Lets you choose between several blacklists and other filtering tools to
get rid of spam from multiple POP3 mailboxes - and it is free!
SpamMotel
- Free disposable email addresses that let you see who is misusing the
one you gave them
DigiGuide
- a fast, powerful TV guide for your PC, covering the UK, US or Ireland
TotalRecorder
- a powerful, inexpensive way to record streaming audio into MP3 files
to take away.
QuestionPro
survey software Lots of features
and free for academic use.
What's the weather like
here?
Copyright

This work is licensed under a
Creative
Commons License.
Meta:
Meta:
Generously
hosted 2001 to Aug 2003 by Reid
Ellis and from then until
mid-2005 by Harald
Koch. Thanks to both!
Try Clarity
Capital Partners for your strategic
technology
consulting and corporate finance
needs.
Blogger
Code
B9 d t k s u- f- i o- x- e l- c--