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27 January, 2007
Did you know that there’s a perfectly usable OCR package built into Microsoft Office for Windows? I managed to lose the install disk for the software that came with my scanner so imagine my relief when I found out about it. I gather the next version of Word in Office 2007 comes with a blog posting tool. Reminds me of the Flanders and Swann song about the rhino whose “bodger on his bonce” (odd thing on his nose) is good for opening tin cans, picking up litter and removing stones from horse’s hooves but alas rarely gets the chance to do any of those things.
12 January, 2007
I have long been in the habit of reading The Economist and while it has often irritated me I have generally found something in each issue I didn’t know before - often a statistic or chart worth clipping. Alas in an editorial this week about Ken Livingstone, the Economist seems to have let dislike of the mayor get in the way of the facts. When it comes to public transport “Bagehot”
- distorts some of the facts - London may have some of “most expensive capital-city fares in the world” but only if you don’t have an Oystercard - and London’s public transport fares have never been cheap. Oystercard fares are still often cheaper than when he first came to power.
- Refers to old conspiracy theories that are as far as I know at best unproven - that lower car traffic speeds are due to “artificially restricting road widths and re-sequencing traffic lights across the capital” and worst of all…
- Resorts to complete (and misleading) hyperbole. “Even the mayor’s buses travel at little more than walking speed.” Well I haven’t been able to find figures more recent than the TFL 2003 report but then the average bus speed was 18kph and the average walking speed was 5kph. I do not believe the gap could have closed appreciably in the last three years!
Ken is no angel - some of his political alliances are certainly suspect - but it’s hard to argue with the broad thrust of his transport policy.
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?
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