You know those Switch to Apple ads? Well some’s done a John’s Switch to Canada one. It’s no I’m Canadian but it is amusing nonetheless.

I suppose I could do a “Switch to England” ad but 1) it would be very un-English to do one (just as it is un-Canadian to beat that drum) and 2) I quite enjoy being Canadian sometimes…

According to CNet, the Bush administration, while supporting a new Council of Europe treaty on Cybercrime is unwilling to go along with an addition that would punish people “distributing, or otherwise making available, racist and xenophobic material to the public through a computer system”. Of course given the First Amendment in the US it would be impossible for America to back that part of the treaty.

Fortunately, it is an additional protocol to the treaty and one that the US can choose to leave out when signing.

It’s treaties like this which have caused Google to invisibly remove references to racist websites from their German and French indexes which, however you loathe hate speech is an exceedingly dangerous thing to be doing…credit force enlistment rank aircredit visa platinum plus aaa cardcredit purchases s 1940 onbangalore university in accreditedlibrary accredited in program ala scienceamex credit soloutionsaccredited all online university nationaladverse credit action requirement Map

It’s called Kikkoman, so some mad Japanese person decided to make a Flash animation about a superhero of the same name.

… and now here is an English translation… kind of.

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The SimpleTech Bonzai is expandable – it uses secure digital and MultiMediaCards which you can insert into the device. (Thanks to Wired for the heads-up).

At the moment, however, I am still more fascinated by the Creative MuVo which is a USB flash device and an MP3 player…

(unless you like it of course!) I decided I would try to implement trackback for those who want to take the opportunity to use them and the easiest way seemed to be to revert to MT’s default templates. If you are wondering what exactly trackback does and how to use it yourself, even after reading the link above then you are not alone! But I grok it enough to think it is pretty interesting so I thought I’d install first and ask questions later.

As best I can explain it, if your weblogging software supports Trackback (so far Moveable Type does as standard) or you do the coding to make it work yourself you can make a link to a post of mine and I will know that you have linked to it. It also allows you to keep track automatically of new postings I make in a category (for example). It badly needs better explanation, and support from a broader range of weblog software but it is an important step forward in making the web a two way communication medium instead of just a broadcast one.

I am still having trouble getting either trackback or comments to work properly on my archive pages, however. Any advice would be welcome… And of course I would be delighted if people would start using this new feature I have implemented – for starters it would help me to understand how it works!

The Wall Street Journal profiles a spammer. I can’t resist reading about them (Also see an earlier article in Salon) and I rarely miss a chance to try to understand how they can live with their consciences.

Fortunately, once in a while a spammer gets hit with a fine in the US. And recently six more were taken to court. I don’t know of any cases in Europe yet, though.gambling liner waukesha 8crisis credit 1990ssaint list club 10 gambling paulringtone a650 installcredit carpet abbeyscotia nova prevalence gambling study 2003conusumer acc creditdrive gamble fl 20264 brooksville Map

According to a new report which was summarised in the Guardian, despite extensive effort being put into getting Government services online, the British public have shown very little interest compared to other countries. Just 13% of the population had used Government online services in the UK over the last year, less than even the Czech and Slovak republics and less than a quarter of the proportion using them in any Scandinavian country.

Overall in the 28 countries examined, most of the use of e-Government by citizens has been predominantly to seek information (24% of total adult population) compared to just 4% who used the Internet at any point in the year to provide feedback of any kind into the government process. Clearly the potential of the Internet to improve participation in government is barely being tapped.new about equity loans home jerseycredit loan $5000 bad withguaranteed approval loans 100approval guaranteed loan home 100loans 0 new car percentno 20 loans land doclouis st mo loans advancewith 10000 loan dollar small paymentscash 90 loan dayadvantage alaska loans

BBC News Online has had “Talking Point” which includes brief reader emails and a poll for years, but I can’t remember the last time they let random readers contribute bylined stories – in this case one on Googling for your postcode to see what the neighbors are up to – complete with a photo of the contributor.

I wonder if Tad Piesakowski got paid for this or for an earlier story on his broadband woes.loans dollar 200,000 personal5000 dollar from loan bankfha loan home financing 100credit with bad 30000 loanloan scholar academict student loan day bill 91jeff about and rich sloanloans in lot michigan down 0 Map

A report published recently into e-government by the British Department for Work and Pensions makes gloomy reading. It suggests (perhaps not surprisingly) that, ” only 8% of the working population said they would prefer to contact the government about benefits through the internet or email, rather than traditional channels. The most popular channel is face-to-face contact at the local office, closely followed by a telephone call.”

Of course this is a false comparison, as you might find you have to travel for a half an hour and queue for another half hour to meet someone and you might have to hang on the phone for ages to speak to them. I have always maintained that if one important aspect of e-government is cost saving or increased efficiency, some of those benefits should be passed on to the users to encourage them to use it. If the government guaranteed faster service online (or offered a slightly higher benefit for those who got it paid in electronically) people might be prepared to overlook the unfamiliarity of the transaction.

There’s a little information on the feasability of offering e-government services online via digital TV as well. So far the government is only offering a DTV gateway on the (expensive) Sky Digital platform. Where it might make a difference would be on Freeview, the new no-subscription DTV service. But alas the providers of Freeview have not built two way interactivity into their low-cost boxes, so anything more than “brochureware” government services will have to wait for a Freeview v.2.