The BBC has reported that Concorde is to retire in October.

I know Concorde is environmentally destructive and noisy but they used to fly over my flat regularly when I lived in South London and I thought the planes were gorgeous. They also remind me of the days (I am too young to remember myself) when people dreamed that one day we would all travel supersonically or by now we’d have colonies on Mars. The dreams might have been unrealistic or even pointless but they were at least ambitious and exciting. As this rather sniffy post-mortem points out, it may be many years before we get to fly supersonic again – even with newer technologies it appears we still can’t make supersonic flight economic.

The Kurds had obligingly stayed out of Kirkuk, but now they’ve gone in – and they’re looting, apparently. Let’s hope the military observers Turkey will be sending don’t stir things up further…

Whew! Now we have to try to win the peace…

[Later] This – US-backed militia appearing to be goons is the kind of thing we have to make sure doesn’t happen!

blam! is a weblog add-on for book and other product reviews, linked to Amazon. The interesting bit is that it pulls various bits of information from Amazon into one’s posting automatically (including a link to a book jacket photo if there is one) and can also automatically post your review to blaxm, which is a meta-weblog containing other people’s reviews. (It’s a pity it doesn’t post them into a more flexible database instead, but it’s a beginning).

This is an early example of the kind of collaborative content tool I would like to see- something that lets you express yourself personally but at the same time share the results with the world in a structured way.

I found blaxm a little frustrating in its implementation – but through it I found allconsuming which doesn’t yet provide the same e-z integrated automatic posting that Blam does (or is supposed to anyway) but is built around a database interface and has some interesting features of its own (it’s easier to look at it for your self than to explain).

A minor grievance is that since these rely heavily on Amazon’s database, if the book you have isn’t there, you can’t use these tools to indicate you have read it – at least not easily. Oh well – nothing’s perfect.

Here’s an example review I just did using Blam (together with the sample HTML they recommended I paste in here, which as you can see doesn’t work too well):

At Home With Computers

Elaine Lally

A useful academic book for anyone who wants to examine the place of computers in everyday home life (in Australia). It takes an ethnographic perspective which means at the end of the day you can often think, “but that was obvious” – yet it is sometimes useful to state the obvious in an academic form. It looks at such issues as “why do people buy computers?”, “who uses them in the home?” and “where do people place their computers in the home and why?”



[Later] Oops – I forgot to credit Ant’s Eye View for helping me find this stuff in the first place.free full download porn length moviesadult free movies watchsex movie free clipsmovies amatuergay movies blackfree gay movies longmovies playboy freenude beach movies Map

A new report by one of my professors, Robin Mansell is summarised here by the BBC. It points out (what should in any case be obvious) that third world organisations are not getting significant new orders via B2B exchanges because these tend to facilitate exchange between firms that already know each other. Companies are reluctant to place large orders with others without some kind of ongoing relationship built up through personal contact.movies free toon tgpmovies teen hotmovie sutra kamamovies fuck maturemovie nudepsp movie creatorin rape movies thesample movies sapphic Map

UpMyStreet, a pioneering experiment in delivery of geographically-based information in the UK, (which also employed a number of people whose work I respect) has
gone into administration. I hope that someone decides to pick up its assets and do something with them. The idea of linking information and discussion to postcodes is an excellent one and with the growth of location-based services of all kinds the site is bound to have a future – its directors say it is “only months from turning a profit”.

I have just put up a small poll to try to learn more about what brings people to this blog and how to improve it. I hope you will take a few minutes to fill it in. It’s anonymous and it isn’t being used for any commercial purpose – I just want to get to know you better.her about mp3sample 2525 mp3matchbox mp3 3am451 mp3 x4gb mp3 watchmp3 01 mp3 search dance myamp3 encoding 320kcruzin 8ball mp3 mjg Map

Despite the media coverage of weblogs, Pew finds they are barely on the radar of most Americans:

“Some 4% of online Americans report going to blogs for information and opinions. The overall number of blog users is so small that it is not possible to draw statistically meaningful conclusions about who uses blogs.
The early data suggest that the most active Internet users, especially those with broadband connections are the most likely to have found blogs they like. ”

Pew’s research suggests between one and four percent of Americans publish online depending on what you ask – 1% “Create a web log or “blog” that others can read online” while 4% “Create content for the Internet, such as helping build a web site, creating an online diary, or posting your thoughts online”. That could even just include posting your thoughts to someone else’s messageboard.

To my mind this emphasises the importance of making the weblog and other content publishing tools we have easier and promoting the possibilities they offer over making the tools more sophisticated (though we should be doing both).

Of course making them work multilingually is also going to be key to international adoption, and making them work well offline (so you don’t have to compose while connected).union credit 1stadvantageagricredit iowaunion allegany credit teachers countycredit counseling ammendalice opening credits show videoof tvameritrust credit card financialcsun school accreditation businesscredit union lubbock alliance Map

Accordin to the BBC, the UK has had the brightest March since records began, and the first two months of 2003 were the UK’s second sunniest since records began in 1960. Since the last three years were pretty crappy it’s about time we had some climatic payback!nudes shemaleswomen hard fucked squirting beingpissing girlzphotos teen chested flatlesbians sexy xxxxxxxxteen tgp tinywomen having squirting pictures orgasms ofcartoons xxx simpson homergirls hot horney sexydaddies fucking anal daughters

RealVNC is a handy open source tool that allows people with a wide variety of different kinds of computer to view and control the screen and keyboard of a machine from across the Internet. It does the same kind of job as PC Anywhere but it costs nothing and it is small and very easy to install. Windows XP Professional can do this too but RealVNC works on anything from Windows 95 upward and 39 other operating systems!

I found it very useful when I wanted to help my Dad 3000 miles away sort out computer problems. Thank you AT & T Research and the University of Cambridge!