Alternative Voicemail Providers


(Usual Disclaimer - I work for Vodafone, but I do not speak on their behalf. Other mobile phone providers are available. I know some of the people at SpinVox and I have an account with them. All biases are my own and should be taken into account before you make a decision.) There has been […]

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BarCamp Transparency #BCT09


An inspiring day. There were, I think, two main points of contention. 1) Information wants to be free - but personal information wants to be private. 2) Raw Data Now. Should we wait for standards - or just make them up as we go along? As for (1) I'm happy for everyone to see my […]

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Armadillo Roll - Open GL Game for Android


Screenshots of Armadillo Roll.

Feast your eyes on these beauties. Amarillo Roll is a 3D game in the same style as Super Monkey Ball. You tip your phone to move the armadillo around the course. The graphics are stunning. Reminiscent of early Xbox games. The one thing the photos don't do is convey the speed of gameplay - it's […]

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Bletchley Park


Sign at a train station saying "Welcome to Bletchley. The home of Bletchley Park & Enigma."

Bletchley Park stands as a testament to the power of mathematics. It represents the idea that brains, not brawn, are vital to winning any conflict. Like many Brits, I learned about the Second World War at school. I devoured books - fiction and non - about the war. What interested me wasn't the tales of […]

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YouTube and QR Codes


I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else. It would appear that the mobile version of YouTube now includes links to QR codes, so you can share the video with your friends. I've only seen this using the Android browser, I'm not sure if it's available on other devices. Browsing http://m.youtube.com/ at the bottom is a […]

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Connect Conference - Part 1


Logo for the Connect Trade Union.

I'm still writing up my notes from the Connect Biennial Conference in Blackpool which I hope to turn into a full post this week. However, I found an anonymous article in the Socialist Worker decrying the merger vote. Socialist Worker accept comments for publication in the paper, but not on their website, so here's the […]

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WordPress Plugin - YouTube for XHTML and Mobile


The Logo for WordPress.

This blog is XHTML 1.0 Strict. Unfortunately, the code produced by YouTube for embeding their videos isn't. Nor is it compatible with the dotMobi WordPress Mobile Pack. This scrap of code is a WordPress Plugin. it allows me to write something like [youtube id="p5ACl4iBGd0"] The code then outputs either the XHTML 1.0 embeding code or […]

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Mashed Up Maps


As part of my project to create a mobile polling station locator site, I've been playing with various mapping APIs. As a base experiment, I passed the postcode of a polling station (GU22 7DT) to both Google Maps and Yahoo Maps. Here are the results. - Two things of interest to note. Firstly, Google has […]

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UberTwitter Review


It's been a long time since my last post about Twitter on the BlackBerry. Back then I concluded that Dabr wasn't quite up to snuff - how wrong I was! In the last year it has come on leaps and bounds. I've even contributed a few suggestions and lines of code. Without a doubt, Dabr […]

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Getting People To The Polling Station


Photo of a wooden sign indicating there's polling station here.

It has always depressed me how little the British make of elections. We don't have voter registration drive, "Kiss me; I've voted" badges" or much in the way of celebrating our democracy. Perhaps it's our reserved nature. But I think it has a direct effect on the declining number of people voting. We're going to […]

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