Author: Gary Cutlack
Having a bad day? Bailiffs taken away your netbook? Tell the world at F*** My Life
Here’s a new social networking micro-blogging toy that Stephen Fry hasn’t signed up to yet – F*** My Life.
Founded as an IRC channel and quickly growing into full micro-blog status, the idea of FMyLife is to broadcast an unrelenting stream of misery and examples of forehead-slapping idiocy people have encountered, creating a nice antidote to the cheerful, kitten-related rubbish spewed out by most vacuous…
Nintendo DS "no better than a pencil" when it comes to training your brain
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Nintendo’s much-loved Brian Training series is a FRAUD that’s of no demonstrable benefit to your brain whatsoever, which means Julie Walters and Patrick Stewart have been LYING TO US all this time.
There is no worse feeling in the world than having been lied to by Patrick Stewart.
The revelation comes from Alain Lieury, professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Rennes, who conducted a survey comparing the effectiveness of a pencil and paper and a copy of Brain Training on the development of the maths skills a bunch of ten-year-olds.
The result? Reading, playing board games and watching documentaries on TV had as much benefit…
That 'friend' of yours who never buys music is safe – UK will not disconnect web access of music pirates
Hooray! The tedious and long-running saga of the UK possibly adopting the ‘three strikes’ system for disconnecting the internet access of music pirates has been dumped, with David Lammy, the Intellectual Property Minister, today saying there are “no plans” to introduce such a scheme.
Last year, everyone thought the French Technique of ordering ISPs to disconnect the harder-core of music pirates was the way to go, with the UK apparently considering adopting the idea.
However, Lammy has just told The Times that the government..
Less is more – new socially-networked nano-blog Chirp gives you ten letters to express yourself
New tech start-up Chirp is the hottest new, lime-green-coloured, nano-social-blogging tool on the web, offering users a chance to “Keep fellow Chirpers up to date with your every thought” – in ten characters or less.
So if you find that Twitter is simply too long-winded and you can’t be bothered doing a whole sentence-worth of typing because you can never think of as many interesting things to say as Stephen Fry, give Chirp a go.
It is, of course, a joke. And a very good one. The sort of joke most of us will go to the grave without having created…
Your phone bill to get marginally less obscene – Competition Commission demands 1.5p per minute cut
There’s been a bit of a tangled web of a technical argument going on between phone regulator Ofcom and the Competition Commission, with the latter investigating the former after BT complained that Ofcom set UK connection prices too high.
The end result is this – your phone calls might be about to get 1.5p per minute cheaper, thanks to the CC agreeing that Ofcom did indeed get it a bit wrong when it capped the networks’ termination fees – the prices phone companies are allowed to charge you for ringing other networks – too high…
eBay Nutcase of the Week: eBay itself, for removing kids WWII board game that "incited racial hatred"
Poor old Paul Ramsier found himself accused of inciting racial hatred – by trying to sell an old World War II-themed board game on everyone’s favourite online junk shop.
Paul’s descent into the world of inadvertent racial hatred started when he realised his old Escape from Colditz board game was worth quite a bit nowadays, so he listed it up on eBay. The auction hit the lofty heights of £20, before eBay yanked the sale…
Sony boss surrenders pay bonus, as company braces for job cuts amid sales slump
Sir Howard Stringer, the Sony boss whose company reforms were doing a great job until the global financial crisis stopped everyone buying second BRAVIAS for the bedroom on their credit cards, will be turning down his bonus this year as Sony reveals its first annual loss in 14 years.
“The massive economic upheaval being experienced across the globe is sparing no one in the consumer electronics world,” Stringer said, as he revealed a forecast loss of $1.7bn for the year – and said Sony would look to making more job cuts on top of the already-announced 16,000 staff its planning…
Apple still not down with the "netbook" scene – insists software is more important than hardware
Still oblivious to the fact that over 90% of the western world’s disposable income is being spent on cheap netbooks right now*, Apple has once again underlined its reluctance to join the miniaturisation scene – because smaller computers aren’t necessarily better. Or usable.
“We think the products there are inferior and will not provide the experience to customers that they’re happy with,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, on the subject of netbooks, while presumably still laughing from watching a Vaio P spend three minutes booting up Vista…
DIGG THIS: Micro-blogging citizen journalism toy Twitter beats granddad Digg in traffic war
Internet traffic tracker Hitwise has reported a readership boom kicking off for mini-blog portal Twitter, with the number of visits to the “citizen journalism” gonzo reportage site topping that of Digg for the first time.
The graph generated by Hitwise – stolen by us and shown to the left there – tells the story of Twitter’s unstoppable rise, with recent high-profile Twitter events pushing user numbers to new highs…
Intel shrinking its Atom processor range – 60% smaller "Pineview" model coming soon
The super-cheap, super-small, super-popular Intel Atom processor that’s in everyone’s new laptop right now, is set for a redesign – with Intel rolling out a smaller version with more built-in functionality during the second half of 2009.
The new chip, codenamed Pineview, includes an “integrated graphics processor” and on-board memory controller, according to a report…
