Gareth Simpson

I finally relented in the face of Scoble's constant exhortations to try Google reader. It looks quite slick but alas there are two show stoppers preventing my migration. 1. I have to reverse the read order to my preferred oldest first individually for each feed! 2. There appears to be no feed level control of how to handle updates to posts. Normally I want updates to be treated as new posts but there are some sites that insist on constantly updating old posts to no effect (Crooks and Liars video play count, I'm looking at you). So, I guess I'm staying put for the time being.

... and its ability to deal with on-line pedophiles. This quote from the Home Office displays an almost total lack of understanding of how the internet works. "The home secretary also wants to look at whether it is technologically feasible to set up a system where if someone enters a chatroom with an identity that was already listed on the [sex offenders] register, it would 'ping' an alert on the relevant people's computers, enabling them to take appropriate action," he added. Which chat rooms? How are the suspect ids being distributed? Should all chat room providers have an extra check box on sign in 'I am am on the sex offenders register'? How many popular chat rooms are run under the jurisdiction of UK law anyway? It's just empty words to make people think something is being done. I don't know if there are any serous and effective technical answers to this problem, but I can tell at a glance that this isn't one.

The breakneck pace of development of Grabbr continues with the release of 1.3 This version includes such astonishing features as permissions and the ability to load the photo page of the image you have just uploaded. I bet you can barely wait.

I realize it's far too late to comment on this, but I rarely if ever crack open the old blogger edit window. Nofollow is good-ish idea. It's perfect for blog comments where you don't have the time to moderate everything but don't want to pass on any benefits to spammers. What it manisfestly won't do is deter the spam in the first place. How can I tell this? Well from the comments I get for a start. They are clearly-auto posted, so there is no reason not to try spam. It takes no effort. They are often not formatted in HTML. Sometimes they are plain text - just a URL, sometimes they are in Forum pseudo tags in square brackets ([url=]http://myspam.com/[/url]) so they aren't even trying to get/checking if they get pagerank. What this means for Wikipedia is that they won't slow their spam onslaught, but what they will do is decrease the quality of search results. Wikipedia has huge pagerank authority. It is also for the most part very well edited. The upsh...

I love Flickr . It gives people like me who have no photography skill and no eye for a picture, something to do with their cameras and phones. I signed up after it was cool but before it was bought by Yahoo! so I am technically, if not actually, old-skool. It has therefore been amusing to watch the unfolding controversy around the dual announcement that they are finally enforcing the long promised Yahoo! logins and that they are also introducing limits on the number of contacts and tags . Naturally this has provoked a shit storm of protest on the forums and in the blogs. I guess they knew that both these things would be unpopular with a vocal minority and decided to get it all out of the way in one go. They probably weren't expecting their corporate bosses at Yahoo! to start using wii tagged photos on a Yahoo! portal advertising page This has been going on for months apparently - it only became an issue when disgruntled punters started looking for things to be angry about ....

"It is critical that we understand that this new form of terrorism carries another more subtle, perhaps equally pernicious, risk. Because it might encourage a fear-driven and inappropriate response. By that I mean it can tempt us to abandon our values. I think it important to understand that this is one of its primary purposes." — Sir Ken Macdonald, Director of Public Prosecutions