Posts Tagged ‘geek’

Facebook’s scheme to deliver YOU to its clients

If you’re interested, read this article Big Brands Like Facebook, But They Don’t Like to Pay from the Wall St Journal about how Ford Motor Co. used a ‘free’ Facebook page (oh, and $95 million dollars in other advertising, 5% of that on Facebook) to launch a muppet called Doug to sell a new car [...]

iOS 5: Tips, Tricks & Hidden Features

OK, just because I upgraded to Apple’s new iOS5 yesterday (with millions of others) I’m not assuming everyone who reads this blog will be interested … but some of you might: iOS 5: Tips, Tricks & Hidden Features by Chris Herbert at macstories.com. Me? I like it so far. – P And, naturally, John Gruber [...]

When the brand is smokin’ hot …

You might remember my post ‘Talk about product placement!’ which featured President Obama demonstrating a new government health website on a MacBook Pro with the Presidential seal over the Apple logo… Here’s today’s NZ Herald displaying no such coyness — in fact the article is about kids wanting Apple products for Christmas. (Enthusiastic consumers of [...]

Homemade space program

Nice project by Luke Geissbühler and son Max, as reported by NY Mag … from my ‘reading’ of the video, I think the iPhone was used to track his ‘space capsule’, but the video itself was taken with a different (unspecified) bit of kit — not the iPhone, despite the report. In a burst of science-is-fun [...]

And then a bug flew in the window(s)…

ATM: ‘Welcome’. Card in. PIN typed in. Oops, instant BLANK SCREEN. Keypad doing nuttin’. Hmmm. Looking, looking, then up came the NCR logo white on black. For a loooooong time. ‘Have I broken it? I muttered. I went into the bank and explained my plight. A teller went and had a look: ‘Oh it’s just [...]

‘The problem with Google is that Eric Schmidt is creepy’

Not just for geeks: Here’s a really thoughtful post about Google, culture, and information privacy. From John Gruber. Well worth your time to read. And I like the way he’s unafraid to mention the FACT that people’s personality, ethics and character can lead their decision-making. Good on him. – P

Talk about product placement!

Funny, I’ve got one of those MacBook Pro laptops like the one President Obama used to demo the new healthcare.gov website … but mine doesn’t have the Presidential seal plastered over the Apple logo. Jeez, those of us using Macs used to be ‘oddballs’, ‘outlaws’ and renegades (‘the elite’ I always used to say, which [...]

Incredible Science

My hat’s off to the Faculty and Students of the Auckland University Science department who put on a brilliant day for kids (and, ahem, accompanying adults) at yesterday’s Incredible Science Day. Wow we had a good time and the place was buzzing. Special mention to the Wow Physics show which was a heady, indulgent mix [...]

Inspiring clarity of purpose from John Gruber

What makes Daring Fireball an efficient and effective soapbox is exactly that it is not noisy. My goal is for not a single wasted word to appear anywhere on any page of the site. … It’s my firm belief that all websites eventually attract the attention and respect that they deserve. The hard work is [...]

More on ad blockers …

Remember our earlier conversation about ad-supported sites suffering from increasing use of ad-blockers? Well, a new round of quelle horreur!! has been prompted by the very recent release of Safari 5.0 with a Reader mode (which, it turns out, uses the open source code of the arc90 Readability java bookmarklet I’ve been happily using to [...]