Kathy Gill writes on Wired Pen that Tumblr has removed its RSS import tool. So Tumblr users can’t use the platform to aggregate content, and as a result she finds it “far less useful”. It could also mean Tumblr is far less secure financially. The telling quote is from Tumblr’s own customer services: In order […]
Evidence that modern life is rubbish, linguistically at least: spotted in the local Morrisons, a handy Coinstar coin exchange machine. Unlike most other commentators, I’m not taking issue with the ridiculous idea of paying a machine for the privilege of counting my money. But I believe we must stand up against the incoherence of its […]
A juror who has been prosecuted for contempt of the English language after using Facebook to contact a defendant in a drugs trial, has been sentenced to eight months of remedial language lessons. Joanne Fraill admitted at London’s high court using Facebook to exchange incoherent messages with Jamie Sewart, a former defendant in last year’s […]
So, YouTube has introduced a groovy new feature called “As seen on YouTube”, which creates special pages of videos embedded on various blogs and other web sites. It’s a celebration of content curators, apparently. Sounds great! How can I get my site’s curated YouTube video all in one place on an “As seen on YouTube” […]
Apparently you have to “like” your own page before Facebook will publish it. Unless a page has at least one “like”, Facebook won’t let you go live with it (thanks, Squidoo). Which is so bonkers I can’t even begin to express it. And where’s that information in the Facebook help pages? Hmm?
Any reader looking to the right of this post will see a blank Facebook feed requiring a login to see a “Facebook public profile”. Or maybe a feed from my Freelance Unbound Facebook page. Or maybe they’ll see something else that I don’t see – because Facebook is nothing if not contrary. The other day […]
In light of recent events, here’s Vogue food critic Jeffrey Steingarten talking about his prescient essay on “Salad, the Silent Killer”, from his collection of gastronomic writings The Man Who Ate Everything – (everything except, it would seem, salad). We should have listened…
The latest instalment of a long-running technology health scare finds the BBC web site telling us that Mobiles ‘may cause brain cancer’. This isn’t exactly new. We’ve been worried that mobile phones can cause brain tumours for a couple of decades now. First studies say they do. Then they say they don’t. What’s the evidence […]
How we love the Daily Mail. Today’s shock news is that the must-have high-street frock that the Duchess of Cambridge wore this week to meet that nice American couple Mr and Mrs Obama was made “in a Romanian ‘sweatshop’ by women on just 99p an hour.” That’s terrible! The royals are exploiting the poorest of […]
Rock star contrarian historian Niall Ferguson took his Civilisation: The West and The Rest world tour to the genteel folk of Bath this evening at the excellent Topping & Company book shop. The small but enthusiastic audience of largely white, largely middle aged and relentlessly middle class Bath folk seemed strangely unperturbed by his grim predictions […]