About This Document Sometimes the internet really frustrates me. In this article I rant about online advertising, an… (more) Sometimes the internet really frustrates me. In this article I rant about online advertising, and beg the question ‘Surely there’s a better way?’ (less)

As per usual, any blog post above a certain length finds its way onto Scribd. Here is the most recent one, with the added bonus of a different cat picture.

Check out these red hot songs from two returning heavy weights.

Firstly, Coldplay: Coldplay – Lost?

And secondly, Sigur Ros: You can hear it here. Or download it for free from Sigur Ros’ site.
Sigur Ros have astonished in the past, and I’m pleased to say that this track is no disappointment. Roll on the new album – its out in a couple of weeks.

In true microblogging style, I’ll try and answer the question in under 140 characters. It was posed by the BBC as a precursor to the new Culture Show series.

“Culture is something wholly unproductive that we get enjoyment from”

“Culture is making something in your bedroom, and putting it on Youtube”

“Culture is going to museums”

“Culture is the last great British export”

“Culture is having a wee, and not leaving the toilet seat up”

“Culture is saying please and thank you”

“Culture is encountering the unexpected”

“Culture is something understood amongst equals”

“Culture is elitism”

“Culture is what feeds the soul”

I tend to think about this kind of thing when I get back into my art work, and I always come to the conclusion that there is no single definition of what makes art or culture, and that’s what makes it so interesting. As long as it involves imagination, then that’s all that matters.

Doing this reminds me of an excellent short animated film that I saw at last years RCA summer show. It has only recently become available online (shock, horror!) and its called Procrastination. Check it out, its truly fabulous:

400,000 machines are heading for Peru.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/22041/?nlid=969

http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Image courtesy of tonx

This site has been thrown into disarray when I unwittingly changed the template. All the tweaks have been untweaked, and now it looks terrible. So I will use this ‘opportunity’ to move over to WordPress:

http://onemanstravels.wordpress.com/

Image courtesy of tonx

This site has been thrown into disarray when I unwittingly changed the template. All the tweaks have been untweaked, and now it looks terrible. So I will use this ‘opportunity’ to move over to WordPress:

http://onemanstravels.wordpress.com/

Image courtesy of tonx

This site has been thrown into disarray when I unwittingly changed the template. All the tweaks have been untweaked, and now it looks terrible. So I will use this ‘opportunity’ to move over to WordPress:

http://onemanstravels.wordpress.com/

Image courtesy of Irregular Shed

I went to the Design Museum today, and there was hundred dollar laptop on display! It was an exciting time, because though we’ve heard all about it in Britain, the chances of ever seeing one was very slim because the ‘give one, get one’ scheme doesn’t operate outside of the US and Canada.

For those who aren’t familiar with the project, the hundred dollar laptop was designed for third world countries in order to narrow the digital divide. The internet is arguably the greatest educational resource in the world, and providing affordable access to it is undoubtedly a highly desirable thing to do.

The laptop has been designed from the ground up to fulfil its purpose, and you can tell as soon as you see, never mind touch it. It looks very robust, with all outer edges being clad in green bumpers, and the whole thing looks pretty water proof, especially the keyboard. The keys are really squidgy, which I like, and the typing position is very comfortable. The OS is Linux, and as you can imagine its been designed to fit the part, featuring cool little retro games (the buttons either side of the screen are for this purpose), and easy to use software, like a word processor. The screen rotates, and lies flat, like a notebook. The mechanism seems robust enough. When the screen is folded away the laptop is very compact. A green handle on either side of the screen conceals a USB port and head phone jack amongst other things.

The processor was designed especially by AMD for low power consumption, which prolongs battery life, and means that it doesn’t need a fan. The laptop also features solid state memory, which makes the system more resilient to knocks than if it featured a hard drive.
All of which, in my eyes, makes this a great bit of design. Every feature has been well thought out, and every event accounted for, except the intervention of Intel and Microsoft….

They have marketed a competing machine, which is for profit (something which the $100 laptop certainly isn’t). Admittedly, the cost is still low, and the version of Windows is heavily stripped down, but this intervention could derail the $100 laptop project. The Wintel machines have been heavily marketed to those in the position to make the orders (often corrupt governors). And seeming as Intel and Windows are huge multinationals , they can set the prices low, because they already have the infrastructure and buying power to deliver these ultra-budget machines. The $100 dollar laptop on the other hand is a charity just starting out. And every contract which is given to the Wintel machines as opposed to the $100 laptop, seriously effects their ability to deliver on the magical $100 price point, which depends on manufacturing the machine in vast quantities.

So should Windows and Intel be involved in this apparently nefarious game? I’m not sure. Before the $100 laptop project, companies wouldn’t even dream of producing a laptop for this market. So whilst it seems hopeful that more people will get access to these technologies, it may just be in a package which lacks the sympathetic design of the $100 laptop. And having seen the $100 dollar laptop in all its glory, this is a great shame.

————————————————————————————————-
Official site:
http://laptopfoundation.org/
Listen to the episode of This Week in Tech which discusses the intervention of Wintel:
http://twit.tv/124
Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_dollar_laptop
Announcement of ‘give one, get one’ laptop scheme which was subsequently scrapped:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297858,00.html