Status-Q

Keith Shaw has a short video over at NetworkWorld demonstrating the DisplayLink technology in a couple of different forms.

Suppose you’re a successful UK high-tech company with an interesting loudspeaker technology. Who would you naturally partner with?

Why, Hallmark greeting cards, of course.

This is an interesting site: TheFunded.com allows people who have received VC or similar investment to review and rate their investors. An intriguing idea.

At CamVine, we’re starting to experiment with using an AppleTV as a server component of our CODA architecture. Being engineers, the first thing we had to do was take this beautiful piece of kit and dismantle it. Michael has a great photo on his blog.

I’m always a little bemused by those who make bold comparative statements without specifying to what they’re comparing something.

Here’s an example. I find myself tonight in a Bed & Breakfast near Gatwick airport. The little sachet of shampoo in the bathroom says:

Well, that’s good. Mmmm… Wait a sec….less harmful than what? Than the animals, presumably?

I’ve moved Status-Q to a new version of WordPress on a new server. Please let me know if you notice any hiccups…

We are approaching the time of year often known in the British media as ‘silly season’. There’s usually relatively little real national news, and so a variety of completely daft things end up in the papers. Oliver Burkeman, writing in the Guardian this week, offered a wonderful “sneak preview of some of the other scoops you’ll be reading over the coming weeks“.

Extracts:

Gatwick terror panic

The government has banned airline passengers from wearing green hats after a man in a green hat was arrested at Gatwick airport carrying a bottle of potentially lethal hydrogen peroxide. Holidaymakers who flout the new rule face severe penalties, although hats of other colours will still be permitted, as will rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

…

Bohemian Rhapsody triumphs in ‘Top 100’ lists

Bohemian Rhapsody, by Queen, has been named the greatest film of all time following an administrative mixup among Sunday newspapers preparing this weekend’s plethora of “Top 100” lists. The glam-rock band’s celebrated anthem also won the title of funniest British comedy of all time, and most powerful person in the British media. A source at the polling company contracted to produce the lists blamed human error. However, a corrected version of the Best Musicians list still showed Arctic Monkeys several places ahead of the Beatles and Johnny Cash, a result that pollsters attributed to people these days having absolutely no taste whatsoever.

Interesting – I didn’t know that such services were generally available yet…

For a cost of about 35-50p, Trace A Mobile will tell you the location of a mobile phone. You need to sign up for a monthly subscription, and you need to have the advance approval of the phone user (usually established by sending them a text message) but for nervous parents, or for spouses who need to know how close their husband is to home, this could be a good service.

Of course, it would generally be cheaper just to call them and ask. So this may be better used for locating your lost Irish Wolfhound, or your stolen Ferarri.

Reading about the Iraqi post-football celebrations last week, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a nice spoof piece in The Onion: Iraq, Kentucky Vie For World Shooting-Into-The-Air Supremacy.

Wow, that was four years ago! It was rather easier to write humorous stories about Iraq back then; there was a greater underlying sense of optimism. What a lot has changed…

The Guardian sent a photographer round this evening – they’re likely to run an article about Ndiyo later this week. John Robertson turned out to be a fun guy to work with; he has just the temperament you would need to do this kind of thing late at night on your supposed day off and keep both yourself and others cheerful.

He obviously really enjoys his work – and he has a fabulous portfolio on his website. I like this one and this one, for example, but there’s a wide variety of styles. Worth watching all the way through.

So I was quite flattered that he was photographing me. We had fun coming up with ways to try and make interesting pictures of yours truly holding a circuit board, in an office. Not the most naturally inspiring subject matter. I wonder how it’ll work out…

In this week’s Economist, HP have a full-page ad – which can’t be cheap – extolling one particular virtue of their CP3505 printer. It’s called Colour Access Control.

This lets you set up lists of people who are entitled to print in colour. The others only get black and white.

Now, I’m sure printing costs are an issue for some businesses, but I can’t help being somewhat bemused by this. I have visions of people wasting large amounts of time trying to find someone who can print a document for them. Of secretaries noticing that you can actually buy a colour laser printer for less than the cost of a set of toner refills, and ‘accidentally’ ordering the wrong thing. But mostly of annual performance reviews: “Now, Fred, you’ve done some outstanding work this year. I’m sorry that we can’t give you a pay rise, but we will put you on the Colour Access List”.