Category Archives: The Interweb

Internet Stuff

Digital Magazines

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I was surfing around today waiting for the tennis to start (Federer vs Nadal) with the prospect of watching the football world cup (Italy vs France) this evening, when I stumbled on something I must’ve missed: Digital Magazines

I know it’s something that’s been around for ages, but a company now looks to be properly distributing it called Zinio
They offer a broad range of magazines which you can buy either as back issues or subscribe to
About the same price as buying off the shelf, and it’s pretty convenient if you want a specific issue and don’t want to go down to the shops. Plus since you pay in US Dollars, the exchange rate works to my advantage eg. MacUser UK is £3.95 per issue over here, but only $3.50 from Zinio
An annual subscription works out at £62.46 by direct debit for a real copy
From Zinio it is only $49.95
When you consider that there’s $1.85 to the pound, it works out pretty cheap

On the downside, the digital version comes in Zinio’s own format, (.zno) and has to be viewed using their viewer. The viewer is available for windows & OSX, though isn’t universal binary yet (but has been confirmed as in development)
It uses some form of DRM called contentguard

A reader program is required to access the magazines, which utilize a combination of technology licensed from Adobe and Contentguard

and if you print anything it puts a pale grey watermark on the page

They offer a free sample section, so i took the opportunity to try it out. The freebies are a little lacking though oddly you can get MacWorld Sweden as well as the US version
You can only view one magazine at a time, as the viewer doesn’t seem to support multiple viewing of documents, and while it is based on Acrobat reader, it lacks a lot of the features you’d expect to have such as scrolling
I suspect you wouldn’t get anything to replace the free CD/DVDs you would normally get though they may have a way of having online links to the content.

The downloads magazines in OSX are stored in your users folder/Zinio Library/
The site itself is a little confusing, as there is an international section, but MacUser UK appears in the US section but not the UK, and there are some publications that they sell which don’t appear on the main site as they are acting as agents for the distributors.

Finally, they offer a US textbooks section for students. It’s a little lacking on variety, and since it’s US textbooks they won’t have scientific books that use metric units like Peter Atkin’s Physical Chemistry the defacto standard text for most university chemistry courses.

They say there are plans for adding interactive features into the digital versions of magazines and books to make them more attractive

Overall i kinda like it, but can’t see myself buying through it – and they do need to add some scrollbars to the viewer.

Myspace

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Myspace was launched in April 1999 and was one of many sites such as friendster, livejournal, bebo, orkut, faceparty, friendsreunited to name a few which attempt to be internet social networking sites.
MySpace is apparently number 4 in the top 500 sites according to Alexa (after Yahoo, MSN and Google).
There’s an interesting one at number 45: 72.14.203.104
Which is the IP address for google

Anyway, back to Myspace. The original site was then sold to Tom Anderson, the founder of 2003’s Myspace and a group of programmers and at some point in the next year it became huge. This was further exemplified when a British band, the Arctic Monkeys reached the number 1 spot in the singles chart without being signed to a record label – their fans created a myspace site to share their music in around 2003-4

Myspace was part bought by Intermix Media inc which was acquired in 2005 by Fox Broadcasting (Rupert Murdoch’s Company)
Where am I going with this? There’s nothing new here and you can find all this out with a google search or on wikipedia
– This is just the preamble

I created a profile in December 2005 ish, i think but did nothing with it. Around February next year people started asking me whether i had a myspace because everyone has one. I said something to the effect of “yes, but i don’t really use it”. What happens? they find me and add me as a friend, so now i have to put something up. I quickly add some basic info and kind of get into how it works, but it’s rubbish!
It’s a blog, info, dating, comment leaving, music sharing mish mash of web space. And it does none of it properly!
If you want a blog, use proper blog software such as wordpress or moveable type which you can install on a proper webhost. You can change the php, add themes, maintain the sql database from your webhost, ftp files etc…
What has myspace got? a profile where you can append a bit of inline css in the profile. This does allow you to change the page design, but it’s a nightmare and not very intuitive. Is myscpace W3C compliant? Let’s find out… surprise surprise, even the front page has 103 errors. I put the url from my myspace and it had 255 errors including the classic no doctype found which is very lazy programming. Nice one myspace, get everyone producing non-compliant pages as per W3C on the internet – as if there wasn’t enough out there already.

You can edit the blog entries when you’re logged in but you can’t have anywhere near the control of a proper blog. You can’t add plugins, or customise things.
If there’s a link on the page there is no way you can change where it goes to or remove it (eg I can’t link the blog on myspace to this one), and it has lovely ad banners all over the place which you have no control of. It’s all coded into the core part of the page which everyone has to have.
The dating aspect of it is just an added encouragement for the are wannabe porn stars and models trying to get some money out of you

The music concept is slightly more interesting, but only if you set up a band page. A regular profile doesn’t let you upload files, and you can only have music files from another myspace band profile. The band profiles are quite good in terms of being able to promote themselves and getting your music heard. You can choose whether to have the files as streaming or downloadable or both.

Bulletins are a feature where people send something to everyone in their myspace friends list, but the only way you can view it is to go into your members area where a tiny box showing the last 5 broadcasts will appear. It will not email you to say that someone has broadcast something. In contrast to invitations which will email you but are also difficult to find if you don’t click the link. It would be quite possible not to know that you have received bulletins unless you looked for them

There’s the overall bit that I can’t stand – the horrific use of shockwave – every page uses far too many shockwave elements that slows things down to a crawl – i find it intolerable.
The site has never managed to remember my username and password despite me telling both keychain and clicked the remember password every time i’ve logged in. It will not let you view parts of other myspace sites unless you’re logged in, and when you do enter your details it takes you back to the main home page. If you have multiple tabs open with myspace sites in each, and then login on one it will not make you logged in on the others when you click links – the logged in status is only valid for that tab/window which is ridiculous and suggests serious problems with the cookie system.

Having said all that the thing that annoys me most is the comments feature. Most of the people i have on my friends are people i know in the real world. They mostly have my email address, aim screenname, msn name, mobile number, some have my home number and possibly my work number. But how do they choose to contact me usually involving a question? By leaving a comment on my myspace – this is stupid on more than one level. Firstly it is unreliable about whether i will get an email telling me that someone has commented and even then i may or may not want to put myself through the pain of looking at my profile to read the message (as unlike wordpress the notification will not contain any portion of the message). Next, comments are a bit like a mix between a forum and a guestbook with a twist…. you can’t add comments on your own myspace!
So what people tend to do is reply to that comment on the person who posted it’s myspace. This makes it doubly ridiculous for someone else reading a comments section, as it will make no sense. Each comment will be a potential continuation of a comment on another myspace so has no flow and serves little purpose after it’s been read.
Some are learning that I don’t like using myspace for communicating, but not everyone

I’m not the only person to think there’s problems with myspace:
myspace sucks and so do you according to Katie McIntyre & Casey Primeau

I haven’t factored in any of the hotlinking problems some websites are having due to the increased bandwidth. This is a direct consequence of myspace not letting users host files on their space so everyone hotlinks.

There’s the more sinister side where myspace ruins lives as it is a honeypot for pedophiles and child molesters around the world

It is a bit reminiscent of Microsoft – the most popular site for social networking and it’s horrible – most users doesn’t mean best.
40 million people using it so it’s gotta be good! right?
Approximately 90% of computer users run Microsoft Windows and a large chunk of them probably think it’s the best operating system to use or have never used anything else so it’s gotta be the best, right?

In conclusion – myspace waste of space – some of the ideas of it are good, but the execution is poor

Bruno Bozzetto

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I came across the work of Bruno Bozzetto about 5 years ago knowing nothing about him but found his flash animations very funny.
I stumbled on his website bozzetto.com and have seen all his flash cartoons but had just assumed that he was an internet cartoonist for such work as Olympics and my favourite Europe Italy

In fact, as I found out today, he is a 70 year old man who has been an animator for many years with an entry on imdb showing his work to date since 1968. Apparently his film Allegro non troppo is his most well known but is difficult to find
bruno bozzetto

The character that he has become associated with is Signor Rossi:
signor rossi

It’s only a lie if someone finds out…

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I saw this in the Guardian newspaper this week. I’m quoting the whole article rather than linking to it so you dont have to register at the site (though it is free, it’s just that to read stories other than today’s you have to get an account):

NHS chief faked his CV to land £115,000-a-year job
Sophie Kirkham
Thursday August 18 2005
The Guardian

A former hospital chief executive has admitted making up qualifications on his CV to land his £115,000-a-year post.

Neil Taylor, 42, was chosen unanimously for the job as head of the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust after claiming to have a first-class degree from the University of Nottingham when he had just “one or two A-levels”.

When Taylor was asked to provide his qualification certificates for a routine salary review last October, Taylor eventually produced a home-made diploma with a crude copy of the Nottingham University logo.

He claimed that the degree was a Bachelor of Arts in business administration and economics, and also said he was a graduate of the Institute of Personnel Management at Nottingham, a department that does not exist.

He also said that he had obtained a postgraduate diploma in Forensic Medicine, again from Nottingham University, when he had actually attended a two-day introduction to the course.

When confronted, Taylor resigned immediately. Yesterday he pleaded guilty before Shrewsbury magistrates to one charge of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception and one of attempting to commit the same offence.

Taylor, from Solihull, West Midlands, had worked as a chief executive at hospitals in the area for 10 years, including four years at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Birmingham from 1995-99 and another four as head of the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital before it merged with the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford in 2003 to form the new trust.

A charge of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception concerning Taylor’s appointment as head of the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital NHS Trust in 1999 was dismissed.

It was only when applying for the position as chief executive of the newly merged trust, which provides healthcare for some 500,000 people across Shropshire and Mid-Wales, that Taylor felt the pressure to exaggerate his qualifications, his defence solicitor, Adrian Roberts, told the court.

Mr Roberts said that his client had been embarrassed about his lack of formal education.

During a salary review following the merger, all executives were asked to provide copies of higher education certificates.

“The authorities were pressing him to produce his degree certificate and qualifications from Nottingham University,” prosecutor John Snell told the hearing. “[Taylor] took the line ‘They are on my aged parents’ wall.'”

Taylor initially stalled investigators, but eventually produced the home-made certificate. When the university was contacted it denied Taylor had ever studied there.

Outside court, Taylor said: “I am very pleased that the first charge against me was dropped. I never did anything up until the trust was merged in 2003. I did something foolish around the end of 2003, but I did not do it for financial advantage – I did it because of the pressures I was under.”

An NHS counter fraud service spokesman said: “Any case of fraud against the NHS means taxpayers’ money is being swindled and this is completely unacceptable. Since 1998, the NHS counter fraud service has saved the NHS £675m – enough to pay for five new hospitals.”

Taylor was granted unconditional bail until sentencing on a date yet to be fixed at Shrewsbury crown court.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

Made me think of all the times that i’ve been so honest in applying for jobs, and also now that i’m again looking maybe i should apply for something completely ludicrous lying through my teeth