$100 Laptop Porn
Monday, July 23, 2007
Nigerian users of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child initiative) have been using the US charity donations to explore porographic sites on the interet.
According to a Reuters report last Thursday, laptops in a primary school in Abuja "have gone awry as the pupils freely browse adult sites with explicit sexual materials."
Nigerian Reporters have reported finding porographic images on computers they had seen.A representative of the One Laptop Per Child aid group was quoted as saying that the computers, part of a pilot scheme, would now be fitted with filters
Posted byPaul James at Monday, July 23, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: $100 Laptop, OLPC, Porn
Posh Spice Takes a Beating
The much-hyped Victoria Beckham TV show was beaten in the ratings by a repeat of BBC crime drama Waking The Dead.
Only 3.5 million tuned in to ITV1's one-hour special following Posh Spice's move to Los Angeles.
The show itself, was a complete work of fiction from the company owned by Simon Cowell. It even carried a disclaimer at the beginning of the show stating that "some scenes" were faked, and that the role of Victoria's assistant was played by an actor.
Posted byPaul James at Monday, July 23, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: David Beckham, ITV, LA Galaxy, Simon Cowell, Victoria Beckham
New York property listing - did I mention the sex parties?
Friday, July 20, 2007
New York's property blog Curbed, finds a catch in an otherwise attractive Craigslist flatshare ad:
"I host one to two male sex parties a week. One after work (usually 6:30pm-11pm) and one on the weekend (usually 8pm-2am). The parties are on the second floor (my room) as well as on the first floor EXCEPT your room. You room is off limits to my guests. The parties are not very noisy except for the guys talking in the kitchen. The parties are very social as we play movies and socialize in the kitchen.[via Curbed]
Also, I have a maid that cleans up immediately after the parties - so you don't have to worry about that. If you are cool with all this, let's talk!"
Posted byPaul James at Friday, July 20, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Spink's out-of-town splurge
The Times a while ago, carried a fascinating story of developer Mike Spink's huge £42m deal which leaves him the proud owner of a run down 30,000 sq ft mansion called Park Place, in Remenham, Henley-on-Thames.
This is the most ever spent on a property outside London (to date)... but then it's an utterly unique proposition, packed with history, from countless links with royalty to a recent spell as a boarding school. By any standards this one hell of a massive project!
Posted byPaul James at Friday, July 20, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Nestoria adds clever parking feature to maps
Nestoria, one of my favorite property websites, have added a clever new feature. Partnering up with ParkAtMyHouse, they now offer information about local parking opportunities - not just conventional carparks but privately rented parking spaces - with each and every property search.
Posted byPaul James at Friday, July 20, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
World's most amazing houses
Architectural amazement all gathered and bundled over at the Amazing Things blog.
Posted byPaul James at Friday, July 20, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Property
Harry Potter Finally Leaked Online...
Thursday, July 19, 2007
The new Harry Potter book has been leaked online in its entirety, only a mere four days before it goes on sale!
I wont post the link to it, however I am sure a determined Potter fan can find it.
I'm sure Miss Rowling is wishing she could cast a spell to make it go away.
Posted byPaul James at Thursday, July 19, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J K Rowling
How many kittens to change a loo roll?
How many kittens to change a loo roll?
Posted byPaul James at Thursday, July 19, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Comedy, Kittens, Youtube
Google News' Cloaking Policy
Google News received a new help center with more details than the old help files on this subject. For instance, you'll learn that high-quality backlinks affect your site's ranking in Google News (but that there's no manual placement of stories onto the News front-page, ever). So far, so good, and much like what we're used to from web search. But this bit on cloaking is interesting:
[W]e need to be able to circumvent your registration page in order to successfully crawl your site. The easiest way to do this is to configure your webservers to not serve the registration page to our crawlers (when the User-Agent is "Googlebot"). You can verify that the request is actually from our robot by making sure the IP address is within the range of 66.249.64.0/20.
So with that, Googlebot will never see the publisher's registration page – but that doesn't mean the user will necessarily always see it. Google offers two options: "First click free" means the publisher will check the referrer; if the referrer is Google News, then the article page is fully shown, but all other links from that page are "trapped", as Google calls it (on a side-note, "first click free" is problematic when people copy the URL to link to the page from e.g. their blog). The second option Google calls "subscription designation", which means that Google will simply add the word "(subscription)" to the News result pointing to the publisher. With the latter solution, a publisher can indeed always hide the actual content from readers, and only show it to the Googlebot.
In comparison, here's the Google webmaster guideline – and it's worth noting that Google News sources are also usually "normal" web pages:
Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
Posted byPaul James at Thursday, July 19, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Cloaking, Google News, Help
For Sale - MacGyver multitool
Looking to sell MacGyver MultiTool for £10, or $20 - totally authentic, without packing - Or you can buy your own box set from any good stationers.
Via Scary Idea's
Posted byPaul James at Thursday, July 19, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Fun, MacGyver Multitool
O2 To Ditch i-mode
Forbes is reporting that O2 is abandoning its i-mode service after only being able to sign up 260,000 users to the Internet phone service in the past two years.
Additionally, the mobile carrier will not sell any new i-mode-enabled handsets from the end of July, but despite this would continue to support those quarter of million users for the next two years.
When I worked as o2, i-mode was pushed as being highly popular in Japan, and the company were hoping that it would have the same popularity here in the UK and Europe
What is i-mode [o2 UK site]
Posted byPaul James at Thursday, July 19, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Mobile Phones, o2
Featured Firefox Extension: Paragrasp highlights and navigates web page text
Paragrasp is a free download which works with Firefox.
Posted byPaul James at Thursday, July 19, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Extensions, Firefox
Hong Kong's Final Court Of Appeal Rules Public Gay Sodomy Law Discriminatory
The court of Final appeal in Hong Kong has dismissed an appeal by the government to prosecute two men for engaging in public sodomy, saying the 1991 law "does not criminalize heterosexuals for the same or comparable conduct."
The Associated Press reports: "The case stemmed from the prosecution of two men who acknowledged committing sodomy in a car parked on an isolated road at night, the ruling said. Public gay sex was a crime with a maximum penalty of five years in prison. After the two men challenged the charges, lower courts ruled in their favor, but the government appealed to Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal. A panel of five top judges unanimously dismissed the government's appeal."
This is the second gay sodomy case that I have heard of recently, that case was unsuccessfully defended by the government in the last two years.
The law however, still need to be changed says Hong Kong's gay activist Cho Man-kit: "The government has no way to avoid amending the law now that the court has ruled unanimously against it."
Hong Kong court rejects gay sodomy law [via boston globe]
Posted byPaul James at Thursday, July 19, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Gay Issues, Hong Kong, Law
Email is dead, long live the social messaging site!
While most of us still wreastle with the deluge of emails that are sent to us, it seems the younger generation says "e-mail is, like, soooo dead."
Posted byPaul James at Thursday, July 19, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Email, Social Sites
Mobile Hang Ups Down Under
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
A recent study has suggested that Australian mobile phone users have hang ups about their phones!
This first in its kind study, led by a team from around Australia, suggests that users feel more comfortable carrying their mobile handsets, even if they don't use them.
Additional findings suggest that Australians feel they work harder because they can be contacted more often.
"The mobile phone is an indispensable part of the Australian life," said the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) in a statement.
"More than half (54 percent) of the respondents believed that the mobile helped them to balance their family and working lives," said lead researcher, Australian National University Professor Judy Wajcman.
Aussies hung up on their mobile phones, study shows [Reuters]
Posted byPaul James at Tuesday, July 17, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Mobile Phones, News
F Word was faked, admits Channel 4
An episode of Gordon Ramsay's The F Word which appeared to show him spearing sea bass off the English coast was faked, Channel 4 admitted today.
Posted byPaul James at Tuesday, July 17, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Stagecoach to take over tram service in Manchester
Bus and train operator Stagecoach takes over the running of the Manchester tram network.
Posted byPaul James at Tuesday, July 17, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Manchester, Travel
C4 Skins drama is a dirty Shane
EX-EastEnders star Shane Richie is set for trouble in his next role - as a pervy teacher in Skins.
Posted byPaul James at Tuesday, July 17, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Shane Richie, TV
Puppy on a string
Posted byPaul James at Tuesday, July 17, 2007 0 comments Links to this post
