http://simonhammond.com/blog the web, society and where they meet and slug it out, mostly. Sun, 31 Aug 2008 21:47:34 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en My formal mathematical eduction began by copying sums off laminated strips and completing them. This was 'work' and it didn't do it for me. I preferred playing with those connectable cubic centimetre bricks, working out what sort of things you could build. Fast forward to A-levels and I was ... http://simonhammond.com/blog/2008/08/31/maths-play-and-work/ Twitter continues its relentless march of decremental functionality and turns off free SMS sending in the UK. Twitter earned support by offering something for free that previously wasn't, essentially paid for by VC funding. Buying in a decent search engine must have left them strapped last month. As bounder put it: no ... http://simonhammond.com/blog/2008/08/16/twitter-goes-from-140-to-0-in-the-uk/ Having to cut back on my whimsical surfing lately has forced me to face a problem you may well share. There is more online stuff that I would love to partake of than I could ever conceive of doing so.  Shared items from social networks, blogs and recommendation engines only swell ... http://simonhammond.com/blog/2008/08/13/1000things/ Lively's a virtual chat room that you can embed in web pages, mine below: Kind of lite version of Second Life from Google which requires a simple download and a Google account. I'm guessing this is a strategic attempt for Google to stick a virtual rocket under their social networking ... http://simonhammond.com/blog/2008/07/15/lively/ I don't own an iPhone (woefully) and I'm only an occasional Facebooker, so I'm just squatting here on the fringe and speculating.   But the latest post on the Facebook blog seems somewhat significant. It notes that 1.5 million people regularly use the Facebook iPhone website since it launched a year ... http://simonhammond.com/blog/2008/07/10/iphone-facebook-app/ I've been harbouring nagging doubts of late about referring to myself as an 'early adopter' of web goodies.  Reflecting on it the other day, I realised the full extent of my delusion. home.html I abused the computer science web server in 94 or 95 with multicoloured buttons and blinking text.   Along ... http://simonhammond.com/blog/2008/07/04/why-i-am-not-an-early-adopter/ Us social media types like to bang on about crowd conversations, live blogging and ambient intimacy but don't often get to see this stuff out in the wild beyond the geekmeets. So, OrangeJon and myself decided to run a little experiment to see whether we were actually early adopters or just ... http://simonhammond.com/blog/2008/06/21/vale-festival-experiment/ I heard about Plurk via Bounder on Twitter just a while ago and dutifully checked it out. First impression was it's Twitter-onna-timeline. Further play sparked this strange, warm, fuzzy feeling that I initially put down to attitude. Plurk has attitude and attitude counts. It counts because it's so easy to knock ... http://simonhammond.com/blog/2008/06/02/plurk/ I've been doing this thing for a while now where I take rough notes with my mobile camera.  Whiteboards, opening hours and witty notices are prime targets for my 5 megapixel N80.  I thought this was advanced but geeky.  I now realise I was a bumbling amateur.  Have the information ... http://simonhammond.com/blog/2008/05/24/evernote/ Just doing my bit to highlight dumbass, blognorant dealings of a shady music festival, namely Surface Unsigned.  Check the backstory in you are interested. In the bigger picture, still waiting the day when getting signed is not the defining moment of a band's success... http://simonhammond.com/blog/2008/05/19/surface-unsigned/