Technology

I've always been a bit of a magpie for new technology and gadgets. These are the odds and ends I've written about over the years - some of it prescient, some of it hopelessly dated, all of it fun at the time.

Posts about Technology

• Apple OSX Messages full stops emoticon bug

  on Sun, Jun 15, 2025 ~ Shorticles | Web | Tech
  When macOS Messages throws a wobbly—what broke, how to spot it, and the quick fixes that calm the chaos, with a wink for sufferers of Apple’s little quirks.

• AI making some astonishing leaps

  on Thu, Mar 23, 2023 ~ Shorticles | Web | Tech
  A look at AI's rapid progress in early 2023 — ChatGPT-4, Google Bard's live URL access, and Midjourney v5's photorealistic image generation.

• Making my Stadia controller work on bluetooth

  on Thu, Feb 9, 2023 ~ Shorticles | Misc | Tech
  Google Stadia shut down in January 2023, but you can still use the controller — here's how to unlock the Bluetooth for use with any device.

• Aperture tidy up

  on Mon, Jan 2, 2012 ~ Shorticles | Misc | Tech
  I spent some of the weekend tidying up my photos in Aperture.

• I never met Steve Jobs

  on Thu, Oct 6, 2011 ~ Shorticles | Misc | Tech
  My thoughts and reflections on the influence of Steve Jobs on me.

• All iPod owners are thieves

  on Tue, Oct 5, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech | News
  Barmy Steve Ballmer from Microsoft has decided to shorten his stay on planet sensible by claiming that all iPod owners are thieves.

• Commenting fixed on this site

  on Wed, Aug 18, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Blogging | Web
  Earlier on today I realised that I had not got around to finishing off the commenting on this site properly. I had fallen asleep at the keyboard one night and forgotten to finish what I was doing.

• Secret Ying Yang club

  on Tue, Aug 17, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web | Standards
  I noticed something interesting when I was using Bloglines this morning - both Eric Meyer's site and Mark Pilgrim's use the same favicon. Is it like a secret mark of the web standards in-crowd?

• Lost in translation

  on Mon, Aug 16, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Blogging | Web
  In the last build of my Blog I had a side panel that allowed users to translate the entire site into a number of languages. The idea was that I could reach out to more people.

• Meme too! or Count meme in!

  on Wed, Aug 4, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Blogging | Web
  There's an interesting experiment going on to test how ideas (memes) zip around the internet. The idea is to post a blog entry and get others to post the same entry.

• Meme 2 - get your blog up those charts

  on Wed, Aug 4, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Blogging | Web
  Nova Spivack has produced a second version of his Meme project already. If you are reading this and have a blog please do join in.

• The Bug - digital radio

  on Thu, Jul 29, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Music | Tech
  I bought a Bug digital radio last night and it's fab! Excellent sound quality, great reception and a brilliant little design.

• Southern Electric - Broadband from your socket

  on Wed, Jul 14, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Opinion | Tech
  Broadband through your electrical socket! Brilliant! I have been waiting for this for years. But what a terrible user experience I have just had.

• Site templates

  on Tue, Jun 29, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  I have actually spent a little time tonight looking at the site templates and have removed the home page templates temporary table layout having fixed on a CSS layout scheme.

• Bopspam right on the head

  on Fri, Apr 30, 2004 ~ Shorticles | Tech
  It's not that often a really good online service catches my attention. However last night I signed up to the Bopspam service and so far it's been brilliant at filtering spam.

• Tim Berners-Lee gets a knighthood

  on Wed, Dec 31, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  Tim Berners-Lee, the English chap who literally invented the web while working at CERN, has been honoured for his work in the Queen's new year Honours list with a knighthood.

• Nice Titles!

  on Fri, Nov 14, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  The more observant and regular visitors will have noticed over the past few days that interesting floating boxes pop up if you hold your mouse over a link - using an advanced DOM technique.

• BlueJacking Mob

  on Fri, Nov 7, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech
  In the small hours of this morning I had a great idea for a BlueJack event that would be useful as a commercial competition or for a product, record or book launch.

• Bluejacking

  on Wed, Nov 5, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech
  Have you been BlueJacked yet? BlueJacking is the latest craze for those with Bluetooth enabled mobiles and consists of sending an anonymous message to someone within range.

• New baby and it's platinum

  on Tue, Oct 14, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech
  Well I treated myself and purchased a new PC for all sorts of reasons. I decided this time I wanted a machine that could run graphic intensive games properly.

• So thats how R2D2 did it!

  on Thu, Sep 18, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech
  Two separate innovations are about to take the humble monitor to a new dimension - the Fog Screen and the Heliodisplay both use projection onto mist or dry fog.

• Toyota produce worlds first self parking car!

  on Tue, Sep 2, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech | News
  Toyota have put on sale the world's first self parking car. You drive alongside a parking space, stop and press a button - the car then manoeuvres itself into the space!

• Don't make me think

  on Wed, Aug 6, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  Steve Krug is bringing his usability workshop Don't Make Me Think to London on the 5th September! If you have not heard of Steve he's the thinking man's usability expert.

• FavIcon installed

  on Thu, Jul 24, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  I finally got round to adding the favicon back into the site. I used to have one a long time ago but it was pants.

• Phone and PDA convergence arrives at Cox hall

  on Mon, Jun 23, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Misc | Tech
  Just purchased a new Palm Tungsten W - that's the one with the phone built in! I am writing this entry on the Palm right now and will be able to update the website from nearly anywhere.

• Text Pipe

  on Sat, May 31, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  It is not often that I get very excited about a piece of software but this week I unearthed an amazing bit of code - Text Pipe Web solved a huge problem for me and saved me hours of work.

• Grub it out!

  on Sat, May 24, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Tech | Web
  Fed up with Google? Grub.org was launched earlier this year and it is a network distributed web crawler - an alternative search engine.

• I've got to Zingo home

  on Tue, Apr 29, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Misc | Tech
  There's no need to search in the cold and rain for a taxi! Zingo finds the nearest available cab.

• Apple iTunes 4

  on Tue, Apr 29, 2003 ~ Shorticles | Misc | Tech
  Thoughts on iTunes 4’s streaming features and Apple’s Music Store, praising home Wi-Fi playback but frustrated that music purchases weren’t available in the UK.