News Corp V BBC

30/08/2009 — efan78

bbc-logo-design
ogco_newscorp_0707

The Guardian has generously provided a PDF of Murdoch’s speech here, and the BBC’s response here.

So, James Murdoch has decided to join his father in attacking the BBC.  Although I strongly believe that most people in the world will be able to see just how hypocritical this attack is, it worries me.  While the BBC has a strong presence around the world this is down to the respect that it has garnered over the decades.  If you speak to most people around the world about what they think of the BBC I think you’ll find that most of them consider it to be good quality programming with a minimum of bias.  Note I say a minimum of bias – all news has bias, but the Murdoch family’s News Corp are probably some of the worst.

In fact, the recent #WeLoveTheNHS row over on Twitter brought us a number of blatant examples of the Fox News bias:

Now, the reason that the Murdoch family are unhappy with the BBC is that they offer free web services such as the BBC News website and Rupert Murdoch recently announced his decision to start charging for access to all his online news sites.  Yes people, you too can PAY Mr Murdoch for this crud instead of visiting the free news offered by the BBC.  And the Murdochs think that people will actually choose to do this.  Really guys – you haven’t got a clue.

The sustainability of journalism is a huge subject to tackle, and there’s lots of people discussing it all of the web.  But this isn’t a sustainability of journalism row, this is a row over how much profit NewsCorp, and by extension the Murdochs, will lose.  They’re trying to paint it as something else entirely, trying to say that the BBC is stifling free speech and freedom of the press, but I think the MPs’ Expenses Scandal proved that freedom of the press isn’t affected by the BBC.  And on the subject of stifling free speech?  Get real guys – just because they don’t fit into the same right-wing views that you do doesn’t make them bad or wrong.  If you can get enough people to llok at the pictures in The Sun, and watch The Sun on TV (Sorry – I mean Sky News!) then good luck to you.  Just please, please, please don’t give us Fox News – whatever you do!

Oh, and Rupert, James…? – leave the BBC alone!

  • Share/Bookmark
Posted in Politics, Responses. Tags: . Comments Off

#WeLoveTheNHS

14/08/2009 — efan78

nhs_415x275I think most people have heard about the #welovethenhs hashtag.  It’s come into effect in response to the recent coverage in the US about the British National Health Service and some of the… interesting… views that have been promoted in refutation of President Obama’s move to offer social health care to the masses.

One of the stories that I’ve seen retweeted today has been this one from Fox News.  Now I’m not a fan of Fox, or it’s UK sister station Sky news either, and this sort of spurious logic always confuses me.  It’s up there with the idea that “10% of the population are Gay, 10% of the population are left handed, therefore all gay people are left handed”  The gist of this news bulletin is that the terrorist attack in 2007 was performed by Muslim doctors who work for the NHS.  Because the NHS is underfunded we need to “import” doctors from Muslim states and so they will recruit terrorists to attack the west.

The logic is fundamentally flawed, obviously, but there are a couple of issues in particular that worry me.  I am sure that there are people out there (and I don’t think it’ll be one or two) who believe it.  But there’s also a few people out there who don’t seem to have noticed that this article was from TWO YEARS AGO.  so those people who are using this to show current ignorance to the story may also have missed the point somewhat.

My opinion on the NHS/Social Health Care issue is probably quite obvious to anyone who knows me.  I think the NHS is a fantastic organisation and the idea of free medical treatment for all is the only humane option for any caring nation.  To expect only those people rich enough or well enough insured to be the only people entitled to full health care is a monstrous and heartless concept.  Come on US, care for your citizens, sort out your social health care, and those people who want to feel superior can carry on using the private system.

  • Share/Bookmark
Posted in Politics, Twitter. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . Comments Off

FaceFeed #ffsalefail

12/08/2009 — efan78

This post has been updated from my mobile, I’ll prettify and tidy it up when I get to a real computer!

There are a lot of people talking about yesterday’s announcement that FriendFeed’s been bought by Facebook. Mashable, TechCrunch and the like are discussing the wider impact on social networking but I’d like to look at the personal effect that it has on me as a user.

I joined Facebook quite early for my group of friends and it was fun. I was able to get in touch. With people that I didn’t see much of and even catch up with people that I hadn’t seen in years. But then came the Facebook explosion, millions of people joining and with them came the “apps”. Oh God, the apps!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m an Android user – I love Apps and spend a good 15-20 minutes a day looking through the Android Market, but Facebook apps don’t add anything to my life, they’re mostly games/contests/pointless wastes of time. Now that’s great for people who want to spend their time online but I have a purpose when I use social media. I want to find out about the people I know and what’s important to them.

Twitter’s great for that and I usually dip in and out throughout the day. FriendFeed was great too, even though I only really checked it once a day I was able to get an overview of the things that people thought were important – I because I was following like-minded folk I usually agreed!

The dev team for FriendFeed were also really approachable, they listened to the community and based development on their vision linked with what the community wanted. Facebook on the other hand, don’t.

I was finally getting to grips with FriendFeed, working out how it fitted into the rest of my social network, and how it could improve my web use. The move by Facebook has led me to believe that we’ll shortly have an influx of ZombieNinjaMafiaVampireWerewolf Hunter Wars and Scrabbulous style games, and that doesn’t add anything to my experience that I can’t get elsewhere. (Don’t believe me? It’s already happened to twitter <L>)

Social networks take time to build and I’ve had to ask myself if I seriously want to throw myself into FriendFeed knowing Facebook’s track record.

And the simple answer is no.

  • Share/Bookmark
Posted in Uncategorized. Comments Off

Oh my god! Apple are teh gr8est!!!

10/08/2009 — efan78

So, Just Another iPhone Blog are getting all excited that Apple are (possibly) going to allow all those iPhone and iPod fanbois the chance to rearrange the order of their apps.

I mean, seriously, you may remember a few months ago that I asked “What’s so great about the iPhone?” and discussed the (then) rumours about what was going to be in the iPhone 3Gs.  And yet all those things came true, Apple added the some total of nothing, zero, zip and nada to the smartphone ecology.

And yet it seems that they have decided to carry on with that theme, adding nothing to mobile phone industry but taking everything.  I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised really, it’s what they did with the Mac OS (based on Linux but then slammed closed and hidden from prying eyes), as well as Safari (take the base from Mozilla and lock it up).  And yet, in the eighties and nineties Apple were at the forefront of the argument that Microsoft were unfair.  Now, granted – Microsoft don’t make the best products, far from it – but they are certainly much more open that Apple.

It should (hopefully) be well known by now that I’m an Android user.  I have a G1 because a) it was the only Android based phone available at the time and so the only fully open source OS available and b) it has a real life keyboard.  But when I hear the people I work with telling me how great their iPhones are it just narks me.  When they send an MMS or talk about using the phone as a dongle I just seethe.  Then there’s that wonderful addition of a 3MegaPixel camera and all the fantastic apps that can use the built-in compass.

And, should this rearranging thing come to fruition, they’ll probably show me how great their iPhone is.  Isn’t it fabulous that we can do all of these wonderful things, it must truly be the greatest phone in the world eva!  No-one has ever thought of these things – only Apple could implement it.

  • Share/Bookmark
Posted in Android. Comments Off

tr.im – the death of a URL Shortener

10/08/2009 — efan78

TrimI’ve been using tr.im for about 6 months now and have been a huge fan of the service.  It offered analytics as well as some of the shortest URLs in the field.

However, I just noticed over on Mashable that tr.im is discontinuing its service effective immediately.  This is of course shocking news and means that I will have to rearrange a number of my links.  In fact, I’ve used some of the trimmed URLs in blog posts – but I can’t remember which ones!

Thankfully, I recently downloaded PrettyLink for WordPress, so at least I’ll be able to shorten URLs for my blog, and twidroid allows links through a few different services so, although it’ll be annoying, it won’t completely cripple me just yet…

However what worries me that companies can fall so quickly.  I haven’t heard anyone speculating about the URL shortening business and yet, from the wording of tr.im’s announcement, it seems that it may be something that we need to be concerned about, and hope that the other services find a way to monetise this, especially in this twitter-centric web.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and get pretty linking…

Trim Shutdown

  • Share/Bookmark
Posted in Web Programmes. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment »

#Sunday7 Week 4

09/08/2009 — efan78

Sunday7Right, twitter’s fucked, it’s well known now and I seem to be hitting it just at the wrong time at the moment ‘cos I keep getting timed out whichever way I access it!  I am not a happy bunny!

But that doesn’t mean that I should scrap my #Sunday7 suggestions goddammit!  It just means that I’m stuck with leaving my suggestions here.  Grrr!!!!

Any hoo, here we go…

  1. I still say @karmadillo’s a bad influence after our #twibbon competition! But she’s worth following! #Sunday7 (And on a seperate note, sign up for your @BullyingUK Twibbon while you’re there!)
  2. Did you know that @edwardclarke is officially the best cook on twitter? TWO awards already! Showoff! #Sunday7
  3. Scathing wit, timely comebacks and a great guy (for a frenchman!) ;-P It must be @zefrog! #Sunday7
  4. Handbag house never died, it just became more cultish. With an L! Just ask @Yorksville when you follow her! #Sunday7
  5. He’s big, he’s new to twitter, and deserves a huge… Following! @BigNige1977 is well worth a #Sunday7 to break him in gently!
  6. He’s in Paris at the moment so he won’t get a big head if I suggest that you follow @anthonyjh as a #Sunday7. He’s a Mac too, bless ‘im!
  7. And my final #Sunday7 suggestion this week has to be @TheFuckingQueen, G’awd bless ‘er! Remember, Mam like ham not Ma’am like farm!

So, when twitter pull their finger out I’ll hopefully be able to get these actually posted up.  Grrr! >:-|

  • Share/Bookmark
Posted in Twitter. Tags: , , , , , . 1 Comment »

#Sunday7 Week 3

02/08/2009 — efan78

Sunday7I bet you all thought I’d forgotten to post them didn’t you?  But no, I named my #Sunday7 this morning!

Just in case you’re wondering what I’m wittering on about, I’ve been a bit overwhelmed with the whole #FollowFriday thing so I’ve decided to pick out one person each day throughout the week for whatever random reason and then let you all see them in all their glory on Sunday.  So, it’s like #FF but with restrictions – a bit like twitter!

You see, 7 people, 7 days, 7 tweets – it’s so easy even I can do it!

So here are my choices for this week for your delectation:

  1. Have you met @Fudgecrumpet yet? He’s plucking great! #Sunday7
  2. He seems to think #Barrowman’s a good thing, but I can’t hold it against him too much. @Gazebow #Sunday7
  3. Fight #chocolatediscrimination @edwardclarke is! #Sunday7
  4. She should be NHS Tzar, we’d have no more of the #swineflu panic! @EmmaRhoyds #Sunday7
  5. He’s not a car, the brum stands for Birmingham… @benjibrum’s my next #Sunday7
  6. She wrote Element of Risk and knows about the Bigg Market, I think that deserves a #Sunday7 shoutout for @authorchristine
  7. And finally, she gives me a warm fizzy feeling and is just my cup of tea! @FizzyDuck’s my final #Sunday7
  • Share/Bookmark
Posted in Twitter. Tags: , , , , . Comments Off

Letter to Starbucks

02/08/2009 — efan78

starbucksEvery morning when I get the bus into work I stop for a Starbucks, it’s a nice little treat to set me up for the day!  Now I know lots of people use their blogs for copying complaint letters to show the world their dissatisfaction so I’m taking a leaf out of their book:

But it’s not to complain!

I visit the Neville Street store in Newcastle and it’s a great little coffee shop.  Yes I know that Starbucks is over-priced for what it is but, to be honest, I don’t care.  The staff there are friendly, welcoming and always have a smile.  They can have a laugh and a joke and are genuinely interested in people.  So I had to send this letter to the Area Manager.

She hasn’t received it yet as it only got posted this morning – so you’re getting a preview!

So, if you’re visiting Newcastle and want somewhere to kill an hour or two, or you want to meet up with a couple of friends then just head down to the Central Station and pop in.

——————————————————————–

Here’s the letter:

Dear Starbucks Area Manager for Newcastle
I’m a regular customer of your Neville Street store and I really feel that I need to tell you about the fantastic job all of the staff do. Of all the stores in Newcastle this is the most welcoming, comfortable and relaxing.
In part this is down to the location, the open, windowed aspect of the store makes it seem spacious, although the fact that you haven’t crammed lots of seats in helps too! But I think the thing that really singles out Neville Street is the staff. I hope you know what stars you have working there!
I could wax lyrical about each and every one of them but I realise that you’re busy so I’d just like to single out Christine, Adam and Ali. These three in particular always have a smile and a cheery hello whether it be at 7am or 7pm, their knowledge of the products is fantastic and they (along with all the others) are the main reason that I come back time and again.
It’s great to see such fantastic teamwork and excellent customer service, and it’s exactly this that encourages loyalty, so I just wanted to let you know what a credit the team at Neville Street are to the whole of Starbucks.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and I’d like to wish you and the partners in Neville Street all the best.
Sincerely
Ethan
  • Share/Bookmark
Posted in Correspondence. Tags: , , , , , . Comments Off

#twibbon Competition – how many can you fit?

02/08/2009 — efan78

twibbon comp OK, some of you may be wondering what the hell I’m playing at with these #twibbons on my picture, well – it’s all @karmadillo’s fault – honest!  She started it!

Basically, we’re seeing how many #twibbons we can fit onto one image – This was where I stood  this morning, 5-4 to me.  However I’ve just spotted that she’s upped the ante – I need to get another three!  Three bloody #twibbons goddamit!! Aw, let’s just say bye-bye to my ugly behatted mug and be done with it!

——————————————————————————

Update:

twibbon comp 2

twibbon comp karmadilloOkie dokie, that’s currently 8-7 to me (although what the heck we look like I have no idea!?!) but there is a serious point to this post.  I found the twibbon site via @BullyingUK and, if you only get one twibbon to raise awareness make sure it’s theirs.

Bullying is an insiduous and awful way to treat another person and the work that BullyingUK does through outreach and their website bullying.co.uk is vital.  If you can just grab one of their #twibbons, either the big one you can see over my image (just!) or the little one in the corner of Sas’s then I’d be very grateful, truly!

Of course if you can pop them a little donation too that’d be swell!  Or, if you’re planning to do some online shopping head over to buy.at.bullying and they’ll get a donation from your favourite store!

—————————————————————————–

Update 2:

OK, ceasefire was called last night at 8 #twibbons each, but I’d just like to finish by saying, support @BullyingUK!!!!

(please!?)
  • Share/Bookmark
Posted in Twitter. Tags: , , , , . Comments Off

Switch to our mobile site