Category: Internet
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Transitioning from Evernote to OneNote
I feel a little bad about this, but I’ve decided to close down my Evernote account and move across to OneNote. The main reason is that it feels like OneNote gets a bit more love and support. EverNote is fine as far as it goes, but it hasn’t really moved on much, with newer features…
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NAS Upgrading Fun
I’m documenting this, just in case there’s someone out there for whom it’s useful. I had two NAS drives, both made by Synology. I have a DS210j that I bought back in 2010. It had a pair of 2TB drives in it with a mirror RAID array, and perhaps the most important thing stored on…
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Undercover Advertising
In the UK, we have some really tight restriction on what and how we are able to advertise. Ofcom has a Broadcasting Code. The Advertising Standards Authority has both Broadcast and Non-Broadcast Codes. Beyond these, there are EU wide codes, and industry codes. But frankly, the internet still appears to be the wild west. Panorama…
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Great Sadness
This week, the Paweł Pawlikowski film, Cold War, was released on home video. I missed this in the cinema, even though I found the film’s trailer utterly entrancing. So I thought I would treat myself to a Blu Ray copy of the film. Earlier in the week I actually saw an advertisement for the film in…
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HMV
A few thoughts on the new difficulties faced by HMV. In part this is response to some utter nonsense I’ve read online, and some of the news reports surrounding HMV heading into administration for the second time in five years. There are undoubtedly structural problems with how music is sold in 2019, but I think there are multiple…
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Is Bandersnatch the Future of Television?
No. No, it’s not. Bandersnatch is the recently released episode of Black Mirror from Charlie Brooker available on Netflix. It takes the form of a choose your own adventure book/game and I loved it! In many respects, this episode ticked just about every box for me. It was set in the eighties, in and around writing…
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Things I Hate on News Sites
I’m something of a news junkie, and I spend a lot of time reading stories on a reasonably wide range of news sites. I pay for a number of those sites, but appreciate that advertising revenues alone aren’t enough to support any sites – with the possible exception of the very largest. But there are…
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GDPR
No, I am not asking you to re-sign up to my website. You’re OK. But if you’re based in the EU like me, then you’ve probably been swamped with direct emails from businesses asking if I can confirm that I’m happy to continue to receive their missives. This Friday, GDPR comes into effect and appears…
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The Redundancy of Imploring Me To Change Things
I regularly receive emails of the following type: Hi, My name is XXXX and I’m writing to you on behalf of YYYY. We have noticed that you wrote about on your page . We have a new that would be helpful to your readers. We think you’re doing a wonderful job and everything you publish…
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Netflix, Independent Cinema, and Hollywood’s New Business Model
The other day The Ringer published a piece about Netflix and their original movie strategy. The piece, entitled Netflix and Shrill listed the original movies that Netflix has already released in 2018 and challenged readers to see how many they recognised. For most people, the most familiar title will have been The Cloverfield Paradox. This…
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Gaming Google
It’s widely understood that news organisations can find the going quite precarious in this digital age, with a reluctance on the part of consumers to pay for news, and advertising alone not bringing in enough revenues. So it’s perhaps not surprising that they should look at whatever advantages they can take, and some of these…
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Facebook Pixel Tracking
This morning Nieman Lab had a really good piece asking whether if there was a certain amount of hypocrisy coming from certain news organisations castigating Facebook for leaking data, when at the same time they’re helping Facebook collect more data on you. Recall yesterday, when I said that some of Facebook’s data was missing from…
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Is Netflix Quite As Smart As Everyone Says It Is?
That’s possibly a provocative title, but I’ve come to the conclusions that while Netflix is very good at some things, I’m not certain that its recommendation engine is entirely as linked up as you’d think it’d be. A couple of recent cases in point. I was really looking forward to the new Alex Garland film,…