Category: Internet
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Twitter Notifications
The other day I was seething about my inability to turn off a particular type of Twitter notification in the Twitter Android app. I’m talking about ones that say something like “@user1 and @user2 are talking about #subject” and urging me to join the conversation. My problem is that these just aren’t intelligent. If there…
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Muting Twitter
The other day I moaned about what I consider a shortcoming in the current Twitter Android app – the inability to turn off notifications that tell you that some people you follow are discussing something. I might be missing out! I should get on Twitter right now seems to be the idea. That could be…
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Twitter Notifications
[Note: I’m on the Twitter beta programme, so this may be a beta-only problem.] A recent update to the Twitter app (I’m using the Android version) has resulted in the most pointlessly annoying thing Twitter has done in a long time. Twitter is trying to be smart, and is pro-actively sending notifications to tell me…
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Migrating from Movable Type to WordPress
For a long time now, I’ve been very frustrated with the blogging platform I’ve used since I started properly blogging here back in 2002. At the time, Movable Type seemed to be the “go to” platform. And it was fine for many years. I’m in no way a web-developer but a lot of Googling meant…
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Comments Fixed… Perhaps
Just a note to say sorry to anyone who spent time commenting here and then saw their words disappear into a black hole claiming I’d be moderating. Something broke, and to be honest it’s all sticking plasters and Sellotape behind the scenes. Anyway, I think it’s working again. And I’ve put live what comments I’ve…
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Some First Thoughts on the New Flickr
A new look Flickr has been unveiled today (or last night). It seems to be part of Marissa Meyer’s attempt to make Yahoo more relevant. And of course Yahoo has also just paid an awful lot of money for Tumblr. Yahoo is a company without the letter “e”. What follows is based on some very…
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In Praise Of… What?
Here’s a curious thing. The Guardian has a regular “In Praise Of…” column on its leader page where rather than just moaning about things, it’ll sometimes, well, praise something. It’s quite a refreshing change to read something positive in that part of the paper. Last night, I saw the column above published online, and while…
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Google Keep – Here To Stay?
It’s been really interesting to read the response to Google’s new product launch this week – Google Keep, a multi-platform note taking application. Most of the discussion seems to have been less about how good the product is, and more about whether it’s worth getting too reliant on it in case Google, down the line,…
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Gmail’s Worst Feature
The more I see it, the more I hate and loathe Gmail’s utterly awful and relatively recent innovation, its “Consider including” functionality. It pops into a space under the “To” box when I add an address to an email. I think Google think it’s useful in some way. It’s not. Here’s the thing: when I…
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Two Screen TV
At the end of Sherlock on Sunday I picked up my phone and pulled up Twitter to see what everyone had been saying about it. Since I’d watched it live, there was a lot of #sherlock activity. Amongst people I follow it was very popular. That’s not surprising – it’s excellent! But then I started…
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Ridding Social Media of Pointlessness in 2012
In the last few days, we’ve seen a couple of storms in teacups. There was the BBC’s “Faces of 2011 – the women” (or “pandagate”), and then yet another Jeremy Clarkson faux pas. In the former, widely picked up on by social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and quickly followed up on by newspapers, we…
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Google Reader
I’ve been shut away at the Radio Festival for the last few days (more about that soon), and since I was largely using a tablet computer there, I hadn’t yet properly used the new “improved” Google Reader until today. I’m late to the party, although it seems that basically nobody who actually uses Google Reader,…
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Cookie Deletion
I do wonder sometimes whether or not digital media industry is desperately trying to cause more problems to itself than is absolutely necessary. Take cookies. Cookies are clearly very useful. They serve many purposes for many websites, as well as advertising networks and so on. They can be very powerful. And users find them useful…