Musings from Bill
[As usual, you can also read this on BBC News online]
The five of us bounced out of the restaurant at around ten, after a great meal, some beers and the usual arguments about preferred programming languages, the future of free and open source software and the merits of Terry Pratchett’s later works.
It was a warm night so we crossed the street to get something to cool us down – not ice cream, but the best kulfi in the Defence Colony, one of the hippest areas in downtown New Delhi.
One of the more unexpected things I found on my first trip to the sub-continent… thanks to Lisa for taking the pic.
If you need some hardware, this is the place to go…
If you have a MasterCard-issued credit card then you may be hearing from your bank in the next few days.
The credit card company has revealed that that a potential security breach at a UK retailer means that cardholder details may have been leaked. MasterCard has told banks that issue their cards to take what they call ‘necessary steps to protect cardholders’, which may include reissuing cards with new numbers.
[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website too]
The range of new web-based services on offer is vast and growing.
Inspired by the early success of innovators like the Flickr photo-sharing site and Google Maps, and funded by venture capitalists who seem to have recovered from the trauma of the dotcom crash, we’re seeing site launches daily, many of them documented on the delightfully upbeat Techcrunch blog.
[As ever, you can also read this on the BBC News website]
Convergence is in the air again, but this time the focus is not on multi-media phones or bizarre combinations of functions like pacemakers with integrated MP3 players and DAB radios.
The real interest at the moment is convergence at the service delivery end, following ntl’s purchase of Virgin Mobile last week and Sky’s earlier acquisition of internet service provider Easynet.
Continue reading “Fourplay”
[You can also read this on the BBC News website]
Back in 1976, the Sex Pistols were playing their first gigs, and Joe Strummer went off to form The Clash after playing support to them.
At the same time, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne set up a company to sell the Apple I computers they were building by hand in a garage.
Earlier this week the director of the BBC’s new media division spent a happy few days in Las Vegas.
As far as we know Ashley Highfield wasn’t trying to increase his budget for the soon to be launched myBBCplayer with some judicious bets at the roulette tables.He was there with representatives from Amazon, eBay and Myspace for Mix06, Microsoft’s massive new media conference.
Earlier this week the Westminster eForum held a discussion on digital rights management at which Derek Wyatt MP made some interesting proposals about getting the British Library to lead the debate on how copy protection and rights management should be regulated and managed.
A word of explanation: the old machine that I called ‘bill’ and which lived with my friends at Verity Networks died a couple of weeks ago, so I’ve taken the opportunity to move my virtual home to a Linux installation hosted by Bytemark. You’re here now.
I’ve got a backup of the WordPress database from ‘bill’ but haven’t had time to get it transferred and uploaded – that will happen this coming wekend. And I’ll try to make sure that old URLs work and all comments are in place.
‘bill.verity-networks.com’ will point here and remain accessible, but it will more correctly be ‘www.thebillblog.com’.
That’s about it..
