The BillBlog

[Read an edited version of this on the BBC News online, as ever]
About two weeks ago I started getting a lot of bounced emails. Most of them were notifications from the ‘postmaster’ somewhere that my email could not be delivered because the recipient didn’t exist, but quite a lot were from spam filters to tell me that I’d sent messages that they weren’t willing to accept.

It seems I’ve been pushing stocks in dodgy companies, offering pharmaceuticals without prescription and even sending virus-laden images to unwitting users.

Continue reading “I’m tired of spam”

[You can also read this on the BBC News site, as usual]

Earlier this month the Association of Indepedent Music had one of those roundtable debates that industry bodies are so fond of.

As well as the independents there were people from the Musician’s Union, the Music Managers Forum and the MCPS-PRS, who license the use of music on behalf of songwriters, composers and music publishers.  All in all they claimed to represent some 85,000 UK music companies and individuals, though obviously they couldn’t all fit in a room at once. Continue reading “New rights? Old tactics..”

Also on the BBC News website, as usual]
The latest Google service, Checkout, launched at the end of June and within a week had been banned by eBay on the grounds that Google does not have a “substantial historical track record of providing safe and reliable financial and/or banking related services.” Continue reading “Online payment”

Taken from the roof of the arts picturehouse, this shows the sidewall of the new Robert Sayle department store – except they are going to call it John Lewis when it opens in 2008… we must stop this!

[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website]

Every time you send an email it passes through a series of computers on its way to the intended destination. Most of them are owned and managed by internet service providers, although if you use webmail from Yahoo!, Google or Microsoft then it may take a different route.

Continue reading “Who is reading your email?”

On July 14 the Arts Picturehouse has a live Q&A with US photographer and director Bruce Weber as part of the Cambridge Film Festival. I’m doing a daily podcast for them, but also helping out with other technotrickery including the linkup.

A year ago this would have meant something like a satellite dish on the roof, or at least some dedicated equipment. Now it means by Powerbook G4, iChat AV and a consumer-quality camera at our end, a nice MacBook and a proper camera at their end, and the Net in the middle. We have the advantage of a serious display, of course – the Cine2K digital projector – but even so, it’s frightening.

Of course, we’ll see if it works on the night – I have a phone line and a still picture of Bruce as a backup!

[Read this on the BBC News website too]

As I write this a message has just arrived in my email Inbox. That brings the total up to 6,559, though if it wasn’t for the junk mail filter it would top seven thousand.

It’s an absurd situation, especially since a year ago I would ruthlessly prune my email if there were over two hundred messages sitting there.

But a year ago I was using Microsoft Outlook on a Windows PC.

Continue reading “To tag or not to tag”