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According to a number of articles, 02 and Apple are in final discussions about the iPhone and how they will distribute it within the European Union. So far we still have to wait until December of this year to get it in Europe. I don’t think I want to own this particular phone because the one I have now has almost all these functionalities to start with. I also like having a qwerty keyboard for ease of typing whilst on the move, unlike the iPhone. The browser is probably the strongest feature of the iPhone but this is irrelevant for most websites. Both Google and Facebook, two of the only websites I’m interested in using on the move have created useful interfaces for those on the move. in the case of Gmail, it’s the interface that allows you to check and send e-mail within their own java applet which is installed on your phone. In the case of Facebook, their strength is in giving you just the features you want, i.e. what your friends are doing, the latest news, and more. It’s great to get some quick information whilst unable to go online. I want to try out the iPhone and see how great and easy it is to use. Apple loves making software that is simple to use, without submenus as you find with windows mobile so for newbies it’s better. In a few months, I may get to see the iPhone in person and see how good it is…. unless I fly to the US or go to one of the EU Macworld.

My latest trip of the day has been a walk from Picadilly Circus after dropping by the bank before going along the bank and getting to Bermondsey. It’s a nice walk and luckily I didn’t have too many people to avoid. As I walked by Greenpark it started to drizzle a little but it didn’t do much so I continued my root. I got towards the Parliament Tesco, bought two cokes, and continued on my journey. The usual sights were there but the street performers lacked an audience. The classical musicians under one arch had no audience. Practice I suppose. The interesting part of the walk is between Tower bridge and Bermondsey because you pass by the Thames walk and it feels less public. You see a small bridge which I think can be raised and upon this bridge a group of friends being photographed by a self-timed camera. I waited for the picture was taken before continuing on my journey. It’s not a bad part of London from what I glimpsed briefly. The sardine express tube carriages were full due to a security alert encouraging delays on the line. I was in no rush so I sat down and watched as train after train filled with people passed. After a while, I got tired of waiting and caught the tube to Green Park and walked a little further. I passed by Covent Garden where Charlie Chaplin the second was performing, getting a child to throw him coloured plastic bricks. I didn’t stay for the rest of the trick. The time I took was useful because by the time I went back down to the tube it was empty once more and I could return home in relative comfort. I’m tired now, and my laptop is apparently in Eindhoven in Holland waiting to be transferred to Switzerland. On the 6th I should have another status report. I really want it now, want to play with DVD studio pro and make a good quality DVD.

If that’s true then my MBP is waiting for me in Switzerland but I’m stuck in London for another week before i can go back and get it. Tonight I’ll find out whether a note was left by the delivery company and soon I’ll start up the computer for the first time. I’m looking forward to that. Once it’s home it’s home and the suspense is no longer there.

On Saturday morning at around 2am part of the university was affected by fires, apparently from gas cannisters. I haven’t visited the location since hearing the news. There have been two fires. One early on Saturday and the second on Sunday. Both these fires were affecting the J block, journalism block. The cause is not revealed yet but there is this message on the uni website: The areas affected at the Campus are the undergraduate and school offices, art and design studios, video edit and photo facilities, photo science labs, ceramics studios and workshops, the fashion area, the newsroom, animation, graphic information design, music and informatics and illustration. I’m hoping that the damage is not too bad. I hope that no final year student work yet to be assessed has been damaged and that none of the equipment has been damaged. [more](Finished studying at this uni a little over a month ago and twice hit by fire. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6259814.stm) info

There is an individual from Wembley who wants to sue google for search results apparently defaming him. The content was posted by anonymous sources and due to this fact, it is time-consuming to find who was the source of these allegations. There is a problem with the complaint. The worldwide web generates several hundreds of thousands of words a day in a multitude of languages and anyone can read the articles. It is malleable and ever-changing. If your reputation is put into question on the world wide web there is only one thing you can do. Write a response on your own website to demonstrate that these allegations are false. If you’re going to attempt to sue a search engine for making search results visible then that is going against what the world wide web, i.e. the free flow of information. When an anonymous source prints something that is incorrect then it is up to the reader of the source to evaluate whether he will take this source seriously or not. It is up to the user to take this content and look in a number of trusted resources to form a proper opinion. Can you imagine the millions of hours it would take to investigate and verify all the content on the web? It’d make the world wide web far slower and less responsive to news and information. One of the great things about the world wide web is that it encourages people to do research from the comfort of their own home. If you want to buy a new laptop you can find information easily from a number of sources, the same as with travel destinations and more. When someone writes something then the creator of the content, rather than the search engine, should be held accountable for the content they make available, not the search engine. If you want to control what search engines link to then you are slowing down the world wide web and you are hindering its progression. What makes the world wide web so powerful is it’s size. It is dealt with on a daily basis by millions of people, some being experts and others being more impulsive. What this means is that content on the world wide web should not work you up so far as to attempt to sue a company. He’s got increased visibility, by writing something negative more people find out about the company. As they find out about the company they may be more interested in what the company has to say. If it does not address the issue then it is missing a PR opportunity. It seems rather stupid to sue Google for something like this.

Today is a great day for a number of reasons. The first of these is that I woke up early, which means I slept enough. The second of these is that I dropped into university and was sad to see all those empty bedrooms, which shows there are some good memories from halls. The key to today was getting my dissertation grade. That’s the reason I dropped by the uni. Tired of the anxiety and worry of grade results I heard from a friend that the results were there. I went and checked my grade and in the process saw quite a few others. One friend I traveled with got a 70 so I’m really happy for him, this being the top grade out of those I looked at. I found that I was in agreement with the feedback I got, mainly that I should have concentrated more on the socio-economic side. Part of the reason I didn’t was that it was hard to find data on this topic. If I did the exercise again I would work harder on doing better. Another good piece of news is the following. My MacBook Pro and the software I ordered have been shipped and they should arrive around the 11th of June. I’m really happy and looking forward to this. It means I have a new toy professional tool to play study with. I dropped by the apple store and took advantage of the wifi at the apple store for a few instants and did the geek thing, watching a mediocre presentation of Imovie. I think I’ll try to get to one or two more advanced shows, see what secrets I can pick up in the process.

Today I’ve spent time looking at the website earnings and I’ve seen that with just a few minutes of work I’ve doubled the earnings from my website. I’m not going into the details at the moment but since I seem to be doing nothing productive I’m going to re-work my website to increase my earnings. Four hundred and sixty visitors passthrough this website with about a million six hundred hits of which most visitors, through search engines get straight to the page they want. What I need to do over the next few days is making sure that there is advertising on most of the pages. in so doing I increase the opportunity for people to click through and find more relevant content on someone else’s web page. I need to write more articles, rather than blog posts. Blog posts are a lazy method of web mastering because they require no real effort. Find an idea, write about it, post it. At least when you create a page you think about the content. I’ll start by writing a section about a variety of podcasts I’ve enjoyed over the past two years and hope that what I write will be appreciated by others. Through this process I will be targeting a specific audience, trying to create relevant content and as a result get more visitors. When working on the Roman section of this website I ran out of knowledge, therefore, the speed at which I added content plummeted. There is one page that I’m proud of from the time. It’s the one on Slavery. I spent several hours doing research, writing notes, and then uploading this page to the website. As a result of the quality of content universities and a number of other reputable websites linked to my own. That’s what I plan to do with the new sections I will add on podcasts I enjoy listening to and why. It’s going to take a few days to generate this new section but since I’m between studies and work it’s one way of attempting to get a small secondary income. We’ll see how it goes.

It would seem that this will be the summer of barbecues because of the amount of meat leftover from last night. With a friend, we went over to France and bought four kilos of meat, a nice little quantity. Too much for two friends to eat in one sitting but that’s what happened last night. Out of curiosity I wanted to see whether a Facebook invite to a barbecue would be enough, in Switzerland to have a party and it appears it wasn’t. As a result of this, I have a kilo of sausages and a kilo of chicken leftover to enjoy but there’s no way I’m going to get through that in one sitting so I’m going to have a series of barbecues over the next two or three days.

Since I finished my dissertation my biggest time sink has been listening to podcasts. For some reason, I download the entire series of podcasts and work through them one at a time until there are no more. It’s a way of relaxing. It’s also a way of getting information quite easily. In London, I hardly ever leave home without the iPod whilst in Switzerland due to my driving I can’t listen to podcasts when traveling by car. When it’s on foot however I can. I found a loop that I do that’s about an hour’s walk and if I chose to I can make that loop last a shorter or longer amount of time depending on which paths through the fields I’ve chosen. Over the past few walks, the rain started falling onto me but it was warm enough and the rain so weak so as not to inconvenience me. During this podcast listening, I’ve learned a lot about technology and the opinions of a team of people. I’ve seen the evolution in attitude between various podcasters. We see the evolution from being fairly new at certain podcast programs to being quite weathered in by the entire process. As a result, the content is more relaxed and feels more familiar. It’s more familiar to me as well. I know these individuals now, as they’ve talked over time. It’s not quite as remote anymore. As I listen to podcasts I’ve started to think that they’re not that innovative. They’re doing what radio did years ago but rather than concentrate on music and other such topics they concentrate on technology and those behind the scenes. In so doing there’s been a shift from a celebrity culture of films and music to one of the bloggers, web developers, and more. We’re in a time when being online is so easy and so normal that everyone is there. Within the past 8 months, Facebook has gone from having two or three of my friends there to over 200. That’s quite a big shift, quite a change. The online world is no longer the realm of the geek. In fact, it would seem that being online is no longer a geeky pastime. I was also thinking about how social networking websites have become the new portals. Remember yahoo, Altavista and others attempting to become portals, the starting point for most people’s web experiences. Now Facebook, at least within my real-life circle of friends, seems to be the most important. Everyone seems to be there now, or almost. How long will Facebook remain popular?

Internet addiction and e-mail addiction should have gone the way of the polaroid years ago. Why are there several news sources claiming that people are addicted to e-mail? That’s like claiming that people are addicted to toilet paper or using a pen when writing on paper. It’s a question of practicality and it’s already an out of date claim. Who still writes e-mails when you can send a pm, write on someone’s wall or send out bulletins. Most of those reading this post will understand what I mean. When’s the last time you sent an e-mail? Hotmail has been replaced by Facebook and myspace. Why would you use old fashioned technology like e-mail when Facebook and myspace are more practical. There’s no spam, there’s no spending twenty minutes looking for the names and addresses. It’s a pointless article that demonstrates a lack of understanding of the new online communication channels. There are so many to be used, whether for photo, audio, video, or other. As an afterthought, it’s a bunch of statisticians having fun with numbers. Why don’t they do polls like the one I did, why don’t they give some theory behind the article? I haven’t even read the article, skimming was enough for my prejudice for such an article to form. Get the early adopters to write and explain the relevance of such statements, not the computer illiterate. I want the skills I have learned through my media tech and society module to be used. “Science sans conscience n’est que ruine de l’ame” or in this context, “stats without analysis are no more than a waste of time”. ;)