What’s wrong with our values now?

11.05.2011/12.38

Alistair Kwun always ﬁnds great articles on personal identity. The latest is from Wesley Yang in New York, discussing the Asian-American experience, and why, despite having such good grades at school, are there so few Asian-American leaders in the US? (Incidentally, this is a strange term: what do Americans call non-oriental Asians?) I applaud […]

Google Ads Preferences Manager issue conﬁrmed by NAI

05.05.2011/00.38

I’ve now had conﬁrmation from the Network Advertising Initiative that Google has, indeed, been dodgy about its Ads Preferences Manager. Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We were able to reproduce the issues you saw and have been working with Google for the last week to address them. I am happy […]

One year on, the same issues remain pressing

23.04.2011/00.13

In 2011, the issues that I spoke about during my campaign remain as pressing as they always did. We still need better, wider and earlier consultation, whether we streamline current processes or create new ones for citizen engagement. We still need to build a city-wide wiﬁ network, one which exists but needs a […]

Facebook resets email preferences, after it removes gay photo as ‘abusive’

20.04.2011/00.31

Not only does Google Ads Preferences Manager reset on a regular basis and bugger what your preferences are, Facebook has today reset (at least for myself and one other friend) email settings. ‘Set emails to spam.’ Why Facebook does this regularly, I have no idea—but this is relatively minor compared to their removal of […]

It’s about content, especially when reality is more appealing than reality TV

10.04.2011/01.55

It’s shows like The Apprentice that have kept me away from watching TV. I was surprised to learn, in conversation last week, that TV viewership is up, while print is down. Shows you can’t base too much of what the general public does on your own experience. I estimate my magazine and book […]

The new Honda goes at over 400 mph

07.04.2011/01.01

I have to hand it to Honda. The next new model from the Japanese ﬁrm is faster than the NSX and its old Formula 1 cars. It goes at Mach 0·72. The simpliﬁed version of Honda’s history goes something like this. Once upon a time, Mr Honda wanted to make cars. He wasn’t […]

Zeiger confronts the U-bahn ads

03.04.2011/06.35

A while back, in Desktop, I wrote about subvertising. This video, found via Rock Rodgers’ Tumblr, destroys the ads altogether, by means of a mirrored contraption that turns the projected images from a Berlin U-bahn station into rather nice art. Of course it isn’t legal, but one has to hand it to these chaps […]

Someone’s doing something right inside Google

01.04.2011/23.45

The troubles with Google that I’ve faced—privacy breaches, Ads Preferences Manager not honouring its claims, ﬁghting for six months on behalf of a friend over a deleted Blogger blog, Chrome being buggy (but not nearly as badly as IE9), phantom entries in my Google dashboard, unanswered messages—would suggest, to anyone studying business or a graduate […]

Cortina, outdoors

31.03.2011/03.46

I was peering through Ford’s archive as it celebrates 100 years in Great Britain. This brought back a few memories: the Araldite glue campaign. Right next to it is an outdoor ad for the 1982 Cortina—Taunus 80 to those outside the Empah. The Araldite ad showed how commonplace the Cortina had become. And back […]

LOL, Wag, ﬂat white added to Oxford English Dictionary

25.03.2011/12.22

A few new words and meanings—45,437 to be exact—have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, report the mainstream media. LOL is one, which I have always taken to mean little old lady, and have almost always used it in that context. Turns out that that was what the acronym originally stood for, […]