• The Best of Technology Writing 2007 – I just finished reading this book myself yesterday. I was considering writing a review but Ars got there first and said it better than I would have done!
• Protests in Tibet erupt into violence – Violence is never a good thing, but the Olympics is undoubtedly a good time to try to raise the profile of the plight of the Tibetan people.
• Open Rights Group questions Phorm – Good to see TalkTalk, BT and Virgin Media’s abuse of their own customers getting more press.

• Dear ISP, I am not a target market – “Some things should just not be for sale, no matter what assurances are on offer or who they come from. Regardless of how the data is acquired and processed, and despite the powerful ISP friends Phorm has made since the PeopleOnPage days, spyware is spywa
• Happy now, bitches? – A fair and balanced analysis of yesterdays announcement of the iPhone software developer kit and “enterprise” functionality.
• Polls say 88% want EU referendum – About a year ago the Daily Mail (I think) published a poll saying pretty much the same thing. But they also asked “Do you understand the Libson treaty?” and about the same percentage of people said “No.” (Can anyone find a link?) Is democracy best served

One of the big technology debates in the US goes by the thrilling title of “Net Neutrality.” In the UK we seem to have skipped this part of the debate and moved on to the next, all without many consumers even knowing that anything has changed. As we’ll see, this does not work out well for many end-users and exposes hypocrisy and dishonesty on the part of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

• Why the Kibibyte is freaking me out – From the “well you learn something new every day” category. Apparently a kilobytes probably isn’t what you think it is…
• Earthquake hits much of England – We actually felt this here in London, although in my half-asleep, half-awake doze I wasn’t entirely sure whether it was real or a dream!
• Danish wind turbine eats itself – To all those that said that wind power was safe…

• eBayer invites buyers to rip him off – It does seem that eBay has become a victim of its own success. Having said that, some of the ways that they’re trying to tackle fraudulent users are clearly bonkers.
• Japan MPs moot halt to executions – Hopefully this will move from “moot” to law, and then from temporary to permanent.
• Designing What’s Right for Consumers – Is it really so hard to design consumer electronics? The manufacturers say it is. Everyone else seems to disagree.
• WordPress 2.3.3 – I’ve upgraded to the current version of WordPress. As ever, if you spot anything amiss please let me know!

• Afghan Student Sentenced to Death After Downloading Report – Good to see that the invasion of Afghanistan has resulted in more freedom for the locals…
• Forget passports – teachers and kids are the new ID card targets – Despite the loss of personal data and despite the fact that they will not (and cannot) do what the Government says they will, the ID Card scheme is still not completely dead.
• The True Cost of SMS Messages – “How come technology, communication, and infrastructure is getting cheaper while the costs of SMS messages are increasing exponentially? My theory: SMS messages are transfered over air made of solid gold.”

• Fifty years of LEGO – Best. Toy. Ever. And still going strong.
• Polish IT worker calculates exact speed of snail mail – Apparently snail mail is actually slower than a snail.
• For those who thought that the MacBook Air had no use… – It’s odd that Steve Jobs didn’t mention any of these uses though.

• Behind bars – Looks like another fascinating documentary by Louis Theroux.
• Music lessons – Why the music industry as it’s currently structured is dying.
• “You Don’t Understand Our Audience” – The whole spiel by Justin Long in Die Hard 4.0 about the media cynically manipulating audiences is much closer to the truth than most people would like to admit…

• Banking disaster man honored by the Queen – The man who lost the personal data of 25mm people is rewarded with a CBE. Does that make any kind of sense? Anywhere other than the civil service he’d lose his job!
• Paris and Berlin ban cafe smoking – Definite progress. Does the reference to Nazi policies in Germany prove that Godwins Law (“As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”) also applies to the real world?
• The Electric Car Conspiracy … that never was – Interesting film. Given the spread of Smart cars here I have to think that there would be consumer demand for electric cars, which only leaves the conspiracy…

And welcome to the new look ZX81.org.uk! This time I decided to go “back to basics” with a relatively simple, low-graphics theme. Having said that, it’s not quite as basic as things were back in late 1999 when the site first went live¹. It’s less fussy than the old version and should load more quickly for those people not yet on broadband.

The boring details are: I’m using a slightly modified version of Dagon Design’s NightSky theme for WordPress. Other than a fairly extensive set of plugins, changes were to bring the theme in line for tags and to allow a daringfireball-style “linked list” rather than the rather more static del.ic.io.us list I had previously.