My wife mocks me for watching SWAT. Sadly with some justification. It is kind of silly. The main character is supposed to be a heart-throb but – I dunno – I don’t quite see it.

If you’ve not seen it, it’s a police procedural set in the SWAT team of the LAPD. In each episode there’s some disaster or crime that’s being committed that needs the efforts of our heros to resolve. Standard stuff.

I found this while (mis)typing the caption to yesterdays photo competition. Is it any wonder that those meerkats have to keep telling the world about their website to avoid confusion with a comparison shopping site? Even the Mac’s spell checker gets it wrong.

• Happy 40th birthday, Intel 4004! – In a way this stated the whole microcomputer… I hate to say “revolution” but I can’t think of a better word.
• How the BBC’s HD DRM plot was kept secret … and why – Your licence money going to benefit rights holders at your expense…
• The Real Cost of Patent Trolls – “They conclude that the loss of billions of dollars of wealth associated with these lawsuits harm society and state.”

• Broadcast television is 75 years old today – “On 2 November 1936, the BBC began filling the airwaves, broadcasting from its Alexandra Palace facility in North London.”
• Broadcast television is 75 years old today – “On 2 November 1936, the BBC began filling the airwaves, broadcasting from its Alexandra Palace facility in North London.”
• A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs – Worth reading even if you’ve read all the other Jobs obituaries.

• The Mac App Store: It’s an honor thing – “Apple’s approach is simple. It’s an honor thing. The company believes that, given the choice, people will do the right thing. It also understands that anti-piracy techniques don’t stop pirates, but they do get in the way of honest users.”
• Nokia’s 15-year tango to avoid Microsoft – “[PC manufacturers] found it wasn’t worth the effort to differentiate their PCs from the competition, in what had become a commodity business.” The reason’s behind Nokia’s original decision not to licence code from Microsoft in the nineties hasn’t really changed, which makes today a sad day.
• Doctor Who Infographic – Everything you ever wanted to know about Dr Who but were too afraid to ask…

• iPad App Pricing – Nice analysis of iPad and iPhone application pricing.
• The Value of Ideas – “Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything.” Or actions speak louder than words.
• The IBM Muppet Show – “IBM. The Muppets. Two venerable institutions-but not ones we tend to associate with each other. Yet in the late 1960s, before most people had ever seen a computer in person or could identify a Muppet on sight, the two teamed up when IBM contracted with Jim Henson for a series of short films designed to help its sales staff.”

• May 25, 2001: Towel Day Honors Hitchhiker Author Adams – Do you have your towel with you today?
• Twenty Years Later, Remembering Jim Henson – Still funny…
• Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull – May 1st and 2nd, 2010 – “I wish I had more time… but the weather wouldn’t co-operate. Typical Iceland.” Really nice time-lapse photography taken in Iceland.

• Rejoice this day! – My sentiments exactly!
• Lost labels for your DHARMA Initiative needs – This is great. I think I’m going to have to re-label everything in the cupboard at home!
• It must have been a slow news day at ZDNet – These arguments against iPhone development come up all the time on places like StackOverflow. This is a great explanation of why they mostly make no sense.

• A Sense of Entitlement: Tweetie 2 – I think Apple needs to do more here — to allow for paid upgrades — but I also congratulate the author of Tweetie for having the nerve to charge for a significant update. He’ll come across a lot of resistance but it’s absolutely the right thing to do and it, potentially, paves the way for smaller developers to do the same thing.
• Peep Show ‘won’t change’ for anyone – Looking forward to this. Slightly worried that it might overstay its welcome — how can you top eating a family pet in terms of gross out? — but then I thought that for the last couple of series too…
• Fail Yet Succeed? – Nice discussion of the kind of things that all software projects go through. Really this is about half of my job!

In stark contrast to pretty much everything else, Time Lords in the US are clearly smaller than their British equivalent.