Design and Technology

An “experiment” which involved using homeless people as mobile wi-fi hotspots has attracted criticism, forcing the advertising agency behind it to defend itself.

A division of Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) equipped 13 homeless people with 4G mifi devices in Austin, Texas.

It suggested the public pay $2 (£1.30) for 15 minutes access to the net.

Comments posted to the BBH’s site accused the project of being “unseemly” and “wrong”.

Members of Twitter asked “what has this world come to?” and accused the project of being a “gimmick”.

CNN in Talks to Acquire Mashable, Sources Say
By BRIAN STELTER
AUSTIN, Tex. — CNN, a unit of Time Warner, and Mashable are in advanced talks that may lead to an acquisition of the social news Web site, three people with knowledge of the talks said.

Mashable, which specializes in stories about technology and social media, could bolster CNN.com, which is one of the most popular news Web sites in the United States. An acquisition of Mashable would make a statement about CNN’s interest in startups and social media.

As expected, Samsung appears to be designing around the German sales ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 by altering the device’s appearance, a parallel to the revised smartphone software it shipped in the Netherlands to avoid a sales ban due to Apple’s patents. MobiFlip spotted the redesigned Galaxy Tab 10.N (pictured above), and the device’s only difference — aside from a Bluetooth bump to 3.0 — is a frame that wraps around the left and right sides, slightly intruding onto the glass. Edge-to-edge glass is an important part of Apple’s European iPad design registration, so Samsung is likely targeting only that aspect of the appearance and leaving the remaining hardware untouched. We’ll see if the German court thinks these changes are enough and if Apple thinks it’s worth challenging this new version, but for now it looks like Samsung is pressing ahead — you’ll find the 10.1N available on Cyberport’s online store.

It’s almost here. As companies prepare to buy their domain names, the rest of us wait in anticipation to see the classic names that will start to appear.

Wrote on the BBC News’ website
“Companies and celebrities are being given the chance to protect their names from porn hijacking ahead of the launch of the .xxx web domain.

From today, brands can request to have their name blocked from use with the new suffix, which goes live next year.

Existing adult entertainment sites can also submit their application to reserve a spot on .xxx

Apple has AGAIN lost another prototype. Maybe its time for the Apple staff to stop drinking while they are working.

cnet news has reported that Apple has lost another prototype version of their latest phone, the iphone 5.

“San Francisco police confirmed yesterday that they “assisted” Apple internal security in a recent search of a home that was aimed at finding an unreleased iPhone owned by the company and lost in a San Francisco bar. On Wednesday, CNET was the first to report the search for the errant phone.
Apple has declined to identify the lost device. But when distributing its statement last night through a Word file, a police representative labeled the file “iphone5.doc,” according to the Reuters news service.”

This dumbing down of software isn’t new to Apple. If they are still going to charge business prices for their computers then they should expect that the people using them wont be people who have never used a computer before. They should keep this simpleness for the iphone and ipad and leave the macs for the designers and editors

Founders of popular file-sharing website The Pirate Bay are launching a new file-hosting service called BayFiles, reports TorrentFreak.

Copyright concerns

The founders say Bayfiles will also respect copyrights and will comply with legitimate requests to remove content.

The firm has even registered officers familiar with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that governs copyright abuse online, who will monitor potential complaints.

How long will it be until they, like many others before them, will start to ignore the ridicules, out of date, Copyright Laws? How easy is it really to do everything everything completely legally and still make enough money to run the site.

Facebook has already spent $40,000 (£25,000) in the first 21 days of their new program to find all of the security holes

Websites like Facebook that sit on the open Internet and offer a set of robust services don’t come together overnight. We hire the best and brightest, and have implemented numerous protocols, like our six-week intensive “boot-camp” and peer-reviewed code pushes, to ensure that only code that meets our rigorous standards is active on the site.
by Facebook chief security officer Joe Sullivan

Andrew Colby

We have been doing some work at andrewcolby.com updating the websites and re-arranging our sites. There are a few more projects added to our list, including Music Map. Music Map is a Stroud based website, design to bring people and music together in and around the west country of England. Music Map is going to be launched in Stroud at one of the Stroud Venues later this year.

There is nothing better than a fresh start. Feel free to add the rss feed to your site I will be updating this as often as I can.