I’m attending a conference on social networking jointly organised by the Oxford Internet Institute and OFCOM. It’s being held in OFCOM’s splendid Thameside offices, which has a wireless network for guests. But guess what? It’s only accessible by people using Internet Explorer. So it’s closed to — for example — Firefox users.

What, you ask, does OFCOM stand for? Answer: it’s the ‘Office of Communications’.

Thank goodness for 3G modems.

Update: There’s someone here from Microsoft Research and he can’t get in — even with IE!

Quentin sent a mysterious Tweet yesterday. Now all is explained…

Take today, for example. I drove out to a nearby village, had a pleasant lunch with my wife and mother-in-law, and then, a little later in the afternoon, a lion peed on me.

This is not something that I would normally expect on a quiet Sunday afternoon, but life would probably be very dull if it didn’t happen from time to time.

He was, I admit, the other side of a fence. We looked each other in the eye, we both purred some suitable greetings, and we seemed to be getting on rather well. But then, as he turned to go, he lifted his tail, and his range and aim were good. I turned fast, but not quite fast enough to stop a little from going down my neck.

I shall continue to assert that he intended this as a mark of great friendship and respect…

Hmmm….

From The Register. The couple’s name is too good to be true, is it not? But the date on the piece is not April 1. Anyway, here goes:

A Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania couple has sued Google for invasion of privacy, accusing the world’s largest search engine of photographing their swimming pool and posting it to the web.

Aaron and Christine Boring claim that in offering 360-degree panoramic pics of their private residence via Google Street View, the web giant has “caused them mental suffering and diminished the value of their property.”

According to their suit – turned up by The Smoking Gun – the Borings purchased their Pittsburgh home in 2006 for “a considerable sum of money,” and “a major component of their purchase decision was a desire for privacy”. So they were annoyed when pan-and-zoom-able pics of the home, including its swimming pool, turned up on Street View.

These pics were acquired, the suit says, when a Google vehicle appeared on their private road without a privacy waiver or other authorization. Claiming this private road is marked with a “Private Road” sign, the suit calls Google’s behavior “an intentional and/or grossly reckless invasion of…seclusion.” The Borings’ lawyer calls it “outlandish.”

Hooray! The proof copy of Jonathan Zittrain’s book has arrived. I’m reviewing it for Management Today. So that’s the weekend taken care of, then.

Devotees of P.G. Wodehouse will know that whenever a gifted chef ups and leaves there will be hell to pay. Remember what happened when Anatole threatened to leave the employ of Bertie Wooster’s aunt Dahlia?

Well, guess what? Food Gal is reporting that Google’s Executive Chef, Josef Desimone, is jumping ship to become Facebook’s very first executive chef.

This is serious. Mark my words: there will be blood! (To coin a movie title.)

I thought this kind of stuff only happened in the UK..

The [U.S.] bureau [of the Census] contracted with Harris Corp. in 2006 to pay more about $600 million for a system that included 500,000 handheld devices to be given to census takers in 2010 to gather information from the millions of people who don’t return their mailed forms. The devices were intended to verify all residential addresses in the nation using GPS, collect and transmit the data from the uncounted, and manage the workflow in the field. Unfortunately, in a scenario familiar to most valley engineers, there was a disconnect between contractor and client over the specs. In a test last year in North Carolina, the computer’s interface ended up leaving workers baffled and confused, and initially the units couldn’t transmit the large amounts of data required. At one point, said Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, the government had some 400 new or clarified technical requirements on its feedback list for Harris. The costs kept climbing, helped along by gross miscalculations. Initially the bureau and Harris agreed that $36 million would cover a help desk for field workers using the handhelds; on further reflection, that figure is now up to $217 million. At a March hearing, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said, “What we’re facing is a statistical Katrina on the part of the administration.”

Yesterday came the final blow. Gutierrez told Congress that the whole computer initiative has been called off for the coming census and that the bureau would hire 600,000 temporary workers to do the job with pencil and paper. The expensive handhelds will be used for address verification, but that’s all. She blamed the problem on “a lack of effective communication with one of our key contractors,” while Harris cited the bureau’s ever-shifting specifications. Bottom line, the government will still buy 151,000 of the computers and associated service from Harris, but now the cost has risen to $1.3 billion. That and the related changes will push the cost of the census from what was already a record $11 billion to more than $14 billion. And the census count — with billions in government spending dependent on its accuracy — will still be conducted in crude manual fashion.