Neat use of Photoshop. It’s an ad for the Nikon Coolpix P-1 digital camera — which can upload pictures via WiFi.
Kennedy’s little secret
The BBC’s Political Editor writes in his Blog:
It was – people say – Westminster’s worst kept secret. I refer, of course, to Charles Kennedy’s drinking.
The implication, therefore, is that we political reporters conspired to keep it that way – a secret. Hold on a second. Not so fast. There is a big, big difference between knowing that Charles Kennedy drank a lot and knowing that he had a drink problem and was undergoing treatment.
I knew the first but certainly did not know the second. The same is true of all the political reporters I know and all but Charles Kennedy’s closest circle. I knew that Mr Kennedy sometimes drank more than he should. I could see that for myself and I heard it from those who worked closely with him.
The perfect headline
Summarises the story succinctly and comprehensively.
Quote of the day
If you want a really expensive laptop, buy a Vaio.
Sony Chairman, Howard Stringer, speaking at CES yesterday. Thanks to Paul Boutin for blogging it so brilliantly.
Four reasons to be glad Bush is still President
Following on from my thoughts about Cheney, here’s some more consoling thoughts.
Thanks to Bill Thompson for the link.
Dave’s domain name
Hmmm… The domain www.davidcameron.co.uk is taken. The WHOIS database says “The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service.”
Google Ad(non)sense contd.
The logic behind the Adsense engine is truly weird. As I write this, the top posts on this Blog are:
So what ads does Google Adsense put up based on the above content? Answer: one link to a site dealing with the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and three anti-piracy sites. It’s idiotic.
Two hours later: It gets worse. Two of the piracy-related ads have been replaced — by one for “Jewish Tours of Berlin” and one for “School History Software”. Could it be that the Google engine is somehow inferring a link between the Economist story about population shrinkage and the Holocaust?
A neat trick
If you highlight a word in Text Edit or Microsoft Word running on a Mac and then drag-and-drop it onto the Safari icon in the dock, a new browser window will open with the results of a Google search on the word. Neat.
Thanks to Pete for the hint.
Two cheers for Gutenberg
Simon Jenkins thinks that some types of newspaper have a healthy future.
British popular newspaper sales have continued to fall, from 13m overall in 1965 to less than 9m today. But they are a separate publishing market. Upmarket newspapers show a reverse trend. Their daily circulation has defied every pundit, rising by a third since 1965 from 2m to close to 3m. The figure for the serious Sunday titles is the same today as it was then, 2.7m. Add the Economist, which calls itself a weekly newspaper, and the figure would be 1m higher.
This growth in serious newspaper sales is unique. Britain has a wider choice of national titles at this end of the market than ever – and than any western country. America’s five leading papers have lost more than 7% of their gross circulation in the past decade alone.
There is one reason for this. Elsewhere in Europe and America publishers are trapped by archaic unions in a quasi-monopolistic market stripped of any zest to compete. Try to start a new newspaper in an American city and you will be met by a wall of monopolistic behaviour, from unions, advertisers and usually an existing dominant title. America has ignored British experience, but people will go on buying newspapers provided they keep updating their content and presentation.
The population implosion
From this week’s Economist…
Russia’s population is expected to fall by 22% between 2005 and 2050, Ukraine’s by a staggering 43%. Now the phenomenon is creeping into the rich world: Japan has started to shrink and others, such as Italy and Germany, will soon follow. Even China’s population will be declining by the early 2030s, according to the UN, which projects that by 2050 populations will be lower than they are today in 50 countries.