Question of the day

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Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?

On the one hand:

Mr. Obama’s site is more harmonious, with plenty of white space and a soft blue palette. Its task bar is reminiscent of the one used at Apple’s iTunes site. It signals in myriad ways that it was designed with a younger, more tech-savvy audience in mind — using branding techniques similar to the ones that have made the iPod so popular.

“With Obama’s site, all the features and elements are seamlessly integrated, just like the experience of using a program on a Macintosh computer,” said Alice Twemlow, chairwoman of the M.F.A. program in design criticism at the School of Visual Arts (who is a Mac user).

It is designed, she said, even down to the playful logos that illustrate choices like, Volunteer or Register to Vote. She likened those touches to the elaborate, painstaking packaging Apple uses to woo its customers.

On the other hand,

Mrs. Clinton’s site uses a more traditional color scheme of dark blue, has sharper lines dividing content and employs cookie-cutter icons next to its buttons for volunteering, and the like.

“Hillary’s is way more hectic, it’s got all these, what look like parody ads,” said Ms. Twemlow, who is not a citizen and cannot vote in the election.

Jason Santa Maria, creative director of Happy Cog Studios, which designs Web sites, detected a basic breach of netiquette. “Hillary’s text is all caps, like shouting,” he said. There are “many messages vying for attention,” he said, adding, “Candidates are building a brand and it should be consistent.”

On this day…

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… in 1912, the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland, less than three hours after striking an iceberg. About 1,500 people died. The New York Times headline read

Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg; 866 Rescued By Carpathia, Probably 1,250 Perish; Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing

There is a story, probably apocryphal, that the Cork Examiner‘s headline read: “CORK MAN DROWNS”, and then, in smaller type, “Titanic sinks”.

Get your Mac clone now and beat the big cease-and-desist rush

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John Murrell, writing in Good Morning Silicon Valley

An outfit called Psystar finds itself in the spotlight today after advertising what it claims is a Leopard compatible Mac built from standard PC-parts for $399, but it probably feels less like a stage star than an escaping convict in the prison yard. See, the license for the Mac operating system bans its installation on non-Apple hardware. Apple, as we know, does not take kindly to trespassers on its turf, and in instances like this, here’s what I like to think happens: A loud bell goes off in the sleeping quarters of Apple Legal, and a squad of attorneys, already dressed in their three-piece suits, jump out of their cots, slip on their tassel loafers, slide down a pole, pile into a fleet of Priuses and roar off (or hum off, I guess) to the scene of the conflagration. So if you have your heart set on an ugly box that might work sort of like an Apple, at least until you try to update it, jump now.

Another ISP to avoid?

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Hard on the heels of the Phorm business (to which Virgin has signed up), here’s the view of the Virgin media CEO on the issue of net neutrality.

In an interview with the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine, far from covering up their intentions, Virgin Media’s new incoming CEO Neil Berkett – who joined the Virgin Media Board just a few days ago – has launched an attack on the ideas and principles behind net neutrality.

“This net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks,” he said, adding that Virgin is already in the process of doing deals to speed up the traffic of certain media providers.

With around 3.5 million customers in the UK, and already traffic shaping due to lack of capacity, it’s a sobering thought that at the behest of “content providers” with deep pockets, Virgin is prepared to speed up their traffic, which would presumably have a negative impact on those at the bottom of the ISP’s priority list, namely bandwidth hungry file-sharers…

Surveillance by Javascript

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Interesting post by Landon Fuller.

Meraki provides free wireless access throughout San Francisco, using the network name “Free The Net”. Trying out their service at a coffee shop in my neighborhood, I discovered that Meraki has adopted a location-aware advertising driven model, and are now injecting ads into every page you visit using their network. (Screen shot).

I was surprised that Meraki is adding advertising to my web site (where’s my cut?), but that’s just the beginning. Meraki is sharing your location with every site you visit.

To display their advertising, Meraki adds a small piece of JavaScript to every page:

Included in that URL is your current estimated longitude and latitude. In my case, that’s the street just outside of Cafe Reverie, where I was taking lunch — a fairly accurate reading.

This is a new twist on the cross site scripting problem — because Meraki’s script is injected directly into the site that I’m visiting, a simple piece of javascript, added by the web page’s author, can fish out your current location.

Thanks to Michael for spotting it.

City council spies on family using RIPA

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One of the things that astonished me in 1999 when I was campaigning against the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill was the way it would grant sweeping powers of surveillance not just to genuine security authorities, but effectively to every jobsworth in the country. And lo! so it has proved. Here’s a fascinating Telegraph report on the latest abuse.

A council has used powers intended for anti-terrorism surveillance to spy on a family who were wrongly accused of lying on a school application form.

For two weeks the middle-class family was followed by council officials who wanted to establish whether they had given a false address within the catchment area of an oversubscribed school to secure a place for their three-year-old.

The “spies” made copious notes on the movements of the mother and her three children, who they referred to as “targets” as they were trailed on school runs. The snoopers even watched the family home at night to establish where they were sleeping.

In fact, the 39-year-old mother – who described the snooping as “a grotesque invasion of privacy” – had held lengthy discussions with the council, which assured her that her school application was totally in order.

Poole borough council disclosed that it had legitimately used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to spy on the family.

Ludicrously, the Council is correct. See here for a pdf of some of the snoopers’ logs.

Child’s play?

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This morning’s Observer column…

For some months, strange goings-on have been reported in branches of Toys ‘R’ Us. Shifty-looking middle-aged men and younger males wearing ponytails and Grateful Dead T-shirts have been observed leaving the premises with small cardboard boxes which they then gleefully tear open upon reaching the safety of their cars. Exclamations of ‘Yes! And ‘Yeehaw!!!’ have been heard by security guards, who are as puzzled by all this as their checkout colleagues.

‘I can’t figure it out,’ said one store manager, when quizzed by this columnist a few months ago. ‘The things are just walking out of the store. They sell out the minute we get a delivery.’

The mystery of Broon — contd.

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Martin Kettle thinks the unthinkable?

This much, though, is certain. Brown is not ready to give up, but nor is he confident he can win the public’s support back. For whatever reason, he lacks the certainty of his predecessor. Even when Blair was wrong, he was clear about where he was heading. But Brown lacks Blair’s confidence – and this is now corrosive. “The challenge is primarily psychological,” says a senior minister, “It’s about being confident.” “He simply doesn’t know what to do,” responds a senior backbencher. “There’s no sense of direction whatever. There’s nothing there.”

What can Brown do about this mood? Helpfully meant suggestions abound – be more radical, be more centrist, be yourself, be someone else, get a speechwriter, get a haircut – yet most of these miss the point. Guys of 57 don’t change much. The way people have behaved in the past, a wise minister observed this week, is still the best guide to the way they will behave in the future. A large amount of the wishful-thinking school of commentary on the Labour government’s predicament persistently overlooks this obvious point. There isn’t an Attlee or Roosevelt lurking inside the prime minister. There’s just the same old Gordon with the same old strengths and weaknesses…