Shortly after the UK government announced £27 billion lost in failed IT projects another minor embarrassment was revealed, this time for the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), whose website proudly states: “Helping Government deliver best value from its spending.”
The logo cost £14,000 to create, and was intended to signify the bold ambition of the OGC of “improving value for money by driving up standards and capability in procurement.”
You can imagine how many meetings, hefty documents, PowerPoint presentations and endless focus groups had to be held to rack up £14,000 in fees while this logo was deliberated - and yet for all this contemplation they missed the glaringly obvious.
According to insiders, the graphic was already proudly etched on mousemats and pens before it was unveiled for employees, who spotted the clanger within seconds.
Just tilt your head to the left.
A spokesman for OGC said: “It is true that it caused a few titters among some staff when viewed on its side, but on consideration we concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of the letters OGC - and it is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on Government spend.”
Google likes to lead from the front when it comes to the practical application of sophisticated technology. Goggles is no exception, a nifty little programme for people with smart phones that uses Googles massive image library and fast developing image recognition system.
If you want to know about what’s in front of you, be it a landmark, painting, tree, restaurant or whatever, just take a picture and pop it into the Goggles image search, and a few moments later up comes all the information. At the launch Google’s VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra gave a demonstration by taking a picture of a bottle of wine, up came the results with tasting notes, including that this vintage had a hint of apricots. It can also ‘read’ other printed images, such as book jackets and bar codes.
The problem is that it can also recognize faces.
Take picture of someone in the street and it has the ability to pull together all the information about that person from the internet … and with millions of people increasingly living their lives online, the possibilities of abuse are enormous.
Anthony House from Google said: “We do have the relevant facial recognition technology at our disposal … But we haven’t implemented this on Google Goggles because we want to consider the privacy implications and how this feature might be added responsibly.”
Facebook has also upgraded its security this week, prompting users not to display personal information to the public.
The moral of these stories is simple, if you don’t want your details to fall into the wrong hands don’t post them on the internet.
Tags: google Subject: Internet | CommentsGoogle+Goggles+-+Everyone%27s+Big+Brother2009-12-14+15%3A31%3A21admin
I’ve been a Apple Mac user since the early 1990s so obviously I am biased - the same as anyone is, whatever computer you are used to has to be the best.
However, since I got involved in web design about 10 years ago, I’ve had to run a PC to test my sites and make sure everything is working across all platforms. This has given me dual view or running a PC and Mac side by side to compare the two operating systems.
What I have always loved about Macs is that they just work, in simple terms that you can intuitively understand - you’ve got a Hard Drive, so it’s called a Hard Drive - there’s no messing about with b / c / or d drives? You want to move a file from one place to another, you just click and drag it there.
Keep it simple stupid
Macs work from your perspective, making things simple, not technical. They boot up faster, they are more stable, the type is clearer, and graphics are better. You get everything you need in a box, rather than loading and registering software from dozens of different companies.
I think they have always been a winner because virtually the whole interface is image / icon based, rather than file sub directories and root folders. Plus, there is the added benefit that you can customize virtually every aspect of how you computer looks and behaves - I know this sounds daunting to most users, but it’s nice to have the option if you want it.
Mac’s reliability and stability have also come on leaps and bounds, and since the launch of OS X I haven’t had a single crash in 3 years.
While I’m getting into this, you also have to take into account the usual Mac hype about no viruses. Now this is true, it’s something that no Mac user has to worry about because we are such a minority (less than 10% of the market) that no self respecting juvenile hacker would want to bother us.
So I don’t have to worry about subscribing to Norton or some other software program and there are no annoying pop up windows that just tick me off. It just works they way you want it to.
Change happens
When I have gone on about Macs to my PC friends, they have come back with two arguments: that you can’t run PC software on a Mac and that the machines are too expensive. Wrong on both counts.
It’s easy to run your current PC software on a Mac, and for all those hard nosed business people looking for quality, value for money and reliability - this is an independent survey carried out the highly respected Which?:
Laptop Best Buys
Model
Price
Score
Apple MacBook
£799
75%
Apple MacBook Pro
£850
73%
Samsung Q320
£666
71%
Dell Studio XPS
£799
70%
Dell Studio 1555
£749
70%
Acer Aspire 77352
£414
70%
Dell Studio 17
£699
70%
Desktop PC Best Buys
Results of survey carried out by Which? magazine:
Apple
Apple gets an impressive 94% in our customer satisfaction measure. It’s also rated highly for support, earning a good overall rating. Apple computers are reliable too, with an above average reliability rating.
Sony
The Sony range is rather limited and priced at the luxury end of the market, but they’re well regarded, as is reflected by its customer score of 80%. There isn’t enough data for Sony to get a reliability rating, it receives a disappointingly poor rating for support.
Novatech
Novatech is popular with customers, achieving a satisfaction score of 79%. There isn’t enough data to get a rating for reliability or support.
Owners’ verdicts - At a glance: the brands rated most highly by Which? subscribers.
WHO ARE THESE MEN ?
Who are these men who march so proud,
Who quietly weep, eyes closed, head bowed?
These are the men who once were boys,
Who missed out on youth and all its joys.
Who are these men with aged faces,
Who silently count the empty spaces?
These are the men who gave their all,
Who fought for their country for freedom for all.
Who are these men with sorrowful look
Who can still remember the lives that were took?
These are the men who saw young men die,
The price of peace is always high.
Who are these men who in the midst of pain,
Whispered comfort to those they would not see again?
These are the men whose hands held tomorrow,
Who brought back our future with blood tears and sorrow.
Who are these men who promise to keep
Alive in their hearts the ones God holds asleep?
These are the men to whom I promise again:
‘Veterans’, my friends - I will remember them!
The English language can be weird, ask any 10 year old.
The trouble is with phonetics. We spent all those long hours at school, fidgeting and passing notes while some teacher tried to explain how two words that sounded exactly the same, were actually spelt completely differently. Ahh, there their.
So how come, many years later, educated adults have such a problem with simple words that are spelt just how they sound? Organized, specialized, mobilization, optimized, prioritize … are all spelt with a Z, not with an S.
There seems to be a dark fear or phobia about using a Z - as though it was some sort of dreadful American spelling.
This mistake has become so common, that replacing it with an S has even made it into the Oxford English Dictionary in recent years as (alternative spelling).
The irony of the situation is that the Americans are using the correct English spelling, whereas we are more frequently using a French alternative.
Wordle is a free web application for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.
This rides on the back of the popular Tag Clouds you see on so many Blogs these days - words with the greatest frequency are given greater prominence in the cloud.
Simply key in your words, submit your RSS feed or delicious bookmarks account - and voila, a beautiful word cloud. You can tweak the fonts and colours to your heart’s content.
This word cloud was generated from my blog content in about 2 seconds, looks almost artistic doesn’t it? It would take a typographer a few hours to do this.
UDC is a professional dance company providing dancers and shows for film, TV and corporate events for such companies as The X Factor, Sony, Bench and Motorola.
Part of their business is running dance workshops for Hen Parties. To support their online marketing campaign they required a simple A5 flyer to hand out at wedding trade shows.
Northstar designed the flyer (incorporating client photography retouched in Photoshop and library photography bought under license from shutterstock), provided copywriting and print ready artwork.
The Ilkley Dress Agency approached Northstar to re-design their website so that it reflected the quality of their stock; they sell high quality, new and pre-owned fashions, including clothing, accessories, jewellery and footwear.
The thinking behind the design was simple: if you’re selling fashion, the site needs to look fashionable. The big headline, colour scheme and layout was taken from the style of women’s fashion magazines.
In this market imagery is vitally important, however, because of the high turnover of stock no existing products could be used. The solution was to use Royalty Free imagery from Shutterstock and iStockphoto. By using an image of an undressed woman the photograph becomes seasonless and reinforces the message “For fashion - we’ve got you covered from head to toe.”
Although the budget was limited a certain amount of SEO was carried out to target the search phrases “Clothes Shops Ilkley” and “Shopping Ilkley.”
Feeling like the world is becoming less friendly? Social theorist Jonathan Zittrain begs to difffer. The Internet, he suggests, is made up of millions of disinterested acts of kindness, curiosity and trust.
Jonathan Zittrain wants to make sure the electronic frontier stays open — and he’s looking to the Internet’s millions of users for its salvation.
Last week Facebook announced that it had surpassed 300 million users, and now the company has announced a strategic partnership with the Nielsen Company. This partnership is aimed at helping marketers better use the web for developing and marketing new products.
“Nielsen is the leader in measurement and is an excellent partner for us as we look to provide marketers with richer ad effectiveness data,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. “The combination of our unique ability to quickly and effectively poll a sample of our more than 300 million users and Nielsen’s expertise in data analysis will give marketers access to powerful data they can use to understand and improve current and future campaigns.”
The companies have already announced a new product called Nielsen BrandLift, which is designed to provide marketers with “effectiveness measurement” for Facebook advertising. The product will launch in the US with select test partners this week. It is expected to roll out to all Facebook advertisers within the next few months.
BrandLift will take the form of opt-in polls on Facebook’s homepage, which will let advertisers know more of what makes consumers tick, by the sound of it. It is described in the announcement: “Nielsen BrandLift measures aided awareness, ad recall, message association, brand favorability and purchase consideration via a set of short, specially designed one or two question surveys.” The surveys will appear on Facebook’s homepage where ads normally appear.
“Facebook is an increasingly vital link between consumers and brands,” said John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen’s online division. “We will now be able to add deep knowledge of this important social network to our unmatched media measurement and consumer insight across all three screens.”
“Together we will be able to provide the missing elements to clients seeking better understanding of how Web content and online advertising affect consumer behavior,” added Burbank.
Nielsen will be conducting hundreds of BrandLift tests over the next few months. Last month, Facebook had the 4th largest unique audience in the US among all web brands.
