ITV, apparently having decided its output is so high quality it can waste money on dotcom acquisitions, has decided to spend £120 million on Friends Reunited. Nutters.
Does anyone really bother with Friends Reunited any more? I haven’t updated my entry in a year. Neither has anyone else at any of the schools, clubs, workplaces, etc that I went to. The bulletin boards aren’t clogged up with people chatting. None of the people who failed to sign up when it was at its peak have had a change of heart recently.
It’s dead. It’s so 2001-2003.
If ITV really has that much money to throw around, perhaps it might like to spend more on decent programming and its ITN contract so that the latter’s journalists can afford to eat food for a change.
One of my blog entries has escaped and mutated
Said entry is also pretending to be written by one of my heroes, Charlie Brooker. How can this have happened.
Another new sign language is born
Deaf people, left to their own devices, invent languages all by themselves it seems. You only have to look at the history of BSL and some of the Central American sign languages to see that. Nice article in the New Scientist on one of the latest sign languages created by the deaf, this one in the Middle East.
Who needs foreigners when there’s Mel Gibson in Hollywood?
Hot on the heels of his last film, which owed its immense popularity to Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic dialogue (or something), Mel Gibson’s is set to direct a film with dialogue that’s entirely Mayan.
Sir, I salute you. We need more people like you. One request, though: can the film after that be shot in Esperanto? Oh wait: someone’s done that already… 14 times?
Bloody Goldfrapp
Today’s “tune I really wish I could get out of my head, even though I really rather like it” is Goldfrapp’s Number One, available in the iTunes Music Store and on Amazon. It’s really rather good and it makes you wonder why she’s been unknown for so long when she’s been putting stuff like this out for ages. Still, not as long as Pulp, hey?
Good luck with that one, silicon.com
Silicon.com has launched a newsblog. Can you hear a spring in its step as it jumps a bandwagon, everyone?
Anyway, sarcasm aside for once, the plan is to have it updated several times a day – a kind of window onto the thoughts of the editorial team is the plan.
Again, good luck with that, guys. Wonder how long it will be before they’re just putting anything that enters their brain straight into it. Oh wait. They’re already doing that after only a few days:
31.10.2005 16:35:03 More boozy Brits are using the net for impulse buys. According to a news report on Netimperative.com, a growing number of British are shopping online for ‘tat’ after a night down the pub.
31.10.2005 15:25:02 silicon.com has been taking a look around Microsoft’s Life² business and consumer technology showcase. We’ll be brigning (sic) you photos from inside the event shortly.
Inspired. I’ll be reading that every day. Oh yes.
Travelling to the US is rubbish for journalists
For those of you who don’t know, the US is one of about three countries in the world that (officially) treat journalists differently to other visitors. If you’re in the UK, you can normally get into the US with a visa waiver form (that’s the green one). But a close study of the visa waiver form reveals that that you can’t use it if you’re representing “a foreign media service”.
That means one of two things:
- Entering the US under false pretences – i.e. using the visa waiver form and claiming you’re on holiday
- Paying £50, making a trip to the US embassy for an interview, getting a letter from a magazine saying they’ll be responsible for you financially and a week or more without your passport
Continue reading “Travelling to the US is rubbish for journalists”
Japanese typos worse than English
If you thought English was a tricky language to spell, spare a thought for the poor Japanese. You try to write “I started living overseas this year” but end up saying “Shellfish started inhabiting my stomach this year” because all those kanji look so similar…
Avoiding the overseas call centres
There’s an easy way to avoid irritating phone conversations with overseas call centres. Asking them to stop doesn’t work. Even if you tell them that the person they’re after won’t be in until after 6pm, they’ll just call again and again at 1pm the next day and the next day and the next. Ask them never to call again and they’ll happily promise to make that entry in your file. Then someone else will call.
But there is a way out, if you have Caller ID.
The strangely parallel lives of trade journalists
For me, it was Mapping Awareness. For this guy, it was Sanitary Maintenance.