Like my iPhone skin?

I decided I'd had enough of the solid plastic case I'd had on my iPhone to protect it against scratches and that it was time to get some serious ART on my phone. These skins are fantastic and much better than any I've seen anywhere before: They are high-quality, they're available in so many different stles from over 50 international artists AND they provide great-looking protection for around only $15.

I'm a big fan of graffiti and graffiti art so this was one of the obvious choices for me. My Wife has the "Birth of Venus" by Botticelli - also fabulous!

Take a look at the site and get inspired - they have great skins for your MacBook, iPod, Blackberry, mobile phone or laptop too

OK, so it's a bold statement. If, however, the decision-makers at Facebook can't start to see that they have both a global reach and a real responsibility to their users it could seriously lead to their downfall.

Facebook have made some excellent progress in the field of user privacy since their beginnings. The level of granularity in Facebook profile privacy is generally very good, as you'd expect from an online service of their size. They've now effectively undone a lot of that good work if articles like this and the new Facebook group opposing the changes are anything to go by...

However, launching a new set of Terms and Conditions with ill-informed and, frankly, rather amateurish suggestion of a claim to ownership of their users' private material is not too clever.

Facebook are in a position that other tech. start-ups have been in before: Having grown to a huge scale they now need to figure out how to actually make money from their business. Could this recent attempt to "take ownership" of their users' content be a badly-veiled attempt at moving towards some form of content-driven revenue model. Hm, seems a little "conspiracy theory"-like to me. It's more likely to just be a bad mistake. Still, we'll never know now, will we?

The new TOS have been quite rightly taken back. Now we see Facebook trying the web-democracy crowd-sourcing approach to building new TOS.

Maybe they should also check with a few international data-protection and privacy specialists too next time?

A social network can only survive if it's users remain users, by it's very nature. Privacy is a major issue, as is ownership of user-generated content. Facebook need to realise this and to think clearly. Provide a platform for people to share THEIR photos, notes, stories, whatever, but don't try to use that very content for your own benefit. Facebook's value proposition should be based around their platform and not data belonging to other people.

In a previous post I talked about the Technological Singularity and the generally-accepted view that it describes how machines will become more intelligent than us, their "masters" and take over the planet.

While this is the most exciting scenario for the filmmakers of Hollywood, it is only one interpretation of the Singularity (as I shall call it from now, for the sake of my fingertips).

I also touched on other variations of the Singularity, other possible scenarios. One of these scenarios is, I am convinced, already very much upon us:

The time we reach a new Singularity will be when our ability to interact with the internet and each other, without the need to seek out a computer and form a connection to the internet. Another, similar, scenario will see us able to extend our own physical and mental abilities through the applied use of technology.

The first of thee two scenarios is near. The second is already here in a number of forms:

Exoskeletons:

Exoskeletons are a kind of "wearable robot suit" which receive signals from your brain and nervous system and translate those signals into movements. Not only do they perform those movements but they also amplify your strength between 2 and 10 times! HAL-5 is an example that you can buy today. (Take a look at the supplier's name and suppress the dry smile that comes in the knowledge that the company's founder simply MUST have been a Terminator fan...)

The concept of an exoskeleton is not new and there are numerous versions either being produced and available for purchase or currently in development.

Muscle reinnervation:

Muscle reinnervation is (loosely described) the process of attaching a prosthetic limb to a patient and performing nerve-muscle graft surgery to link remaining nerves to the prosthetic limb, thereby enabling the recipient to learn how to control the prosthetic limb as they would a "normal" arm, for example - by thinking about moving it! While not an everyday procedure, this approach has been used to great effect already, as this article testifies. The fact that the young lady described in the article can actually FEEL things touching her prosthetic hand is amazing.

Take these two technological mini-Singularities and add the promise that DNA Computing offers, or may appear to offer if limitations can be overcome, and it doesn't take too much imagination to see how the level of technology we are in possession of today could be developed to catapult us towards a true Singularity with just a few minor advances.

Two new films - "Transcendant Man" based upon the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil and "The Singularity Is Near" based on Ray Kurzweil's Book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans transcend Biology, (see right-hand sidebar for Amazon link) and also directed by him and Anthony Waller are due to hit the Movie Screens in the coming months. Both promise to entertain and inform, both following Kurzweil's convictions that our future as a race is to become stronger and more intelligent through our adoption of and enhancement through new technologies.

This is not only a potential goldmine for Hollywood but also an area in which we can now start to gather informed opinion, to step back and view the advances in technology, in science, in research and say "yes, I can see how that could happen". Science fiction is certainly harder to write nowadays, but Science Fact is getting really interesting!

Next time I'll come back to the former of my statements: That the time when we will be able to interact with each other via the internet but without seeking out a computer and connecting is also near. Until then, happy reading...

I was just reading the news on the BBC website during my lunchbreak.

Some of the scenes of deserted London streets, empty offices and traffic stranded on snow-strewn highways have a post-apocalyptic feel to them: "Britain after the storm", or something like that...

This shouldn't happen. A quote from the BBC article I was reading:

Two military rescue helicopters are assisting ambulance services in parts of Devon and Cornwall as roads became impassable following 10cm of snow in some areas.

This is amazing. i do sincerely hope that nobody has been hurt or has suffered AND I do know that the snow storms have claimed lives and find this terrible. BUT, and I repeat, this shouldn't happen.

OK, the UK is not Lapland or Iceland but there was a similar "snow event" like this 18 years ago. I was in it.

Here's how it went:

I was working in London and commuting in every day from the Midlands. I left work on the Strand to the accompaniment of gentle flurries of the white fluffy stuff. By the time I reached Aldwych (really not far) the now had set in and was getting heavier. Buses were already severly delayed, cars were slipping on the road and things looked like a scene from [insert name of your favourite natural disaster apocalypse film here].

Having given up hope of getting a bus to Euston station I hailed a taxi. All went pretty well until we finally ground to a halt in 10cm (there it is again - the critical snow depth) snow near Russell Square. I left the taxi and trudged my way to the station, feeling like Captain Scott in a suit.

What awaited me at Euston station? Canceled trains, delayed trains. The BBC and the papers carried "snow" stories the next day, stories of travel disruptions and of "the wrong kind of snow" - snow which entered the workings of the intercity trains via their air vents and caused them to break down - nasty stuff.

OK, I got home - late, but safe enough. The point of the story is that this was 18 YEARS AGO. Children have been born and grown to adulthood in this time but nobody has learned from the transport issues experienced then.

Now it happens again and the UK grinds to a halt. More quotes from the BBC article:

"One of the world's biggest economies should not be grinding to a halt, even if it is only once every 10 years." - Stephen Alambritis of the Federation of Small Businesses

It estimated almost 6.5m people - a fifth of Britain's workforce - stayed away from work on Monday as a result of the weather.

"All the European channels were showing images of London at a complete standstill, which was not a very positive image for the UK" - David Frost, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce

Indeed, Mr Frost. That's my point.

As one of the World's biggest economies (still, despite the efforts of greedy bankers throughout the last decades) the UK needs to be better prepared and stop saying that spending in this area is not necessary because it doesn't snow very much.

Introduce the concept of winter tyres for cars - as used in most European countries. They have a special compound and tread pattern to provide grip in winter conditions.

Consult with other countries to see how they deal with snow on the railway infrastructure. Minimise the issues.

Beef up the efforts on public roads and on public transport, spend some money on something that will help people and, ultimately, the economy.

Invest in teleworking alternatives for workers who don't physically need to be onsite - even if they are normally onsite. At least they could work from home if the transport system collapses.

It could even be possible to invest in "teleteaching" for times when children are unable to get to school - or at least send them home with some snow-related homework

Rant over. It's a shame that it can't be handled any better though.

Here's a little bit of fun - with some simple messages too:

Personally, I do find that owning a shiny MacBook Pro DOES help me to feel more creative. It looks and feels so much nicer than my boring bluey-grey-black HP laptop - and it even makes Windows look nicer.

Note that my new site design will be delayed a little longer now that I've noticed grunge and brickwork backgrounds just about EVERYWHERE!!!!!