Science discussion I am impressed by this site- a discussion of kebab vans explaining the Yule-Simpson effect- suddenly I have clarity and the desire for a kebab. The YS-effect (or Simpson’s paradox) is one of those counter-intuitive statistical phenomena that make you realise that you’re thinking the wrong way about things. Anyway – Nerd Alert [...]

So wordpress installs everywhere have been under pretty heavy attack, and the attack seems to be evolving – they’re reading the same pages we are to remove the hacked code. I found a good way to check if you’re hacked is to install noscript (http://noscript.net/) firefox extension. Then navigate to your “Users” page in wp-admin [...]

A new Apple patent application shows iPhones giving the user the opportunity to share Music, Photos, Videos, Voicemail etc by different communication modes- phone, email, text message, fax, chat etc A communications device may transmit a media item chosen by a user over a communication path also being used to transmit an established communications operation. [...]

The BBC has finally made a version of their iPlayer that works on the mac… it works well and puts the Mac licence-fee payers on the same level as Windows users. The release is a bit haphazard- i found it almost impossible to find out where to download the program from and you need the [...]

Despite Apple’s claims that Snow Leopard will be “Taking a break from adding new features” are they considering updating the Finder? rumours suggest the Finder has been completly rewritten in Cocoa, could it be that more than under-the-hood changes will take place. There has been many discussions about how you sell the concept of an [...]

A new patent application released today shows Apple’s potential plans for user interface tweaking in Snow Leopard, the next version of OS X. The new patent shows cursors providing much more information than a spinning beach ball of death. The cursor will show lots of information about the file or link (previews, file permissions, virus [...]

Apple is constantly refining the UI for Safari and they have too with more competition coming from Chrome and the constantly evolving Firefox. The linear history associated with Web Browsers has always been an annoyance for me — I don’t browse in a straight line, I graze in a haphazard manner and then always pine [...]

A mega Apple iPhone patent application has just released by the USPTO (Jobs et al. 20080174570: 361 pages!). It contains a detailed description of most of the iPhone’s user interface. There are two interesting features which haven’t been seen before in the extant iPhone — support for Flash and Window Media and a useful iPhone [...]

Remote control systems that can distinguish stray light sources Further support for the contention that Apple is building a Wii-like controller is found in the USPTO patent applications. Apple has applied for a patent for a refinement of a Wii-like controller which uses a number of means to stop interference with the system by reflection, [...]

An interesting patent application from Apple is for a method of informing a user that their phone/device may lose signal before it happens (i.e. if you’re driving along a road it will say “you will lose signal in 15 seconds, allowing youthe driver to pull off the road so you can finish your conversation or [...]