Posts

October 03, 2012

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The BBC is apparently working on a music equivalent of its iPlayer catch-up service. The service, which is thought to be called Playlister, will give licence-fee payers free access to hundreds of thousands of music recordings without paying any additional fees. Nice for us Brits and I assume that as soon as it launches proxies, [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkBBC Playlister coming soon?

October 02, 2012

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1:22 PM | What do Internet providers care about?

A rhetorical question obviously: What do Internet Service Providers (ISPs) care about? Well, they’re companies, they care about profits. Period. But, Peter Jones and Daphne Comfort of the Business School at the University of Gloucestershire and David Hillier of the University of Glamorgan, UK, wanted to find out whether there was also some corporate social [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkWhat do Internet providers care about?

September 28, 2012

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2:03 PM | Fed-up Friday: the new #FF

I was on twitter..I’m supposed to be finishing up a science news story, but you know how it is. Write a couple of hundred words and then head over to the virtual watercooler, as it were… Anyway, there’s lots of fascinating chatter, lots of provocative stuff, interesting links, amusing pictures, a bit of Friday afternoon [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkFed-up Friday: the new #FF

September 26, 2012

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9:07 PM | Subconscious religious predjudice in children

We know that religious affiliation is one among many markers of group identity. But if you ask typical adults, they will insist that they are not prejudiced against members of other faiths. However, if you measure their subconscious reactions, you can reveal hidden biases. In other words, adults know they are not supposed to be prejudiced, but deep down they often are. But what about children? Larisa Heiphetz and colleagues, at Harvard University, ran a series of studies to find out. The […]

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10:16 AM | Backup your email for easier searching

If you’re like me you have several email accounts and a regular need to search for old messages and attachments. Martin on gHacks highlights “Mailstore Home” as his go-to software for backing up email and migrating email between programs and computer systems. It’s also very useful for archiving emails so that you can speed up [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkBackup your email for easier searching

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6:48 AM | NoPassword

When you register on a site, you’re usually asked to come up with a password, the site will send a validation email that you click and then lets you login with your password. But, why not cut out that additional step. If the site were to simply send you the validation email you would not [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkNoPassword

September 25, 2012

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8:12 PM | Self-monitoring on the web

We are repeatedly warned by the media about how web 2.0, social networking sites, search engines and countless apps are compromising our privacy, hoarding our personal data, and tracking our browsing habits on the web. Moreover, anyone who has done a vanity search for themselves personally or for a company brand will know only too [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkSelf-monitoring on the web

September 22, 2012

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9:56 PM | The rising tide of religious protectionism in the West

In the West these days we're used to a familiar narrative about growing rise of non-belief. Poll after poll has been clear: most countries in Europe, as well as Australasia, are either largely non-religious or becoming markedly less so. Even in the USA, there is now a clear trend towards lower levels of personal belief, especially among the young. But that's not the full picture, not by a long chalk. There are many different ways to look at whether society is 'secular', and one of the is to […]

September 16, 2012

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9:37 PM | Cultural transmission of religious violence: is it inherited or diffused

In 16th century Europe, a radical new Christian movement arose - the Anabaptists. Although the history is murky, it seems that the new sect began in Zurich, and then rapidly fractured into a collection of splinter sects. Some of these groups (around half), advocated the violent overthrow of government and existing churches to establish a theocracy. The other half, although often sharing the same ultimate goal, were non-violent. Luke Matthews, an anthropologist at Harvard University, was […]

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9:06 AM | Foolproof way to put on a screen protector

Here’s a neat and simple way to apply a screen protector to a mobile phone or other device, getting it square on and avoiding the dreaded bubbles Originally, saw this on Amit’s site labnol Related Posts:Hardware password protection #meerkats11Read It Later in your PocketWho is Andy Sparks?Not Google Plus !G+BranchOut to get a new jobPost [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkFoolproof way to put on a screen protector

September 14, 2012

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8:01 AM | An analysis of being private and public on social networks

In the US and elsewhere voting registers contain allow anyone to see your basic personal data – name, birthday, postal code, and gender. Medical records also contain that information as well as diagnostics and prescription data. There is a clear division between the two data sets although there is overlap. A leak from the voting [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkAn analysis of being private and public on social networks

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7:40 AM | Music Video Genome

Think Pandora and Last.fm, but accessible anywhere you can open a web browser and with music scraped from Youtube videos that creates a continuous playlist based on your musical taste: Music Video Genome. Ish. Related Posts:Stream media from PC or Mac to iPad or Android with Air PlayItAccess Pandora outside the USASearch and Record Internet [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkMusic Video Genome

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6:55 AM | Play Six Degrees of Google

Most readers will be familiar with the whole "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" concept that connects one actor to Kevin Bacon via the other actors that have been in the same films. It’s a bit of a myth that Kevin Bacon is somehow more prolific and that it is this that explains why you can [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkPlay Six Degrees of Google

September 13, 2012

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8:43 AM | One-click to Google Chrome privacy

gHacks explains how there are many reasons to make sure that your web browser is not leaking personal and private information. Google Chrome lets you control settings via the URL “chrome://flags” but the Google Chrome extension Privacy Manager is a much less geeky approach giving you one-click access to these privacy settings. It adds an [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkOne-click to Google Chrome privacy

September 10, 2012

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10:06 PM | When did moralising gods emerge?

Looking at societies cross the world, you're stuck by the enormous variety of mystical beliefs out there - to the point where, infamously, even trying to come up with a definition of religion that everyone agrees on is pretty much impossible. Yet there are common themes. Many societies do believe in some kind of chief god, and many of those believe that this god is some kind of parent or leader figure - one that takes an interest in his people, and punishes bad behaviour. So the question is, […]

September 08, 2012

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7:12 AM | Why is there something rather than nothing?

One of the perks of writing a blog is that sometimes publishers offer to send you copies of new books. Sadly, they are mostly not the books that I actually want to read. But here's one that was really enjoyable, but was also (tangentially) relevant to this blog. So here's a brief review - consider it an advertorial :) The book Why does the World Exist? is framed as an 'existential detective story'. Basically what this means is that the writer, Jim Holt, has shuttled around the world […]

September 05, 2012

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7:46 AM | Analyze your Facebook with WolframAlpha

Wolfram|Alpha positions itself not as a search engine to rival Google but as an “answer engine”. You give it a question and it seeks out and processes data on the internet to give you an answer. The system is based on the computational platform Mathematica, written by British scientist Stephen Wolfram in 1988. It was [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkAnalyze your Facebook with WolframAlpha

September 04, 2012

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8:33 PM | The war on atheism - bucking the social norm leads to social rejection and unhappiness

Take any given country, and religious people tend to be happier and more satisfied with their lives than the non-religious. Quite why this is so is a matter of debate, but there's increasing evidence that part of the explanation is that happiness stems from believing yourself to be 'normal' - that you fit in with your community. Olga Stavrova, at the University of Cologne in Germany, is an expert on how social norms affect individual happiness. For example, she's recently shown that […]

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8:14 AM | BBC iPlayer downloads on mobile

Viewers will now be able to watch the latest series of Doctor Who and other BBC favourites while travelling and on holiday abroad, with the corporation allowing programmes to be downloaded from the iPlayer to tablets and smartphones for the first time. From Tuesday, licence-fee payers will be able to download BBC programmes from the [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkBBC iPlayer downloads on mobile

September 02, 2012

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1:30 AM | Adios Niel Armstrong y la evolución de una noticia en el siglo XXI

Data visualization: Tweets sent about Neil Armstrong 08/25/2012-08/27/2012.via: Microsiervos.

August 31, 2012

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2:06 PM | JavaRa updates Java

I’d recommend disabling Java in all your browsers. If you need it for a specific site, then have a “spare” browser you use only for that site. Oracle apparently just plugged the week-old security hole in the Java runtime environment, but there will be another leak soon, you can count on that. If you really [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkJavaRa updates Java

August 30, 2012

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11:51 AM | Why your hard drive is smaller than you thought

Of gibibytes and gigabytes… If you’ve paid attention to hard drives, USB flash drives, and other storage devices, you may have noticed that they always have less space than promised once they’re formatted. The reason for this difference lies in the way hard drive manufacturers advertise their devices, versus the way Windows computers actually use [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkWhy your hard drive is smaller than you thought

August 29, 2012

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10:00 PM | Catholics and Muslims want democracy - but for different reasons

So, what's wrong with Muslim countries, eh? That's something I hear with increasing frequency - usually by people who are implying some kind of cultural superiority over the faithful. After all, Muslim countries are mostly autocratic, and even after the Arab spring real democracy seems like a distant hope for most. Among academics, there are two popular theories for why democracy does not take root in Muslim countries. The first says that it's down to a lack of modernization - stronger […]

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7:23 PM | 2-Step authentication secures your DropBox

Learn how to secure your Dropbox account with two-step verification using your mobile phone and stay safe even if your Dropbox password gets leaked. Something everyone has been eagerly waiting for. You can now secure your Dropbox account using 2-step verification meaning an intruder would need more than just your password to access any of [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk2-Step authentication secures your DropBox

August 26, 2012

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7:44 AM | Awe expands your sense of time - and makes you less materialistic

In a series of fascinating experiments, Melanie Rudd (Stanford University) and colleagues have shown that inspiring a feeling of awe in their subjects also made them feel that they had more time to do things, made them less materialistic and encouraged to think about volunteering their time to help others. The really amazing thing was how easy it was to instil such a sense of awe: a TV commercial, a walk down memory lane, or a story about an awe-inspiring view In the first study, subjects […]

August 25, 2012

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9:42 PM | Neil Alden Armstrong (1930 – 2012)

Neil Armstrong en Wikipedia.El tipo fue a la Luna en una nave que tenía menos capacidad computacional que mi celular. Respect!

August 21, 2012

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8:12 PM | Avoiding monkeys and wasps online and offline

Wikipedia, file sharing, Q&A sites and much more of what we consider web 2.0 succeeds by social synergy, which is people producing more together than apart, but online the usual incentives are absent. An analysis by Brian Whitworth of the Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences, Massey University, in Auckland, New Zealand, and Cheickna Sylla [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkAvoiding monkeys and wasps online and offline

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10:42 AM | Drugs Quote #021 – F Scott Fitzgerald

Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane… There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

August 17, 2012

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11:17 AM | Recollections of childhood religion: your past becomes like your present

Trying to work out why and how religious beliefs change over their lifetime is challenging because hard data are rare. Instead, researchers often have to resort to asking adults what they believed when they were children. Of course, everyone knows that such memories are not 100% reliable, but just how unreliable is hard to judge. David Hayward, at the University of Michigan, and colleagues, have been able to quantify it by using data from a survey that's been running in Rhode Island since […]

August 16, 2012

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6:59 PM | The Art of Community

Online social networks and communities offer many opportunities for supporting a cause, marketing a product or service, or building open source software. In “The Art of Community” Jono Bacon explains how they can be used to recruit, motivate, and manage participants. Bacon has 14-years’ experience building and managing such communities, and is currently manager for [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkThe Art of Community