Tag Archives: News

News

RSS Feed Links

If you’re subscribed to my RSS feeds you may well have noticed already, but I have started, as an experiment, adding interesting links to my del.icio.us account and syndicating them from here. Is that a good idea? What do you think?

If, on the other hand, that first paragraph made no sense, read on.

First, let me explain terms. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a way to get your web browser ((Yes, there are programs that do this specifically. And programs like Outlook can read RSS feeds too. However I think most people still use a browser.)) to tell you when a website changes. If you have Internet Explorer 7 you should see the feeds icon (an orange square with white lines) next to the home icon on the top right, just below the search text box. In Safari the bar with the URL will have a blue RSS icon to the right. And Firefox has “Live Bookmarks” which do the same thing. Simply click the appropriate button and see what happens.

And if your browser does not support RSS — time you upgraded! — there are a couple of other ways of catching up. Look to the right of your screen and you’ll see buttons to add ZX81.org.uk to your “My Yahoo!” or to your Google Reader or Personalised Google Home Page. And, if that wasn’t enough, you can also subscribe by email ((Really, there’s no escape. You may as well give in now.)).

If you do that you’ll see brief articles there that you won’t see here, where “here” is directly on the zx81.org.uk website.

And del.icio.us? That’s basically just a website where you can share interesting links with your friends. I’ve just made it easy by merging my bookmarks with the ZX81.org.uk RSS feed.

Travel

Monterey Bay Aquarium

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I don’t normally split a single trip into several pages since it annoys me on other sites where you have to keep clicking “Next” just to get the complete story, however I was impressed enough with the Monterey Bay Aquarium that I thought it deserved separating out. There is another page for the commentary and pictures from Berkeley, Point Lobos and Carmel.

One of the main focal points in the aquarium is the Kelp Forest, a large tank with kelp and a diverse range of fish swimming around. Of course, as a long-time user of Linux I’m always impressed by penguins, and who wouldn’t love a playful sea otter?

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Most of the penguins were stood still but one was busy. It would carefully select a pebble, passing over most of the easily reached ones for that perfect stone. Picking it up in its beak, it would waddle over to a little cave, drop it in there and start over the whole process. Quite why I have no idea. The other penguins seemed either to be just as bemused or maybe just indifferent.

I was most impressed with the jellyfish. I had no idea that they were so diverse and beautiful. It was all helped by the nicely contrasting lighting.

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The bad news is that it was very dark and most of my pictures came out blurry, dark or both. I guess that just means you’ll have to go see it yourself!

Links

iPod at five

It seemed to take pretty much everyone by surprise. Techie-oriented website Slashdot greeted the introduction of the iPod with the words: “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.” Even I, on the way home from Tottenham Court Road with a first generation, 5Gb model, thought, “What have I done? I’ve just paid ?350 for a walkman!” And I did wonder about the name.

But we all underestimated Apple. Five years later and now it’s difficult to see someone on the London Underground without an iPod and they’ve captured the public imagination in a way that few products have in recent times.

Photos: iPod through the years | CNET News.com

I still think it’s one of the best gadgets I’ve ever bought. It’s amazing that they got so much right on that very first model.

Links

Microsoft says Zune to sell for $249

I’ve refrained from commenting about Microsoft’s iPod competitor so far as it’s not much of a challenge to mock it when they decide to make one model dung-coloured.

However this article caught my eye:

AppleInsider | Microsoft says Zune to sell for $249

What the headline doesn’t tell you is that they are planning to make a loss on each unit to make that price-point, just like they do on each XBox games console. I can’t think of many other companies that would make a loss of $388 million in one quarter and consider that to be a good strategy worth replicating for another product.