BatFlattery

One of the tools I use every day, without thinking usually, is Dropbox. It’s an incredibly well-designed answer to the problem many of us have: if you use more than one computer, how do you transfer files between them, or work on a file using different computers?

If you always use the same computer, no problem. But if you have both a desktop and a laptop, or sometimes do a bit of personal stuff on the work computer during your lunch break, your options are pretty much email it to yourself (which doesn’t help if you forget, and the latest version is on the home computer when you’re at work or on the laptop) or save it on a USB stick, which is a bit of a pain, needs to be taken with you, and is a worry if lost.

What Dropbox does is create a directory, called your Dropbox, on every computer that you install it on. Any file you put in the Dropbox is immediately copied up to the Dropbox server, and then synchronised with your other computers as soon as you log on. This happens automatically and seamlessly, and it doesn’t matter what platform you use (I have a Mac desktop and a Linux netbook, and Dropbox synchronises both instantly and effortlessly). There’s even an iPhone client!

You can also access your Dropbox on the server, via a web interface, from any computer. So if you’re on a friend’s computer, or at an Internet cafe, you still have access to all your Dropbox files.

You can get Dropbox here: there’s a free plan, with a usable amount of space, and if you need more, there are paid plans with various levels of storage.

So the Obamacare proposals guarantee, among other things, that companies will be forced to offer “affordable” cover to individuals. The thinking being, these greedy companies are pricing cover too high, they need to be forced to offer cover at a proper level.

Of course, the reality is that the market is already forcing these companies to offer cover at the proper level, since if some of them really did overcharge, their competitors would come in and take all their customers by offering cheaper coverage. What BHusseinO is really saying is that he doesn’t like the answer that the market is giving, and is insistent that he, rather than the market, is right.

A few years ago, the government got it into its head that a lot of banks were unfairly discriminating against home buyers with poor credit histories when deciding whom to lend to. Never mind that any bank that did this would see its profitability suffer compared with banks that lent on purely commercial terms: the government knew better than the markets, OK? And passed laws to force the banks to lend, even when commercial lending criteria would suggest the borrowers were a poor credit risk.

But the government didn’t know better: the borrowers were a poor credit risk, and they defaulted in such record numbers that the entire banking system tottered. (Of course this was the fault of greedy bankers, not incompetent government!)

So are the seeds of the next disaster lurking in the heart of Obamacare? The history of government intervention suggests that is a strong possibility.

Just found this handy, crib-note style post on Seomoz that summarises all the bits you need to remember to rank well in the search engines:

Perfecting keyword targeting on-page optimisation

My girlfriend thinks that girls are better at games than boys. I’d like to disagree with this but she currently holds the top score on Frenzic on my iPhone, and I can’t seem to dislodge her. I also struggle to maintain my early lead on the Wii: I seem to do well right off the bat, but can’t seem to improve much, whereas she seems to improve dramatically in a relatively short period of time.

So, based on this very objective and scientific study with a very valid sample size, I’m forced to conclude that girls are better at games than boys.

So the Government PR machine is working overtime to lay the groundwork for action on the terrible state that alcohol has left Scotland in. The problem is, it seems, cheap alcohol, abused by a small minority of drinkers. The solution is to make all users pay more. Will it work?

Comparison with the drug industry suggests not. Prohibition has increased the cost of drugs far beyond that of alcohol, yet they remain popular, suggesting that demand is unlikely to be affected. Also, many of the most problematic users of drugs resort to crime to fund their habit. So we can look forward to, in addition to the usual public disorder and assault offences that attend on alcohol abuse, an increase in muggings, burglary and robbery. Nice thinking there.

You may know that Spotify comes in a free, ad-supported guise, as well as a premium, ad-free one that costs £10 a month. I’ve been listening to the free version, and I’ve discovered a fairly annoying (and pretty slimey) tactic on the part of the software.

One of the ads that keeps coming on is the awful DEC appeal for the “crisis” in Gaza. Since I don’t like hearing people bleat on about giving money that will likely go to the terrorists rather than the innocent collateral damage of the terrorists, I hit the Mute button on the Mac. After awhile, thinking the ad must be over, I hit unmute. Nope, still playing. After a couple of minutes of this, it dawns: Spotify is monitoring the state of the mute button and pausing the ad!

And lest you think this is a feature for the music, that just happens to have the effect of forcing you to listen to the ads: hitting mute during music play does NOT pause the playback.

Absolute bastards.

I’ve been using Spotify for a few weeks now, and I’m starting to get that “car-crash in slow motion” feeling: the record labels still don’t seem to get it, and the service is degrading before my eyes. And it’s still in beta!

First there was a massive withdrawal of tracks days after I signed on. But OK, there was still a decent amount of music. On the home page, there were a number of cool tracks in the top ten, including Infinity 2008, Poker Face by Lady Gaga, and Viva la Vida by Coldplay. Today I went back to the home page for the first time in awhile, and the top 5 tracks are all in red, including the tracks just mentioned. An attempt to play them gives a “This track is currently not available in United Kingdom” message. WTF??

Even more bizarre: many of these artists have albums in the top ten, which are listed just to the right. Clicking on the album allows you to play the track! Is this a Spotify screw-up, or intentional? Who knows?

Just unbelievable.

BTW if you want to get in on Spotify before it completely collapses, I have ten invites to give away.

UPDATE:

According to a commenter on the Spotify blog, the problem is caused by restriction of the particular versions of the songs that went into the top list, but that other versions are still available in the UK, and thus the ability to play from the album is not an oversight. So the problem should disappear as the top list is updated. Still seems a bit of a silly error, and a chilling reminder of the way the record labels want to keep the world divided up.

As a longtime user of Amazon’s DVD rental by post service, I was a little annoyed when they sold it to LoveFilm. But after some initial teething problems relating to the transfer of my account, I have to admit that LoveFilm is pretty good. The website has some great features, like categorisation of your list into high, medium and low priority movies, and multiple lists if you and your partner each want their own list. And if you search for movies by eg genre they are sorted intelligently, so that more recent and more popular movies feature first, making it more likely you’ll find what you want, rather than having to plough through every weird film ever released in the genre. (Of course if you want to find that obscure cult film, you can easily do it by searching directly.) The service is fast, so you get a new movie a couple of days after posting an old one back, and of course you can keep a movie as long as you like.

This is in strong contrast to the BlockBuster rental by post service which I did a free trial on. The website was awful. Searches produce lists sorted alphabetically, so you have to wade through dreck released fifty years ago to get to the movie you want. The whole experience was very un-user-friendly. You cannot return the movies to a BlockBuster store, so there is no integration between the online and the physical store network. The whole thing just reeks of poor execution. Which makes sense, I suppose: LoveFilm do this as their main business, while BlockBuster were forced into rental by post to deal with the decline of their core business model. BlockBuster’s heart isn’t in it.

These days I use LoveFilm more for TV than movies: you can rent series on DVD, usually getting three episodes per disk, so it’s quite a nice way to catch up on all of a series that you might have missed some episodes of, or stopped watching because you lost the thread of the plot. You can even plough through a series of 24 in near-real-time: a three-disk rental scheme would give you enough disks for 12 hours of 24, giving you a bit of a break and some sleep before the next three disks arrive!

LoveFilm is definitely worth checking out if you love movies and TV.

I have to admit that I have pretty much lost total interest in Facebook, and although I still need to find my stride in terms of posting on Twitter, I do read Twitter every day. At least. (Mostly, I admit, to find out what Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross are up to.) FB just seems too demanding, too annoying, too commercial, too slow. Twitter is quick and easy and cuts to the essentials. God knows how they will make money with it but I am enjoying it while it lasts.

You may not have heard of Mohammed Al-Dura, but to millions of Arabs he is a martyr akin to Hector Peterson, an innocent victim of Israeli action. But there has always been strong doubt about whether the IDF fired the fatal shot, or even if the boy died at the scene at all.

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