http://goldsounds.com Technology, Media, Music and Nerdiness Sat, 21 Apr 2007 16:03:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Sometimes, Mark Watson does very long shows. In 2004, he did a very long one indeed: Mark Watson’s Overambitious 24-hour Show. I wasn’t there, but Andy McClelland was, and by all accounts a wonderful time was had by all. In 2005 I became inadvertently entangled the next ill-advised marathon show, called ... http://goldsounds.com/archives/2007/04/22/mark-watsons-24-hour-show-hits-melbourne/ Google lets you embed gadgets in your own home page now. http://goldsounds.com/archives/2006/11/28/wicked/ Three people have come to my site this week after searching Google for “whore licence”. In amazement, I told my co-worker, and he said “why would that bring them to your site?”. More to the point, who the Hell would type that into Google in the first place?? http://goldsounds.com/archives/2006/09/12/query-log-fun/ As YouTube gradually replaces TV as the idle brain’s opiate of choice, I am tempted to write such arrogant know-it-all tidbits as “it was only a matter of time before big-money PR firms took notice”. With the benefit of hindsight, and a helpful article by ABC News, I’m going to ... http://goldsounds.com/archives/2006/08/07/a-convenient-falsehood/ After a week in damage-control mode after a drunken anti-semitic diatribe, Mel Gibson blamed his behaviour on resurgent Alcoholism and sought forgiveness from the Jewish community. This morning, however, Gibson held another press conference - this time, on the balcony of his Malibu home - in which he blamed ... http://goldsounds.com/archives/2006/08/02/mel-gibson-blames-alcoholism-on-the-f-ing-jews/ Google is famous for its unofficial corporate motto, “Don’t be Evil” (uh, and for making web search useful again). Since going public and aggressively expanding their business across the world, much of the criticism of Google’s business practises has been focused on whether they have decisively ignored this credo. For evidence ... http://goldsounds.com/archives/2006/07/05/define-evil/ There’s nothing I love more than a good Astro-Turf campaign, and US telecommunications providers have been dishing it up in spades. At “Internet of the Future“, you can view a homespun-looking flash animation describing how internet providers want to open up “new lanes of traffic” for special applications (video-on-demand, for ... http://goldsounds.com/archives/2006/06/28/welcome-to-the-land-of-tomorrow/ Amazing photo set from North Korea, created by a Russian web designer who visited there. Exciting detail: Electrified barbed wire along the beaches so citizens can’t swim away. One thing is for sure: It sucks to be North Korean. http://goldsounds.com/archives/2006/06/15/north-korea-is-a-bit-crap/ My new job involves quite a bit of work with natural language tools which try to group, summarise or classify text fragments. I am aware that sometimes these tools produce odd results, because in the end they’re not really intelligent - they’re driven by statistics. Still, it made me laugh when ... http://goldsounds.com/archives/2006/05/11/back-to-the-labs-boys/ Today, Australian journalist Richard Carleton died while reporting on the Beaconsfield Mine disaster, which claimed the life of one miner while two others are still trapped almost a kilometer underground. A transcript of ABC Radio’s reporting of the story is available online, and contains what may be the silliest line ... http://goldsounds.com/archives/2006/05/08/sometimes-a-transcript-doesnt-convey-the-appropriate-sense-of-gravity/