For example, this new trend for lengthy videos of pretty girls staring at the camera.

Apparently the idea is to help socially anxious guys get used to making eye contact with pretty girls. Personally, I'm not so sure that the best treatment for this affliction is more staring at the computer screen, but who am I to say? I'm not an expert in prettygirlnoneyecontactitis. Though I am pretty sure I've had conjunctivitis at least once in my life.

My particular tactic at work is to have a 90 second voice greeting that really, really, slowly and laboriously tells people that I really prefer email to voicemail, and repeats my email address numerous times, including spelling it out in full. And if people suffer through that all the way, I say: "I am often away from my desk or travelling and may not get your voicemail for days or weeks … however I have a mobile phone with email, so that is always the best way to reach me … but leave your message, if you want."

Comically, the only people who ever leave me messages are bubbly junior PR people who are ringing to follow up to check that I got such and such a press release. Clearly, they don't care whether I got the message or not, as long as they can tick the box on their client billing form that says they followed up with me.

Another good thing I discovered for avoiding voicemail in my life: on my particular mobile phone plan (Optus Blackberry $79 cap plan), the Optus SurePage service can be billed into the cap. So, even though each operator-answered message that is taken down and SMSed to me costs $0.85, that can be billed as part of my $300 per month cap value. And since I never spend anywhere near $300 on my voice calls, those $0.85 pager-style text messages don't cost me any real money.

I'm sure it's not the same on all plans, and since it's a premium Optus service, I almost wonder if it's an oversight by Optus, but I'm glad it's that way, because now I never have to listen to voicemail on my mobile any more either — I just get an SMS with the message and a number I can click on to call back if necessary.

In short, I HATE VOICEMAIL, and even if it was massively overhauled and sent to my email and stuff, I'd still hate it, because listening to the messages and transcribing people's numbers, etc, takes up valuable time, and I wish they'd just email me instead.

It's nice for Michael Arrington — who is hugely influential in tech — to have come out and declared voicemail dead.

I couldn't agree more. I was amazed at what abject shit the new version of Whereis is compared to Google Maps.  Yellow Pages is equally useless… I hate the way when you're trying to find a plumber in your area, the first 50 results are always massive contractor companies with a 1800 number that cover the entire state. The sooner Google's business directories supplant telco directories, the better. Google gets search, and that's what directories are all about from the end user's perspective.

Speaking of search, Sensis' shit search engine… why do they even bother? Microsoft can't make the smallest dent in people's loyalty to Google, and that's with them having full control of Windows so they can sucker in people who use the default settings in Internet Explorer.

Why doesn't Sensis just shrivel up and die, in the face of the superior competition?

But the funniest part was the closing credits 'mashup'…

- he says newspapers around the world are down 10 - 30% in ad revenue, which eats into profit margins. "They've made every economy they can in production, with computers and so on," says Murdoch. "Now they're going to have to reduce costs in journalism and things are going to deteriorate tremendously."

- "A news story published in a newspaper is, on average, touched or edited by 8.3 people. That is ridiculous."

One of the things that really annoys me about Apple Safari is that it doesn't use the CTRL+K / CMD+K keyboard shortcut for activating the Google Search dialogue box, which is standard across most browsers — particularly Safari.

Instead, Safari makes you use CMD+Shift+L which is a "twister" of a keyboard shortcut — not very ergonomic. 

Amusingly, in their efforts to make Firefox 3 more Mac-like, the Firefox team has implemented the CMD+Shift+L keyboard shortcut as an alternative to CMD+K in Firefox 3. However, I still much prefer CMD+K. 

I found this great post over at 5thirtyone about how to make Safari recognise CMD+K as a keyboard shortcut for activating the Google Search box. It works a treat! Hurrah!

There's also Jamphat, which graphs rap songs (sometimes quite obscenely, warning NSFW):

via Wired

Ever wanted to change the desktop picture in Mac OS X by selecting the file in the Finder, right clicking and selecting "set as Desktop Picture" from a context menu?Or perhaps select some files, then "move files to a new folder", "create folder enclosing these files" or "make new folder for files"? (It's about time Apple built a "move files" option into OS X rather than just having copy available via the GUI.)

The answers to these needs are at a great page listing various context menu plugins for Mac OS X. Check it out. The two mentioned above are DeskPicChangeCM and MoveItemsX.

I also discovered a wonderful program that sits in your menu bar and lets you change your desktop picture. It can change desktop pictures on a schedule, too (with very nice transitions). It's called PictureSwitcher (pictured below). It's $US30 shareware, which I will happily pay once I've got some damn money in the bank again ;-)

And then there's this handy Utility… Desktop 2 Login, which replaces the utterly hideous, gaudy, un-Apple-like purple starscape that sits behind the OS X login screen. It simply copies your current desktop picture to be displayed instead. Why couldn't Apple have provided that as an option!! Grumble grizzle!

Since Apple is pretty good about force-sleeping the computer before the battery runs out entirely, it's actually very rare to run out of battery altogether. I think in the entire time I've been using Macs, the safe sleep function has only been necessary once — and that was when I changed an old worn out battery over to a new one.

Fortunately, you can disable safe sleep mode, by entering the following into the terminal:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

If you want safe sleep mode back, just change the '0' to a '3'.

Voila — your Mac will be back to the good old days of instant sleep.

There's also a preference pane that can do this called Smartsleep, which lets you select a nice middle-ground: only use safe sleep mode if the battery is running low at the time you sleep the notebook. For me, who is usually plugged into the power point, that's ideal!

One of the inaccuracies that caught my eye was about me. According to Richards "Maybe Dan needs another drink before he chokes on his grovelling for Kickstart or a round at the bar from [a vendor] who at one Kickstart event had a bar tab that would break even my expense account."

Richards (thankfully) doesn't know me well but evidently got his facts wrong on this one. I don't drink alcohol (for health reasons) … and I don't tend to grovel for rounds of mineral water. Nor was I present at these supposed drinks — or possibly even the Kickstart in question (he's not specific in his story about which event he's referring to.)

But even if I was, is David really surprised that journos have drinks at conferences on a vendor tab? I'm sure David has been the recipient of plenty of corporate hospitality — I wonder if he feels it has compromised his independence?

Then again, one can't be sure whether this story was really published by Richards or one of the hackers that have been controlling what is published under his name.

At least now, Richards knows that all eyes in the IT journalism community are on his sites all the time, so if the hackers start posting plagiarised copy again, or stories with gross inaccuracies, we'll be able to expose them publicly for him so he can correct them.

I imagine vendors are already becoming wary of inviting Richards to any events until he can assure them that the hackers are banished from his sites for good, lest they publish something completely inaccurate or plagiarised, as has happened so many times in the past.

You can Digg the video here to help other people see it.

Richards has excused himself from the allegations with the rather implausible explanation that his website has been under the control of a hacker for the last two years. The hacker is supposed to have been hell-bent on publishing other people's content, with a hastily written standfirst at the top of the articles in an attempt to cover up the fact they're plagiarised.

Numerous content owners have said they have contacted Richards over the years to complain about their content being ripped off, which pours cold water on Richards' excuse that he was unaware of the "hacker".

Whirlpool has had a discussion thread going since 2005 about plagiarism of Whirlpool articles that have appeared on Richards' websites. One post includes a long list of other articles that the "hacker" has published on Richards' behalf.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 punnet ground beef (the Woolworths organic minced beef tastes best)
• 1 big white or brown onion (sliced)
• 2 big cooking carrots (grated)
• 2 zucchinis (grated)
• 500g pre-sliced mushrooms
• 1 heaped teaspoon prechopped garlic from a jar
• half teaspoon prechopped chilli from a jar
• 1 beef stock cube (dissolved in hot water)
• generous shake of salt
• 1 jar tomato passata
• 1 800g tin of tomatos
• big shake of dried oregano (e.g. two heaped dessert spoons)
• big shake of dried parsley (e.g. two heaped dessert spoons)
• big shake of dried basil (e.g. two heaped dessert spoons)

METHOD

• grate carrots and zucchinis, put to the side
• Fry up onions till soft
• Fry up meat till well browned (with onions)
• Put everything else in!
• Simmer till the ingredients of the sauce seem 'saucy' and well integrated. Usually takes 1 to 2 hrs. Make sure you stir often so it doesn't stick.

Serve with al-dente pasta (thin spaghetti or regular spaghetti), grated parmesan cheese and optionally, good quality crusty bread and butter.Good luck!!! It's a pretty fail-safe recipe.

Banks are particularly annoying like this… despite the fact that their websites are designed to work on screens as small as 800×600, they have code in their login routines that maximises the internet banking window, even if you're running a high-res display like a 24".

Here's a hugely useful tip about how to reconfigure Firefox to stop websites doing these annoying things.

1. Open a new tab in Firefox. In this new tab, type about:config into the address bar.

2. Copy and paste this text into the filter box: dom.disable_window_open_feature.

3. Double click each of the items that appears in the list to change the default behaviour. (See the tip referenced above for more detailed info on what each of the list items does.)

Why don't tech companies just say what they mean? As a journalist, I'm sick of receiving essentially dishonest announcements from big tech companies.

Read more…

Perhaps a comparison might serve to illuminate. First some of the lyrics from "Blue Sky Mine", written by Garrett:

"The candy store paupers lie to the share holders / They're crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers / The balance sheet is breaking up the sky".

And then today's rather less impulsive lyrical achievement:

"I am very proud of the comprehensive set of policies and proposed actions we put to the people of Australia in the election campaign, and I am very pleased and proud to be involved in implementing them."

Strewth.

Still, I'm nonetheless impressed to have the Midnight Oil lead singer as the environment minister. Wish he'd do a Midnight Oil redux though. Arny the Governator still throws Terminator lines into his speeches in California, after all.

Listen to this demented, distorted, dying "Nokia tune" ringtone. MP3 of the "dying Nokia" ringtone

Fortunately the following blogs have instructions on how to hack the Toolbar very easily to point to your Google Apps account rather than Gmail.

Tokyo Genki Blog — Google Apps Gmail + Google Toolbar

RedPrimary — customise Google Toolbar for Google Apps Gmail (make sure you read the first comment posted as well — and follow the tip there.)