tl:dr Recipe for recording the audio of multiple individuals in a large crowd.

Ingredients:

Sandisk Sansa Clip+ MP3 Player - http://www.sandisk.co.uk/products/sansa-music-and-video-players/sandisk-sansa-clipplus-mp3-player
Rockbox - http://www.rockbox.org/

Instructions:

Install Rockbox (open source firmware for MP3 players) on the Sansa Clip+. Configure to record on the Sansa Clip+ microphone in .wav format. Give a Sansa Clip+ to every person you want to record the audio for. Have every person start recording at roughly the same time, leave for 5 hours.

Gather all Sansa Clip+s at the end of the session, and extract the .wav file. 10-participants = 10-track equivalent audio recording of the session.

Mix and fade between the tracks to isolate the audio of single conversations between participants.

He basically has created a relatively inexpensive and reliable way to get this audio. Much like using multiple Go Pro cameras to record action of sports events beats out using professional equipment (and in some ways has become professional equipment). He's arguing that the Sansa Clip+ together with the Rockbox open source firmware, is a better solution than using professional radio mic's and then having recording equipment receive those signals and store them on disk for editing later.

I've no idea how "crowdsourced" fits into this though, nor how this is anything more than an advert even though the solution is a little interesting. It's useful enough and potentially cheap that you might imagine giving everyone at a Ted one of these as the conversations caught off-record might be even more valuable than the sessions.

Have you guys not tried the 2 factor authentication yet?

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/advanced-sign-in-security-for-your.html

I was afraid that my girl might find it difficult to use or overly technical, but once I explained how it worked and supported her through the setup of it, it's been working brilliantly.

Basically any new machine that you connect to Gmail from requires not just your password (something you know) but also the code generated from the supplied app (on our Android phones - something you have).

The key to internet security is to always have 2 out of the 3 following things:
1) something you know (passwords, answers to secret questions, etc)
2) something you have (physical keys, dongles, RSA SecurID)
3) something you are (biometrics, fingerprints, etc)

Google as yet, are the only major provider of email offering security that can use 2 factor auth by the something you know and something you have.

It's really worth turning it on, just for peace of mind.

You know the moon is moving away from Earth at a verifiable few centimetres a year? Well if you extrapolate backwards it's obvious that the dinosaurs are extinct because the moon hit them on the head... doosh! That'd make you extinct pretty fast.

Cold hard science here guys... it's undeniable.

Whenever you read something like "more than 369 signatures" it really just means "370 signatures"

Where are the measuring *from*?

I've moved a site from Linode New Jersey to Linode London, UK because the target audience are in London ( http://www.lfgss.com/ ).

However in Google Webmaster Tools the page load time increased, suggesting that the measurements are being calculated from US datacentres, even though for the target audience the speed increased and page load time decreased.

I would like to see Google use the geographic target preference and to have the nearest datacentre to the target be the one that performs the measurement... or better still to have both a local and remote datacentre perform every measurement and then find a weighted time between them that might reflect real-world usage.

Otherwise if I'm being sent the message that I am being penalised for not hosting close to a Google datacentre from where the measurements are calculated, then I will end up moving there in spite of the fact that this isn't the right thing for my users.

If you allow the user to have multiple shopping lists, and then take each list to the checkout rather than a basket... then one-click doesn't apply, right?

In the UK there is a chain of brick and mortar stores called Argos. You don't have a shopping trolley, cart or basket... you have a bit of paper on which you write the codes of the items you want and you take that to the checkout and then once paid someone gets them from the warehouse and brings them to the counter near the exit.

You can have multiple lists, and pay separately. Thus, this is not a shopping cart.

By taking the idea of shopping lists online it's feasible that the multiplicity of lists breaks the existing cart definition enough to allow one-click.

Actually one-click becomes even easier then... as it's just one of many lists that you have... a buy-now list, a buy-later list... a gift-list... etc.

Would this be enough?

They wouldn't be able to use the phone as a recording device to automatically transcribe interviews:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/05/chair_chucking/

"Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy" - Steve Ballmer (allegedly)

If all you've got is:
"#### Eric Schmidt is a #### pussy. I'm going to #### bury that guy"

Well, it becomes a little harder to make an exact quote... "was it the f-word or was it the c-word?"

And the bands.

Having worked in the industry for over a decade, the secret motto is "This would be a great business if wasn't for the bands".

The view is generally that they are prima-donnas that dislike selling their product and think they're artists.

Now they've updated it to be both the bands and consumers you have to wonder whether they've realised what they're admitting... that they're just an intermediary.

I'm extremely concerned by Phorm.

Effectively it gives the ISP the ability to remove the adverts that fund 60% of our costs and replace them with adverts for which they would receive the entire revenue stream.

My site is funded by adverts (60%) merchandise (30%) and donations (10%).

I'm fairly sure that the community would step up and purchase more stuff and donate more, but I don't think it's realistic that this could be sustained, whereas the advertising revenue is reasonably constant.

I believe that if Phorm becomes ubiquitous that I would have to question seriously how to find the website, and would probably have to remove all adverts and to seek to have the costs covered exclusively through other means. As I'm unsure of the feasibility of this, I would have to say that in my case the loss of that revenue would threaten my ability to continue running the site, especially under the risk of redundancy in the near/mid future.

I've already implemented the Phorm opt-out cookies, and written to my local MP (who couldn't care less from the generic response I got), so it's great to see the EU step up where the UK seems to have failed.