Archive for the ‘Other Countries’ Category

Under Surveillance

Sunday, May 14th, 2006

I went to Manchester to see Dave Matthews friday, having left the world to read my recent interview, and I’ve come back with some interesting web stats, as the following image shows:

Web stats by country

Some of the countries stand out as being rather out of the ordinary. Most of these are fairly explainable though – the chances are somebody in France is going to have the intelligence to use a computer. Even a DMB oriented member of the US military might find themselves perusing the internet, it’s not as if there’s anything going on in Iraq at the moment. But the sudden jump in the number of hits from the US Government is what disturbs me the most, especially considering they don’t appear on the stats at all before May. Perhaps there are some more liberal minds in the overly right-wing Senate and House of Representatives. Or, far more likely, Dave is part of some massive Republican conspiracy. Perhaps those indicted in the CIA leak case will turn out to be Rove, Libby and Matthews?

Either way, I seemed to have gained a new audience as a result of my foray into semi-professional journalism. Other interesting tidbits from my stats:

- “england football club” is my second highest search string click-through (after “nancies uk”)
- Britney Spears is featured in 5 of my top 20 search strings
- Thanks to my site URL being misquoted in the DMB Rhyme & Reason newsletter I was featured in (as nancies.uk) people have had to search for that URL in Google to find my site. With all the spying going on it’s probably not a bad thing, to be honest.

Coup d’Microsoft

Saturday, January 7th, 2006

I’ve previously mentioned that I’m a big geek so this post will come as no surprise either.

I stayed up tonight to review minute by minute updates of Larry Page’s keynote speech at the 2006 CES. For those of you who don’t know what that is, I’d stop reading, because its only going to lessen your respect for me (of what little you had anyway) if you carry on.

As it turns out, he announced some pretty neat things. He waxed lyrical about some power supply bollocks, which I presume was supposed to have some seminal meaning about the interconnectivty of mobile phones and USB. To be honest, this whole “everybody needs hundreds of devices for everything that can all connect and talk to each other in their home” idea has yet to convince me, considering I still tape things on VHS and stick CD’s in my stereo upstairs. But maybe America is different. Soon you’ll be able to download videos from Google that aren’t just teenage girls singing into hairbrushes and dancing along to the latest Kelly Clarkson tripe. But they’re going to cost you between $0.99 and $1.99, and it’s all CBS shows too unfortunately. But apparently you’ll be able to get hold of the original Star Trek, and seeing as how the Charlie Rose show is aired on CBS I might be able to get that incredible acoustic performance of “The Stone” Dave did a few year’s back. Plus, Letterman’s on CBS, and he loves Dave. So for now, Google = Dave = good.

According to Engadget.com, ‘General opinion around us is this is one of the best keynotes ever. Incredibily entertaining yet sincere. Jason says, “There was no spin. I still don’t know what Viiv is about, but I understood everything they showed today perfectly’. Don’t worry, I don’t know what Viiv is about either.