“Do you want the United Kingdom to adopt the ‘alternative vote’ system instead of the current ‘first past the post’ system for electing Members of Parliament to the House of Commons?”

If you’ve spoken to me recently (or know me on Twitter or Facebook), you’ll know that I’ve been campaigning for a “Yes” vote in the referendum tomorrow on whether Britain should adopt the Alternative Vote. This is the first time I’ve been ‘politically involved’ in anything beyond voting, and it’s an interesting experience - equal parts uplifting and depressing, I’d say. I thought it would be a good idea to…

I am wary that this blog is in danger of turning into “Gripes With Apple”, especially after last week’s article, so I thought twice about posting this. It’s certainly not of the same order of magnitude as last week’s news, but it is something I’d usually blog about if I hadn’t seen it covered anywhere else - and I haven’t seen it covered anywhere else, so here goes…

Recently I noticed that I can no longer generate “promo codes” for Eucalyptus. These codes are basically akin to iTunes gift cards, and they allow free copies of apps to be given…

I’d like to take a moment to talk about Apple’s new policy on paid ‘content’ in iOS applications. If you don’t live in the Apple bubble I live in, let me explain: Esentially, all apps that allow users to comsume pay-for content (magazines, music, books etc.) must allow the user to buy access to that content in-app, using their iTunes account. For this, Apple will take 30% of the retail price of the content. Content can also be sold outside of the app, via whatever means you can think of (books on your web site, an newspaper subscription bought via…

Today, November 11th, is World Usability Day. To celebrate, the good folks at Clearleft wil be donating all revenue from sales of Silverback, their Mac ‘guerilla usability testing’ app, to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

Silverback’s a great app [full disclosure: I did some work on the latest version, but I’m pretty sure I would think this regardless] for performing quick, simple usability testing of your Mac app, web app or web site (or even Windows app with VMWare or Parallels!). It records what’s happening on screen, along with the user’s reactions using the iSight camera, and you can play…

Spam is getting more and more targeted. With contact details blurred to protect the, erm, guilty…

I love how they insinuate that this in response to some enquiry I made, somehow hoping I’m so busy I’ll presume I forgot about it or something.

I’m tempted to try to get an SDK and some hardware samples out of them…