Gary's Posterous

Because sometimes 140 characters isn't enough

Posterous; Paused. Possibly Permanently?

If you follow my blog through Posterous you'll have noticed that I haven't posted here in a while and my main blog over at www.vicchi.org is way ahead in terms of posts and articles. There's a good reason for this and it's to do with the way in which search engines penalise duplicate content with different URLs. That's the short version. The long version is over on my main blog at http://www.vicchi.org/2010/03/01/posterous-paused-possibly-permanently/.

The upshot of this is that, for now at least, I won't be posting on Posterous any more. Which is a deep shame as I think it's a fabulous service but for now, one that doesn't only not meet my needs but actively penalises them, at least for SEO purposes. See you over on www.vicchi.org sometime.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

Filed under  //   content   duplicate   penalty   posterous   seo  

A Posterous Wish List

I've been using Posterous for a while now, a quick trawl back through the archives shows the first post I wrote via the service was in August 2009, and I've been using it ever since.

Read the read of this post at http://www.vicchi.org/2010/02/16/a-posterous-wish-list/

Filed under  //   autopost   bitly   posterous   postly   wordpress  

Through the Window Redux

The view from my window has changed a lot of recent. Through my office window there's been St. Giles and Covent Garden in the snow ...

Read the rest of this post at http://www.vicchi.org/2010/02/15/through-the-window-redux/

Filed under  //   coventgarden   home   hotel   london   moffettfield   newyork   sunnyvale   window  

Location is a Key Context, But Most People Don't Know This

Like a lot of people, I get most of the information I use, both personally and professionally, from the web; from RSS feeds, from keyword search alerts and from Twitter. The genesis of my recent Theory of Stuff slowly accumulated out of this mishmash of feeds, alerts and status updates.

Firstly I read about EchoEcho, a new location based service which promises all manner of good stuff by showing you where your friends are regardless of which location based service they currently use. Let's leave aside for one moment that the service independence of this app seems to be based around the concept of getting all your friends to use EchoEcho and then consistently getting them to report their location. Let's look at something far more fundamental than that, the strong sense of location deja vu harking back over two years ago.

Read the rest of this post at http://www.vicchi.org/2010/02/12/location-is-a-key-context-but-most-people-do...

Filed under  //   audience   echoecho   engagement   foursquare   gowalla   hyperlocal   local   location   streetview   stuff   theory  

The Location Battle Between You and Your Phone

Whenever I talk about the privacy implications inherent in sharing your location with an app or service, I keep coming back to the idea that it's essential to be your own source of truth for your location. This is a slightly verbose way of saying that you need to be able to lie about your location or that you need to be able to say "no, I really am here" despite what other location contexts such as GPS, cell tower triangulation or public wifi MAC address triangulation may have to say on the matter.

Read the rest of this post at http://www.vicchi.org/2010/02/09/the-location-battle-between-you-and-your-phone/

Filed under  //   agps   foursquare   gowalla   gps   location   privacy   truth  

Through the Window

Looking out of my hotel window I can see into the heart of Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale. What do you mean it's fairly uninspiring? East of here is Mountain View, home of the Google-plex, west of here is the Yahoo! mothership, which is the reason I'm here and to the south is Cupertino, and 1 Infinite Loop, the home of Apple.

Read the rest of this post at http://www.vicchi.org/2010/02/08/through-the-window/

 

Filed under  //   apple   google   hangarone   moffettfield   siliconvalley   sunnyvale   yahoo  

The Airport Security Ritual

Post 9/11, post the Shoe Bomber and and post, for want of a better description, the Pants Bomber I've had to travel to the United States in the aftermath of a security incident and have had the dubious privilege of witnessing at first hand the incrementally heightened security procedures that have been put in place. Witnessed as a passenger I might add, so I can only pass comment on what I've seen and not what may or may not be going on hidden behind the scenes and out of site of me and my fellow passengers.

Read the rest of this post at http://www.vicchi.org/2010/02/08/the-airport-security-ritual/

Filed under  //   airport   ritual   security  

It's Time to Stop LAMB (Location Based SPAM) Before It Even Exists

We all suffer from SPAM, the unwanted and unsolicited commercial bulk emails that are the reason we have Junk Mail filters and folders in our email clients and servers. A quick glance at the Junk folder for my personal email account shows over 300 of these since the beginning of February alone.

Read the rest of this post at http://www.vicchi.org/2010/02/06/its-time-to-stop-lamb-location-based-spam-be...

Filed under  //   advertising   apple   control   iphone   lamb   location   privacy   spam  

Sometimes the Hardware is Willing but the Software is Weak

I've had an HP DeskJet F-something-or-other for a couple of years now. It's a small grey thing, around the size of a shoe box that prints, scans and photocopies. At least that's what it said in the brochure and on HP's web site. It used to sit plugged into the USB port on my AirPort Express for easy wireless printing. Not that it actually printed mind you. 

Read the rest of this post at http://www.vicchi.org/2010/02/05/sometimes-the-hardware-is-willing-but-the-so...

Filed under  //   design   fail   hardware   laser   samsung   software   usability