"What is the world coming to when a well-established museum, now over a hundred years old, cannot share its unique collections, wealth of educational resources and vibrant programme of events with the public?" complains museum director Janet Vitmayer. Another sad case of disinterest leading to a lack of visits from the PlayStation generation? Not quite. Apparently the museum in question is having some trouble attracting the right kind of visitors, and has also found that its perfectly innocent web and email communications are being systematically blocked. It's a sad case, but the curators will have to face up to the facts. In a world where smut, marital pharmaceuticals and all manner of questionable materials are just a couple of clicks away, it just can't carry on calling itself the Horniman.

October 28, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple duly launched its U2 special edition iPod yesterday and of course the band were on hand to join Apple bigwig Steve Jobs at the launch to promote the thing. Only, hang on, according to this Reuters report (and photo), the four celebs who turned up to kick off the product were Jobs, Bono, The Edge, and some bloke from U2's record company. What about the other two much-valued members of the band? You know, thingy and err, the other one. Were they busy? Not invited? Sitting at home twiddling their thumbwheels? Ah, well, that's fame for you. It's a fickle thing.

October 27, 2004 Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

Respectable science journal Nature today reports that running an electric current from one side of your head to the other can actually make you smarter. "A current of two thousandths of an ampere (a fraction of that needed to power a digital watch) applied for 20 minutes is enough to produce a significant improvement [in verbal skills]," according to research undertaken in the US. Apparently a smaller current of one thousandth of an amp had no effect. If, as the study suggests, a tiny trickle charge can boost mental agility by 20 percent, just think what a bigger current might do! Wait here. Sneak is just nipping out to buy a swimming cap, a set of jump leads and a heavy-duty car battery...

October 26, 2004 Science | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak is a firm fan of the excellent Mozilla Firefox browser, and is also a staunch supporter of RSS feeds. So naturally Sneak was delighted when the Firefox 1.0 Preview Release included a new Live Bookmarks feature that turns the humble Bookmarks menu into a powerful RSS aggregator. When a Firefox user browses a page that offers a suitable feed, an orange RSS button appears - as if by magic - at the bottom of the browser window. Clicking on it brings up the option to subscribe. Firefox users should, in fact, see just such a button at the foot of Sneak's home on the web. Sneak can't wait for the fully-fledged Firefox 1.0 to arrive and went, therefore, to subscribe to the Mozilla announcements RSS feed. Just one slight technical hitch. The feed is there, but it doesn't actually seem to quite mesh with Firefox's RSS features. So no orange button. So, erm, that's that idea knackered then.

October 25, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last night Sneak happened to catch the opening of the movie Alien3 on channel Five, and noticed the name of the planet on which the action is set: it's called Fiorina 161. On the whole it's a grim and uninviting place stocked with abnormal misfits, but everyone seems to be getting along OK. Then a ball-breaking woman arrives, takes charge, and unfortunately disaster swiftly follows. So... Nothing like what happens in the vicinity of that other Fiorina, then.

October 25, 2004 Film | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak is sorry to keep harping on about the Accenture/Sainsbury's debacle, but couldn't help noticing the sudden and mysterious disappearance of certain pages on Accenture's web site. As Google's cache shows, as recently as 15 October you could have read about how Accenture had helped Sainsbury's toward "cumulative cost savings of $1.3 billion by March 2004". Today you can only read a note saying "We're sorry, the page you requested can't be found". It's sad. With all the poop hitting Accenture's air-con at the moment, you'd think that the pesky page-pinching pixies would leave the company in peace.

October 22, 2004 Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak had really warmed to the notion that one day, recharging a mobile phone or laptop might entail a tempting encounter with the drinks trolley, given promising research into alcohol-powered fuel cells. But now Sneak has learned that top boffins in the US are working on jet-engine-powered dynamos to provide power for portable gadgets. Yes, you read that right - researchers are working on miniature jet engines small enough to be etched onto a chip, hooked up to penny-sized electromagnetic generators that are already capable of churning out enough power to run a cellphone. It’s sobering to think that the same principles that once let Concorde streak across the sky at Mach 2, subjected to intense miniaturisation, might one day let your laptop carry on working for the many hours it takes a modern airliner to chug its way across the ocean. Worse, the new design dispenses with neat alcohol as fuel and instead sips from a tiny tank of diesel. And they call it progress...

October 21, 2004 Science | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple is rumoured to be preparing a special-edition iPod that has something to do with the pop band U2.
Apparently Apple will sell a special black-cased iPod preloaded with U2's latest album, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, as well as songs from the famous foursome's back catalogue.
Given the huge personalities that make up the band, Sneak wonders why Apple hasn't thought of bringing out four different new iPods, each cashing in on the defining character traits of band members. The Bono iPod could interrupt each song with an important message about an issue of the day. The Edge iPod could be lacking something on top, but cover it up with a fancy attachment. And the other two iPods... well... there could just be another two. Maybe one could wear sunglasses.

October 20, 2004 Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ah, the benefit of hindsight. Struggling supermarket chain Sainsbury's has admitted that its "complex supply chain solution" unfortunately "simply cannot be delivered to the required scale" and that its IT systems have proven more expensive and less effective than planned. The result being some very empty shelves - embarrassingly not due to the grabbing hands of eager shoppers. So the retailer is now busily doing what beleaguered businesses always do: throwing out staff and refocusing on things that the management hasn't managed to break yet. Of course it's all rather poor news for those who might have crowed in the past about what a great job was being done delivering that complex supply chain solution. Congratulations must surely be due to business magazine Supply Chain Management Review for its particularly helpful and indeed glowing case study into Sainsbury's supply chain miracle. Published in May this year, the article details the "substantial wins on many fronts" delivered by the system. But far be it from Sneak to simply shoot the messenger. No, stars of the article Accenture and Sun Microsystems must surely both deserve a bullet too.

October 20, 2004 Food and Drink | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft and Cisco are working together on new security technology, the two announced yesterday. Sneak certainly hopes that the result will be safer systems. And not the more obvious and indeed more likely outcome: that by pooling their efforts, these two clumsy giants will simply find twice as many opportunities to cock up.

October 19, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google's new desktop search download is surprising some early adopters by keeping records of instant messaging conversations, deleted emails and secure web pages. Apparently these features can be switched off, but are enabled by default. A variety of risks are raised as a result, particularly for those that share their PC with others. For every person offering up thanks when a deleted item turns out to be still available, there will surely be another spitting out curses as they face an angry spouse or livid boss with the evidence of some forgotten misdeed. For now, the desktop search works only with Windows XP and Windows 2000 SP3+; meaning that Mac and Linux users can continue to delete dodgy mails, chat chirpily and surf suspect sites with impunity. There's also a growing case to be made for back-migrating to Windows 95, Sneak feels, and retreating back to a time before the world and the web got so complicated.

October 18, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

Back in June Sneak blogged about the idiots allowing a Spanish beach bar to stick RFID tags in their arms, presumably so that bar staff could charge them for drinks even after they became too sozzled to sign their names. Now the surveillance-obsessed US authorities have given the nod to the same technology - in this country still happily reserved for identifying dogs, cats and bunny-rabbits - for medical-record keeping and related purposes. Where will it all end? The steady march of system-on-a-chip development means that sooner or later the rice-sized implant will possess enough processing power to put a Centrino laptop to shame. Then the authorities will be in a position to record, encrypt and transmit data about a chipped person’s every action. Don’t laugh, it could happen. At which point, two common phrases from today’s IT could take on ominous new meaning. Sneak, for one, will not allow Intel Inside, lest it unleash the Blue Screen of Death on Sneak’s core processes.

October 15, 2004 Science | Permalink | Comments (0)

It sounds like something from a dodgy Hollywood science fiction flick, but the philanthropic Howard Hughes Medical Institute aims to capture dreams on disk. And the institute is not to be sniffed at. Not only does it enjoy a substantial $11bn stack of cash, courtesy of loony-but-loaded dead industrialist Howard Hughes; but it funded the two researchers who landed a Nobel Prize earlier this month for their work on the science of smell. Now HHMI is spending $400m on a state of the art research centre that will do whatever blue-sky research it takes to capture and record the images and thoughts from inside people’s heads. Gerald Rubin, director of the new Janelia Farm Research Campus, told Reuters, “If someone tells me they are doing something with a 90 percent chance of success, I’ll tell them they are not being creative enough - to go find something more adventuresome.” And now the place is hiring biologists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians and physicists. Hmm. Well, if HHMI is willing to give Sneak a substantial slice of that $11bn, Sneak would happily undertake some research that would most definitely have a less than 90 percent chance of success...

October 14, 2004 Science | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sneak is amazed to learn that a man paralysed from the neck down has been able to join the digital revolution, after surgeons implanted a BrainGate chip in his head. Using the chip, which uses tiny spikes to interface directly with 100 neurons in his brain, the man is now able to send email just by thinking about it. Which certainly makes a change from most of the messages that land in Sneak’s overstuffed inbox, most of which seem to have been sent by people who haven’t thought about it at all.

October 14, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today Sneak has been finding out about QR Codes and Semacodes - two varieties of next-generation barcodes that are currently finding a variety of innovative applications. Both use a two-dimensional pixel-map in place of the conventional barcode’s single-dimension rack of thin and thick lines. A single QR Code image can convey up to 2kB of data, for example, while the system can include error correction code so that scanners can cope with up to 30 percent image loss. The codes can be used for labelling almost anything, from packing cases to sushi plates. In fact the business uses must be endless. And, interestingly, the latest, greatest, most expensive (and most covetable) cameraphones have QR or Semacode compatibility built in, meaning you can take a snap of anything labelled with a code splodge and extract the data. Which is the part that Sneak is really interested in, of course. Finally, a truly convincing excuse for putting that sleek new smartphone on expenses...

October 13, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (6)

What’s the most essential item to pack for a foreign business trip, Sneak wondered? Fortunately, readers of tech-blog Engadget have some ideas. Noise-cancelling earphones (for subtracting screaming babies and the like from your iPod listening pleasure) seem to be the top tip, although reader Marco offers a long list of suggestions obviously honed over years of travelling in arse-class (at the back-end of the jumbo, in other words). And his top tip? Take a towel. Not because he’s a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy obsessive. No. “I was trapped in an Asian airport for hours that had a shower but no cloth or paper towels,” Marco reveals. “You try drying yourself with toilet paper.”

October 11, 2004 Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)

“The latest weapon in food-taste chemistry - the artificial throat - swallows, breathes, salivates and will drink almost anything,” says New Scientist today. Sounds a lot like almost any of Sneak’s colleagues on a Friday night.

October 11, 2004 Science | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak must get a new suit from Ted Baker. Apparently the firm’s Endurance range of suits features specially-designed pockets labelled with icons for mobile phone, passport and, err, other bits of kit. That the suits are claimed to be highly stain resistant is of course an added bonus, given Sneak’s typical working week. This capability was, apparently, “summed up by a tag showing a stick man vomiting, then carrying on partying,” according to today’s Metro newspaper. “But marketing chiefs keen to nurture a ‘classier’ image have since replaced it with a roulette wheel symbol.” Sneak is not sure that vomit and roulette wheels are quite the same thing. It’s hard to picture James Bond coolly quipping, “Twenty thousand on carrots; they always come up,” while plonking down a stack of casino chips next to a chunder-bucket, whether decked out in Ted Baker threads or not.

October 8, 2004 | Permalink | Comments (0)

The team behind the Ansari X-Prize, which successfully spurred the development of the winning SpaceShipOne, now intends to launch further competitions - “a series of technology prizes seeking to meet the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century”. They are currently asking the world at large to suggest suitable goals for humanity to shoot for. Sneak, naturally, has one ready-prepared. Just as the X-Prize helped a new generation to boldly go where only Nasa and its ilk have gone before, the new prizes should follow suit. So Sneak would like to propose a competition to see if anyone can strap both George Bush and Tony Blair into a rocket and send them where only a small dog and a squirrel monkey have gone before: on a one-way trip into outer space.

October 7, 2004 Science | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ever since the DoJ surprised everyone - except perhaps the reality-challenged Larry Ellison - by losing its antitrust case against Oracle in the courts, Sneak has been waiting to hear the sound of the other shoe dropping. Of course Oracle’s hostile bid for PeopleSoft is still up in the air, but there have been a few notable thuds, bangs and crashes in the last few days as things other than the second shoe have hit home. The first thud was the trap-door opening under PeopleSoft ex-chief Craig Conway. Thud two was Conway admitting he lied to shareholders about the impact of the Oracle bid. Thud three was PeopleSoft director Steven Goldby testifying (in Oracle’s anti-poison-pill lawsuit) that PeopleSoft’s board might now approve a fresh approach from Oracle – at the right price. Sneak only hopes that in all this thudding, there won’t come the sound of Larry Ellison making good on one of his many rash promises. After Conway compared Oracle’s bid to a man offering to buy a family pet purely to take it out and shoot it, Ellison said, “I love animals. If Craigy [Conway] and Bear [Conway’s dog] were standing next to each other, and I only had one bullet… Trust me - it wouldn't be for the dog.”

October 5, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s sobering to realise that each of us has a brain capacity measuring roughly 1350cc. That sounds OK when compared to, say, a 0.5cc mouse, but in automotive terms it doesn’t seem quite so hot. Most of us would be hard pressed to beat a clapped-out Ford Escort. But it could be worse – at least most of us manage to fire on all cylinders most of the time. In computing terms, we fare slightly better, with each of us boasting at least 100 teraflops, according to one of the best brains in the artificial brains business. The UK’s fastest computer, by contrast, can demonstrate only about nine teraflops by calling on the services of more than 2,100 IBM Power4+ processors running at 1.9GHz. That supercomputer runs a vast model of our planet’s atmosphere and ocean, for
weather-forecasting purposes. Sneak can of course do that too, given a strong-enough cup of coffee and a window to look out of – but it never really feels as if there is still 91 percent capacity remaining. So there is only one conclusion: there must be a software issue. Anyone know where Sneak can get a grey-matter firmware upgrade?

October 5, 2004 Science | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just look at the price of Tesco.com’s special-offer chipolatas! No wonder profits are up...

October 1, 2004 Food and Drink | Permalink | Comments (0)