Talking to Bruce




Cambridge Film Festival fun

Originally uploaded by BillT.

On July 14 the Arts Picturehouse has a live Q&A with US photographer and director Bruce Weber as part of the Cambridge Film Festival. I’m doing a daily podcast for them, but also helping out with other technotrickery including the linkup.

A year ago this would have meant something like a satellite dish on the roof, or at least some dedicated equipment. Now it means by Powerbook G4, iChat AV and a consumer-quality camera at our end, a nice MacBook and a proper camera at their end, and the Net in the middle. We have the advantage of a serious display, of course – the Cine2K digital projector – but even so, it’s frightening.

Of course, we’ll see if it works on the night – I have a phone line and a still picture of Bruce as a backup!

Cambridge Film Festival Podcast

The Cambridge Film Festival kicks off next week and runs to July 16, with over two hundred films being shown. It’s one of the best things about living in Cambridge – I’ve been going to the festival for over twenty years now! And this year I get to be part of the team, as I’m producing a daily podcast with news, reviews and interviews.

We’ve done the first one, hosted at Liberated Syndication, and you might like to listen. It will go daily from next week, and it’s a lot of fun.

To tag or not to tag

[Read this on the BBC News website too]

As I write this a message has just arrived in my email Inbox. That brings the total up to 6,559, though if it wasn’t for the junk mail filter it would top seven thousand.

It’s an absurd situation, especially since a year ago I would ruthlessly prune my email if there were over two hundred messages sitting there.

But a year ago I was using Microsoft Outlook on a Windows PC.

Continue reading “To tag or not to tag”

John Naughton’s Inaugural

Due to the unfortunate timing – he was speaking just as I was recording Digital Planet at Bush House – I missed John Naughton’s inaugural lecture as a professor at the Open University (only four years late, as Quentin points out). Fortunately the transcript is now available, and the webcast will soon be viewable – perhaps they’ve forgotten their YouTube password over in Walton Hall 🙂

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One gates opens…

[As ever, this is on the BBC News website]

The news that Bill Gates is giving up his role as Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect was the second item on Radio 4’s Today programme on the morning it was announced.

While Gates will stay at Microsoft for the next two years, and even then will work part-time and remain the major shareholder in the company he founded, the announcement marks the end of an era. Continue reading “One gates opens…”

Playing with Flock

I’ve just downloaded Flock, which advertises itself as:

a free web browser that makes it easier than ever to share photos, stay up-to-date with news from your favorite sites, and search the Web. Take our tour to learn what’s different about Flock, then download the beta to get started – and please tell us what you think.

Flock — The web browser for you and your friends

So far it’s really nice – especially the ‘web snippets’ and the integrated blogging, which I’m using here. I also like the way it integrates with Flickr so I can have my photos – or those of my friends – along the top of the window.

Too early yet to see if it will replace Firefox in my affections, but it’s clearly superior to Safari.

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Suing Stephen Joyce

From Lawrence Lessig’s blog

The Stanford Center for Internet and Society’s Fair Use Project has filed a law suit against Stephen Joyce, who claims the right to control access to the papers and letters of James Joyce. The context of the suit is described well in this article appearing in the New Yorker by D. T. Max. The complaint in the case can be found here.

Lawrence Lessig

From reading the New Yorker piece mentioned, this seems about time – and I’ll make sure to read out large chunks of Ulysses on Bloomsday this Friday!

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