I can't believe I missed this news yesterday. That's damn amazing. The only thing that would make it better - if they let those in Britain call people in the States for free. Even so, 1.7 euro-cents per minute is extremely cheap. 
The New Statesman's New Media Awards 2006 has a podcast with last night's Bruce Sterling talk which I was too lazy/busy to go to (technically, I wasn't busy, but I was tired) - they also have a blog entry about the talk. Bruce is also talking tonight - see his blog for full details. I'm too lazy for that too. Sorry, Bruce, but I need some time off. It would be cool if someone podcast it.
I'm just doing a survey and it's asking my marital status. There's no single, but there is "pre-marriage". That's a bit damn presumptious, right?
Since I've started using Firefox again, I decided to start using CoComment. They sure don't advertise their Firefox plugin very well - here it is.
Wired News has an article about the iPod and audiophiles. I must say, my mid-priced Sennheiser 'phones sound great hooked up to the nano. 
Those macZOT kids have got a great app you can download caled Paparazzi. It lets you take screenshots of long webpages. Very handy if you want to become the next über-blogger and prefer the Arrington long post aesthetic to the Winer keep 'em short aesthetic.
Digg is reporting that Nokia wants to refer to 'phones' as 'multimedia computers'. The comments have lots of snark and sarcasm, but I've posted up my response. I actually think it's not a bad idea. I use my phone mostly for data, as do a lot of other people here in the UK and across the EU. This doesn't make sense to Americans, but it does to us. Of course, we still get luddites and whingers, but the fact is, I would prefer a carriage of people texting or browsing the Internet to a carriage full of people shouting at invisible friends. But then, I'm a freak and don't like the corporate games, nor do I drink coffee, so what do I know?
Mike Arrington is reporting that Yahoo! have started rolling out their new front page. Here's the UK version. My opinion is simple: they want to be Google, but aren't doing it very well. In fact, I have prepared an image with advice about what to cut out. It's progressive - once they've done this, leave it for a year, then remove everything but the search box and the key links. Wait a second - who needs links? They're dead, aren't they? (Update: I found what everyone is looking for).
Give us back our storyline 
The Guardian has an article on the new family-friendly, booth-babe-free E3. On the one hand, the booth babes are pretty tacky, but the thought that the gaming industry is going to be as dull as modern television is far worse than a bit of "T&A". I mean, the Revolution is now called the "Wii", for crying out loud and we've got fewer and fewer games with storylines (somehow plot stopped being a necessity when MMORPG's - aka. IRC with swords - became popular).
What's exciting from E3? Well, there's some Final Fantasy XII stuff being shown. The guy who made Leisure Suit Larry is hanging around. There's some cool shots from the new Command and Conquer game. A lot of bloggers have been doing their thing. There's been lots of rather dull little games for mobile phones which are recreating the stuff we got bored with back in about '95.
I'm also thoroughly unexcited about HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. I won't be buying either since they are both copy-protected up the wazoo far further than DVD is. HD doesn't really matter. I use an ordinary TV to play games, and I'm sitting ten feet across the room! I want gameplay, I want storyline, I want plot. And I'm not getting any of them. Instead I'm getting some slightly tarted-up version of FIFA or NFL. Who gives a shit? I mean, a Desperate Housewives video game? What were they thinking?
I'm not the only one disappointed. I must say, I actually find myself more enamoured with the portable system like the DS and PSP - because in lacking Internet connections and fancy-pants high-def video, they actually have to focus on producing games. Perhaps instead of a PS3, I should buy a PSP. It'll be a lot cheaper and I might get a storyline on my teeny-weeny screen rather than a multimedia experience (it's called that for a reason, so they don't get criticised for having no content) or chance to shout "L0L! I need cure! Plz get me cure!11" at each other while in historical costume.
I see a future for the gaming industry which is very simple. They ecome the next Hollywood, they produce duller and duller products, and completely alienate gamers. I'm looking forward to Final Fantasy XII when it comes out in Europe and the States in October. Beyond that though, it's a big old desert and it's a long way to the next oasis.
Can't we write?
I never get these etiquette stories that come up about email. The Christian Science Monitor has recently an article that seems typical of the genre. It says things like:
"First and foremost, e-mail lacks cues like facial expression and tone of voice. That makes it difficult for recipients to decode meaning well. Second, the prospect of instantaneous communication creates an urgency that pressures e-mailers to think and write quickly, which can lead to carelessness. Finally, the inability to develop personal rapport over e-mail makes relationships fragile in the face of conflict. In effect, e-mail cannot adequately convey emotion."
The second claim has a certain amount of cogency. But it is just as possible to send a letter too hastily as it is to send an email in such haste.
Now, the first and third claims, as well as the conclusion, deserve some attention. Imagine if someone had written:
"Written communication, unlike face-to-face communication, lacks facial expression and tone of voice. That makes it difficult for readers to decode meaning well. The inability to develop personal rapport through written communications make relationships fragile in the face of conflict. In short, written communication cannot adequately convey emotion."
Oh, the written communications conveys emotion inadequately, does it? I must be in the wrong business.
"May your shit come to life and kiss you on the face." (F. Zappa)
"Come live with mee, and be my love, / And we will all the pleasures prove, / That Vallies, groves, hills and fieldes, / Woods, or steepie mountaine yeeldes. And wee will sit upon the Rocks, / Seeing the Sheepheards feed theyr flocks, / By shallow Rivers, to whose falls, / Melodious byrds sing madrigalls." (C. Marlowe)
"Then shall the lambs graze as in their pasture, and nomads shall eat among the ruins of the rich." (Isaiah 5:17, ESV)
"I was crying partly because I felt that this was expected of me, partly from genuine repentance, but partly also because of a deeper grief which is peculiar to childhood and not easy to convey: a sense of desolate loneliness and helplessness, of being locked up not only in a hostile world but in a world of good and evil where the rules were such that it was actually not possible for me to keep them." (G. Orwell)
"Unmoved is my soul and bright as the mountains in the morning. But they think me cold and a mocker with fearful jokes. And now they look at me and laugh: and laughing, they still hate me. There is ice in their laughter." (F. Nietzsche)
We have a whole generation spilling their tears across MySpace and LiveJournal - not particularly well, mind - and people still have the gall to insult the thousands of years of literary tradition because some people send emails without really thinking about them.
Instead, we have today's crop who don't do words. They worked in jobs dominated by the telephone. They spend their hours watching television and listening to the radio - rarely taking the time to read, and even more rarely taking the time to write. And, if my experience serves me correctly, barely trained to. Schooling in Britain doesn't really take the time to teach people how to write well. If you hanker after any sort of penmanship, skip school and go to the library.
Email has been the collective "oh shit!" moment for my generation, a demonstration of the absolute privation we have had in literary proficiency. (Of course, the "oh shit!" is filtered out by email filters so our politicians are blissfully unaware of the world outside their Wesminster offices).
Written language isn't the problem. The Oxford English Dictionary lists - at last count - around 290,000 words. That some people can not arrange them to convey emotions is not a fault of the language, it is a fault of the writer, or yet another omission of his educators.
