As someone who has used Adobe Kular for quite a while as a source of inspiration, I was interested to come across this.Basically it is a plugin for the Colour Picker (or color for our American cousins) that allows you to browse colour swatches from the Kular website and add them to your custom palette.These swatches tend to be made of five complimentary colours and can be used to create a cohesive and non-distracting palette for documents or webpages.The product is currently a free beta download which will expire on 28/02/08 which gives you enough time to have a play.

So after a couple of years holding hands, Microsoft has finally decided to ‘marry’ Yahoo. Looking at the downward popularity of MSN and the near non-existence of live.com, this would appear to be the only thing that Microsoft can do to stem the seemingly stratospheric rise of Google

BBC NEWS | Business | Microsoft wants to purchase Yahoo: “Microsoft wants to purchase YahooMicrosoft and Yahoo are both struggling to compete with GoogleMicrosoft has offered to buy the search engine company Yahoo for $44.6bn (£22.4bn) in cash and shares.The offer, contained in a letter to Yahoo’s board, is 62% above Yahoo’s closing share price on Thursday.Yahoo cut its revenue forecasts earlier this week and said it would have to spend an additional $300m this year trying to revive the company.It has been struggling in recent years to compete with Google, which has also been a competitor to Microsoft.”(Via .)BBC NEWS | Business | Microsoft wants to purchase Yahoo

This would seem to by in with Steve Ballmers comments last year that Microsoft would seek to by up to 20 companies each year, although this substantially goes over the $50m to $1bn dollar price tag he seemed to mention.

Ballmer: I will buy 20 web companies a year | The Register: “”(Via .)Ballmer: I will buy 20 web companies a year | The Register

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Over the last several years we have witnessed a huge growth in the invasion of our privacy and civil liberties in the UK, most of which has bee carried out under the guise of anti-terrorism or crime and disorder.Every other week it seems that a new draft proposal is put forward to limit the rights of individuals to go about their daily business.

Be it detention without charge, replacement of trial by jury or the governments suggestion that it may appointment its own coroners to special cases. All in the publics interest of course.We all know that we can expect to be monitored via CCTV virtually anywhere in our towns or cities. Conversations to companies are routinely monitored by the companies themselves and by whoever else we are not told about.

Driving more than half a mile in this country will result in passing more than a dozen road signs and the ubiquitous “Safety Camera”So it should come as no surprise to a member of parliament that they are bugged whilst carrying out their duties. As has been stated in earlier reports, it apparently is quite normal for visiting rooms in prisons to be bugged for the general populous, so why should it cause such consternation amongst MP’s.

Or are they saying that the laws that they propose, scrutinise and place on the statute book are only meant for less honourable members of the public?

BBC NEWS | Politics | Police ‘took MP bugging decision’: “Last Updated: Monday, 4 February 2008, 13:43 GMTPolice ‘took MP bugging decision’Sadiq Khan has welcomed Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s inquiryA decision to bug a conversation between a Labour MP and his constituent was taken by a Thames Valley Police officer, the BBC understands.It follows claims counter-terrorism officers secretly recorded discussions between Tooting MP Sadiq Khan and a constituent he was visiting in jail.[tags]BBC[/tags] Political Editor Nick Robinson says ministers were not consulted and Mr Khan was not the target of the bugging.Justice Secretary [tags]Jack Straw[/tags] is to make a Commons statement at 1530 GMT.He has ordered a probe into the claim, which if true would breach a 40-year-old anti-bugging code………………..(Via .)

BBC NEWS | Politics | Police ‘took MP bugging decision’

At long last Slacker is available in the UK for sale and rental. Richard Linklater film (followed by the more commercially successful Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, School of Rock and just recently A Scanner Darkly) follows a day in the life of Generation X going about there business in Austin, Texas.

Starting with a cameo from the director as he returns back from out of town, the narrative simply follows different sets of people as they pass each other in the street.As people pass each other in the street the camera will pan off with a new subject and follow them through an episode in their daily lifeWhilst full of arty and pretentious conversations at the same time it offers an insight into a generation, a time and place.Full of paranoia, aspiration and resignation in equal amount the immediacy of the film borught home through the minimal amount of editing, most scenes being shot in one take.

Some genuinely fascinating dialogs pass between the character, one of my favourites being the guy obsessed with video;

“To me, my thing is, a video image is much more powerful and useful than an actual event. Like back when I used to go out, when I was last out, I was walking down the street and this guy, that came barreling out of a bar, fell right in front of me, and he had a knife right in his back, landed right on the ground and…

It didn’t look like blood. The hue was off. I couldn’t adjust the hue. I was seeing it for real, but it just wasn’t right. And I didn’t even see the knife impact on the body. I missed that part.”

Don’t watch expecting anything to happen in particular, but if you are of a voyeuristic nature then it’s an absolute joy to watch. 

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I am not normally one to speculate on Apple products, as part of the fun is in the surprise of each release, but the recent announcement of the 16gb iPhone and the 32gb iPod Touch makes me wonder about the next release of the iPhone

Firstly, why limit the 32gb to the iPod touch and not put it in the flagship iPhone model? Maybe this is to do with supply constraints or maybe moving the iPhone from 8gb to 32gb in one go would potentially rile too many people who had recently bought 8gb iPhones iPhone adopters" target="_blank">(remember the fuss when they scrapped the 4gb iPhone)

By introducing the 16gb iPhone, Apple can create the price differential as well as creating a different product base in the iPhone range.

Which brings us to the second point, when the iPhone was released a lot of the negative press in the UK and Europe seemed to centre around the omission of 3G which is widely rolled out in Europe but by all accounts is limited in the USA.

The argument was that EDGE was fast enough and more prevalent (in the USA) and you could use WI-FI when required. In truth, playing around with friends iPhones to check the web/email etc. the EDGE connection operated by O2 in the UK is pretty snappy (some of the credit for this can probably be taken by rendering engine in Safari/Mail as well)

I can’t say I’ve watched anyone download YouTube content via EDGE so that may cause hiccups but as it goes the lack of 3G doesn’t seem to be causing any great headaches.

The only thing people I know with iPhones universally moan about, is the camera. I know mega-pixels can count for little if the compression is set to high and the lense is crap, but the lack of features and flash cripples what is otherwise a reasonable camera. If you take pictures in bright Californian sunshine!

Therefore I am guessing (hoping - ‘cos I intend to be in the market for an iPhone about July/August time) that come by the end of summer we will be able to choose between a 16 and 32gb 3G enabled iPhone with a 5MP camera and flash, with some clever iPhoto/PhotoBooth type software.

Remember June 29th is the 1st anniversary in the USA of its launch so it should be due an update a bit more encompassing than a HD bump or software update.

In which case I can start pestering people for birthday gift vouchers…….

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Maybe I’m being thick but wasn’t the whole point of PFI that private companies would raise the cash to bid for government contracts and therefore carry the risk. It comes as no surprise to the more cynical of us, that we (that includes all of us taxpayers who don’t live in London ie. the majority of the country) will pick up an extra £1.7bn bill to cover the private firms cockups.

Metronet costs taxpayers £1.7bn
Metronet went into administration after financial problems. Almost £2bn of taxpayers’ cash is being given to London Underground to cover the collapse of the private maintenance firm Metronet.

A total of £1.7bn will be used to pay back the amount lenders made available to the company, which went into administration last July. The deal was announced in addition to a 10-year £39bn funding package for Transport for London (TfL).

Critics said it represented a “bail out” of the firm but TfL denied this.

TfL’s spokesman said the £1.7bn would have been paid back to lenders over the course of the public private partnership (PPP) deal had Metronet survived. The spokesman said: “It will have limited net impact on public finances since Metronet’s borrowing was already part of the government’s balance sheet.”

Transport secretary Ruth Kelly said the funding package “carries forward our commitment to modernising and extending the capital’s public transport system”.

Metronet was responsible for maintaining two-thirds of the Tube network…….

[From BBC NEWS | England | London | Metronet costs taxpayers £1.7bn]

I suppose we should be gratefull, at least we won’t be bailing out any other private companies for getting things wrong (Northern Rock?) or subsidising any well budgeted, well costed, self financing sporting events (Olympics 2012)