The Good Word

On a recent trip from London’s Luton Airport, I encountered this helpful chap, who was on-hand to provide some guidance on how best to navigate one’s way through customs.

I’m sure this is quite a common technological advance at airports across the world, but it’s the first time I’ve seen such tech used first-hand. It’s like something from Total Recall.

It’s the bane of every blogger. Comment spam, blog spam…whatever you want to call it, has reached epidemic proportions. Bloggers from all backgrounds set aside time to sift through the steady stream of pseudo-comments that sit waiting for ‘approval’.

Most experienced bloggers can spot a counterfeit comment from a hundred yards. The grammar is normally passable, and it often adopts a rather complimentary approach, but it just never seems quite right.

A quick perusal of the thousand-odd comments awaiting approval on my own blog (most of the comments will never see the light of day, I must add…), reveals where the spammers are going wrong.

To read more on this, check out my piece over at The Next Web: ¿Habla Spamglish? Speaking the language of spambots.

Has it really been six years since YouTube first took to the online airwaves? No, not quite. But a month from now will see that magic milestone reached, so I went in search for the first ever YouTube video…and I found it.

Uploaded at 8.27pm on Saturday 23rd of April, 2005, YouTube’s inaugural video starred company co-founder Jawed Karim. It’s not terribly exciting, and it lasts a mere eighteen seconds, but it’s a historical moment nonetheless.

The ‘Me at the zoo‘ video is Karim standing in front of a herd of elephants at San Diego Zoo. His main insight is that these elephants have “really, really, really…long trunks”.

Anyway…watch it for yourself here:

Geek

–noun Slang .
1. a computer expert or enthusiast (often considered offensive when used by outsiders.)
2. a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person, especially one who is perceived to be overly intellectual.
3. a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken.

You would think nobody would wish to be associated with these various definitions of ‘geek’. Well, the computer enthusiast bit is harmless enough, but generally speaking, ‘geek’ has always been a negative term suggesting a low social status. Not now though.

I’ve lost count of the number of Twitter profile biographies that have ‘geek’ included somewhere: ‘self-confessed web geek’, ‘tech and social media geek’, ‘a geeky girl’, ‘geek at heart’…it seems we’re now surrounded by wannabe geeks.

But when did the tables turn? Is it possible to identify a specific moment when ‘geek’ emerged from the lonely shadows of libraries and blinded bedrooms to become something a little more…desirable?

And who are the digital Dalai Lamas that made everyone yearn to be a geek?

To find out, read my piece over at The Next Web: The men that made ‘geek’ cool.

I’ve never been duped by spam, and I aim to keep it that way.

But  Thursday was the closest I’ve come yet to being even remotely fooled by a digital fraudster. How? Here’s how.

I never, ever do the National Lottery. But on Wednesday I did – and I bought my ticket online. The jackpot was around the £3m mark.

So when I got this email in my inbox on Thursday, I was very excited:

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