Hello.

Some personal news first. Beatrix, one of our two chickens, was killed by a fox this morning. Not wanting the remaining hen (Enid) to be alone, or at risk of a follow up attack (foxes can be like burglars in that way), we have delivered her into foster care with my parents' chickens. Thanks Mum. I know the demarcation of time in to months is a pretty arbitrary thing but if I'm honest I'm looking forward to seeing the back of January. It's not been a good month. Hopefully February will be happier.


"Today was a good day", rapped Ice Cube. (I bet he never kept chickens). But which day, exactly, was he talking about anyway? The clues are there if you know where to look, and this guy manages to work it out by an impressive process of elimination.
http://murkavenue.tumblr.com/post/16553509655/i-found-ice-cubes-good-day

A rather good article about the BBC's coverage of science (my pet hate is Radio 4's Today programme science coverage, which will treat politics, economics and even sport with reverence but seems to think that science is for laughing at).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2012/jan/26/1

"Before, when Twitter erased a tweet it disappeared throughout the world. Now, a tweet containing content breaking a law in one country can be taken down there and still be seen elsewhere."
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/27/twitter-censor-tweets-by-country
And here are three writeups about why that, in case you had been worrying about it, is actually a good thing:
  http://tum.hitherto.net/post/16596051373/what-you-need-to-know-about-twitters-new-filters
  http://technosociology.org/?p=678
  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/what-does-twitter%E2%80%99s-country-country-takedown-system-mean-freedom-expression

Did you know that Google infers your age and gender based on the websites you've visited? It thinks I'm a male aged 35-44, which is almost right.
https://www.google.com/settings/ads/onweb/

First Olly, the web connected smelly robot (http://ollyfactory.com/) and now Molly, who will turn your retweets into sweets (http://ollyfactory.com/molly/). Not sure I actually want to own either of these devices, but Mint are doing some lovely work and I hope we will see even greater things from them this year.


Productivity

Jay Chiat (of Chiat/Day) sowed the seeds of the office of the future in 1994. It didn't work perfectly and, strangely, it seems plenty of agencies have still not learned much from this episode. Warren Berger writing in Wired, via @bowbrick.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.02/chiat_pr.html

I've never had 'buy more productivity software' on my todo list, but I must confess I spend far too long messing around with tools. This video demo of 'Clear' looks like it has some very nice interface touches. I don't think I'll be able to avoid giving it a go.
http://vimeo.com/35693267 -> http://www.realmacsoftware.com/clear ['coming soon']


Events

'The Event' ('a series of preparatory meetings ahead of the 2012 apocalypse'), talks and performances from experts. 12th and 19th February. London. �5.
http://thisistheevent.com

'This Happened' (design/technology/culture/art event). 7-9 pm on 14th February at the V&A, London. Free.
http://www.thishappened.org/events/london-11


That last one is being organised by Leila, my co-conspirator for the Shift Run Stop podcast (http://shiftrunstop.co.uk/). After taking a year off (!) and coming back for a Christmas special, we finally got together again to record something today and so will hopefully be bringing more episodes of geeky goodness to your ears soon. Regularly, if we can.


Yours sincerely
Roo