Well, today another photo has emerged that also looks decidedly odd (the original is here).

All looks fairly innocuous but there are a few bits out of place.

1. The control tower top left?  It would be over 200 feet tall to be up there surely?

2. The footwell light bottom right is a totally different colour to the surrounding sea.

3. A close look at the status screens shows doors and ramps as being open – at this height, really? (unfortunately I don’t know enough about the instruments to delve further).

4. That’s a very odd blur below ship in left hand windscreen – not at all like a smear on the screen.

BUT the best thing is the guy on the left has his fingers crossed.  Was it trepidation at the pending take-off (come on we all know this was pre-flight) or is he a BP exec just hoping people won’t notice?

Now of course there may well be plenty of image experts out there who will be able to prove this is an original and un-doctored image, BP may even come out fighting but honestly given their recent muppetry just how much do you trust the image above?

You’re opting IN for more junk by NOT ticking just to be clear.

BUT (and I really shouldn’t have been that surprised given the Facebook tie in) that the default settings for the installation are to share anything and everything from installation.

So anytime you create a new playlist it gets shared.  Unless of course you go and manually disable automatic updates.

Given all the flak Google got over Buzz and it’s presumptions on automatically opting people in, given all the grief Facebook gets for it’s over sharing it is such a shame to see Spotify falling into such a simple trap.

Oh and don’t even get me started on seeing adverts re-appear on my desktop version – I am a paid up member of the premium subscribers gang which was supposed to be non-advertising!

UPDATE: It gets worse.  After a few minutes use adverts are popups, and also taking over other areas in the UI.  On a netbook this is unacceptable as pace given over to my music is already squeezed and now it’s even worse.  Also audio adverts have re-emerged.  Not happy at all

I’m not going to cover the Bill (or Act as it now is) as there is plenty of very well written stuff out there however I thought it worth mentioning the brief discussion I have had with Michael Fallon, our MP for Sevenoaks and Swanley.

I had originally sent Michael an email on Apr 7th at 18:25, the day of the vote requesting details on why he had according to published sources failed like so many MPs to show for the previous night’s discussions on the Bill.  By 19:44 Michael had written back stating the reports were not only wrong, he had in fact attended but that he also had voted against the second reading of the Bill.

Needless to say I apologised for the incorrect assertion he had not and indeed requested the source of the attendance report to be amended.

Today a formal letter arrived from Michael, you can read it below.  And excusing the minor grammatical omission on the first line he makes it quite clear that the Conservative Party Line was against the Bill by enclosing a statement to party members from Jeremy Hunt – who both spoke and opposed the Bill.  Those I have attached also.

Today Tweetmeme founder Nick Halstead quietly tweeted himself…

dear @slideshare please stop using our trademarked design without using our service

When I asked Nick let me know that Slideshare have started using a re-sharing button on their website that looks… well here it is, have a look for yourself.

Compare that to the “retweet” button top right on this blog post.  So the difference is almost nothing, just the removal of the letters “re” and nothing else that I can easily spot.

Now Nick is a savvy chap.  Whilst I’m sure he has trademarked the button design I can’t really see this getting all legal but honestly I reckon Slideshare has overstepped the mark somewhat.  The intent of “their” tweet button is obvious, by passes Tweetmeme altogether and is sufficiently similar in design for me to call “WRONG!”

UPDATE (23rd March) - As pointed out by “Amused” in the comments, Slideshare were prompted enough to make a change to the retweet button overnight.  You can see it below.  Honestly I don’t think it’s enough.  Sure they’ve made 3 changes; colour is now blue, wording and the little triangle-bit has shifted to the right BUT it hardly shows imagination and kinda sucks of bad-faith to make such minimal changes as to appear different.  Especially so as they have been called out on it.  Come on Slideshare surely you have a graphics person capable of coming up with a button of your own?

The problem though has in no small part been of Twitter’s own making.  Look at the other two buttons.  A Facebook & Google Buzz set.  Those buttons are distinctly utilising the logo’s of the sites.  Surely Twitter should provide a Twitter created logo / button that sites could use – at least that way they would maintain some brand consistency.

In New Zealand much scorn was poured upon the mobile duopoly of Telecom NZ and Vodafone.  God knows I dislike the later as much, if not more so than the next man, but that is a post for another day.

But for a country of less than 5 million and yet a similar size to the UK (i.e. pretty sparsely populated) generally mobile comms was pretty decent.  I mean, take the little (130,000 people) town we resided in, Tauranga.  At home I was a good 7 miles from the cell tower BUT maintained either a 3G or 3.5G (HSDPA) signal 24×7.

Right now I’m living in the South East of England, Kent to be precise.  We’re about 25 miles from the centre of London, 5 from the M25 – hardly the back of beyond.  I can see a cell tower from the upstairs bedroom window (about 8 miles away) and know full well that there are a few more I can’t see that are closer.

Can I get a reliable signal here.  Nope.  Upstairs with line of sight maybe, just maybe half a full set of bars.  Downstairs – where I want to work – nothing.  Not even a GSM signal capable of sending an SMS let alone holding a voice call or data.

And it’s not as if I hadn’t done some research before choosing a network – I asked loads of people, rang a few customer service desks (although how a guy in Mubai is seriously going to understand localised signal problems in the Garden of England I don’t get).

After looking ThreeUK seemed the best bet with coverage for 99.5% of the UK.   Actually looking at Three’s coverage map we should have full blown 3.5G!

So new (back) to the UK, job hunting and such I have to hand out my contact details daily.  But missing those calls has been a regular occurrence as of course not only does the call not come through but neither does the SMS letting me know or the voicemail message from Three.

Scuppered.

[Caption]

In New Zealand much scorn was poured upon the mobile duopoly of Telecom NZ and Vodafone.  God knows I dislike the later as much, if not more so than the next man, but that is a post for another day.

But for a country of less than 5 million and yet a similar size to the UK (i.e. pretty sparsely populated) generally mobile comms was pretty decent.  I mean, take the little (130,000 people) town we resided in, Tauranga.  At home I was a good 7 miles from the cell tower BUT maintained either a 3G or 3.5G (HSDPA) signal 24×7.

Right now I’m living in the South East of England, Kent to be precise.  We’re about 25 miles from the centre of London, 5 from the M25 – hardly the back of beyond.  I can see a cell tower from the upstairs bedroom window (about 8 miles away) and know full well that there are a few more I can’t see that are closer.

Can I get a reliable signal here.  Nope.  Upstairs with line of sight maybe, just maybe half a full set of bars.  Downstairs – where I want to work – nothing.  Not even a GSM signal capable of sending an SMS let alone holding a voice call or data.

And it’s not as if I hadn’t done some research before choosing a network – I asked loads of people, rang a few customer service desks (although how a guy in Mubai is seriously going to understand localised signal problems in the Garden of England I don’t get).

After looking ThreeUK seemed the best bet with coverage for 99.5% of the UK.   Actually looking at Three’s coverage map we should have full blown 3.5G!

So new (back) to the UK, job hunting and such I have to hand out my contact details daily.  But missing those calls has been a regular occurrence as of course not only does the call not come through but neither does the SMS letting me know or the voicemail message from Three.

Scuppered.

[Caption]

As part of Simpson’s £41.50 per month contract was a £7.50 data plan maxing out at 120Mb per month.

It appears that Simpson may have forgotten to switch on his ‘Dumbdar’ when he hooked up his mobile as a broadband modem at home as it was faster than his existing connection! After downloading what was thought to be “20-30 TV shows and four albums” Vodafone UK pulled the plug.

Now I’m not sure whether this speaks worse of the state of broadband in the UK or Vodafone UK for helping to perpetuate the widely held belief that mobile network operators are determined not to offer up sensibly priced mobile data. These downloads equate to something like £18 per minute!

Only last month we had the case of the Canadian running up an $85,000 with Bell Canada, for exactly the same thing, using his mobile as a modem.

Vodafone UK have stated they will “try to come to some sympathetic arrangement” with Simpson but is this enough? With Vodafone’s mobile data revenues up 49% to £1bn for the six months to Sep’06 surely they would be in a position to i) wipe this silly bill and ii) leverage their size to open up mobile data when and where the customer wants it for a sensible price?

“Spare lithium batteries – extra batteries not installed on devices – will no longer be allowed in checked baggage. Spare lithium batteries may be packed in carry-on baggage and lithium batteries installed in a device may be packed in either checked or carry-on, as long as the battery is installed in the device.”

www.tsa.gov

To be clear on this, if your battery is installed in the device you can check it in BUT if not don’t bother as it is a security risk?

Just to make the whole thing even harder there are limits on the size/capacity of any spare battery as well.

• Under the new rules, you can bring batteries with up to 8-gram equivalent lithium content. All lithium ion batteries in cell phones are below 8 gram equivalent lithium content. Nearly all laptop computers also are below this quantity threshold.
• You can also bring up to two spare batteries with an aggregate equivalent lithium content of up to 25 grams, in addition to any batteries that fall below the 8-gram threshold. Examples of two types of lithium ion batteries with equivalent lithium content over 8 grams but below 25 are shown below.
• For a lithium metal battery, whether installed in a device or carried as a spare, the limit on lithium content is 2 grams of lithium metal per battery.

Got it? Nah – me neither. Thankfully I don’t travel much in the US, but certainly these silly rules will spill over into the global scene soon enough.

So for all you hardcore gadget freaks you will need to purchase a humble calculator soon as, just to add up all those batteries you are toting around before you next hit the terminals.

For help with all the wierdness of the new rules head over to safetravel.dot.gov.