Me 2.0

What is it with all these new 'bleeding edge' web technology upstarts churning out useless online services people neither want nor need just to get in on the Web 2.0 'revolution'? Take Tumblr for instance (I wish that was a typo, yawn).

It's pitched expressly towards Webizen X who allegedly has a burning desire to post unblogworthy information, in a blog format. Stuff like disorderly scraps of half-baked ideas and other miscellaneous, incoherent flotsam and jetsam. The urge to verbalise neural hairballs when exhibited by infants or psychiatric patients is known as echolalia. Apparently in the Web 2.0 sphere it's called a 'tumblelog'.

Something else I can't quite wrap my head around is why this theoretically untapped cluster of niche publishers require a separate software solution in order to find their voice. Start a blog, turn off any snazzy features, disable comments, fill it with copious fragments of nothingness, and hey presto, you're Tumbling!

So how do they work in practice? Well the Tumblr FAQ proudly points us in the direction of Project.ioni.st by way of example. See what they've done there? (again!)

I swear if the likes of Davidville (the inventive chaps responsible for Tumblr) keep this up I'm going to dislodge a spoke or two and re-patent the whl (or should that be whe.el?) just to make them look silly.

...and if you think you've tasted the bottom of the barrel, think again.

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Subscribe to podcasts without iTunes

Lots of people don't like iTunes and would rather not use it to keep up to date with their favourite podcasts. I'm one of them.

One alternative is to subscribe to RSS podcast feeds using an RSS to email service such as Rmail. You can do this by submitting the feed as you would with any ordinary blog feed. The MP3 files themselves aren't attached to the emails; what you get instead is a description of the episode as it would appear in iTunes, along with a direct link to the MP3 file so you can decide whether or not you wish to download it.

Create a podcasts folder to save your audio in and you have the most lightweight, portable, platform-independent podcatching client available.

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Energy saving ace in the hole unveiled

The business manager of Hazel Grove High in Stockport, England has shaved £16,000 off his schools' £100,000 per year energy and water bill and slashed its 530 tonne carbon payload in the process.

How was this possible? You'd expect some fairly imaginative and dramatic compromises to be implicated wouldn't you. If you guessed that they've revised the dinnertime menu so as to feature nothing but salad and sandwiches, or ditched the traditional boiler-powered heating system in favour of an exercise-while-you-learn personal heat-generating programme you'd be way off the mark.

The solution - as proposed by an eco-friendly 'hit squad' - was to switch off their 500 computers when they weren't in use i.e. after the kids' home time, at the weekends and during school holidays when not a soul would be on the premises to even consider making a single key press.

Pure genius! If you're in the market for a cushy career change you could do much worse than becoming an energy consultant.

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Ultimate Mac hack: turn your iPod into an MP3 player!

Pin back your ears, this is a Kookclusive! Thanks to Isaac Huang and his new application, iPodDisk, you can now access songs stored on your iPod via OS X's Finder. When plugged in, your iPod appears alongside your other drives and folders through the magic of iDisk drive emulation. The mounted drive can be explored with non-iTunes applications, copied from and used as a launchpad for the playback of MP3 files... just like a real digital music player device.

Readers should note that iPodDisk doesn't enable you to also copy music to your iPod - the emulated drive is essentially read-only. If in future revisions Isaac can somehow manage to wangle his way around this impasse, I can really see this iPod thingy taking off. Call me crazy if you like, but I envision the iPod enjoying a worldwide mainstream adoption and going on to become the world's best-selling range of digital audio players. You read it here first!

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'Friendly fire' muppet is a hero!

Nearly four years after Lance Corporal Matty Hull was gunned down in a gung-ho fly-by shooting in Iraq, 'POPOV36', the trigger-happy pilot responsible, has been identified as Colonel Gus 'Skeeter' Kohntopp.

Despite evidence of numerous grave errors and the conclusion of a British Army inquiry - "that procedures were not followed" - neither Kohntopp or his still unnamed wingman, 'POPOV35', have been disciplined. On the contrary, Kohntopp has since become a full colonel (at the time of the incident he was a lieutenant colonel), been "awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service as the chief of A-10 mission planning for Operation Iraqi Freedom" and promoted to the esteemed role of 'top gun', the man in charge of training hundreds of fresh-faced US pilots in the fine art of ground attacks.

Kohntopp can be seen proudly posing for the cover of the autumn 2005 edition of Pearls and Rubies, a local Boise magazine. Inside, ironically, he claims that "My best piloting experience has been flying the A10 in Iraqi Freedom. After all the years of training, to go to war and use my experiences to help dispose Saddam from power was the epitome of my career". Clearly putting this minor blip behind him hasn't posed too much of a challenge. The hypocrite goes on to preach: "Honour your values and be true to yourself. You have to live with your actions so make them worthwhile to your loved ones and this great nation".

His best pal and neighbour, Eldon Anderson, goes so far as to call him a hero and accuses the British media of making a fuss about nothing and failing in their duty to show sufficient support for the US-led war on terror.

Meanwhile, in a pitiful damage limitation exercise, PM Tony Blair has said he "deeply regretted" the distress caused to Matty Hull's family by the inquest delay. Apparently the MoD "acted in good faith". That is aside from colluding with the Pentagon in lying about the very existence of the video in the first instance, and then pretending that it couldn't be released to the coroner because it contained highly sensitive classified material, which, if leaked, could pose a serious threat to national security.

All things considered it's a farce worthy of a Blackadder script! No doubt backwater redneck, Eldon Anderson, and his ilk will still need this wholly absurd anti-Americanism thing explained to them.

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