|Absolute Value|

Ian Smith has been an absolute king when it comes to documenting the Vista Squad meetings.  Dragging his equipment around London means we as a usergroup get amazing content to show users who could not make it to the meetups.

We’re now seeing a good set of content from our speakers and are available completely free and you are even able to download the WMVs if you would prefer to watch them offline or on another device.

Coming soon will be IPhone compatible videos which after seeing a sample on Ian’s phone, I cannot wait for this to happen.

So head on over to our Vimeo site where we host the videos, and download away!

http://www.vimeo.com/vistasquad

I have a Google account that manages my domain (rjb.za.net) for mail.  I specifically use Gmail because of the awesome search abilities of the web client and was wanting to move away from the Thunderbird interface.

Over the past week, I watched my spam count move past the 10,000 mark in total unread spam emails.  I wasn’t too concerned as I didn’t ever receive any to my inbox and I know Google deletes all spam after being in that folder for 30 days.  Which points out another fact in that my amount of spam is increasing.

On one bored day, I emptied the spam box manually for no specific reason.  This seems to have been a bad idea, as now I’m being hit by at least 20 spam emails to my inbox per hour.  Does Gmail look at your spam folder?  Is there another heuristic that means its a good idea to keep the spam box untouched?

Gmail’s spam catcher has always been outstanding, never a single false positive but the amount of spam that now actually makes my inbox is increasing.  This is also coupled with the delays in mail getting through to my inbox.  On Friday, I received a response to an email chain (a proper chain, not a FW: FW: FW: type chain. ) before I received the intitial email itself.  Checking the headers when the original arrived 30 minutes later, there is a definite 35 minute wait between two Gmail servers.

Not the most promising developments from what was always a perfect experience.  Less labs and more stability please?

As an avid photographer, I have had a few run ins with people who think that photography in public places is either illegal or gives them a right for general abuse.

Quoting Rogier van Bakel:

"To be clear, there is no law against taking photos — or video — in a public space. Not in the U.K., anyway. Not in the U.S., either. Know your rights, and assert them. Let them atrophy, and, like never-used muscles, they begin to disappear."

Below is a video of London Community Support Officers behaving in a disgraceful way, projecting so much aggression from the first, that I guess most people would immediately back down.  This sort of behaviour is disgusting but hopefully displays possibly a form of correct manner to handle these matters.

I’ve been pushing some new photography to my photoblog over at Sumatro.com.  I have a new set of work lined up, all being published at 9am every morning.  To keep up to date, subscribe to the RSS feed.

Would love some comments/idea/abuse on the photos if you have the time.

Just opened Google Reader on my N95 and WOW.  A complete overhaul on the interface that makes reading a pleasure.  Bigger text, smoother fonts and a much tighter UI, its a step in the right direction.

Looking for an official announcement, but nothing on the official blog yet.

Thanks to everyone that popped on over to Vista Squad last night in Victoria. Damn good turnout and I think it all went pretty well. We managed to give out our copy of Vista and I definitely think I’ll pull out some of the Technet Plus subscriptions for next time.

Hope to see you all next time, 18th of June is the next meetup. Keep a check on the website for the full details and speaker confirmation. We definitely have Stephen Lamb booked in for one of the talks but are still looking for the developer slot. So if you’re interested, have some interesting tech you’ve been playing around with, drop us an email or comment and we can get talking.

Cheers!

Video Sharing startup Vimeo seems to be struggling with uploads and conversions at the moment.  See below for the page that came up when I wanted to view the video I just uploaded.