The BBC website today featured a great story on the use of smart phones in pub quizzes. The article is really insightful and if you read it from different perspectives it makes you think about all sorts of new ideas and applications for technology. I thought it was work mentioning on my blog.

Here is an excerpt:

Text-messaging Is Destroying the Pub Quiz As We Know It, noted the Super Furry Animals in 2001. Little did they know that the pub quiz of 2011 would start with the host insisting: “OK, iPhones away, please. Yes, very clever – and Androids. All phones away.”

Cheating has always been possible in pub quizzes. But while once the dishonest quizzer had to pop out to phone a friend, or wait for a text message reply, phones with fast internet access have taken cheating possibilities to a new level.

So on the one hand, 24/7 access to information threatens to deal a deadly blow to the tradition of competitively recalling facts over a few pints. On the other, smartphones offer an opportunity to question-setters to come up with more inventive ways of testing drinkers’ knowledge.

Some rounds are safe. The traditional A4 sheet with photos of well-known people can’t be farmed out to the internet. But it’s not feasible to base every round on colour printouts.

Others need to adapt. Playing extracts from pop songs risks competitors searching for the lyrics. Lyric rounds themselves are obviously out, along with naming titles or chart places.

Better to use instrumentals, perhaps – although services like Shazam allow the devious to have a remote server identify a track if their phone can “hear” 10 seconds of it. A truly secure music round might consist of “mash-ups” – two songs played or mixed together, or even of sheet music.

The challenge for quizmasters is to ask for things that computers don’t – or can’t – know. Machines can be better than any human at chess, for example, but are not so hot at cryptic crosswords.

So a smartphone-proof quiz might feature questions which can only be solved by making associations. For example, what connects a single by the Pogues, an Italian island resort and a unit of electrical current? (Answer in the box at the bottom.)

“The more you complicate a question, the more Google-proof it becomes,” says Thomas Eaton, who sets questions for The Weakest Link. “You can set something up and then ask people to make elliptical connections – the kind of thing you get in Round Britain Quiz on Radio 4.” Another examples is the “What links…?” section of Eaton’s weekly quiz in the Guardian.

End the excerpt!!

You can find the fulls tory here

Exec calls Google Bing sting ‘spy-novelesque stunt’

Google unveiled the results of a sting operation which shows that Microsoft have been capturing Google search results and placing them into the competing Bing search engine.

The issue relates to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and the Bing Toolbar which apparently passes search queries and visited web pages to Microsoft servers which are then later used to generate results in the Bing search engine.

“I’ve spent my career in pursuit of a good search engine,” said Google search ranking fellow Amit Singhal. “I’ve got no problem with a competitor developing an innovative algorithm. But copying is not innovation, in my book.”

Find out more

The social networking site, which connects old friends and allows users to make new ones online, is being blamed for an increasing number of marital breakdowns. Divorce lawyers claim the explosion in the popularity of websites such as Facebook and Bebo is tempting to people to cheat on their partners. Suspicious spouses have also used the websites to find evidence of flirting and even affairs which have led to divorce.

One law firm, which specialises in divorce, claimed almost one in five petitions they processed cited Facebook. Mark Keenan, Managing Director of Divorce-Online said: “I had heard from my staff that there were a lot of people saying they had found out things about their partners on Facebook and I decided to see how prevalent it was I was really surprised to see 20 per cent of all the petitions containing references to Facebook.

“The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to.” Flirty emails and messages found on Facebook pages are increasingly being cited as evidence of unreasonable behaviour. Computer firms have even cashed in by developing software allowing suspicious spouses to electronically spy on someone’s online activities.

One 35-year-old woman even discovered her husband was divorcing her via Facebook. Conference organiser Emma Brady was distraught to read that her marriage was over when he updated his status on the site to read: “Neil Brady has ended his marriage to Emma Brady.”

Last year a 28-year-old woman ended her marriage after discovering her husband had been having a virtual affair with someone in cyberspace he had never met. Amy Taylor 28, split from David Pollard after discovering he was sleeping with an escort in the game Second Life, a virtual world where people reinvent themselves. Around 14 million Britons are believed to regularly use social networking sites to communicate with old friends or make new ones.

The popularity of the Friends Reunited website several years ago was also blamed for a surge in divorces as bored husbands and wives used it to contact old flames and first loves. The UK’s divorce rate has fallen in recent years, but two in five marriages are still failing according the latest statistics. Mr Keenan believes that the general divorce rate will rocket in 2010 with the recession taking the blame.

Find out more here.

In these times of political correctness gone mad, I would expect Google to be impartial in respect to the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Not becuase the founders and many of the employees of this immense corporation don’t share the Christian faith, but simply because sometimes its best not to alienate your customers. For this reason when I received a seasonal email from Google, it was as I expected, a very middle of the road uncommittal seasonal gesture. With a second glance I looked at the work of the graphic artist and noticed that they had made a clear design decision. Incorporate into the design was a cross that could be interpreted as a represnetation of a gift parcel, card, and ribbon. The allignment of the horizonal ellements in the design, however; ensure that we are treated to not just a cross, but in fact; a rather celebratory Crucifix. Well done to Google for celebrating Christmas.  

So we are heading for the largest economic crisis to hit the world for over decades. Maybe I could ask google the best way too, erm, too …… ah whatever, I’m sure Google will help me. Now lets see what the reccomend to get me through these times of need. Aha, right now I got it, OK first I’m gonna loose some weight, then when that doesn’t work I’ll probably just want to end it all. Jeez if I could just loose some belly fat that might help. Sod it, I cant loose it, so I’ll try and gain some. I’ll get high on weed and eat some snickers that should do it. Now I got it, I’ll get pregnant. Stranger things have happened. Now what shall I burn next? Some fat or some money? Perhaps I’ll just go on holiday to spain… maybe I’ll quit the fags when I get back.

Come on Google, things arent that bad, are they ?

Computers can help make and break relationships. In the 80′s we got Weird Science that saw the fantasies of teenager come alive in the form of the stunning. But that’s just fantasy right? Well it seems not any more.
More and more of us are falling for someone we know only through some form of virtual contact. traditionaly news groups bulletin boards, and email now its easier then aver to have a virtual flirt with messenger. But it seems the potential for a virtually real relationship doesn’t stop there.

Recently it has been reported that a man’s relationship in virtual world Other Life has resulted in the end of his real world marriage. His wife has filed for divorce on the grounds of him having an affair.
It’s easy to understand how ass humans we can get so much out of a relationship via computer. It’s a bit like the way we love our dogs. A dog doesn’t really love you. We simply project love onto the dog and in our own twisted manipulative minds we like to believe its bouncing back. As humans we are needy.

Using online tools to interact with your illegitimate love interest can be dangerous. It was back in 1995, working at Online Magic, London’s greatest online new media agency, that I saw my sparring partner Jim clutch his face gasping.
Clutching your face and gasping is the first thing you do when you are no longer fucking your computer but your computer is fucking you.

Alas poor Jim was having an affair. It transpired that whilst his love interest existed on terra firma he liked to communicate with her via email. This is an important lesson kids. Always check the email address before you click send. On a slightly shaky Monday morning poor Jim received an email from his girl and being excited like he was, he failed to check the header or the sender. Jim wrote back enthusiastically saying how great the weekend had been with his semi-digital squeeze pouring out his heart and declaring much love. Caught up in the moment he signed his love bunny signature and clicked reply.

Jim of course was very surprised by the next email he received.

I quote “Dearest Susie,, what a fantastic weekend, the more time I spend with you the more my heart yearns for you… and so on ”

Had Jim sent the email to himself? No kids!

Jim had replied to all on the newsgroup that he subscribes to, other subscribers included his digital squeeze, most of friends and his wife. Well done Jim.

That day Jim learned that making up via email is a damn site harder than breaking up. Jim we had our differences but I remember you fondly.

Next week we are going to look at how sending pictures of your erect member to women in America can get you free rides around the world.

Worshipping a new God. Visitors to a church demonstrate modern worship behaviour directed at a new digital god.