There's not room in print for all your letters and blog pingbacks, but there is here. Twitter proved interesting; it's all there on the clickthrough...
MORE TWITTERING Might be of interest for a snippet: twitterfone.com Sean O Sullivan, chief technology officer, Dial2Do
I just wanted to say how pleased I was when I saw a link to the latest scores project on your Twitter article. I created that Twitter app for myself back in December (see the first post). When I started talking about it people wanted other teams and word spread until it appears here. I'm just really pleased that such a tiny application can have such an impact. Thanks again Robbie Clutton, Loughton
>> A great time for those early adopters of Twitter, with our commitment to initially puzzled colleagues now being vindicated in the mass media one might thing. It's perhaps reminiscent of the excitement we felt in May 1997, perhaps the last time we felt the people were, at last, being empowered. But why do I feel that the dreaded Boris moment is lurking around the corner? But what can we expect in the backlash. I suspect journalist have already been asked to dig for a story on the negative side of Twitter. I think we can expect the CEO of a large company (other head of the CBI would be even better) to provide figures on the amount of productivity lost due to Twitter. ukwebfocus.wordpress.com
>> I think there's a lot more to say about the service and its sociocultural significance, so I am making this the topic of my next episode of Heads Up!. blog.wieck.com
>> I finally moved into 2007 today by signing up to Twitter. I figured if there was an "introduction to…" article about it in the paper then it was officially beyond the Early Adopter stage and I could fully embrace it with my comfy luddite tendencies. So far it's been fun, but I wonder if it'll last as long as my interest in Facebook, which I think ran to almost a month. blog.pigsaw.org
>> What this service does provide, however, is an intelligent and welcoming wrapper for the technologies that many of us are familiar with, but have not yet educated ourselves on or bothered to fully exploit. Twitter is arguably set to do for mobile communications what Blogger did for blogging. guyberes.com
>> It can be useful for news, as long as you follow the right people (not as easy as you might think). But it allowed me, for example, to know about an earthquake in Sao Paulo, Brazil, even before it was on the news. network.nature.com/blogs
HMRC, OR NOT The suggestion made by Keith Goode (Letters and Blogs: Thursday 8 May) – that, as a result of last year's HMRC data loss, anyone who receives child benefit should contact their bank to get new cards issued - is unfounded. The data on the lost discs contained bank account information, not debit or credit card details, so there are no fraud-prevention grounds to ask your bank for replacement cards. Furthermore, to date, no instances of fraud have been identified on the relevant bank accounts as a result of last year's data loss. Also, there is no evidence to suggest that the missing CDs ever found their way into criminal hands. There is no need for child benefit recipients to be concerned. Rather than asking for replacement cards, cardholders should continue to check their statements regularly and thoroughly and report any unusual transactions to their bank immediately. Sandra Quinn, director of communications, APACS
WIKI-CROPPING >> [Seth Finkelstein] uses the "digital sharecropper" image to describe Wikipedia contributors. Actually, sharecroppers do make some money from their work, so Wikipedia contributors are more like slaves. But given the voluntary nature of their participation, "slaves" overstates the inferiority of their status relative to Wiki overlords Wales et al. Perhaps "brainwashed cult members" works best. bennett.com/blog
FREE OUR POLICE DATA? >> There are naturally worries that police forces might not want to give up the information, but tough - this is not a private commercial data source, it is a record of crucial events in the lives of the individuals and communities whose security is the police's raison d'etre. We pay the Bill's bills, and if they don't do their job properly it is us who suffer, not them, so there can be no room for petty hogging of data. tpa.typepad.com
FINGERPRINTING One of the problems with overly long or frequently changed passwords is that people tend to write them down and stick them on to their monitor or laptop casing. The same is true of fingerprints, though you may not realise it, as this blog post/image points out: identityblog.com/?p=981 Tony Hirst, Open University, Milton Keynes
WILL WRIGHT LISTEN? I was wondering if you could possibly help me. I am one of about 14 thousand players who are very upset and the callous imminent closure of an online game called EA Land originally The Sims Online created originally by the above subject Will Wright and I wondered if you may be able to contact him to forward this email to him. Our site is currently www.playercampaigns.com Most of us are angry and devasted and will do anything to keep this old game going. Apparently EA in their wisdom and being so short of money decided it was not lucrative enough for them so have decided to shelve it by August 1. I have already emailed microsoft for them to pass my email to Bill Gates in the hopes he may read it and help. I wondered if Will Wright was aware of this situation or might be able to help. The owner of the website will even buy the game from EA to keep it running but I do not think they are very communicative. So far we have a petition of over one thousand people wanting this game to continue. I appreciate your reply in advance and hope you can help Thank you. Stella Lee, Brentwood
CALCULATE THAT Why is it that newspapers find it so difficult to avoid even the most obvious errors in their articles on technical or arithmetical matters? For example in "How low-energy LEDs could soon be lighting our homes, Guardian IT 08-05-08" we see: " ... a single LED chip may be around one third of a square millimetre (0.3 mm by 0.3 mm ) ..." Bob Pearson, Lincolnshire
YELLING FOR HELP I have just been admonished by Yell.com for not reading their full terms and conditions for the use of their yell.com mobile program. Why should I complain that I was charged to use it by my network provider (I pay for 1GB/month and using my browser on Yell is covered by this charge but not using Yell's own software that it encourages you to download) when in small print at the end of over a page of A4 or terms and conditions that even define the word "yours" it says that some networks may charge? But when the screen is a two inch mobile phone just how small can small print be before it becomes an unreasonable size? John Loader, Ely
FRING FRING Working through a backlog of podcasts, so I'm coming to this one a bit late, but I was interested to hear the brief conversation about Fring. I'm a Fring user myself, but despite the attractive potential of VOIP on mobile phones, there are very few occasions when it's actually useful. Whenever I've found a wifi network in cafes round here (I'm in south London) it's always through one of the big-name providers, who charge £6 or more for a monthly subscription. That's just ludicrous... I might as well run Fring on my standard data add-on. Until free or cheap public wifi becomes a reality (I've been waiting patiently for years and I'm gradually losing hope) the network providers will always have us over a barrel, whether they're selling us voice/data tariffs or third-party wifi. Adrian Clark, Sutton
