While working at a recent trade show / exhibition type thing I was lucky enough to experience first hand the latest product from BT… a photo of which is shown along with this post any guesses on what this thing does? prizes will be awarded for the correct answers! - answer in comments.

p.s. I can tell you one thing, It doesnt appear to suffer from any hardware or software issues…. strange.

Google. The world’s number one search engine. But it’s far more than just a typical web search now, today I stumbled across a lot of features after spending the best part of a couple of hours browsing google.com and all it has to offer (yes, i know, but I was bored!)

Recently Google introduced Image Search and Google Groups has been improved countless times and of course there’s the infamous Gmail service. But everyone knows about these…

I’ve been looking most recently at

• Google Suggest
• Google Maps & Directions
• Google Local
• Google SMS

And not only how useful these services are but how they make an amazing use of web standards like HTML and the DOM to provide interactive pages that feel like purpose built applications (ever found another website where you can drag things around on your own personal homepage to rearrange them)

Google Suggest, starts executing your query as you type (much like Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger) and displays a summary of suggestions for alternative searches and also the number of search results for each before you even submit the form.

Google maps and directions is incredible, and now seems to work with all of the UK as well. Again the interface has to be seen to be beleived - maps scale in real time, pop up “bubbles” showing mini maps of each stage of your journey etc…

Last but not least, Google SMS, which in it’s simplest form is a new interface to the search. But can also be a free yellow pages directory enquiry replacement… Just text “ASDA.Glasgow” to 64664 and you’ll get a text back with the address, telephone number etc…

You can even ask Google SMS things like “3 pints in litres” and it will tell you (1.70 if you’re at all interested :P) or just a vauge question like “telephone inventor” and it will reply..

Google is taking over the internet, and it’s rather incredible what they’re doing Now, let’s just hope they dont turn their minds to AI…

In the last few weeks there has been a lot of talk that Millie (Glasgow University’s resident dinosaur) was to be removed. The date named was the 19th. Many people objected to this and the University’s press office eventually said that it was just a rumour.

At 7am this, Saturday, morning - Millie was destroyed. Almost as if they didnt want students to have a chance to interfere isn’t it?!

Millie was put there as part of the Walking with Dinosaurs exhibition at Glasgow Uni in 2000, since then she’s been well known by students, tourists and west end residents. She was the biggest statue of her kind and just last year (when she was saved from the university cutbacks) the a spokesman of the university themselves said “There was talk about removing Millie because it costs hundreds of pounds every time she is damaged, but … she has become an important landmark.”

I imagine a lot of people will only notice her now she is gone, the gaping hole in the landscape of University Avenue.

Sign the petition at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/millie/

After over a year of being in this flat the bedroom has still remained relatively unchanged from the day I moved in (except with more stuff filling it!) so we decided to start clearing it out and get rid of most of the rubbish in it so that we can possibly redecorate in the not to distant future and fit luxuries like curtains… and maybe a carpet

This is a cricket. Well, that’s not actually a cricket but rather a nice little drawing of one found on Google Image Search. The differences between this one and the one’s currently annoying me are most notably that this one is silent (i resisted the idea to embed audio in this web-page).

We, as you know, have 4 adorable Geckos… these eat crickets… small geckos eat small crickets, and small crickets make no sound… big geckos eat big crickets. And, well, you get this picture.. Just wish they would shut up (or they will be eaten quicker!)

It seems Rory & I aren’t the only people to notice the bug in RAW support in Tiger… There’s quite a few other people talking about it on the discussions forums at Apple now (although I must admit I admire Apple for providing public discussion space for their products - even though some people do complain about things they dont like - and other’s see those complains… imagine if microsoft.com had public forums on their site for people with Windows issues :P)

More information and examples at http://iross.net/tigerraw/

Yes it’s true. GUST triumphed at the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Awards (presumably held somewhere near Cape Canaveral?) … of course they actually triumphed at the NaSTA awards (National Student Television Association) but Guardian (who seemingly have won awards themselves) are either incompetent or simply believe their spell checker more than themselves…

New Look in Braehead… Obviously having some issues with it’s alarm system so instead of risking losing a few items, they risk the lives of their staff and customers by BLOCKING A FIRE EXIT completely. This matter has been reported to the centre management who seemed rather disinterested… so HSE and the head office got an eMail… Maybe they should take a “New Look” at their own stupid decisions?!

Now, what is unusual about these Birthdays Gift Tags… well nothing, other than the fact that they’re christmas trees and it’s may… oh and this was in the Gadget Shop in Braehead.

We visited Martin’s new flat in Balerno for the first time today… he cooks! amazing!

He’s also got a fairly nice flat (photos in the gallery of course :P) … call me a stickler for old buildings but I think they have more character, although I do envy him not having one falling towards a main road at a rate of god-knows-how-many- inches-per-year

Oh, but my plug sockets stay on walls (mostly) … Well he seems happy and as I said … HE COOKS! can envisage us spending more time here considering how much time he’s spent living at Number 18 in recent weeks/months since the start of hwtv etc…