Cowabunga

A Cow App (BBC story)

For me, that really defines Digital Divide, and the potential for ICT to change the world in the process, more than anything I've read for a long time.

Sure, Bookface apps and driving games and dice rolling apps (v cool btw) are all very good and lovely. But the Cow App rules.

Hannah says, how do I concatenate a date into a sentence?

Ah, glad to hear from you Hannah. And, as usual, an excellent question.
Here's the problem - if you want to produce a concatenated sentence (that's one where words or cell contents are merged together into one cell) then if you try and include a date it won't copy the date in properly.

So, for example, if I wanted to say "This quote is valid for 7 days from 12 October 2010" then I would probably try and go:
="This quote is valid for 7 days from "&L47

But it won't work - it will give a five figure serial code for the date instead of the actual date.

So, this is what you do instead:

="This quote is valid for 7 days from "&TEXT(L47,'dd mmmm yyyy')

And it'll work.

A note

• if you want the date format 12-10-10 then go 'dd-mm-yy'
• if you want the date format 12 Oct 10 then go 'dd mmm yy'

and so on.

Hannah says you don't get nothing for a pair, not in this game.

Nerdcore and Geek Pop

Yay - geek pop rocks...

Couple of examples of where geek culture is starting to get hip and trendy (yeah, OK...):

An article on the rise of Nerdcore music from the BBC. The highlight for me of this is a classic quote about how you become a geek - "In the Venn diagram of geekdom, you become a geek by association". Excellent - Venn diagrams :-)

And the Geek Pop website (tag line: "Be there *and* be square!) has lots of very kewl stuff. I want a square T shirt.

Rock 'n' roll.

Passwords and the Law

Apparently it's illegal not to tell the police your computer password.

Yes, I know, caught me by surprise as well. But this is, apparently, the case, although I imagine that have to demonstrate good reason for wanting to know it.

This case, of a man suspected of having indecent images of children on his computer, highlights the issue. In those circumstances I can see why the law has a place - and this is under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 by the way. It would certainly be something that might make a useful contribution to a Unit 1, ICT and Society, exam.

There's also a story in the news about the impacts of the Digital Economy Act on file sharers - this blog article from the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones reviews the case, as well as providing lots of interesting links to other stuff on the Digital Economy Act 2010 - an Act which was pretty controversial when it was introduced and remains very open in the ways it might be applied.