Chris Barrie: The satnav is a breath of fresh air | Celebrity squares
Actor Chris Barrie admits to being a luddite, but he finds his satnav to be a true guiding light What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life? I have to say that being on the road quite a bit, the satnav is very convenient. I still occasionally use the good old-fashioned map book, but the satnav has been an absolute breath of fresh air. When was the last time you used it, and what for? Yesterday, to take me from West London down to Kent and it got to the point, about 70 miles into my journey, that it was taking me completely the wrong way. But it eventually delivered me to where I needed to be.
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Chris Barrie: The satnav is a breath of fresh air | Celebrity squares
Glastonbury festival: The full lineup as a spreadsheet
Glastonbury festival kicks off today, with Gorillaz replacing U2 as the Friday headliners. Check out the bands that will be playing and plan your weekend here • Get the data Glastonbury opened its doors to festivalgoers this morning. Revellers at Worthy Farm can look forward to a weekend packed with bands, including Damon Albarn's side-project Gorillaz, who hastily took a headlining spot after U2 were forced to pull out last month when Bono suffered a spinal injury. But Glastonbury is about so much more than the headline acts. Who else will be rocking Worthy Farm over the weekend of 23-27 June? Now the official Glastonbury site has put up the full timetable of acts - we've excised them for you and put them into a spreadsheet. Check out the embedded table, or download the spreadsheet, for the full line-up across all the main stages and venues. Last year, @RichardAblewhite created a magnificent visual mash-up by combining the Datablog's Glastonbury dataset with content from several other sites. He's created another excellent mash-up for this year's Glastonbury festival , which together with this dataset from Clashfinder General and the Orange GlastoNav app will enable data-savvy festivalgoers to plan their weekend with military precision.
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Glastonbury festival: The full lineup as a spreadsheet
TomTom for iPhone price leaks out: will you pay £100?
Earlier this year satnav maker TomTom caused much excitement when it announced that it would be creating a downloadable application for the iPhone with new maps and all the gubbins. While some convergence strikes me as odd (note to self: my attempt at humour yesterday went down like a lead balloon) I can say from my own experience of trying to use the iPhone's built-in Google Map system for driving directions, that proper satnav could prove very useful indeed. But the big question went unanswered: how much would it cost? TomTom continues to remain silent on the issue, but this report from DaniWeb points out that there's now a listing for "TomTom for iPhone inc Mount" on the Handtec website . And it has the price: £99 + VAT (that's £113.85). That includes extras like a GPS-enhacing cradle with all the added extras (charging, amplification and so on) but it still means that marginally cheaper than buying a bottom of the range TomTom unit . And, of course, you've already spent a wodge of cash on your handset and the monthly contract. On the one hand, keeping the price high is unsurprising - after all, TomTom's unlikely to want to hugely undercut its own flagship products. But shouldn't it cost less, since the company doesn't have to bother making and selling the biggest bit of hardware
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TomTom for iPhone price leaks out: will you pay £100?
Charles Arthur reports on augmented reality
You can analyse a tennis ball's flight, recognise strangers and play with a stegosaurus. Charles Arthur reports on augmented reality, coming soon to a smartphone near you As the players pause between ends in a match at Wimbledon, the TV screen suddenly overlays the court with a pattern of yellow and black dots - showing where the receiver has been returning the first and second serves. As they walk back out, the overlay vanishes and they're back to play
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Charles Arthur reports on augmented reality
Read me first: Raising the cost of paperwork errors will improve accuracy
It's a sad, horrific story. Homeowner returns to find his house demolished. The demolition company was hired legitimately but there was a mistake and it demolished the wrong house . The demolition company relied on GPS co-ordinates, but requiring street addresses isn't a solution. A typo in the address is just as likely, and it would have demolished the house just as quickly. The problem is less how the demolishers knew which house to knock down, and more how they confirmed that knowledge. They trusted the paperwork, and the paperwork was wrong. Informality works when everybody knows everybody else. When merchants and customers know each other, government officials and citizens know each other, and people know their neighbours, people know what's going on. In that sort of milieu, if something goes wrong, people notice. In our modern anonymous world, paperwork is how things get done. Traditionally, signatures, forms, and watermarks all made paperwork official. Forgeries were possible but difficult. Today, there's still paperwork, but for the most part it only exists until the information makes its way into a computer database. Meanwhile, modern technology – computers, fax machines and desktop publishing software – has made it easy to forge paperwork. Every case of identity theft has, at its core, a paperwork failure. Fake work orders, purchase orders, and other documents are used to steal computers, equipment, and stock. Occasionally, fake faxes result in people being sprung from prison. Fake boarding passes can get you through airport security
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Read me first: Raising the cost of paperwork errors will improve accuracy
Celebrity Squares: Flash of Genius director Marc Abraham and star Greg Kinnear
Repairable typewriters and silent satnavs top the wishlists of Flash of Genius director Marc Abraham and star Greg Kinnear What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life? Marc: The typewriter. It was a great piece of technology for me the Selectric electric typewriter was my favourite. Up until then I had manual typewriters and I had written a couple of books as a sports writer. Then the Selectric came in and it was faster, and it also had a built-in white-out for when you made a mistake. Honestly, I can remember that was huge. Greg: The onboard navigational system – the automobile GPS. The idea that there is someone in my car readily getting me from point A to point B is pretty terrific. I'm hooked on it. My wife gets frustrated cos even if I'm going two blocks down the street I like to put it on and punch in the address. I like to know where I'm going. When was the last time you used it, and what for? Greg: To get to the bottom of the street, I think – the gas station, or something like that. I use it for everything. It would be great for this town – London is built for the GPS, by the way. I live in LA, which is pretty simple to drive and get around, but this – this is a GPS town right here. Marc: Funnily enough, I do use it [an electric typewriter] because I send personal notes and I've gotten so my handwriting doesn't work very well. So what I've done now is that I bought an old typewriter specifically for this and I use it to type personal notes when I'm thanking people for things. And I always get questions back like, "Did you really type this on a typewriter?" What additional features would you add if you could? Marc: The only thing I'd change is probably make it easier to find somebody who can fix it.
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Celebrity Squares: Flash of Genius director Marc Abraham and star Greg Kinnear