A Consuming Experience

Sunday, 13 February 2005

MyYahoo! - how to add your feed

If you try to add your feed to My Yahoo! but can't, that's because the link on Yahoo's help pages about RSS (where it says "add by RSS URL") is no longer working. You'll just constantly get an "unable to update" etc message, even after you sign in to Yahoo.

But this link does work:
http://e.my.yahoo.com/config/xcontent

So just click that link and sign in to MyYahoo!

Under the "Add New Sources" heading fill in your feed URL and hit Search.

And in the results page under the "Add New Sources to New Page" heading just make sure your feed is listed there, and ticked, and click "Add".

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Feeds, RSS, Yahoo, MyYahoo

Friday, 11 February 2005

Bouncing w-h-A-T??

I've recently started playing with Google Groups Beta (effectively just a mailing list system with Web archives, but with the magic Google name attached).

Maybe it's just my regrettably filthy sense of humour, but I couldn't help laughing when I saw these FAQ titles:

What's a bouncing member?

Where do I find a list of bouncing members?

I'm sure we could all make a suggestion or two...

Technorati Tags: Humor, Humour, Funny, Dirty

Thursday, 10 February 2005

UK identity cards (ID cards)

Why not introduce identity cards in the UK?

They won't work - identity cards won't be enough to stop terrorists or organised crime - the determined and the criminal will always find a way to forge or fake
It's compulsory - they say it isn't, but if you don't get an ID card you can be refused public services (e.g. NHS)
Bye bye privacy - too much personal information can be required to be stored on the "National Identity Register" or the ID card, including all your addresses, fingerprints etc - whatever the government minister (not an elected Parliament) says, really
Too many people can get at that information for too many purposes - effectively, whoever and whatever the government minister says
Comparisons with other countries' ID cards schemes aren't valid - it depends on the setup and security of the infrastructure and who can have access to the associated information
Hello crackers (i.e. bad hackers...) - the info will be in electronic databases - so crackers can get at it too (see above on terrorists and organised crime), and don't forget leaky staff. Do you really trust government departments' IT security and confidentiality? (remember the various incidents involving police staff using police databases for their own purposes?)
Hello identity fraud - identity theft is much more prevalent in the USA because they have a single social security number associated with an individual; do they want to make life easier for identity thieves in the UK too?
Hello divisions in society - it's going to foster a climate of suspicion, fear, resentment, paranoia and dissent - racial, religious, you name it; spot checks, maybe depending on what you look like; having to carry the thing around even if you're just going about your lawful business
Bye bye hospitals, schools - like all UK government IT projects it's bound to be underscoped and undercosted, and will come in way over time and way over budget - transferring money from taxpayers' pockets to private IT contractors'. Money which most ordinary people would much rather was spent instead on sorting out the hospitals, education, the Tube and public transport. That's the best way to defeat terrorism - education, raising the average standard of living, and people talking to each other.

Even that bastion of economic conservatism the Financial Times is against identity cards, and has published many a good article or letter about it. If the Conservatives had promised to never ever introduce ID cards, that is the only thing that would make me vote for the Conservatives - and it would by itself be enough to make me vote for them too. That's how strongly I feel about this.

Bottom line: it'll be a waste of taxpayers' money and do more harm than good - it just won't be worth it.