David McCandless

The site for my book, The Internet Now In Handy Book Form! is an official Webby Award Honouree for the 2008 Webby Awards. Woo-hoo.

I’ve been writing a weekly Podcast guide on RadioTimes.com for RSS obsessed audiofiles. Saves you trawling through the dross to find the gems. Here’s a Best Of to get you started.

Hey man - don’t want to face the world. Don’t blame ya. It’s a big scary world world out there. Full of responsibilities, difficult situations and death. And you simply don’t want to face it. If you’d rather have kid’s toys delivered direct to your door and spend your weekends playing with remote-controlled AV technology, you’ve come to the right place!

(This is one of my favourite spoofs in the book. It was written by Joel Morris and myself, for Seethru.co.uk, about 6 years ago, right at the height of my gadget obsession. It runs to 2 pages in the book.)

Looking for love online? You could do better than visit Poormatch.com, officially the worst online personals service on the planet. Now with over 16 members!

I’m writing a weekly column on the ‘Best Of YouTube’. Cherry-picked video clips with fun and some might even say, witty, commentary. Find it here. Be sure to track back through the archive. There’s some good stuff in there.

» Clips For Kids
» Best of The Simpsons
» The Best (And Worst) UFOs

I bought some undu at Painsbusys to eat with my flaunaue. Why can’t my mobile spell properly?

My phone has everything: camera, polytones, triband, GRPS, internet, MP3 player. The manual is heavier than the phone, which is heavier than my wallet, now substantially emptier for having purchased it. But there is one flaw: the predictive text dictionary.

Published in The Guardian, 24 November 2005

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Thanks to David Allen’s cult time-management credo, I have a tidy desk, a clear conscience, increased output - and an unfolding love affair with my filing cabinet.

It is grey and it is ugly, but I love it. My new Bisley four-drawer filing cabinet dominates the corner of my all-new home office. It is the centrepiece of a new organisational system that has rejuvenated my perspective and changed my life. It is all I can do not to stroke it.

Published in The Guardian, August 05

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Trail of electronic data from US websites leads to convictions for Britons buying psychedelic drugs on net.

Police have arrested and prosecuted more than 22 British customers of websites selling class A designer drugs online after a trail of electronic evidence from busted websites in the US led police to addresses across the UK.

Published in The Guardian May 05

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Usenet newsgroups dedicated to piracy are seeing a resurgence in activity as file sharers seek less-policed areas of the internet to trade illegal data…

Published on Wired.com May 05

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Is it OK to borrow someone else’s wireless network without their permission? And how do you stop others doing the same to you?

I am faced with a modern ethical conundrum. My flat is very long and thin and, frustratingly, my wireless network does not extend from the office at the back to the lounge at the front. My dreams of sofa-surfing have been thwarted. However, my laptop does pick up my neighbour’s Wi-Fi connection. It’s called “belkin54g” after the brand of router he is using. A quick Google reveals the default passwords for this router. A few security screens later, I’ve effortlessly hacked into my neighbour’s Wi-Fi. I can now surf on the sofa while watching TV and drinking red wine. Bliss.

Of course, he doesn’t know this, which leaves the conundrum: should I tell him his network is unprotected and risk losing my convenient living room wi-fi? Or should I continue to hijack his connection, risking discovery and a possible neighbourly feud?

Published in The Guardian April 23rd 05

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With an estimated five million people now connected to broadband at home, one early internet enthusiast is giving it up for good. David McCandless explains why he’s given it the boot.

Published on the BBC News Magazine, Feb 2005

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Some online games are so addictive, some players just can’t stop - even if their lives depend on it

Ahmar Ahmad has not been outside his home in Beckenham, south London for three weeks. He barely speaks to his brother Amir anymore, just a few words when they see each other in the morning. A year ago, the 30-something brothers, avid PC games players, came across an online fantasy war game called CastleQuest 2. That was when things started to go wrong.

Today, the brothers are the top-ranking players in the game and proud of it. But it has cost them. CastleQuest is set in a persistent real-time universe. When you leave, it carries on. So to hold onto their position, the brothers must play the game 24 hours a day, in shifts. Each shift lasts 12 hours. As one gets up, the other goes to bed. They know it’s odd. It would be funny if they could only free themselves from it, but they can’t. They are addicted.

Published in The Guardian September 04

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Within 24 hours of its release, the MyDoom virus had flooded the world’s email networks, making it the fastest-spreading virus ever.

Published in The Guardian Feb 04

They first detected it at 13:03 GMT, 10 days ago. An innocuous attachment in an email sent from Russia triggered a minor alarm at the Global Operations Centre of Messagelabs, a leading email security firm. No one paid it much attention. Just another new virus, one of the handful that are trapped, analysed and blacklisted every day in the darkened bunker in Gloucester they call the war room. Little did they know…

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It will arrive next day by registered delivery in an unassuming padded envelope, promises the blurb on the British website. Inside, vacuum-sealed, will be 7.5g of AK47 - high-grade Cannabis Sativa. “Very strong nice smoke,” gushes the sales copy on the site. “Back by popular demand.”

Published in The Guardian Jan 04

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The US army’s foray into violent PC games has been hailed a success. But it didn’t allow for one thing - cheaters

Christopher has been killed in action many times: 305 to be exact. But his most recent death was the last straw. Defending an Alaskan pipeline from terrorist attack, he and his nine-man squad came under fire from a sniper who picked them off, one by one, in just under a minute.

“We were lying on the ground, prone, in thick fog,” he says. “There’s no way he should have been able to shoot us, let alone see us. He must’ve been cheating.”

Published in The Guardian May 03

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Robbings, blackmail, epilepsy, melodrama and chipshops - it’s all here.

In 1978 a small Japanese company called Taito & Midway released a stand up cabinet full of electronics and sporting a bright 14in screen. It was the latest experiment in electronic entertainment. For years, other companies had been toying with the concept of the “video game”, most successfully Atari with its electronic tennis game Pong in 1972. No one, however, had achieved true mainstream success.

So nobody paid Taito’s new gimmick much attention. It was called Invasion Space or Space Invaders or Space Raiders, or something. It was a silly black and white game where you shot aliens in spaceships. It cost an exorbitant 10p to play and had irritating sound effects.

But the world has never been quite the same since.

Published in The Daily Telegraph Dec 98

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By day, Ed is a mild-mannered retiree. By night, he is an online superhero.

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Apr 1997 - revised Dec 2001

For some, software piracy is a pathological, obsessive, illegal habit. For the software industry it’s a billion dollar nightmare.

Published in Wired April 1997

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