04.08 I’m a Webby Award Honouree My Internet spoof book gets cited!
 

10.05 Fitter Happier More Productive A time-management system changed my life!
 

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

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

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

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…

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

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

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

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