Digitalia Alasdair’s workblog and linkdump

Links For Thursday 2nd July 2009

• BBC – Earth News – Ant mega-colony takes over world
  I for one welcome… etc.
  (tags: environment ants science awesome)
• Shownar
  The latest public project from Schulze and Webb, beloved of this parish for basically being much cleverer than me, is site that tracks the word-of-mouth buzz around BBC TV and Radio programs. Yes, it skews populist, for obvious reasons, but I can think of ways round that, and in an iteration or two, might be a really good way of tracking good telly that one would otherwise miss.
  (tags: bbc prototype schulzeandwebb trends)
• Lifehacker – TrueCrypt Now Available for Mac, Too
  Bit of a note to self – with the loss of my laptop, I am kind of aware that had I gotten around to putting proper encryption on the thing, I would not have had to bother with the hassle of changing every single bloody password I use. If you use a laptop, or notebook PC, and don't encrypt the entire HD, then you're running the same risk as I did. (Hell, it's true of desktops, too, but they're not begging to be lost of stolen on a daily basis.) You can find software that will do this for you linked from the link above, whatever OS you use.
  (tags: freeware encryption osx)