The Ideal Home show in London has a few show stoppers.

Brunel University design graduates came up with five of the 15 products showcased in the Future Concepts gallery.

Design graduate Andrew Cubitt has taken the humble toilet roll and turned it into a hi-tech news and information service.

A unit installed in front of a toilet on the cubicle wall provides up-to-the-minute information on products, stocks and shares and lottery results.

People can even print off the information on a standard toilet roll.

Do we need or even want a talking fridge?

A spammer sues an anti-spammer.

‘Embedded’ Journalists
The Boston Globe has an opinion piece by a journalism professor asking questions about war coverage versus propaganda.

Citizens in a democracy should be able to expect from journalists:

a trustworthy source of facts gathered independently of powerful institutions.

the historical, political, and social context to help make sense of facts.

the widest range of opinion to allow people to test their own conclusions against alternatives.

And this article in the Asia Times gives readers some simple tips in being more discerning in their media consumption.

How to tell genuine reporting from an article manufactured to produce the desired propaganda effect? The war in Iraq provides us plenty of interesting samples for a study of disinformation techniques.

Stuart Hughes of the BBC has updated his blog. I posted his story April 5th.

Ultimately, though, I know there’ll be dark days ahead. At the moment it looks as though I’ll lose the foot and part of the leg. It could be worse, but it’s not great. I’m steeling myself for what’s to come and hoping I have the inner strength to deal with it. Then there’s the issue of learning to walk again, drive a car, stupid bureaucratic things like compensation. Just writing this helps.