Another United Web Screw-Up

So, wanting to answer a question about my flight times for EuroPython I clicked on an email link to "My Itineraries". Thanks, United, this couldn't be clearer.

My God, I Have Fans

I've been putting out links on delicious.com for a while now (when I started it was del.icio.us, which I personally still prefer as a domain name, though probably it was too esoteric for the non-geeks). It's a great system, and I have a program that searches my feed for the last seven items I tagged with "python" and makes those the front-page news item on holdenweb.com.

Most of my interactions with delicious go through the Firefox add-on, so I was a little surprised today to discover that my delicious network page shows that my feed has 44 fans. This means I now have a bunch of feeds to start looking at. I am going to have to stop sleeping ...

Looking at the network page I was also quite interested to see the top 10 tags list of the things I have tagged most frequently.

python           194 
web               96 
programming       80 
design            71 
development       58 
tools<            49 
politics          46 
webdesign         44 
marketing         40 
open<             40 

That gives you a fair idea of my interests. Don't tell Guido about the marketing ...

What Would We Do ...

... without the EFF?

Technology for Keeping People Honest?

Simon Willison and his team at the Guardian in the UK have brought a dream a step nearer to becoming true for me with his new Investigate Your MP's Expenses site. After looking at government profligacy in the USA I decided the only thing to do was to open up public accounts to public scrutiny.

Simon's site (quite independently conceived) is a practical demonstration of the idea's feasibility on a large scale. All we need now is a sponsor with deep pockets and an interface to Mechanical Turk. The next election is going to be interesting.