If there was a Nobel Prize for Cartoons, Wondermark would win.

“I’m talking about expansion slots!“

Someone has given Sonia a digital camera from Mattell’s GirlTech product line. It takes VGA photos with two buttons, no preview, and can be used as a webcam for “Video Journal” which is what the product is called. First of all impressed that the camera is a dull grey and not some garish pink, although that might have met with approval from the target demographic.

Two problems: we duly install the software on her ancient computer. It starts up with a great non-rectangular splash screen (which Sonia noticed, I may say: geometry still means something when you’re just eight), and then exits. Nothing. Bang. Gone. Checked the driver status in the Device Mangler. There is a problem with the driver. Sigh.

Go out in search of support - NOTHING! The Mattel support site doesn’t even list GirlTech as a possible brand. Spit. Need to try it on a more uptodate computer, but for heavens sake, are they trying to put girls off?

But that’s not quite all. There are two other objections.

One is that there are two buttons on the camera. One takes the picture, the other one switches it on and changes modes. Yes, modes. About 12 different modes each with a submillimeter icon to show what is set. No try explaining that to the under tens! It would have been so much better to be completely instant - press the take button and it takes a maxres photo, shows how many spaces are left, then switches off on its own.

And then, on the GirlTech website there’s a quiz for what you take most pictures of. Sensible items like friends, landscape, family and pets are joined by “Cheerleading activities”. Yes folks, can’t have girls using a camera unless its for some demeaning activity in skimpy clothes. Sigh. Double sigh.

Wonderful Wondermark cartoon characterising Twitter.

Check out this great little video.

A lot of people are writing about how Android and LiMo are “open” platforms for mobile, and that this will liberate huge creativity and generally bring joy to the masses of done-down phone users just gagging to put loads of extra stuff onto their handsets.

Sorry to rain on the parade folks, but you’ve got to think about to whom the “open” applies. It’s open to OEM hardware, it’s open to network operators, but doesn’t make it open to the end user. An Android phone in the hands of a user is just as likely to have been locked down by the carrier, who will use the openness to make it closed, than to be a free and open for the end user.

As a software developer the sandbox protections are very annoying, but they are there for a reason. While I can’t begin to think what this mythical application that “brings down the network” that haunts people like Steve Jobs might do, it’s perfectly simple to imagine something that runs up big bills for end users, pinches their phone lists (frankly, so what?), or simply runs down their battery in a few minutes by bluetoothing pointlessly but intensively.

This is why we have certification processes, however some carriers have once again broken that by making it to run certified applications without their intervention. While security and support issues stop the open nirvana described above being realised, it would good if Apple’s iPhone SDK and Android come up with a certification mechanism that works.

So much for teenagers putting up videos on the web. Now it’s my father’s turn. To celebrate becoming an Octogenarian he has put a couple of videos up on YouTube:

The Gentle Art of Arch Building

Learning to Abseil

Interesting - our e-mail is filtered in and out by MessageLabs which means it should theoretically be spam and virus free. As noted below, over the last couple of weeks the level of spam has been on the point of rendering e-mail almost useless - it was certainly impossible on the mobile without a helpful local filter like the one in Entourage.

However, since yesterday when people went back to work in England (here in Scotland we have an extra days break), the volume has gone. That suggests that the MessageLabs people were on holiday, and the obvious keywords had to be entered manually. Surely there’s some way of automating this process?

Update: Sadly this seems to have been a temporary effect. The spam is back at monumental levels. Mobile e-mail has been out the question this weekend.

Happy New Year to everyone. I’m sure 2008 is going to be very exciting and full of lots of surprises.

I’m thinking about a set of predictions but I’ve not worked out my preferred set yet. I’ll post them in a few days.