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I’m buying donuts for software engineers to enjoy. Tests prove that donuts increase productivity in geeks by up to 3.147 percent. If you know a computing professional, buy them donuts today and enjoy better software tomorrow.

One of the coolest future applications that was discussed at WordCamp UK last weekend is the WordPress client for the Apple iPhone. Well, it’s just arrived on the iTunes store (here), and I’m using it to write this short test article. More…

The very good news on the grapevine is that the first WordCamp UK has, already broken even (through sponsorship and ticket sales) with a full 10 days of ticket sales still to go. This is particularly good news since it pretty much guarantees the success of this years event, and future events. If you’ve been thinking about popping along to say hello, now’s a very good time to get your ticket!

As the largest food retailer in Britain, what Tesco does has a massive impact on the rest of the British food industry, however, Tesco are not a charity and their primary purpose is to make maximum profit (supposedly within ethical guidelines).  The profit-vs-ethics problem is therefore one of ensuring that the right ethical guidelines are followed and where animal welfare is concerned (suggests Hugh) Tesco should be independently audited, specifically “to ensure that chickens purchased for sale by the Company are guaranteed always to have been kept in conditions that meet the Five Freedoms.”

Tesco however, are being a bit awkward in their latest mission to cloak the facts about the welfare of animals that end up on their shelves and will only take Hugh’s resolution to their AGM if the cost of distributing the relevant papers to their shareholders is met.  They could waive this fee (after all, every little helps) but they have so far refused to do so.

The cost of the distribution is (apparently) £86,888, which sounds a lot, but for a company that made profits of £2.55billion last year, it’s not going to break the bank.  However, shareholders are shareholders and the profits belong to them, so the directors cannot be blamed for not wanting to stump up the cash… can they?

So how to raise £86888 in two days?  Ask nicely, auction your services, and hope.

Bid now, or donate, no matter how small, remember, every little helps.

Update: Wow!  Target reached! Next stop the Tesco AGM!

WordCamp is coming to the UK.  WordCamp is a weekend event where the users and developers of WordPress (i.e. members of the general public) can get together for a series of formal presentations, less formal discussions and informal refreshments.

I’ve run this site on WordPress since 2003.  I’ve also written a couple of plugins for WordPress. So that’s why I’m interested in WordCamp.  It’s a chance for me to put some faces to names and hopefully to help others along the path to publishing using zero cost, free (as in liberty), open source software that adheres to, and promotes global open standards.

If you’re a user of WordPress, or if you’ve gone further and started to develop your own plugins, or if you’d like to start a website but don’t know where to start, or if you’re generally interested in the development of open standards or open source content management systems (and the satellite web services that support them) - WordCamp may be of interest to you.

• Date: Saturday and Sunday 19-20 July 2008
• Venue: Aston University, Birmingham
• Venue: The Studio, Birmingham

Find out more at the WordCamp UK website.

Imagine a scene in the not-too distant future… after a frenzied period of leaks, rumours, claims and counter-claims, interspersed with no-comments, denials, and increasingly reliable and suggestive evidence emerging from component and sub-assembly manufacturers, Apple Inc announce the imminent release of The Perfect Gadget.

The mainstream press attend press conferences and briefings where Apple proclaim that their Perfect Gadget does everything up to, and maybe even including, ordering sliced bread from the online grocer at the precise thickness that it knows you will prefer (a fact derived from a semantic analyses of how you use said gadget).

Socially driven news sites will go utterly berserk.

So how long must we wait until Apple actually makes this announcement? Perhaps we’re only five or ten years away from The Perfect Gadget 1.0. More…

In the UK, the BBC has a radio channel that is predisposed to airing important current affairs featuring argumentative interviews with politicians insistent on not answering any questions and instead peddling their own distorted interpretation of reality - it’s called “Radio 4″. More…

The new BBC News website is a bit too tall. The Beeb have introduced an additional banner at the top of the page which is of very little use (other than cementing the BBC Brand across its sites) so I wrote a little greasemonkey script to remove both the banner and a few other bits of the site I find irrelevant. More…