Today’s Guardian Media 100 list
Apparently I'm ranked 89th:http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/10/william-tunstall-pedoe-mediaguardian-100-2009
More TK questions
How long is it until Christmas?When is mother's day?When is easter next year?Where can I buy a digital camera in Cambridge...
some interesting True Knowledge questions
Here are some random examples of favourite True Knowledge questions - all of which (at the time of writing) have a substantially better response (for various reasons) that what you get out of the main search engines.How old is the Eiffel Tower?How old is...
Facebook for business – latecomer to the party
I've been a user of Facebook for a number of years now. My usage comes from its origins in university campuses. It was my friends who are in Cambridge University who first made me aware of it and whose avid use of the site made it worthwhile. For all the time I...
First public demo of True Knowledge
Quiz Bot is the first public exposure of True Knowledge's question answering technology and has been launched today.It's a very simple one page website, powered with a very simple question answering API that sends a text question to our platform...
Great design?
I gave a presentation at The Design Council in London a few days ago. The organisation is dedicated to the concept of great design and communicating its virtues to British business. In order to stay true to its mission, everything in its headquarters has clearly...
what I’ve been doing
The company I founded, True Knowledge, has just come out from under the radar. The old website which said just two sentences about what we are doing is now replaced with a brand new website describing what we are doing in detail and a video demo of our technology...
Punting from Cambridge to Ely
Every now and then it's fun to do something utterly ridiculous just for the sake of it. In was in this spirit that myself and three friends (Rufus Evison, David Sinclair and Katherine Webster) set out to punt from Cambridge to Ely. As anyone who has ever visited...
Drama at home
Yesterday evening started so normally yet had a little more drama than usual... I got home after work around 7pm (pitch dark at this time of year), and found that my cleaner (who had been working in the house during the day) had somehow managed to jam the front...
Redividers (and unfortunate domain names)
Anagrams are the art of rearranging the letters of one piece of text to find something else. However, a certain class of anagram involves no rearranging at all! The letters in the anagram are in exactly the same sequence as they appear in the subject: the only...
comfortable and lovable
There is nothing I like more than hearing from people who use my software, especially when the experience is positive. Here's the start of an email I received this morning (with the personally identifiable information removed): Hi this is [name removed] here from...
CD published with Anagram Genius track titles
I got an email today from an American composer called Nick Didkovsky (wikipedia page) who tells me that he sometimes uses Anagram Genius to generate titles for his compositions. He also tells me that a CD containing his music played by a group called the Meridian...
Terrible Business Slogans
One source of occasional amusement during my travels is the wonderful English language slogans many east Asian businesses chose to associate with themselves. English is spoken natively almost nowhere in this region but it is widely used as a lingua franca....
Carol Vorderman’s laugh (or “no I’m not Des Lynam”)
Years ago, when I ran an email-based anagram server, I used to get a lot of misdirected email from people who would reply to the server thinking the reply was going to their friend who made the request (and typed their email address into the form). I would promptly...
How to get random hilarious anagrams as your Bugzilla quip list
Bugzilla has a feature where you can get it to display a random "quip" or one-liner at the top of each list of bugs. Follow the instructions below to add an exceptionally large selection of hilarious anagrams of your company name or product name as your...
Anagram Genius powered chatterbot
I've just found out about a chatterbot powered by Anagram Genius called Sternest Meanings. Whatever you say to it, it responds with a perfect anagram (and thus waits for you to open the conversation, unlike every other chatterbot I've seen). The program is the work...
More anagram craziness
Though perhaps not quite on the scale of Dan Brown, I got contacted today by a Professor of Psychology from Chicago, Dr Jon Smith, telling me about a book he had written using Anagram Genius. His career seems mostly to be related to writing about stress and how to...
Official website of the Da Vinci Code movie is an anagram
I've just noticed that the official website of the Da Vinci Code movie is www.sodarktheconofman.com - i.e. one of the Anagram Genius generated anagrams. It redirects to a section beneath www.sonypictures.com but it is the URL that is being used in their advertising...
I’ve now seen the Da Vinci Code movie
The worldwide launch of the Da Vinci Code movie was today and I've just come back from seeing it. I won't write a long review as others will have a lot more to say about it generally, but I enjoyed it. It was a very visual movie - lots of very beautiful cinematic...
Da Vinci Code TV adverts
I saw the first television advert for The Da Vinci Code movie today (Sky One, UK). The very first words of the advert were "this is an anagram" and "my" So Dark the Con of Man anagram was displayed as the opening sequence to the ad! This is very interesting to me...
My contribution to The Da Vinci Code
In case there is anyone left on the planet who doesn't know, The Da Vinci code is one of the best-selling novels of all time. The official Dan Brown web site is now claiming more than fifty million copies sold worldwide and the book has been translated into 44...
Yahoo bounces an email after eight years!
I wonder if this is a record for the longest time taken to bounce an undeliverable email? The email was sent by the Anagram Genius Server. (The email version that sent this is now housed at crosswordtools.com). It was sent on the 26th of February 1997 01:20 UTC and...
Redividers (and unfortunate domain names)
Anagrams are the art of rearranging the letters of one piece of text to find something else. However, a certain class of anagram involves no rearranging at all! The letters in the anagram are in exactly the same sequence as they appear in the subject: the only...
Yahoo bounces an email after eight years!
I wonder if this is a record for the longest time taken to bounce an undeliverable email? The email was sent by the Anagram Genius Server. (The email version that sent this is now housed at crosswordtools.com). It was sent on the 26th of February 1997 01:20 UTC and...
Redividers (and unfortunate domain names)
Anagrams are the art of rearranging the letters of one piece of text to find something else. However, a certain class of anagram involves no rearranging at all! The letters in the anagram are in exactly the same sequence as they appear in the subject: the only...
CD published with Anagram Genius track titles
I got an email today from an American composer called Nick Didkovsky (wikipedia page) who tells me that he sometimes uses Anagram Genius to generate titles for his compositions. He also tells me that a CD containing his music played by a group called the Meridian...
How to get random hilarious anagrams as your Bugzilla quip list
Bugzilla has a feature where you can get it to display a random "quip" or one-liner at the top of each list of bugs. Follow the instructions below to add an exceptionally large selection of hilarious anagrams of your company name or product name as your...
Anagram Genius powered chatterbot
I've just found out about a chatterbot powered by Anagram Genius called Sternest Meanings. Whatever you say to it, it responds with a perfect anagram (and thus waits for you to open the conversation, unlike every other chatterbot I've seen). The program is the work...
More anagram craziness
Though perhaps not quite on the scale of Dan Brown, I got contacted today by a Professor of Psychology from Chicago, Dr Jon Smith, telling me about a book he had written using Anagram Genius. His career seems mostly to be related to writing about stress and how to...
Official website of the Da Vinci Code movie is an anagram
I've just noticed that the official website of the Da Vinci Code movie is www.sodarktheconofman.com - i.e. one of the Anagram Genius generated anagrams. It redirects to a section beneath www.sonypictures.com but it is the URL that is being used in their advertising...
Da Vinci Code TV adverts
I saw the first television advert for The Da Vinci Code movie today (Sky One, UK). The very first words of the advert were "this is an anagram" and "my" So Dark the Con of Man anagram was displayed as the opening sequence to the ad! This is very interesting to me...
My contribution to The Da Vinci Code
In case there is anyone left on the planet who doesn't know, The Da Vinci code is one of the best-selling novels of all time. The official Dan Brown web site is now claiming more than fifty million copies sold worldwide and the book has been translated into 44...
Facebook for business – latecomer to the party
I've been a user of Facebook for a number of years now. My usage comes from its origins in university campuses. It was my friends who are in Cambridge University who first made me aware of it and whose avid use of the site made it worthwhile. For all the time I...
Redividers (and unfortunate domain names)
Anagrams are the art of rearranging the letters of one piece of text to find something else. However, a certain class of anagram involves no rearranging at all! The letters in the anagram are in exactly the same sequence as they appear in the subject: the only...
Terrible Business Slogans
One source of occasional amusement during my travels is the wonderful English language slogans many east Asian businesses chose to associate with themselves. English is spoken natively almost nowhere in this region but it is widely used as a lingua franca....
Great design?
I gave a presentation at The Design Council in London a few days ago. The organisation is dedicated to the concept of great design and communicating its virtues to British business. In order to stay true to its mission, everything in its headquarters has clearly...
comfortable and lovable
There is nothing I like more than hearing from people who use my software, especially when the experience is positive. Here's the start of an email I received this morning (with the personally identifiable information removed): Hi this is [name removed] here from...
Carol Vorderman’s laugh (or “no I’m not Des Lynam”)
Years ago, when I ran an email-based anagram server, I used to get a lot of misdirected email from people who would reply to the server thinking the reply was going to their friend who made the request (and typed their email address into the form). I would promptly...
More anagram craziness
Though perhaps not quite on the scale of Dan Brown, I got contacted today by a Professor of Psychology from Chicago, Dr Jon Smith, telling me about a book he had written using Anagram Genius. His career seems mostly to be related to writing about stress and how to...
Punting from Cambridge to Ely
Every now and then it's fun to do something utterly ridiculous just for the sake of it. In was in this spirit that myself and three friends (Rufus Evison, David Sinclair and Katherine Webster) set out to punt from Cambridge to Ely. As anyone who has ever visited...
Drama at home
Yesterday evening started so normally yet had a little more drama than usual... I got home after work around 7pm (pitch dark at this time of year), and found that my cleaner (who had been working in the house during the day) had somehow managed to jam the front...
comfortable and lovable
There is nothing I like more than hearing from people who use my software, especially when the experience is positive. Here's the start of an email I received this morning (with the personally identifiable information removed): Hi this is [name removed] here from...