Tweeting near you

Track down tweets in your vicinity - there's an Adobe Air application which takes advantage of the optional "location" function which some people transmit with their tweets. TwitterLocal.

Slimming down

The thinner PS3 is coming - and to the UK too.

Ewell to Richmond via Israel and Japan

One of Britain's best novelists turns back to non-fiction in a book out next month.

Here he is, interviewed in the Guardian.

Has the metric system destroyed your house?

The Daily Mail headline generator.

I'm not sure that this is actually how Daily Mail headlines are written. But if you keep hitting "Refresh" often enough (and it's addictive), you may change your mind,

Remember the summer of '11?

The best, the worst and the weirdest summers.

Orchestral man hoovers in the dark

What can that be?

Well, it's a robot vacuum cleaner. I particularly like the way that, when it's finished the hoovering, it will head back to its charger to recharge itself.

(And the headline? Andre Previn doing the cleaning with the lights off. It's an old DLT joke.)

Watch us change

I've only just scratched the surface with this, but GapMinder allows you to see the world changing through statistics. You can watch, for instance, a developing chart with infant mortality reducing as average incomes increase over the decades.

The organisation is based in Sweden, with most of the data coming from UN sources.

Coming home

The SS Great Britain coming to Bristol in 1970, and the boat today.

600 square metres of smothered sausage

That's currywurst, Germany's favourite meat snack. Now it's going to have its own museum.

Your PC as you've never heard it before

John's blog has been on a break (although not quite in the Friends sense of the phrase), but let's come back with this, which I've heard in full effect in the Bose shop at London's Westfield shopping centre - and which is, trust me, simply stunning.

As the build-up on the Bose website tells you, it runs through your USB port, bypassing your sound card which can therefore be as ropey as you like, whilst your PC or laptop produces the most amazing sound you can imagine.

Tempted, I am, sorely tempted.

Brian Shalcross

Sad news this morning that Brian Shalcross has died. Brian was a Westminster reporter for the various radio groups which evolved from Capital Radio. Justin Kings posts a tribute here.