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The Rev Dr Peter Hearty of the excellent 'Platitude of the Day' website is clearly concerned that former Archbish Carey is rather upset at the (supposed) continued victimisation of christians in the UK*.  He thinks we should send Christmas cards to the poor old soul.

It's been suggested that Lord Carey deserves a response to his Not Ashamed campaign. He's obviously feeling a bit down, what with all this Christian persecution that's going on. I think the idea of sending him a Season's Greetings card, perhaps with a picture of some jolly penguins or some reindeer on the front, is an excellent way of cheering the old chap up.

Click over to Platitude of the day for more... I think I may well just do the same...and I'm sure Lord Carey, ensconced in the House of Lords with the others who are there merely because they are senior figures of the Church of England will enjoy all those seasonal sentiments and images. *Of course, not everyone agrees that there is any persecution.  The Bishop of Croydon disagrees (Bishop bashes Christian persecution complex).

This is a listing of my favourite iPad apps: Dropbox - Absoutely invaluable for shifting files too and from the iPad; synchronise files between iPad and other computers; useful for collaborations Squeezepad - Excellent and easy to use interface for Squeezebox Server.  Logitech's series of Squeezebox audio devices are really rather a nice way of managing and playing digital audio files. iAnnotate - read and annotate pdf files.  Aji Reader Service can be used to synchronise pdf files between Mac or PC and iAnnotate.  I use this to synch my pdf collection which I manage on the Linux and Mac notebooks using Mendeley.  Unfortunately the current version of the Mendeley iPhone/iPad app leaves quite a lot to be desired. iWork - three iWork applications have iPad versions: Pages, Numbers and Keynote Skype -VOIP telephony via the iPad.  No video of course, but the rumoured second generation iPad may have video.  Works well on my WiFi model iPad. The Feed -Interfaces with Google Reader to help keep on top of your RSS feeds (I usually follow around 120 or more feeds). Tweetdeck - Not quite as full-featured as the desktop version, but still pretty good for emitting thoughts into the twitterverse.  Has a useful browser panel. Headspace - A kind of hybrid task manager, planning, to-do list app that is really quite versatile.  Three dimensional effects! Wolfram - Very useful if your web searches aim to pull out numerical analyses.  Reasonably good value when I got it on special offer, but I guess one could always access Wolfram Alpha via Safari.  A bit too focussed on American data. Notes Plus - very versatile note taking app, with diagrams and text.  No character recognition - for this try WritePad.  Works best with an iPad stylus. Quickoffice - read and edit MS Office documents. Penultimate - a neat and easy graphic note-taking app.  Works best with a stylus, otherwise you're finger-painting

The BBC reports that the UK ISP TalkTalk (also known as StalkStalk) is pressing on with its intrusive malware scanning system (Talk Talk to introduce controversial virus alert system).  However a better analysis can be read over at NoDPI (Update: StalkStalk, Time to Switch ISP). Essentially TalkTalk will visit every website visited by every TalkTalk customer, and investigate it for malware.  Essentially this is an exercise in recording customers' web activity, in many cases recording URLs containing personal information.  TalkTalk customers cannot opt-out of the URL stalking.  As NoDPI put it:

Yesterday, TalkTalk announced the forthcoming relaunch of their ‘anti-malware’ service. The same system was covertly tested on TalkTalk subscribers in June/July. [...] Every URL that you visit will be captured, and used to classify the web site that you visit. The technology is supplied by Chinese company Huawei, who are commercial partners with notorious spyware company Phorm, who in turn use technology supplied by malware hackers OCS Lab in Moscow.

TalkTalk customers are advised to read the NoDPI article and judge whether their privacy would be best served by leaving for a new ISP. Personally I left BT over their dalliance with the dreadful Phorm. See also

Related articles

• TalkTalk rapped for trial silence (bbc.co.uk)
• TalkTalk to launch controversial Virus Alerts system (v3.co.uk)
• ISP to test controversial alerts (bbc.co.uk)
• TalkTalk reprimanded over Malware trial (ghacks.net)

Techdirt's latest story on the ongoing saga of the Murdoch media paywall rounds up the apparent effect on the ability of the Murdoch media to break stories (How Murdoch's Paywalls Meant Some News It Broke Went Unnoticed & Uncredited | Techdirt) - no-one notices. This on top of falling advertiser revenues makes me wonder how long they plan to continue the paywall.  On the other hand, they've just moved The News of the World behind the paywall. I read a multitude of sites regularly - using the Feedly front-end to Google Reader - and I probably do so just as most web users do.  I'm what you might call a 'fly-by' reader - I follow links from feeds, twitter, other websites.  I don't read on line newspapers as I do (did) print newspapers, I read single articles.  Paywalls just mean I don't go to those sites, so when the NewsCorp paywall went up, I went elsewhere. I guess the big question for NewsCorp is whether paywall income compensates for the loss of advertiser revenue.