A little later this morning, I’ll be publishing the tenth and final review in a successful series of posts about my favourite Mac apps.

From next week, Wednesday mornings will feature book reviews: some original, some I’ve published elsewhere, and some a combination of the two. This series will continue pretty much indefinitely (read: until I get bored of it). I’ve even created a brand new skeuomorphic post template for this series, so you won’t want to miss that!

YouView could entice a large cache of older viewers too technologically timid to hook their set up to a games console to view the world of TV a little differently.

So said The Guardian this morning. It seems that, for YouView to be successful, Lord Sugar is relying on customers who are all of the following:

1. Too tech timid to hook up a games console, but tech confident enough to hook up a YouView box using an almost identical method.
2. Too money-conscious to spend cash on a Sky, Virgin, or BT Vision subscription (all of which offer – or will soon offer – most of the new features), but happy to spend £200 on a box whose additional online functionality is broadly comparable to that of a £49 Roku box.
3. Have a broadband connection (or are willing to pay for one), despite tech timidity and money-consciousness.

That doesn’t strike me as a huge market… but perhaps I’m underestimating the power of its big-name backers!

If people could actually see inside my brain, all the things I was thinking, it really would be a very bad day.

So said Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, in an interview with Amber Elliott for Total Politics published today. This may be a slightly ill-advised soundbite given that there’s a perception that he’s duping the public with his plans for the NHS.

As it turns out, he’s having a pretty bad day anyway, as doctors have voted to take industrial action over pensions.

BBC One should reflect the whole of the UK in its output.

That’s a key part of BBC One’s remit. I get that the ratings are better on the CBBC channel, and I sympathise with that position; but I simply don’t see how BBC One can meet it’s remit without kid’s programmes. BBC Two hasn’t got over the existential crisis it had because of BBC Three and Four, yet they’re inviting the question: “What’s BBC One for?”

It also invites criticism, means that they have to find (and pay for) something to plug the gaps in the schedule, and reduces awareness of kid’s TV amongst the people who actually pay for it. As strategies go, it seems like madness.

I frequently recommend some of the apps I use on my Mac to other people, and generally get a positive reaction. However, I’ve never really written about them on this blog.

From tomorrow, that changes. For the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about a different desktop app that I love each week. It will appear online on a Wednesday morning, and will continue for as long as I have an app in mind that I use regularly, really love, and want to recommend (about ten weeks, I imagine). I hope you’ll enjoy it.

I’m also working on my “personal canon”, inspired by Robin Sloan’s excellent Fish (and David Cole’s excellent example). That won’t include apps, but I am planning to include books, music, and television alongside weblinks. That’s probably a few weeks away from being finished (or, as finished as the first iteration will ever be), so keep an eye out for that.

He tries to convince us that ‘we’re all in this together’, and doesn’t realise how disingenuous it makes him sound.

It’s not original to say that Cameron’s the heir to Blair, but it was a little arresting to find this sentence in a post I wrote almost seven years ago about Tony Blair – certainly not the Prime Minister most associated with that particular phrase these days.

Recently, the polyphonic ringtone acquired a competitor: A compressed snippet of actual recorded song emanates from the cell-phone handset as if from a tiny radio.

It’s easy to forget how quickly technology progresses. It seems remarkable that this New Yorker article from 2005 already seems so quaintly dated – and yet it was published just two years before the first iPhone launched.

I just would have liked to have seen Bartlet say ‘goddammit’ from time to time, which you can’t do. You’ll be able to say ‘motherfucker’ on network television before you’ll be able to take God’s name in vain.

Aaron Sorkin in this Kaplan and Leibovitz Vanity Fair piece about him, his methods, and his move to HBO. It’s a really good read.

Thanks to everyone who sponsored my 10k swim for Marie Curie Cancer Care!

If you haven’t sponsored me yet, this weekend is you last chance! Please sponsor me by visiting sjh.im/SimonSwim.

I feel compelled to write to you about an architectural disaster that has been inflicted on the people of Southport. This building is totally out of place and reminiscent of drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa.

Janet Berg wrote this complaint to the Southport Visiter. It might seem a fair complaint: archiectural disputes are loved by local papers. But I noted with amusement that the urgent compulsion to complain to the local paper about this building has occurred a full 40 years after it’s construction. Though, in fairness, it is fairly ugly.