My lovely wife Lauren gave me a Nintendo 3DS for Christmas, and I’ve been playing it extensively (mostly The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D) since then.

My last handheld game system was a Nintendo DS Lite (I also have a Wii and a PS3), and I suspect that there are many DS users out there who are wondering whether to upgrade to the 3DS. I decided to write up a few thoughts from my first week of owning the device.

Just over a month ago, I switched comments off for this blog. I wanted to post a very brief follow-up on that decision.

I read Ben Brooks’ article on The Verge’s lack of compelling reporting with considerable interest. It talks about the all-too-common bet-hedging approach to tech journalism, referencing MG Siegler’s piece (also about The Verge). Both articles make the point that, as readers, we’re often looking for insight to help with a buying decision, rather than raw information.

I was reading Rands’ 2011 in review earlier, and thought it might be interesting to check my own web traffic stats year-on-year, and list a few of this year’s most popular articles here on the blog.

At the weekend, I noticed a tweet that mentioned me, sent from the @allthisfeed account, which is an announcement account for @allthis. It read:

Ten minutes of Matt Legend Gemmell’s attention @allthis @mattgemmell http://j.mp/tGvzmC

The link in the tweet is dead now (as I’ll explain later), but essentially it’s from a startup whose business idea is to ‘trade’ (not sell, they repeatedly assure) the time of other people. The idea is that you bid on ten minutes of time with someone you want to speak to, for any purpose you like.