Just like EastEnders

Watching ‘The Passion’ on BBC iPlayer I was rather intrigued by the programmes suggested by the ‘More Like This’ feature… ‘The Worst Journey in the World’ makes some bizarre sense – but EastEnders?

Odd suggestions for things to watch...

The Offline Cost of an Online Life

[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website]

The next time you want to search for something on the web, try going to ‘www.blackle.com’ instead of your usual search engine.

The page you get looks remarkably like Google, and queries you type in are fed through to Google, but there’s  one obvious difference. Instead of the generous amount of white space which has characterised Google’s home page since its 1998 launch, the page is mostly black.

Heap Media, the Australian company behind Blackle, claim that  black pixels take less power than white and so using their search saves energy. They believe that small things matter when it comes to reducing our energy use, limiting our C02 output and reducing the likely extent of global warming as a result of human activity.

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@bbccouk Finished my column and going to make coffee…

[As ever you can read this on the BBC News website]

Unlike many of my friends and colleagues I wasn’t able to make it to Austin, Texas for this year’s  SXSW interactive, the four day technology conference and festival that is currently firing the imagination of the technology world.

So I wasn’t in the ballroom when the keynote address by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went awry under the less-than-forensic questioning of technology journalist Sarah Lacy.

I didn’t see the crowd start to get restless and heckle Zuckerberg about the deeply-unpopular Beacon advertising system, or get a chance to grab the microphone and ask questions when Lacy threw the conversation open to the floor.

And yet I was there in another way, listening to and even interacting with some of my friends in the audience, picking up on the vibe in the room and even tuning in later as Sarah Lacy loudly defended herself.

Continue reading “@bbccouk Finished my column and going to make coffee…”

Teaching in the Networked World

[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website]

When Conservative Prime Minister Harold MacMillan was asked what was most likely to cause problems for governments he famously replied ‘events, dear boy, events’.

Coping with the completely unexpected, the sort of thing that simply cannot be anticipated, is a skill in itself and one that all politicians have to develop if they are to survive long in power.

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