Category: billblog

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I Link Therefore I Am

[As ever, this is also on the BBC News website]

I had to send a fax to a US university recently on behalf of my daughter, and I realised that not only do I not own a fax machine, I have never owned a fax machine.  During the 1990’s I would occasionally approach one of these mysterious devices, a sheet of paper in hand ready to be fed into the slot and transmitted through some mysterious method to other parts of the world, but it was clearly the devil’s work.

I never wanted one of the infernal devices in my home, and it has been wonderful to see emailed attachments replace them for most uses, apart from the odd recalcitrant academic institution.

The recent advent of on-demand video streaming of the main terrestrial TV channels has made me realise that I may never get round to acquiring a PVR, a hard-drive based TV recorder, before they too are swept away in the flood of technological innovation. Farewell, then Sky+ box, I hardly knew thee.

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

When I heard that full episodes of The Prisoner TV series were available online I immediately headed over to the AMC website to wallow in nostalgic enjoyment and remind myself just how cool Patrick McGoohan was as he stumbled around Portmeirion trying to avoid a big plastic ball.

I’m old enough to have watched it the first time around and remember the shock we all felt at the last episode, so I was looking forward to revisiting a few episodes without having to make the effort to borrow the full DVD box set from somewhere.

I would happily have watched online and let AMC advertise to me in return, but sadly it was not to be. When I got to The Prisoner page on its site I saw only an unfriendly message, shouting at me in uppercase that:

THE VIDEO YOU ARE TRYING TO WATCH CANNOT BE
VIEWED FROM YOUR CURRENT COUNTRY OR LOCATION

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Get Carter…

[As always, this can be read on the BBC News website. And thanks to Tony Hirst there’s a commentable version of the Digital Britain report, which we will draw to Carter’s attention..

Added 8/2/09: there’s a useful commentary on the Power of Information beta from the ‘other Tom Watson’ on TechPresident.

]

It may well be that Stephen Carter is pleased with the generally negative response to the Digital Britain report he has assembled over the last few months with help from people like psychologist Tanya Byron, Spectator editor Matthew d’Ancona and Channel 4 deputy chairman Barry Cox.

After all this interim report is intended to outline the policy challenges to be addressed in a final set of recommendations and proposals published later in the year, and so its primary purpose might simply be to stir things up and let all of the interested parties know that the issues that matter to them are in the frame.

In which case hearing that universal two megabit per second broadband is pathetically slow compared to other countries, that the idea of a rights agency to negotiate online copyrights shows no understanding of the reality of current download practice, and that the chief executive of Trinity Mirror, Sly Bailey, feels that the report shows a ‘crushing lack of understanding of the urgency required for changes to merger regulations in the local and regional media sector’ might simply reassure Lord Carter that at least everyone is taking notice.

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Don’t dream it… Google it.

I’m an easily distracted person, as anyone who’s ever had the misfortune to talk to me at a party will agree. It’s not that I’m not interested in what someone is saying, and I do pay attention, but I have a tendency to scan the room and tune in to other conversations from time to time.

It’s even worse when I’m sitting at my computer on a Sunday evening trying to write an article, do my tax return or simply make sense of the long list of things to be done in the coming week.

Marx could work for weeks in the Reading Room of the British Library with only the tea room and perhaps an occasional fellow writer to distract him, but working on an internet-connected computer is a challenge to anyone trying to focus on the job at hand.

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Changing the world

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

Coming up with ideas for new digital products and services is hardly difficult in this world of rapid technological development and increasing access to computers and the network.

Anyone with a vague grasp of the capabilities of internet-connected devices should be able to think of two or three innovations over an overpriced latte in their nearest ‘third space’ coffee shop.

Having ideas may be easy, but deciding which to pursue and turning them into reality is hard, difficult work, with a low likelihood of success.

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Our Connected Christmas

We had a traditional Christmas this year, though since the kids are now sixteen and seventeen their sleep patterns were not disturbed by an anxious wait to see what Santa would provide in return for their good behaviour during the year.

After a lazy morning, a protracted lunch and a game of Scrabble we settled down to watch Doctor Who and the latest Wallace and Gromit, assembled on the sofa in a perfect twenty-first century family scene.

However in a slight break with tradition our shining faces were illuminated not just by the glare of the television but also by two laptops and my iPod Touch as we used Microsoft Messenger, Facebook and Twitter to keep in contact with our friends around the world.

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Going Mobile

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

Most weeks I am fortunate enough to hear about interesting and innovative developments in technology around the world as the in-house commentator for Digital Planet, the World Service technology programme presented by Gareth Mitchell.

We hear about solar-powered wifi in Brazil, computing in Nepal, driverless cars in the USA and silicon chips that can tell when their calculations have been affected by cosmic rays.

We get to interview interesting people like Feargal Sharkey, former Undertone and now a lobbyist for the music industry, author Steven Johnson and head of the Mozilla Foundation Mitchell Baker.

And we find out about new initiatives and projects that could shape the emerging networked world, like One Laptop per Child.

But having a worldwide audience doesn’t stop us being interested in developments closer to home, and last week reporter Anna Lacey went to Park House school in Newbury, where they have been experimenting with the use of mobile phones in school.

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From Art to Activism

[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website, where Mark has titled it ‘Net Politics is all Rock and Role’!]

This afternoon my son and I drove from Cambridge to Lode, a small village just north of the city. When we got there we made our way to the old watermill and I lobbed half a brick across a river while Max filmed me.

Earlier in the weekend my friend Matt Jones, co-founder of the social network site Dopplr, had made a significantly more strenuous expedition to Knowle Park in Hildenborough to leave a rock shaped rather like a flint axe-head in a field.

Matt and I weren’t just randomly littering the countryside, but making our individual contributions to the ‘Britglyph’, a project that will eventually be the most extensive work of public art ever seen in Britain, one that follows in the tradition of the White Horse of Uffington and the Cerne Abbas giant.

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Twinterval




IMG_7856

Originally uploaded by parkylondon.

A fantastic time at Twinterval last night – and many thanks to @amanda and @girlonetrack for the organisation and good times!

This photograph from Paul (@parkylondon) shows what a good photographer with a good camera can do to make even the hairiest of us look good(ish)…

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Making the Market Work

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

Twitter, despite the attention it receives around the place with its high-profile users like Stephen Fry, is not the only micro-blogging service out there.

I quite like Tumblr, and Stumbleupon does something useful, while BrightKite links notes and photos to your current location and is growing fast.

One service I never really tried seriously is Pownce, and now I’ll never get the chance as the company has been bought by Six Apart and is going to be shut down.

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