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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.

Continue reading “Don’t dream it… Google it.”

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Why we need to stop the data retention proposals

I’ve just had this article posted on the Index on Censorship site

..we need to stand up against the plans because even if the current proposals can be justified as a proportionate measure –– and remember that only details of sender and receiver are being stored, not the content of the messages themselves –– mission creep is inevitable.
Powers granted under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act which we were told were needed to investigate serious crime and catch terrorists have been used to determine whether parents are really living in the catchment area of a popular school, something that is not actually illegal under the act as passed.

Read the whole piece, and it’s worth looking at Mike Butcher’s rant too.

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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.

Continue reading “Changing the world”

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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.

Continue reading “Our Connected Christmas”

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The Dude Abides

The boy bought me a ‘Big Lebowski’ figure for Christmas… the similarity is almost painful. And I, too, will abide.

Bill and the Dude...

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Facebook foolishness

I like Facebook, and I use it a lot, but I don’t trust random applications that ask for access to my profile data or want to be able to post on my Wall, so I don’t add them even when people I like ask me to do so – I’ll settle for the few apps (like Causes and 30Boxes) that are useful to me.

But it gets a bit silly…

Current requests
Current requests
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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.

Continue reading “Going Mobile”

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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.

Continue reading “From Art to Activism”

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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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Home Life

We had a visit from Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC technology correspondent, yesterday – they wanted to film my home network setup for an internal BBC presentation and talk to me and the boy about the future of television.

Rory also blogged it and even made a short video…

As a BBC veteran, I’m obviously not the best person to take a completely impartial view on the importance of Project Canvas.That’s the plan outlined on Thursday by the BBC, ITV, and BT to co-operate on a common platform for IPTV – or, as an ITV statement put it rather more usefully, to “bring broadband and television together in one box”. There are plenty of obstacles to be cleared – regulatory rows, technical teething troubles, standards snafus – before we start plugging a set-top box into our broadband and watching the iPlayer and other online video offerings on our televisions rather than on a computer.

But I think that this is an exciting development that could be an important step on the road to the connected home that technology gurus have been promising us for so long. Just one question – by the time the rough sketch of Canvas becomes the full picture, won’t millions already be choosing different ways to pipe web content around their homes?

By chance, as Thursday’s announcement was being made, I was in a house that is already wired for the future. We were filming at the home of Bill Thompson, top technology pundit and columnist on this site, as part of a report on the way we may all consume the media five years from now.

And I even managed to make it into the iPlayer day coverage 🙂