Technology

Article — 28 April 2009 — 1,253 words

Iain Macwhirter inadvertently criticised the media

There was much hand-wringing among bloggers a couple of weeks ago in the wake of an article about blogging written by Iain Macwhirter. I didn’t take much notice of it at the time. After all, it is not exactly surprising that an established media figure would take a swipe at blogging. And if there is […]

Article — 6 April 2009 — 188 words

Web 2.0 and the Scottish Government

Business — Culture — Society — Web

As part of my never-ending quest to find something resembling employment, I recently spent a bit of time shadowing at the Scottish Government. It was a great experience, and reassuring to see that there are people there who really properly get it. It was interesting to see how they are preparing to enter the web […]

Article — 8 March 2009 — 988 words

Blogging and the future of journalism

Current affairs — Media — Personal — Technology

This week I helped out Peter John Meiklem on a story for the Sunday Herald about the future of journalism. Amid all the job losses in the Scottish media, the piece looks at whether bloggers can step up to the plate and begin to supplant traditional media outlets. My view has long been that blogging […]

Article — 20 February 2009 — 1,090 words

Putting the social into social bookmarking

Technology

Recently, Twitter has very much gone mainstream (at least in the UK). Even for a while before that, Twitter has been becoming more than just a microblogging service. It is certainly about a lot more than the famous prompt, “What are you doing?”, suggests. Twitter is used by different people for a wide variety of […]

Article — 10 February 2009 — 882 words

Social ladder

Business — Personal — Technology

One of the problems with social networking sites is that not everyone is on the same one. Thankfully I don’t find myself having to login to MySpace any more. But I would drop Bebo at a moment’s notice if I could get away with it. Unfortunately, a lot of my friends — particularly those from […]

Article — 15 January 2009 — 1,319 words

Spare part

Business — Current affairs — Personal — Technology

I see that the BBC’s iPM blog is asking for the human stories behind the current unemployment figures. Well, I am a human face of two recent news stories. As readers are no doubt sick of reading by now, one of those stories was the loss of around 27,000 jobs at Woolworths. The other is […]

Article — 1 November 2008 — 1,081 words

Happenings at Scotweb2

Business — Society — Web

I said that I had hoped to tweet a bit from Scotweb2. I am terrible at multitasking though so I only managed a miserly two, hurriedly posted during lunch. So instead I will write a report of what went on. First off there was a great talk by James Munro who works on an interesting […]

Article — 28 October 2008 — 203 words

Reading The Guardian in full

Media — Web

I have long been an advocate of full RSS feeds for reasons outlined in this post. I do, however, understand why most news outlets opt to keep partial feeds. News websites, unlike blogs, typically show you just the headlines and a short summary of each story on the front page — just like a partial […]

Article — 23 October 2008 — 1,540 words

Rumours of blogging’s death are exaggerated, but not greatly so

Media — Society — Technology

There’s been a lot of chat recently about whether blogging is dead, sparked by this article in Wired by Paul Boutin. It’s easy to scoff at the article, and the idea that blogging is dead is obviously nonsense. But I doubt the claim would have got so much attention if there wasn’t a bit of […]

Article — 10 September 2008 — 409 words

Interesting event about web technologies: ScotWeb2

Business — Society — Web

I’ve recently been doing little bits and pieces helping out with the organisation of a very interesting event called ScotWeb2. It will take place on 31 October from 1000 to 1600 at the Holyrood Campus of Edinburgh University. It will be an informal barcamp / unconference-style event. It’s being organised by Alex Stobart who works […]

Article — 17 July 2008 — 1,381 words

Why is technology news not news?

Current affairs — Media — Technology — Web

I’ve been wondering a bit about the way technology news is still ghettoised. I don’t mean news about the latest rubbish web 2.0 start-up with a ridiculous name. I mean quite important stuff. Security problems and the like. Take what happened last week. A patch to fix a major flaw in the DNS was released. […]

Article — 13 November 2007 — 298 words

Blocking Beacon

Current affairs — Personal — Technology

I am usually a defender of Facebook. But this time I think they have overstepped the line and have introduced a ‘feature’ that makes me personally uncomfortable. From The Facebook Blog: Just as Facebook shares your on-site interactions with your friends through News Feed, we now give you an option to let News Feed share […]