Google has never quite worked with social media. After buying Blogger, it never seemed to know what to do with it. Then there were the high-profile flops Google Buzz and Google Wave. It was tempting to think that the mighty Google had lost touch completely while Facebook and Twitter gain more ground all the time. […]

Is there anything more annoying than those security questions you need to login to certain websites? I cannot understand how they are supposed to make websites more secure. I understand that passwords can be cracked and the security question is a safety net. But let’s face it. All the advice on passwords is that they […]

There is something about the way that economists think that makes them different. Sometimes this makes them downright brilliant. Other times it makes them complete outcasts. I often enthuse about the paradox of voting — the phenomenon whereby economists struggle to explain why people vote. But when I talk about it to anyone else, the […]

It is commonly said that blogging is dead. The refrain has increased in frequency over the past year or so, as Twitter extends its influence further and further. I have been blogging since 2002, when I was just 16. Over the years, it has been my favourite means of communicating online — more than Facebook […]

There was an interesting blog post over at the Telegraph by Geoffrey Lean over the weekend. He asked if GDP is “past its sell by date”, noting that “the EU is due to publish a paper which will conclude that GDP is too limited a measurement.” I agree with the view that GDP doesn’t tell […]