RadioPlayer was launched today. It’s a collaboration between the BBC, Absolute Radio and a various other media groups and it aims to put all of UK radio in one place. Absolute Radio boss Clive Dickens described it as “the most important development in the 50 year history of UK radio”. My view? It deserves to [...]
Last week I ruffled a few feathers with a post about the sorry state of Labour and the internet. One of my main points was that Labour seemed to be drawn into a battle of the blogs and was neglecting investment in a responsive email campaign. Thomas Gensemer, founder of Blue State Digital, the firm [...]
It’s taken thirty-six years but last week it finally happened. I found myself – however I might wish for it to be otherwise – agreeing with an article in the Daily Mail. It was a stingingly accurate critique of the Labourlist group blog which has been online for a while now but was ‘launched’ last [...]
Each month the Mayor of London faces a grilling from the London Assembly, a kind of Mayor’s Question Time. It lasts up to a few hours and there is a webcast of it. But the image quality is spectacularly bad: I suppose this is what people mean when they talk about ‘faceless officialdom’. It’s only [...]
In a post earlier this week, I referred to my ‘weekly diet’ of podcasts and I thought it was only fair to open up the larder. I have been podcasting the radio show I present since May 2005. Initially I didn’t know what podcasting was or how to do it. A kind listener explained and [...]
The London Festival of Architecture goes from strength to strength and this year runs from 20 June to 20 July. Along with the exhibitions, talks, guided walks, debates and parties there is a series of excellent architectural podwalks produced by Ruby Wright. I did one about my neighbourhood, entitled ‘Backstreets of Southwark’. It was featured [...]
I spent Saturday at “barcampUKgovweb” and met a very interesting group of people who care about how government behaves online. Among the 60 or so participants, there was a roughly even split between people working for government, people working for companies and people who are – for want of a better term – civic hackers.
Many Eyes is a web-based data visualisation tool that is still in alpha but already looks impressive. It’s very simple. You cut and paste data (numbers or text) and then choose from a variety of data visualisation tools to make your dataset come to live. We hope to be doing some cool things with it [...]
At noon today at a meeting at the Trimdon Labour Club in his constituency, Tony Blair told a group of his friends and political supporters (link requires Real Player) that he has tendered his resignation as leader of the Labour Party and will be stepping down as Prime Minister on 27 June after ten years [...]
British campaigners against European Union plans to outlaw imperial measures like pounds and ounces have claimed victory, according to news reports today. The self-styled ‘metric martyrs’ say they have say they have won the battle to keep Britain imperial, after confirmation from the European Commission’s industry commissioner, Gunther Verheugen, that dual marking of goods in [...]