I recently wrote about the iPlayer, and made a throwaway comment about not having a TV licence, yet enjoying the ability to finally be able to legally watch TV programmes online, on my Mac. It sparked quite a discussion. Nick Reynolds (no relation) of the BBC kindly pointed out the new licence fee page on […]
Category Archives: life
BBC iPlayer gets (a little bit) better
If you really know me, you know two fact about me: I’m quite tall. (at 6′ 4½”) I don’t have a TV license (though I do have a TV, connected to a Wii and a Mac Mini) The first fact means I don’t mind standing near the back of gigs. The second fact means that […]
Exploring the UK Government online – They Work For You and the Public Whip
I’ve known about TheyWorkForYou.com for some time, but had not really explored it properly until this weekend. I also unearthed two underlying services: the Parliament Parser, which hosts structured data on MPs and their debates, and The Public Whip, which uses that same data and tracks voting patterns. I happened to be listening to Prime […]
Arriving in Zurich
As I mentioned, I’m in Zurich at the start of this week for the 6th annual IBM Innovation Forum. How things can change in a year…. 13 months ago, the free Swiss Air chocolate looked like this. …whereas now they look (disappointingly) like this. Call me a traditionalist, but the previous wrapper was a classic […]
Live while I’m alive: sweets on my desk
The IET were kind enough to give me a silver dish (which also has a very attractive lid, not pictured here) as a thank you for giving this year’s Mountbatten lecture. It has my name on it and everything. Rather than let it gather dust in a cupboard, I’ve decided to fill it with sweets […]
Oh, Austin! SXSWi 2008
It’s official. I’m on the list of speakers for South By Southwest Interactive 2008. Rachel, Dan Jeremy and I made it through the panel picker. I have a speaker pass, and my flight is booked. Hurrah and huzzah. The tentative panel list is already looking very promising indeed. It includes… The Future Virtual World & […]
ORG Day
It’s ORG day. Support ORG. That is all.
Madvertzines: Ads vs Content
I don’t read dead-tree newspapers or magazines very often, but I do seem to have a subscription to the dead tree version of Wired, which reliably arrives in my work mail dip once per month. I don’t remember subscribing (I believe it was a gift) and I don’t see a price on the front cover. […]
Speechification
Russell and Steve recently invited me to join the Speechification team, where I have been happily sharing my favourite bits of speech radio. Any team needs its initiation rites, and mine ended up being migrating the blog from Tumblr to something with comments. WordPress 2.3.1 seemed like a good bet. I have not been keeping […]
Twitter SMS Limits
I’ve been using Twitter a lot recently. I made my 1000th Tweet this week. By the way, if we’re friends on Facebook and you don’t use Twitter, it’s why and how I update my status so frequently. Although I follow over 150 people on Twitter, I only have SMS notifications turned on for about a […]