Do you work or achieve?... I’m a thinker and most of my best thinking happens in the shower (must be the lather). This morning, after waking up early and spending a couple of hours catching up with some reading links I’d saved for later, I found myself in the shower at about 9:30am. That’s not uncommon on an...

News is an onion... Pic: Jason Scragz A wise ogre once told a donkey, “Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.” I’d like to add a third to the ‘things with layers list’; online news. While the news industry is going through all this...

Government need to get relaxed about IT ... At yesterday’s inaugural Lichfield Social Media Café the conversation turned to local government e-petitions. Will Perrin pointed out that local gov have issues using an open-source system like the Number 10 petitions system because of restrictive IT contracts. The U.S. is again making progress...

Recognition for The Lichfield Blog just ... When I first got involved in The Lichfield Blog back in February this year I had no idea that six months later I’d be writing a business plan for a brand new social enterprise. The Lichfield Blog banner up at Fuse Acoustic '09 I never thought I’d be looking at stats showing an average...

Citizen journalism: Friend or foe to tra... Recently I’ve become involved in a relative new project, The Lichfield Blog. As you may gather from the name it’s a blog, about Lichfield. I’m really proud to be part of something that has such a switched on and engaged little team behind it. It was especially gratifying to watch as...

Is Google deliberately pricing itself ou... I was one of many who were shocked yesterday when Google announced the changes in Checkout processing fees. They’ve also announced that AdWords spend will no londer fund free processing of transactions. In fact, it turns out the new fees are almost identical to PayPal’s fees. Plenty of sellers...

The tablet that knows you’ve swall... Photo credit: kjarrett When my Dad – a sufferer of Pick’s Disease – was still living at home, there was always concern about whether he was remembering to take the many tablets he was prescribed. There were many times where he’d be trying to figure out which day it was and therefore...

Does nationalism matter?...   Image courtesy of geishaboy500 I was walking past Lichfield police station today, watching their grubby Union Jack flapping around in the wind and I wondered why the Lichfield District Council building just down the road didn’t also have a Union Jack proudly waving around. In fact, why don’t...

IE8: Saviour of the Semantic Web, or Usa... I’ve been pushing web standards for years, so the news that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 will support W3C guidelines by default is very welcome from where I’m sitting. There is one problem, though. They’ve announced that sites including CNN, Facebook and MySpace won’t...

This Will Stop You Having Regrets... My Mom once told me that jealousy is a wasted emotion. It’s true, and it helped to open my eyes. That and show me another trait I’ve inherited from my Dad. In a similar vein I’ve always thought that having regrets is pointless. Instead, learning from our mistakes is better. To that...