Citizen journalism: Friend or foe to traditional media? 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 the story of a fire in one of Lichfield’s pubs quickly make it onto the blog just 3 hours after the initial call to the emergency services. Obviously we were lucky to have one of our team walk past at the right moment with a camera phone - a photo quickly made it’s way...

I don’t want broadband, leave me alone! There is a lot of buzz at the moment about broadband in Britain, mainly thanks to the Digital Britain report. I’m a firm believer in technology as a driver of innovation, entrepreneurship and job creation so I definitely see that as a good thing. That said, I have a feeling it might be mis-directed. See, there’s this whole 2Mb broadband for every home thing being bounded around but as Ed Richards, head of Ofcom, said this week, not everyone actually wants broadband. So why give it to them? Instead of focusing resources on getting people who don’t want it to...

Is Google deliberately pricing itself out of payment processing? 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 have been complaining about the move but is it a deliberate attempt by Google to get rid of them? The previous fees were very, very low and along with the free processing offer based on AdWords spend, Google Checkout was a very attractive alternative to the well-established...

The Guardian should know better I like the Guardian, probably because it’s so tech savvy, but I was dissapointed reading Simon Hoggart’s column (via The Lichfield Blog) having a bit of a moan about Michael Fabricant MP’s use of Twitter. Hoggart takes the typical response to seeing Twitter; “I don’t understand it, therefore it’s just full of toilet trip talk and sandwich fillings from people who have nothing better to do than seek all the attention in the world as best they can in 140 characters.” His article was, in essence, an elongated version of exactly the kind...

The tablet that knows you’ve swallowed it 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 which partition he should open on his very handy seven-day pill dispenser. Now, though, forgetting to take pills might not be a problem any longer, thanks to advancements in technology. GigaOm has gone through a bunch of biotech offerings, including an edible microchip that sends a...

Screw society, I want to avoid tax! Today, RBS, which is now 84% owned by the Government in economic terms (whatever that means) announced the biggest loss in British corporate history of £24.1bn. Wow. That’s a lot of money. We, the tax payers (so if you don’t pay taxes you can ignore this bit), are taking on RBS’ “toxic assets” to the tune of £325bn. Wow. That’s even more money. Now, you’re probably thinking “well we own the bank now so we (the tax payer) can run it how we want it!” Yes! Actually, no. “We”, despite owning 84% of RBS have no voting...

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 all Government buildings have a Union Jack? I’m kind of a nationalist - in the sense that I like to feel like I’m part of something, like I belong - but not in the defensive ’screw everyone else, let’s be completely independent’ sense. One of...

Disabling Vista’s “Cancel or Allow” Thingymajig   It’s so very annoying and I just found out how to get RID of it!!! So I’m sharing… Open up the Control Panel (Start > Control Panel) Open up User Accounts Click “Turn User Account Control on or off“ Click Continue (yet another dialog!) Uncheck the check box Click OK You’ll need to restart your computer. Choose to do that straight away or do it yourself later. Done! Peace is restored. Until the next dialog or blue screen of death, of course!

Microsoft, Yahoo Deal Would Strengthen Google I’m getting might pissed off with all this talk about some “deal” between Microsoft and Yahoo now. I don’t see how Microsoft forking out $15 billion for Yahoo’s search business would have any impact on Google’s share. Sure, on paper, Yahoo’s share would drop to 0% and Microsoft would jump from 8.5% to 29%, but Google’s share would still sit at 63.1%. (Based on comScore’s latest figures.) Today, a large Yahoo shareholder, Ivory Investment Management urged the company to sell to Microsoft to maximise shareholder value. How...

IE8: Saviour of the Semantic Web, or Usability Nightmare? 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 work correctly. Users of the browser will have to choose to view these sites in “Compatibility View”. That sounds painful. It smacks of the “cancel or allow” ‘safety‘ feature in Vista. It’s great that Microsoft are finally supporting standards....