March 2011
9 posts
1 tag
Print publications with pay-for websites...
…listen carefully:
If I’m reading your dead tree newspaper magazine, I don’t expect to be told I must subscribe in order to read the same articles on my computer. It’s annoying. It also means that something which should be much easier on the Web — pointing a friend or colleague at an article — is actually infinitely more difficult than it is in the paper edition.
So, I...
1 tag
“Linked Data. It’s really fucking simple: give everything a URI and make...”
– Tom Morris (via IRC)
I want this on a T-shirt. That, and a two-by-four.
3 tags
Yammering On
Upon reflection, my post on Friday was a little harsh.
Actually, part of its harshness was entirely justified. Yammer is a terrible platform. As social networks go, it’s the worst of all worlds.
However, that’s not the BBC’s fault. I suspect the thinking was, given a desire to “engage” with BBC staff in as many ways as possible, and that Yammer is already in place and...
3 tags
Yammer into Anvil
The BBC’s Delivering Quality First (just… don’t say it, okay? I know) process took a new turn this week when Pat Younge invited invited everybody over to a specially set up “community” on the self-styled social-networks-for-corporates service, Yammer.
This is a gigantic bag of fail on several counts.
I shall ignore, for the purposes of this, the fears amongst some staff that posting about...
2 tags
BBC People
There’s a piece in the Guardian today about the BBC’s approach to staffing and careers which seems particularly relevant here. There are aspects of it, and things I’ve read elsewhere, which are striking:
Anecdotally, via a number of colleagues, morale amongst staff is awful in a lot of areas. Many good and talented people feel distinctly undervalued, and reports like this (and...
1 tag
A thought on Net Neutrality
There’s lots of talk about net neutrality in the UK, and how big ISPs plan to use “transparency”, essentially, a crutch for lack of neutrality.
Do you know what? If it was as simple as that, I’d be fine with it. If smaller, better, competitors get a bigger slice of the pie, then that’s all good with me.
But there’s a snag. Actually, two:
Long contracts don’t have termination...
1 tag
The five most hated sentences in e-mail
(No particular order)
“Please do not respond to this address.”
“Consider the environment before printing this email”
“This email (and any attachments) are for the named recipient only…”
“This message was sent with High Importance.”
“Stop using ‘Reply to All’!!!!!!”
2 tags
Copywrong
Once upon a time, there was no copyright. If you published something, it was a free-for-all. While this is more-or-less fine for people who were producing and publishing creative works as a hobby (I say “more-or-less” because more people choose to license works today under something like CC-BY than place works in the public domain proper), it’s difficult to build a creative industry if publishing...
1 tag
iPad 2
Whatever your opinion of the iPad 2 might be, please refrain from the following:
“[the new features] are all things that should have been in the original iPad”
No, they’re not. They’re things we all would have liked to be in the original iPad. Here’s the thing, though: people considered the iPad to be expensive. People still consider the iPad to expensive. This despite the fact...
