Weblog Archive - May 2007

In an earlier blog posting I explained GPS and how you can use it for recreational activities. Now think if the GPS reciever recorded your position every second and you walked along a road, you'd get a file that can be represented as a dotted line. Walk down some more roads recording as you go and you'll soon have something resembling a street map. A nomination in the  read more

The Audit Commission wants local authorities to innovate rather than seek gradual improvements, especially when it comes to IT. Seeing the Light: Innovation in Local Public Services, states that many councils are innovating successfully -for instance, hand-held voting technology and electronic consultation is improving citizen engagement. In London's Sutton, staff with tablet PCs could carry out financial assessments of care service users on the hoof. But ... read more

The Temple's ancient staircases and cobbled streets lent a historic setting to a New Media Awards debate.

The debate: "Will MPs use their Communications Allowance effectively?" focused on the merits of the £10,000 MPs would be given to help communicate with the electorate.

On the panel was: David Wilcox, social media consultant, Tom Steinberg, director of mySociety and Derek Wyatt MP (chair of the All Party Internet Group). ... read more

Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden says even though there are more and more public services being put online, they won't discriminate against those without access to the internet. Yet there remains a crucial third of the population effectively not online.

He admits being online is both "cost effective and more efficient" so the sheer draw of delivering services this way could prove too tempting for government, despite denials to ... read more

You wouldn't think that classified advertising and the future of a healthy democracy have much in common. Unfortunately, they have a great deal in common. So it's interesting to note that job searches on the government's Jobcentre Plus website have reached a new high. The website now handles over 70m job searches a year, accounting for over 14% of the overall recruitment market in the UK.

Now here's ... read more

Recently photography historians were celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the Box Brownie camera, the first mass-produced camera which catalogued the lives of the Edwardians and beyond. As a result they started wringing their hands about the future of our visual history today, given that so many photos are just no longer being printed. Instead they languish on hard drives, likely never to enlighten future generations about today's day life and ... read more

Social media - blogging, using networking sites like MySpace, video sites like YouTube, you name it - is tricky to handle and at times looks like chaos.

Hence when Kathy Sierra, a high profile marketing blogger recently received death threats there were calls to institute a "Bloggers code of conduct".

These calls came mainly from Tim 0'Reilly, a blogging and technology doyen who also runs a ... read more

I am delighted to announce that joining me on the judging panel for this year's New Media Awards are [cue drum roll]:

Mandy Berry, director, 01zero-OneMartin Bright, political editor, New StatesmanMike Butcher, journalist, t-bitesMatthew Cashmore, development producer, future media and technology, BBCPhilip Chalmers, Atos OriginJemima Kiss, new media and technology reporter, Guardian UnlimitedAleks Krotoski, academic, writer and ... read more