Archive for internet
Posts of the week: the social media myth and the problem with song lyrics
Welcome to my weekly round-up of two blogging highlights from the past week: the post that I found most interesting or enjoyable to write and the post from someone else that I found most interesting or entertaining. A post from me… Have you been fooled by the social media hype? It’s a point that has [...]
Have you been fooled by the social media hype?
A newly updated version of the YouTube Social Media Revolution film is doing the rounds and winning praise along with lots of “ooh, aah, look how quickly the world is changing!” messages. There’s a little problem, though. In its enthusiasm to makes its case it makes some very dodgy arguments about how the rate of [...]
The monopolies of the internet
Across a huge range of internet activity there is one dominant firm: Facebook for social networking, Google for search, Twitter for micro-blogging, Amazon for books and so on. The contrast between the presence of these dominating firms and the apparent ease of entry for new challengers is the subject of a piece by Tim Wu [...]
Lib Dem IT policy consultation: what did I learn?
Sitting through the consultation session this morning at Lib Dem conference on IT policy (see here for a copy of the consultation paper) I learnt lots of interesting points of detail – just how many Liberal Democrats have a connection to Cambridge, the horror many have of learning Pascal and details of the issues around [...]
Lib Dem IT policy consultation update
Last month I blogged about the Liberal Democrats setting up a policy working group looking at information technology and in particular its implication for intellectual property (see my post along with a copy of the consultation paper). My email inbox today brought me the news that I’ve been appointed one of the members of the [...]
How the internet is changing: the tale from Pagerank 10 sites
The internet has changed in many ways over the last six years, broadening its international reach and with a far more diverse range of uses. That change is neatly illustrated by comparing the select list of sites that had a Google Pagerank* of 10 back in 2004 and those that do now. Here’s the 2004 [...]
Information Technology and Intellectual Property: Lib Dem policy consultation paper
The Liberal Democrats are setting up a policy working group looking at information technology and in particular its implication for intellectual property. There will be consultation sessions at the party’s conferences this autumn and in spring 2011, followed then by a policy paper to be debated at the autumn 2011 conference. Here’s the consultation paper [...]
Key facts on how The Times pay wall is working
A useful set of statistics about how the pay wall around The Times and The Sunday Times is working out has been pulled together by one of my research whiz colleagues at work, Katrine Birk. Although the published data from News International has been fairly limited so far, there is data that can be extracted [...]
Is it newspapers rather than politicians who should be learning from the 2010 election?
Most of the punditry about the internet and the general election has focused on the impact of the internet, and social media in particular, on politics. Although journalists often get a mention, the basic frame of reference is “how is politics changing?” However, there was a hint of a different perspective at the launch at [...]
"I work in a modern tower block office in an alley where an Internet was invented in the 15th century"
Who can resist a blog post that starts this way? If you too can’t, then read this piece from Charlie Beckett.
