Year: 2006

  • My life as an author

    Josette Garcia is O’Reilly‘s UK Press Office – and before that she worked for another, significantly less groovy, tech publisher. She worked there, in fact, when I got my first…

    Read more

  • Warning – very long sentence about very boring topic

    Stephen Newton, a Manchester PR guru, correctly points out (in a comment) that my long reply to Nicola Stanbridge’s long but slightly off-the-point reply to my long (and witheringly to-the-point)…

    Read more

  • My reply to that BBC reporter

    Hi Nicola, Thanks for your thoughtful response. I don’t want to sound like an obsessive or a copyright geek but I think ownership of intellectual property is important in modern…

    Read more

  • What Beavers do on St George’s Day

    I spent part of the afternoon at one of those simultaneously anachronistic, life-affirming, frustrating, funny and frankly nauseating events that we’re good at in suburban Britain. It was St George’s…

    Read more

  • The BBC replies

    I got a reply to my letter to The Today Programme – from Nicola Stanbridge, the reporter involved, in fact. I haven’t replied yet but will do so tomorrow. In…

    Read more

  • More excellent PR from the record industry

    The BBC’s flagship daily news programme, Today, has, over the last few years, been a reliable mouthpiece for the music industry. Yesterday morning, Nicola Stanbridge interviewed Cliff Richard (yes, Cliff…

    Read more

  • A neat SMS application

    Jag put me onto Spinvox. I love it, although I understand it hasn’t been a hit. Carphone Warhouse just took a 17% stake and I guess that might have been…

    Read more

  • Broadband access providers want to subsidise your business

    There’s never been a better time to start an Internet business. In Britain, we’re about to have a broadband price war. This is of course a good thing. Clever Carphone…

    Read more

  • On getting old

    So Paul sent me a link to a track by The Au Pairs, awesome feminist guitar-funk post-punks whose prickly, jumpy-up-and-downy sort of agit-pop animated our (Paul’s and mine) late teens…

    Read more

  • Microsoft’s turn for a kicking again

    I know it’s always Microsoft’s turn but the ‘Microsoft=dinosaur’ stuff always intensifies in the run-up to a big Windows release. Search The Economist‘s archive and you’ll find a big ‘is…

    Read more