Highlights
Nearly half a bicycle
The atomic theory in Kilburn — This place (on Kilburn High Road) has been morphing steadily from dry cleaner’s to bike shop over the last few years. I remember being surprised one morning to see a few kids’ bikes lined up for sale outside but I’d say the shop is now approaching 50% bike shop. […]
Where is my patriotism?
Come, love of country, fill my heart… — I do love Britain. I guess I love England more. London most of all. I hope that in my life I’ve honoured the place I live and not disgraced it or undermined it (I support England and GB in sporting events – I fly a little flag […]
Some bullet-points about regulation
In case you’d got the wrong idea about how the ’regulatory state‘ is supposed to work — UPDATED 23 May 2025. I could update this thing daily. Regulation is always a news story in the UK (Search any news service for ‘regulation‘ right now and you’ll get a long list of current news stories about […]
Browse by year
Latest
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
The next SMS?
A friend of mine just told me about USSD. Of course, you already knew about USSD – it’s been in the GSM spec since the beginning (like SMS). It’s a…
-
An ad idea
Mark Cuban – who should get over himself, by the way – has had a brilliant idea: live TV ads. The more I think about it the more I like…
-
The survivor…
In May 2002 I wrote this piece for The Guardian. In it I celebrated the unlikely survival of the big, dumb, general-purpose PC – over-determined, over-specced and over here. Four…
-
You’ve heard of Jazz Hands…
This is a real product. What were they thinking?
-
Calendar stuff
30boxes is awesome. Why did I hesitate? I have no good reason to use a desktop calendar any more – although I guess I’ll keep iCal synched up to 30boxes…
-
Sort of weekendy blog stuff
Thinking about it, poetry might be the best application of podcasting yet. I suppose that poetry is about as close to music as language gets and listening to poetry in…
-
Remembering Tony Blair, part one
Tony Blair ignored, neglected and ultimately abused the party that gave him power. He was right to do so. In the early 1990s Tony Blair saw that the Labour Party…