29 Jul 2025

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. […]

13 Jan 2025

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 […]

6 Sep 2024

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 […]


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  • Breakfast with Mike Butcher and some reading

    This morning, at his very congenial Breakfast Bites event in D’Arblay Street, Mike Butcher introduced me to a friendly gang of new media types as ‘the grande dame of the…

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  • Defining ‘widget’

    Widget: an American word, a potent metaphor from another era. Widgets are those nameless mechanical devices used in stories and undergraduate text books to stand for the output of equally…

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  • Ofcom entry ‘a bit boring’ says author

    That Ofcom entry was a bit boring wasn’t it? Even by my standards. Two or three people have told me they actually fell asleep while reading it – one while…

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  • 2.0 apps that really blow the cobwebs away

    Here’s a couple of remarkable businesses I’m really enjoying at the moment, one you’ll have heard of and one you probably won’t. Tumblr is the mother and father of web…

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  • Living in cyberspace

    I’m looking around me now, trying to mentally map Gibsonian cyberspace onto a chainstore coffee bar in Chesham. This is what it was always going to be like I suppose:…

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  • Reinventing public service media

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  • Have we had a good week then?

    I went down to Ofcom yesterday to speak to a small ‘stakeholder conference’ about what they’re calling a ‘PSP’ (Public Service Publisher). I’ll write a proper entry about the PSP…

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  • Discontinuous marketing

    I went to visit David Bausola and Katie Streten from Imagination: they pulled faces and comprehensively failed to buy me lunch. I first visited Imagination nearly twenty years ago to…

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  • Planklantis

    The story: Russell and his friends from the Electro Plankton Quartet played for ten minutes on their Nintendo DSs at Interesting 2007. The music was recorded, of course. I twittered…

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  • Consolidation’s final frontier

    I watched practically all of Glastonbury over the weekend (on the TV, obviously) and I think I’ve figured out what’s wrong with the music industry: there are too many bands.…

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  • People Ready? Not really.

    OK. I’ve scouted around and read all the blogs and I think I’m up to speed with the MS People Ready spokesblogging thing. Still haven’t seen any actual live ads…

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