Bowblog

Category: Uncategorized

  • A parable of sorts (about the music business, I feel obliged to point out)

    The year is 1823. Nathaniel Burrell, sheep farmer, has stumbled upon a method for duplicating sheep. To cut a long story short, after years of essentially random cross-breeding he now…

    Read more

  • Wordle: my last 1000 tweets

    UPDATE April 2022: do you remember the time before Wordle meant ‘addictive daily word puzzle bought by the New York Times’?

    Read more

  • Michael Grade whistling to keep his spirits up

    The inner workings of the BBC news operation are a mystery to me (although I did get a peep into the newsroom a while ago which was very exciting) so…

    Read more

  • Measuring the health of the open source economy

    Here’s a fascinating thing. A really detailed analysis of a single very important open source project, Open Office.org (OO.o). The author, Michael Meeks, a prominent Open Office hacker, has tabulated…

    Read more

  • Filter it or lose it: free speech on the net depends on good filters.

    Geeks and Internet industry types like to say that Andy Burnham, our Minister for Culture, doesn’t get the Internet. They’re wrong. He gets the Internet all right. He just doesn’t…

    Read more

  • In defence of Twitter

    Top debunker Andrew Orlowski put the boot into Twitter and to poor old Rory Cellan-Jones in a very entertaining way in the tech Private Eye The Register the other day.…

    Read more

  • Brand and Ross are innocent

    The Russell Brand show was outstanding radio and didn’t deserve censure. I’m just going to come out and say this because I have a feeling you might not agree with…

    Read more

  • Magazine masterclass

    Right, I’ve been very busy with my new thing: I’m blogger in residence at the BBC. Honestly. It’s really cool. Follow my comings- and-goings at the special blog I’ve set…

    Read more

  • Social media smog

    I ran a session for Deirdre and the Chinwag crowd at the Ad:Tech conference yesterday. The theme (which we’ve covered before) was ‘micromedia’: widgets and microblogging and the atomisation of…

    Read more

  • George Osborne revives ideology

    I sat in the front row at Demos this morning for shadow chancellor George Osborne’s speech to the think tank (I’m an associate of Demos). Osborne was personable and relaxed.…

    Read more