The challenge, according to Jack Fuller in the Summer 2010 Edition of Nieman Reports, is ‘to induce people to want what they need’. In this way journalists – and I’d say content producers by extension – can go some way to improve engagement in dialogue with other members of our community, including those with opposing […]
Category: Technology
I used Windows for a long time, and then I moved to Linux. I was all fine and dandy until I took a quick glance over my shoulder at the then-new Windows 7. It struck me exactly how Linux and Windows compare in terms of their strengths, and those differences brought me back to part-time […]
Even though it’s still the aftershave your dad wears, and you’ll never buy it, the campaign worked. It doesn’t matter if the product is a dud one (I don’t think the brand mattered here), social media campaigns can win nevertheless.
Brian Kelly’s paper From Web Accessibility to Web Adaptability and his Web Accessibility 2.0 paradigm advocates that access should be provided however the student chooses. This includes disability, but also preference – including open source (i.e. I choose the platform that I learn on/via). Instead of fitting some guidelines for accessibility of the web, it […]
Many academics and other professionals worry about social media and the loss of authority in other voices which often now have equal power. On the other hand, those ‘less authoritative’ voices are just the latest in a long history of people complaining how the ‘establishment’ fails to let others in. But the very reason that […]
I mean proper geeks. Not gadgetophiles, not Stephen Fry. I mean Cory Doctorow, Jonathan Zittrain, Richard Stallman and me. The first of these men have been quoted on Nick Carr’s post The iPad Luddites, and Nick suggests that we should all just shut up about the fact that the iPad may usher in an era […]
I’ve just come across this article on ‘7 of the Best Free Linux Medical Imaging Software‘. It’s on Linux.com. Now, my problem with this is: why on earth do I want to know about this? And more to the point: why would anyone who does want to know about this want to know about it […]
There’s been a lot written and said these past few months on the subject of Free, Freemium, Freetards etc. And a hell of a lot of it has been crap. First there’s Free, by Chris Anderson, perhaps the Freemium bible. Then there’s Lilly Allen and those who fell upon Allen like several tonnes of bricks. […]
You need training to use a computer. If you’re not trained, you’re wrecking it for the rest of us. So maybe we’re not trained. Or rather, we’re self-trained. We take a natural interest in computers: how to make them faster, more useful, more powerful, more fun to use. Most people don’t, and that in itself […]
What is a semi-geeky blog without considering this question of a January? I was listening to the excellent-please-send-me-a-free-gift-cheers Tux Radar podcast on the way to work this morning, and they were discussing just that topic. Thankfully they said straight away that the question was becoming ever more clearly a stupid one, and possibly irrelevant. A […]