the Web

Martha Lane Fox wants you all online. Now!

Martha Lane Fox was appointed by Gordon Brown as the UK Digital Champion, and has founded the RaceOnline2012 campaign to get all people of working age on the Internet (10 million of us Brits haven’t used the Net, but to do so would help us a lot). Lane Fox says that getting the ‘unconnected’ online […]

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Writing

An ‘Open Source’ Sci-Fi Anthology

A note about a great anthology project which should interest writers and readers of Science Fiction, as well as Creative Commons fans (I fit into all these categories, which must be why I liked it so much!). Thoughtcrime Experiments is a paying online anthology of Science Fiction stories (or, more precisely, speculative fiction) edited by […]

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Usability

What is a User Experience Designer?

Another fascinating – and in parts infuriating – podcast from Sitepoint, who bring in two User Experience Designers to repsond to Ryan Carson’s tweet that “‘UX Professional’ is a bullshit job title. It’s just a way to over-charge naive clients. All web designers should be UX pros”. They discuss the meaning of ‘user experience’, and […]

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Usability

Getting towards a question – and thence to an answer

One of the things that has occured to me about this Engagement lark (and perhaps explains why I’m interested) is that those whose work I’ve read are trying to design systems which encourage the best default behaviour. When any system is designed, it automatically encourages one way of using it more than others, for better […]

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Writing

Writing Creative Commons Short Stories

As a geeky writer of Science Fiction (or Speculative Fiction when in polite company), and as also as a fan of Creative Commons, my eye was caught by a short story released under a Creative Commons license (Bitly link no longer works). And this was no half measure – the authors want feedback and alterations! […]

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the Web

Using Content to Promote the ‘Right’ Choice

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 […]

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Linux/FOSS

Linux users are generic users

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 […]

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the Web

Why Old Spice Man Succeeded

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.

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Linux/FOSS

Open source software as an accessibility tool

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 […]

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Science

Proof of Psychic Cephalopods?

So, Paul the Octopus was right. 100% right. And that’s no-nonsense proof of a psychic animal, yes? Randi, are you there? Of course, the skeptics amongst us, and indeed the Forteans (such as myself) will not accept this as proof of anything. So that begs the question: what kind of thing will us twits accept […]

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