Citizensheep. "Michael Grimes lives in Birmingham (UK). This is his blog about anything that he fancies."

In his Digital Britain Final Report, Lord Carter sets out his plan to keep Britain “at the forefront of the digital revolution”. But a revolution needs revolutionaries, who are driven by passion and not just economic incentive. Has this report overlooked the importance of people as volunteers, and the impact on their social contributions of [...]

Last week I went to hear Lord Carter discuss his Digital Britain Final Report in Birmingham. I took a laptop and tweeted a little. As a crude record of what I wrote, what follows is my Twitter stream for that event. All I’ve done is take the html from Twitter Search and pasted it here [...]

The furniture shop Habitat recently made a very wobbly entrance into Twitter, by not appreciating the norms that have evolved there. Not good for a trusted brand; although even with the disgust voiced by some in the community I doubt it’s damaged their business particularly. However, the episode did spawn this blog post, which – [...]

In the same spirit as our friends at the Daily Mail, this poll has no balanced evidence and a clearly biased agenda. Oh, and here’s the disgusting cartoon that accompanies Littlejohn’s inflammatory article about gipsies:

I’ve been meaning to go for ages, and on Saturday I finally went to Birmingham’s pen museum. Nikki Pugh steered me there. I’m not sure I’d have found it otherwise. It’s one of those incredible places that sit politely out of the limelight but are full of cool stuff: in this case, nibs, nibs, nibs, [...]

Run out of clothes pegs? Try paper clips instead.

A few weeks ago Nikki Pugh and I were walking through the empty market stalls in Birmingham, and were struck by how much they resembled table-tennis tables. What a waste, we thought. Yesterday we put that right. Nikki and Charlie, who facilitate the BARG events, organised a bunch of us to meet at the vegetable market [...]

Anyone who knows me will know how bad I am at making decisions. Not knowing how to choose can result in procrastination, or – worse – avoidance. That's not good for someone who's responsible for managing an organisation's corporate web strategy. Mind Tools has actually been very helpful for me. Although at first glance it [...]

I just stumbled across this mind map that was instigated by Robin Good. It shows people's favourite online collaboration tools for tasks such as file-sharing, drawing, writing, conferencing, reviewing and whiteboarding. Although it was developed collaboratively it doesn't actually seem to be editable by users: shame, but a great resource nonetheless. Visit Best Online Collaboration [...]

Every year the Birmingham Post polls the region for the top fifty most powerful people in Birmingham. So this year I’m doing the opposite (it’s probably been done before, but who cares). I’m looking for fifty people in Birmingham who are in the public eye but who seem to wield very little power. I’m doing [...]