November 2009

Young people don’t value the political power of social media, but they would vote

  • November 30, 2009 at 3:42 pm
  • Categories: Citizenship & civic engagement,Social media

  • According to new research, most young people aged 14-25 would be likely to vote in an election and would be more likely to if they could do so online. However, they don’t see social networking as particularly useful for furthering a cause, favouring instead an email to their Member of Parliament. A recent YouGov poll [...]

Could foursquare empower people to break commercial advantage?

  • November 24, 2009 at 10:22 am
  • Categories: Citizenship & civic engagement,Social media

  • A while ago I chewed over the problem of making it easy for members of the public to leave useful contextualised information for others in spite of opposing commercial incentives. Whether their developers intended it or not, foursquare could be the solution. I had been incensed by a cashpoint in Birmingham’s International Convention Centre. It [...]

Do dogs really out-phrase cats?

  • November 19, 2009 at 11:41 pm
  • Categories: Ramblings

  • Dogs Dog’s breakfast Dog’s dinner Dog’s life Dog days Dog tired Dog-gone Dog’s b@ll@**s Doggy style Cats Cat’s whiskers There must be more than that for cats. Help me redress the balance.

Will paid-for news create a new underclass?

  • November 9, 2009 at 5:35 pm
  • Categories: Citizenship & civic engagement,Communications,Ramblings

  • What happens when paid-for news content online becomes sustainable and influential, but a significant chunk of people who are currently engaged and informed get news from other sources? (This is a very under-developed thought; I’m only putting it here because it’s too long for Twitter.) I never buy the Financial Times, but I used to [...]

Learn to Program (using Ruby)

  • November 1, 2009 at 8:00 am
  • Categories: Sheep Dip

  • I'm trying to get my head around Ruby (and Rails, and HAML) and this is proving a good start. Obviously you need Ruby installed first (which wasn't all that straightforward, not in Windows at any rate), but once you've done that it's quite enjoyable. Visit Learn to Program (using Ruby)