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

How can ants help us solve complex problems but, using the same technique, end up walking in an endless circle for the rest of their lives? Why can crowds be much smarter, and at the same time more stupid, than any individual? In Smart Swarm Peter Miller explains how lessons from the natural world have already changed [...]

‘Hyperlocal’ has been a buzzword in the online engagement community for about eighteen months, and to be honest it’s not one I’ve been comfortable with: why try and define a sub-category of ‘local’ which is itself pretty undefinable? I still have a bit of a problem with it, but yesterday it did become clearer to [...]

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 [...]

A couple of times I have voiced on Twitter my frustration with the arm rests on Chiltern trains. It hadn’t occured to me that the company might be listening. Since nothing happened the first time I tweeted, I suspect that Chiltern were not using Twitter then. However, when I tweeted again recently… “I’ve asked before [...]

I’ve been lookikng for a good audio sharing service for a while, and stumbled across Audiofarm. You can choose to grant your files ‘preview only’ playback or Creative Commons licencing. It would be great if the site also offered some annotation features and codes for embedding into web pages as well as the sharing options [...]

I find it exceptionally difficult to believe that I have any skills of note, and keep meaning to force myself to try and audit them just to check. So here I’ve spelled out what I do in my day job, and some of the challenges I’ve faced. Although I’m still not sure I know any [...]

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 [...]

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 – [...]

Jo Swinson, Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire, is trying to convince Parliament to allow the posting of parliamentary footage to social media services such as YouTube. She is asking other Members of Parliament to sign her Early Day Motion in support of putting parliamentary procedures online. At the time of writing 28 have done [...]

I keep telling people how my life has altered since using Twitter, even though I’m well aware of how sad that sounds. The thing is it’s not really about Twitter at all, but about people: all Twitter did was help me find them. This post will appear particularly self-indulgent: it’s trying to articulate something that [...]