In December I blogged about the perilous state of Leeds' Temple Works. Neglected for several years, this Grade I-listed building had suffered a partial collapse, blocking the road outside with shattered masonry and opening up a gaping hole in the roof where sheep once grazed on a covering of grass. Six months on, I'm pleased to report … Continue reading Temple Works 3.0 Alpha
As a child in the late 1970s and early 80s I enjoyed a golden age in which learning to program was part and parcel of everyday use of computers. Now as a parent in the Noughties I see my primary school-age sons with instant access to untold online information and computing power, yet they never … Continue reading Kids and code: “It’s good because you can boss the computer around”
I really enjoyed my day at Barcamp Leeds, part of LSx 2009 - Leeds' second web festival. Having turned up meaning to talk about kids and code (see separate post) I also ended up reprising The History of Leeds: What Every Geek Should Know, fortuitously followed by Jon Eland on Exposure Leeds' vision for Leodis.net, a massive … Continue reading Barcamp Leeds 2009 highlights
In his latest cartoon my friend Noel, aka DJ Bogtrotter, reminds me of an oddity revealed in this month's Orange Digital Media Index. [Disclosure 1: I work for Orange though the-postings-on-this-site-are-my-own-and-dont-necessarily-represent-the-positions-strategies-or-opinions-of-my-employer. Disclosure 2: My employer's premises are protected by the power of feng shui. Really. Disclosure 3: That last link was to a PDF, sorry.] Anyway, … Continue reading I was born under a long-named star…
Kids will do anything for stickers... ... stars... ... and badges... So will grown-ups... ... ... :)
I'm on the bus, checking my RSS feeds with Bloglines Mobile. I see a couple of links I might want for later. The obvious thing would be to bookmark them on Delicious. But that's not an option using the mobile versions of many sites in Opera Mini. So I reach for the nearest scrap of … Continue reading Mobile bookmarking the old-fashioned way
A few weeks ago there was a "Twitter Makes Us Better People" meme doing the rounds. It reminded me why I'm suspicious of claims about technology changing behaviour. In particular some social media evangelists seem to appropriate the language of radical politics to describe the alleged impact of Facebook, Twitter and the rest in some … Continue reading One song to the tune of another: the 18th Century prophet of social media revealed
Last month's Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology, was based on the insight that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. I was pleased to help meet that need in a very small way, with a short … Continue reading Why I took part in Ada Lovelace Day
The words of radical orator and writer John Thelwall, 1796: "The fact is that the hideous accumulation of capital in a few hands, like all diseases not absolutely mortal, carries, in its own enormity, the seeds of a cure. Man is, by his very nature, social and communicative - proud to display the little knowledge … Continue reading “Whatever presses men together…”
If, as David Ogilvy said, diversity is the mother of invention then the technology media and telecoms sector is missing out on untold opportunities to innovate, stuffed as it is with people who look like me, white and male. I'm proud to work for a company that wants to change this. Today is Ada Lovelace … Continue reading “Embellish your Country with useful inventions & elegant productions”
21/02/2009 Originally uploaded by mattedgar. Dear Lazyweb, Please make a product/service where: I pour large quantities of Lego into a hopper. The Lego is sorted by colour, shape and size into its original sets, as defined in a freely available online database of Lego set contents. Those sets are offered for sale on Ebay or … Continue reading Forward planning
The words we use to talk about people quickly come to constrain the ways we relate to them, so it's with mounting alarm that I see the spread of the word "normob" - a contraction of "normal mobile user". It started here, and has spawned this and this, and has even been taken up here. … Continue reading Normob: is this the ugliest word not yet to enter the English language?
[Mr. Incredible throws a log at Syndrome, who dodges it and traps Mr. Incredible with his zero-point energy ray] Syndrome: Oh, ho ho! You sly dog! You got me monologuing! I can't believe it... Late last year BBC4 aired an excellent Charlie Brooker Screenwipe special in which Graham Linehan, Russell T Davies and others shared their secrets … Continue reading Twitter: where monologues collide
From Barack Obama's inaugural address: "Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been … Continue reading Tolerance and curiosity
In the spirit of Chris Heathcote's excellent abstract pointillist powerpoint toolkit, I spent a couple of happy hours putting together 20 slides about Leeds, its industrial heritage and why I find it so inspiring. I was too late to submit to this week's Ignite UK North event (but thanks, Imran, for the kind tweet in any case), … Continue reading Abstract innovation
Matt Edgar writes here 