Big Brother is Watching You - as predicted by Sam Seaborn

I was just watching an ancient episode of the West Wing (for WW fans, it's when they decide to nominate Mendoza for the supreme court instead of the crazy anti-privacy guy), and the climax is a moving speech about how the next century is going to be all about privacy as the internet develops.

Standardised everything

In my post a few days back I mentioned the beauty of standardisation - in that case in terms of feed reading. Today I'm going into more detail about its importance - with specific reference to Disqus and the idea of a universal comment community.

The Khan Academy - an powerful online school

If you want to learn on line, there's a sea of material - Wikipedia, video tutorials, university lecturers' notes, and even the odd home-made page by page tutorial (the ones with the sickly single colour background and nothing but Times New Roman text with a few links to other pages). But one resource sticks out from the rest: the Khan Academy, an online school of maths, science and humanities with a 'knowledge map' for each subject.

The calm after the storm - what's wrong with Google+?

One word best describes Google in my mind: Behemoth.
But describing Google+ - the internet giant's new social networking service - is a different story. At the moment, coming from a keen user of g+, the word that springs to mind is quiet.

What the web doesn't do...

I recently had a conversation with a copyright lawyer who works as the general secretary of the society of authors (UK). While we were talking, I was surprised to learn that paper books were not likely to die out any time soon due to the rise of the eBook. Most people still enjoy paper books despite all their faults, just because it's something physically there - not ones and zeroes on a hard drive.