Author: Carrie

  • Maybe Nokia needs to buy in some software

    And I don’t mean a few copies of Microsoft Office. Symbian is looking increasingly isolated, so perhaps Nokia needs to kill it. [hardware bossing the software guys about] wouldn’t be such an issue if specs were all that mattered, but in smartphones the reverse is true. In hardware terms the iPhone was and is rubbish…

  • How to write about science

    This has been doing the rounds on Twitter, but just in case you missed it: Martin Robbins shows how to write a newspaper article about science-related topics. In this paragraph I will provide balance with a quote from another scientist in the field. Since I picked their name at random from a Google search, and…

  • Some articles about Apple and Google Android

    Some more articles by me have made their way to the Internet. First, has Apple sold out? It seems that Apple can’t do anything right nowadays. It has been accused of censorship and bullying, and implicated in subcontractor suicides and heavyhanded policing. Despite creating the most impressive, most popular products in its entire history in…

  • Self-publishing isn’t that great

    Jane Smith’s How Publishing Really Works is worth a read at the best of times (if you’re interested in publishing, of course), but her five-part demolition of a “self-publishing is the future” screed is particularly delicious. Part five has just gone up; here are parts one, two, three and four. But the people that you…

  • “People Who Do Not Like Muse are annoying”

    I think Wendy Roby enjoyed the gig.

  • My hero

    A woman in China has sued a cinema… for wasting her time with adverts.

  • The TV business is a cruel and shallow money trench

    …and Google’s the latest tech firm to jump into it. A wee op/ed piece by me: One of my favourite TV programmes was Casualty. I didn’t like it for the acting, though. I liked it because of the hilariously protracted accidents in each episode. “I’ll just hammer this nail in with an UNEXPLODED BOMB!” this week’s…

  • Waterhouse on Newspaper Style is out again

    Great news for journalists and anyone else interested in newspapers and language: Waterhouse on Newspaper Style, by the late Keith Waterhouse, is back in print. This is a typical Waterhouse quote: When Sam Goldwyn advised that cliches should be avoided like the plague, he forgot that the plague, by its very nature, is almost impossible…

  • Fathers get the baby blues too

    A new survey suggests that one in five fathers suffers from depression by the time their child is twelve. The researchers say the stresses of having a child trigger the depression – such as too little sleep, changed responsibilities and extra pressures being placed on the parents’ relationship. It’s not the same as post-natal depression,…

  • Easy answers to questions in tabloid headlines

    Today’s Daily Mail asks: “What turned this public schoolgirl into Rooney’s £1,200 a night escort?” £1,200 a night, I’d imagine.