Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Category: Media

Journalism, radio and stuff like that

  • Wise advice for freelance anythings

    The most excellent John Walker has written a wee bit of advice for aspiring games journalists, and I reckon much of it is relevant to all kinds of freelancing.

     This job is a not a privilege. It’s something you got by being good at what you do – you earned it. Anyone who tells you it’s a privilege is trying to get something from you they shouldn’t have. That’s the language of those who want you to do just a little bit more work than they’re paying you for, or put up with conditions that don’t feel appropriate.

    …Make a fuss. Good grief, the number of times I’ve not been paid for work, or screwed over in some way, is awful. It’s generally down to incompetence rather than malice, but it’s unacceptable.

  • In which I compare Internet Explorer to Sugababes

    Oh yes.

    On the face of it, Internet Explorer doesn’t have much in common with Sugababes: IE isn’t beautiful, doesn’t sing and isn’t likely to dress in a primary-coloured PVC dominatrix outfit to perform at G-A-Y.

    However, they’re not as different as you might think.

  • Not Nokia-ing on Heaven’s door

    Nokia’s keynote this morning wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. 

    “Our ambition is to surprise you at every turn,” said Kevin Shields, a man whose job title – senior vice president of program and product management for the smart device – is longer than many people’s lives.

    And then he started shouting.

    “It looks AWESOME!” he bellowed, channelling his inner Ballmer and scaring the hell out of the first six rows. “It feels GREAT in your hand!” he added, frightening everybody again. “It SCREAMS premium!” he screamed.

  • The iPhone 4S: “the best thing Apple has ever made”

    My friends at Techradar like the iPhone 4S, it seems, and they’ve put together a typically exhaustive review.

    Executive summary: if you have an iPhone 4, there’s no real need to upgrade once you’ve installed iOS. If you’ve got an older iPhone, however, the 4GS is a huge upgrade.

    I’d like to get my hands on one to play with the Siri voice recognition and see how it copes with my accent, but my car needs an MOT and service. Damn you, reality!

     

  • Bye, Steve

    Steve Jobs’ obituary on Techradar. I was getting a bit teary as I was writing the end of it. We’ve lost a giant.

  • The next iPhone needn’t be fancy

    Me, at Techradar:

    It’s Apple’s new iPhone event tomorrow, and we know what that means: most of the internet is publishing “ten things Apple will announce tomorrow” articles, most of them split into eleventy-nine pages to rip off advertisers.

  • Amazon’s Kindle Fire is going to burn Android

    Me, on Techradar:

    In times of great excitement, I like to paraphrase Noddy Holder – and today is one of those times. Ready?

    So here it is, Merry Christmas

    Everybody’s Having Fun

    Apart from all the Android firms

    Who are probably chucking themselves off bridges right now

  • “Self-doubt convinces us that our own failure is inevitable, an unavoidable recourse based on our own screaming lack of talent.”

    Chuck Wendig wrote this post for writers, but I think it’s relevant to any kind of creative activity:

    Suddenly Old Mister Doubt is jabbering in your ear.

    You’re not good enough.

    You’ll never make it, you know.

    Everyone’s disappointed in you.

    Where are your pants? Normal people wear pants.

    …self-doubt is the enemy of the writer. It is one of many: laziness, fear, ego, porn, Doritos. But it is most certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, in the writer’s rogue gallery of nemeses.

  • The A to Z of ebook publishing

    I thought it might be an idea to do a huge ebook-advice post based on the various discussions we’ve had here and on other sites, so that’s what I’ve done: an enormous A to Z of ebook publishing aimed at would-be ebook publishers. If there’s anything I’ve missed or got hopelessly wrong, I’m sure you’ll let me know in the comments.

    (more…)

  • Steve Jobs steps down as Apple CEO

    We’ll miss him.

    They reckon that we’ll never have another Beatles or another Rolling Stones: the world is too different, too fragmented, and the perfect storm that created them will not happen again. Jobs and Bill Gates are tech’s Beatles and Stones. I’ll let you decide which one’s which.