Category: Media

  • Happy birthday, broadband

    UK broadband is ten. How would we manage without it? If Chatroulette had existed in the year 2000 you’d have had to draw your genitals on a bit of paper, choose somebody’s address from the phone book and post the picture to their house.

  • There’s a difference between printing something and publishing it

    Novelist and former tech writer David Hewson on the coming eBook avalanche/apocalypse/delete as applicable and its implications for writers: Technically it’s never been easier to get a book into digital print. But here you hit a perennial problem. Successful books aren’t just printed. They’re published. Anyone can print something. Few can publish successfully. Publishing involves a…

  • Print is dying? Really?

    Adweek has a nice op-ed by Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter. I liked this line: But in this age of constant information availability, it’s important to take a step back every now and then — once a month sounds about right — to immerse ourselves in the stories that define our times.

  • Paying for news is doomed, isn’t it? On The Times, paywalls, porn and iPads

    The Times and Sunday Times are doing the paywall thing from June. I’ve written a wee bit about it: What we do know is that publishers need to do something now – or at least, they do if they want to avoid the same fate as the record industry. The businesses aren’t identical – with…

  • Waterhouse on style

    The late, great Keith Waterhouse had some very strong opinions about journalists’ writing. Press Gazette has published some of them. I liked this one. The standard Fleet Street excuse for shoddy or silly writing has always been that the offending story was written against the clock. It usually isn’t so. Deadline fever encourages taut, crisp…

  • Paying for girls’ attention? Isn’t there a word for that?

    I’ve written a wee piece on Techradar about GameCrush, the frankly bizarre new service that will enable you to play videogames with girls, for a fee. Paying women to talk to you? Isn’t that what the ads for HOT GRANNY ACTION in the back of movie magazines and men’s magazines are for? Apparently not. GameCrush’s…

  • More covers

    The Huffington Post details the best-selling magazine covers of 2009. This is one of them. Isn’t that brilliant? As you might expect, most of the other covers were about Michael Jackson. There’s also a slideshow of the worst-selling covers. Surprisingly Rolling Stone’s Shakira cover is one of them.

  • Unintended consequences: why Windows’ new browser choice screen will only help Chrome

    Me at Techradar: What we’ve got, then, isn’t a case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted: it’s a case of locking the stable door after the horse has evolved opposable thumbs, learnt to drive cars and driven through the stable in a Challenger tank. It’s far too late for Netscape and…

  • Could Spotify work for ebooks?

    As long term readers will know, I’m amazed by the way in which the music business spent more than ten years missing every business opportunity the Internet brought them, effectively handing their entire business over to the pirates. Services such as Spotify should have turned up a long time ago. Could the same kind of…

  • Stop insulting the elderly with crappy technology

    It’s Tuesday. It’s Techradar time… Sagem’s Cosyphone is aimed at the over-50s. Not only does it have really big buttons and numbers, but it has near field communications technology, too. Need to call somebody? Why not wave a big picture of them in the air, like a simpleton? “It uses cards, which can be customised…