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Me: why the HP TouchPad is another nail in Windows’ coffin. What’s happening is incredible, and it’s happening incredibly quickly. Until very recently, personal computing generally meant Windows running on Intel, with a smattering of AMD, Linux and Mac OS X to keep the internet in arguments. Now, though, personal computing often doesn’t involve traditional… [more]
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I’ve been using Word on the Mac for a long time, but since Office 2008 I’ve encountered an extremely annoying problem: documents get corrupted. It doesn’t happen very often, and it appears to be connected to the Send File button: when I send a file by email, Word does something to the document that means… [more]
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The hills are alive with the sound of tech writers going “OMG! Apple will kill the Kindle app!” I’m not convinced. The bit about Apple refusing to “let customers to have access to purchases they have made outside the App Store” isn’t a quote from Sony. It isn’t included in the Sony Reader blog’s explanation either.… [more]
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Me, on Techradar: In December 2009, on this very website, I wrote a very silly thing. “There’s no way any device, not even an Apple one, can live up to the hype the long-awaited Apple Tablet has generated,” I grumbled. Oops! Elsewhere on the site I’ve written a wee piece on the NGP, aka the… [more]
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Me, on the news that Intel has hired will.i.am as some kind of creative powerhouse: For the finale of last month’s Paper Clips and Metal Fastenings 2011 show, they wheeled out the pint-sized popstress Pixie Lott. “All the paper clips, they’ve got it going on,” she sang to a crowd of chubby middle-aged men, tears… [more]
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Me, at Techradar: Social media Chinese Whispers and thoughtless retweets tend to be more innocuous than tales of crazed gunmen, but they can still be annoying: a few days ago otherwise sensible people were retweeting “an actual letter that was sent to a bank by a 96-year-old woman”, a newspaper humour column that has been floating… [more]
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Before getting my iPad, I promised to dump my expensive newspaper habit. It didn’t really work, because I missed the serendipity of a printed newspaper. So I came up with a compromise. I’d get a daily paper again, but instead of the full-fat Guardian I’d get i, the abridged Independent. From tomorrow, I’m back to… [more]
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Sensible doesn’t mean timely – this should have happened about ten years ago – but at long last two major record labels have wised up: they’ll no longer release records to radio months and months and months before anyone can buy them. David Joseph, the chief executive of Universal Music, said: “Wait is not a… [more]
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Dave Pell: I think about a lot of things before I share online. But here’s one thing I never think about: The unthinkable. Daniel Miller didn’t think of that either. So he shared photos on Facebook and Flickr, wrote anecdotes in his blog, and managed his finances using Mint. And then his one year-old daughter… [more]
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Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
