Nearing the end of 2009

It’s been a hectic year, and I’m currently embedded in the BBC Archive Development team until at least April, though I’ll be continuing my work with Digital Planet, Focus Magazine and the Billboard, as well as other gigs that come up during 2010.

In the meantime, here are two of my stories that I didn’t get round to posting here:

The Media and The Message (BBC Technology site, 16 December)

Like thousands of other people around the world I’ve just spent £2.39 on The Guardian newspaper’s iPhone app.

I can now read the paper onscreen, with some sections nicely cached for offline browsing and a cleverly designed user interface that lets me put the Media and Technology sections at the top of the paper, mark articles as favourites and quickly find related stories.

And Ten Years After Doomsday (BBC Technology site, 8 December)

I spent the evening of 31 December, 1999 in the company of Rolf Harris, Peter Snow and a large number of other people in a studio at Television Centre in London, seeing in the New Year as the nation’s official Millennium Bug watcher.

As anyone who knows about calendars will tell you, the real millennium didn’t start until a year later, but I was there because of the very real fear that major computer systems around the world would crash because they could not handle the rollover from 1999 to 2000.

My job on New Year’s Eve was to interrupt festivities every hour of the evening to report on what was happening at midnight in different countries around the world.

Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate such things, Happy Holidays for those who don’t but live in places that do, and ‘have a nice day’ to everyone else…

2 Replies to “Nearing the end of 2009”

  1. Hi Bill. I’ve only recently started tweeting but have enjoyed your articles in Focus and on the ‘net. I retired as a PC World in-store technician in July and have devoted a page on my website to my thoughts about poking around in customers’ hard disks etc.

    There’s also images and rendered animations on the page. I’ll paste the URL into a tweet reply.

    best wishes, Dave Henniker

  2. Bill

    One of the great joys of the interwebs is the feeling (even if not actual) that there is a connection with others in vastly different circumstances and in other places.

    The information shared along with Gareth on Digital Planet, your involvement in it and the other bits of stuff that pop up due to Facebook and twitter has filled me with interest and joy of what is shared with the world.

    Thanks for what you’ve produced and I look forward to more in the New Year.

    Best of Days

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