Author Archive
Monday, September 14th, 2009
No Net Gains for Party Politics
[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News technology pages, and Alan Connor kindly reminded me of his excellent analysis after the 2005 election that made a similar point.]
The next British General Election will almost certainly be called the first ‘real’ internet election, on the grounds that the ‘internet election’ of 2001 happened [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in billblog by bill
Monday, September 14th, 2009
Making Digital Planet in Nairobi
We’ve got another couple of days in Kenya, with some interviews lined up for future episodes of Digital Planet, but we finished off next week’s Connected Africa show last night.
Listen!
Rory Cellan Jones is in Mombasa, on the coast, preparing his own reports, but I’ve been in Nairobi.
It’s been a remarkable few days, with some great [...]
No Comments » - Posted in gone digital by bill
Saturday, September 12th, 2009
In Kenya for Digital Planet
One of the best things about working on Digital Planet is that I get the opportunity to visit places that I wouldn’t normally get to, and when I’m there I get to meet a lot of interesting people and talk about their work and their lives.
Yesterday I arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, to meet up with [...]
No Comments » - Posted in I saw this by bill
Sunday, September 6th, 2009
Giving Google Company in the Library
It’s been a busy week. My article on the Google Books settlement (which the BBC headlined as ‘Keeping Google out of Libraries‘, even though my point was that Google should not be the only company in the library, and my original title was ‘Keeping Google’s Tanks Off The Library Lawn’), provoked a fair amount of [...]
4 Comments » - Posted in billblog by bill
Sunday, August 30th, 2009
UNIX: The Enlightenment’s Operating System
[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News Website]
In the autumn of 1984 I completed the Diploma in Computer Science at Cambridge University and started looking for my first job in the computing industry.
Cambridge was a good place to be a programmer at the time. Trinity College had built its Science Park on [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in billblog by bill
Friday, August 14th, 2009
Downloading is Not Enough… probably
[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website too]
Peer to peer download services are still popular with music-loving kids, it seems. The second annual survey of young people’s music consumption by pressure group UK Music found that three-fifths of the 1,808 18-24 year olds who took part said they used p2p services, [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in billblog by bill
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
Oiling the Digital Society
[As ever, you can also read this on the BBC News Website. And Bud Smith at Google Voice Daily mentions it in his round up of GV news.]
The announcement that Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt is standing down from the Apple board hardly came as a surprise.
Google’s Android is already powering smartphones that offer an [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in billblog by bill
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Follow in the footsteps of geeks
[As ever, this is on the BBC News website too]
About ten years ago I went on a family holiday to Cornwall, and one day I dragged my unwilling kids to a delightful but otherwise undistinguished beach so I could point out to them the spot where the world’s first undersea telegraph cable came ashore in [...]
4 Comments » - Posted in billblog by bill
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Learning to live offline
[This was on the BBC News website last week, but I've only just got round to posting it here... lazy, I know]
I have just endured a week of limited connectivity and it has given me a salutory lesson in what life is like for the digitally dispossed here in the UK and around the world. [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in billblog by bill
Saturday, July 11th, 2009
Being Open About Secrecy
[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website too]
It must be tricky to be an advocate of transparency when your job involves selling serious encryption tools to government departments, large and small companies, hospitals and people who are concerned about having their bank account details hijacked from a home PC.
After all, the [...]
