Originally appeared on Nodalities Blog: http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities “Free citizens must be able to hold big institutions and powerful individuals to account.” I attended a speech at the Institute for Government by UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg at which he outlined the government’s stance on civil liberties. This topic is one I am particularly passionate about …
Read more »The more I use it, the more conflicted I am about the iPad. It’s bright and renders images beautifully. I love the way designers are now taking this big screen into account when they produce apps like Pulse news reader and FryPaper. It’s really fun for showing photos to people. But—and there are so very …
Read more »Friends very often ask whether I feel myself to be American or whether I’m English yet; and I find I always stammer a bit, and hedge. Do I feel like an American? I don’t know. I spent the first 18 years of my life in Colorado, so you could say I’m definitely American. But it …
Read more »Guest post by Stephen Leighton So who am I? My name is Stephen Leighton and I’m the owner and head roaster at Has Bean Coffee based in Stafford. Has Bean is an online retailer, roasting and selling fine specialty coffees from all around the world direct to home consumers. So, before I go into the …
Read more »I was asked on Formspring.me: “Do you think it’s possible for a religious politician to put aside the teachings of their religious institution, and make decisions purely on evidence and for the benefit of the population as a whole?” What follows is an edited version of the answer I gave there. My immediate reaction was …
Read more »Ebooks are doing rather well, with Amazon announcing them outselling their print counterparts in bestsellers lists. I’ve enjoyed using the Kindle app for various reasons including: Instant purchase/download (even Amazon Prime can take too long!) One device, not many books Reading in the dark (on the iPad, any way) Searching and smart(ish) bookmarking Now I’d …
Read more »This is a podcast I recorded for Talis’ Nodalities series of talks. Because Facebook has recently made announcements about moving in a Semantic Web direction, I spoke with their Senior Open Programs Manager, David Recordon, about Facebook’s perspectives on many of the technologies they’re beginning to use. We ended up discussing Social Networking as a …
Read more »Here are a few shots taken from around the place I grew up in Colorado. It’s been a long time since I lived here, but I have never forgotten just how arid and stark it can be. There is a beauty here, but it’s a harsh, unrelenting beauty. The plants are tortured and frail or …
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Following my post about using the iPad recently, I’ve spent some time using more of the content-focused apps. As I mentioned before, the iPad has turned out to be a great device for consuming, reading and just experiencing media. This has obvious benefits for video, and many of the examples I’ve seen have made use …
Read more »Two weeks ago, I counted myself one among the hoards of silly sods who queued early in the morning for the chance to see, touch and indeed buy the much-hyped iPad. My justification for this lameness is that the next day, I was scheduled to fly out for a week-long conference and wanted to try …
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