I was recently trying to buy a train ticket using a Web platform which shall remain nameless for obvious reasons. I have been using the site for years to buy train tickets in advance, and while it costs marginally more than buying it directly from the providers, it was still Read more…
(via Mathias Klang) I highly recommend this excellent video about filter bubbles: The filter bubble was a phenomenon that was described in its early shape by Cass Sunstein in his seminal Republic.com, where he narrates the rise of the Daily Me, an information filter where people hear only what they Read more…
Twitter has been in the news quite a lot this last week here in the UK. First, we were presented with the Twitter Joke trial, where accountant Paul Chambers lost an appeal and was fined £2,000 GBP for posting a threatening message on Twitter, or more accurately, he posted a Read more…
I have recently become the proud owner of a wireless Kindle 3G eBook reader. I have always been comfortable reading content on a screen, and getting an electronic reader makes sense. The ebook market is exploding, and with the popularisation of tablet devices I suspect that we are about to Read more…
Before starting to criticise Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not a Gadget”, I have to state clearly that this is an important book that should be read by anyone interested in debating the role the Internet plays in modern society. However one may want to criticise its content, and there are Read more…
In recent years Flickr has been one of the best examples of user-generated content, billions of pictures uploaded by people all over the world, usually available under a Creative Commons licence. It is because of the sheer volume of content that Flickr has also become one of the most visible Read more…
This is a great video about what makes people perform better and be more creative: One of the questions asked over and over again about open business models is precisely what makes open source work. How can Wikipedia exist? Who programs open source software? There is growing empirical evidence that Read more…
So, what many suspected has come to pass, our deepest fears confirmed and one of the worst possible texts adopted. The Digital Economy Bill has gone through the wash-up process in the very last day of this Parliament. I am expecting others to go into the detail of what is Read more…
Thanks to yesterday’s post about Wikileaks, the BBC World Service invited me to their program “World Have Your Say“. If you are bored, you can find the program here as a podcast. I’m on after 30 minutes or so (note to self: eloquence is not your forte, stick to writing). Read more…
In case you have not seen it yet, Wikileaks has released a video of an American helicopter crew opening fire on a group of men in Iraq, and later firing on a van that was trying to retrieve the wounded. I have been debating with myself whether to embed the Read more…