July 2012 Archives

On Friday and Saturday I attended Design Jam #5 in London. A group of around thirty-or-so designers got together over a 24 hour period, to form teams and to try and research and design products to meet a specific challenge. This time around the challenge was: “Design a service for people who read for pleasure”

Here are my notes from the event.

With barely 3-and-a-half days to go to the opening ceremony, I finally finished editing a book about protest, terror and dissent at the Olympics Games for the Guardian. It is based on a series of blog posts I wrote in the run-up to Beijing in 2008, supplemented with a generous delve into the Guardian’s archive of over a hundred years of reporting the Olympics. As has become the custom, here is the “DVD extra behind-the-scenes editor’s commentary” on putting the book together.

I wonder if the 13th edition of “Friday reading” needs to be unlucky in some way? Anyway, on the day that the Olympic opening ceremony takes place in my hometown, and that I’m doing some mentoring at Design Jam London #5, here are a bunch of links to interesting things and long reads from the river of the intertubes that I’ve been wallowing in this week. Journalism, digital things, and a bit of cycling. You know the drill.

I recently appeared at an event entitled “Is social media destroying journalism?”. Here is the essay version of what I said on the night. Featuring a certain B-movie favourite...

Roll up! Roll up! Stuff your Kindle, Instapaper or Pocket app full of the finest juiciest long reads and interesting links I’ve siphoned off from the web this week.

On Wednesday I was talking at Facebook Marketing London 2012 about the Guardian’s Facebook app, and I’ve put together a collection of things I’ve previously written about the app. Here are some of my notes from what I saw on the rest of the day.

If you saw me speaking at Facebook Marketing London today about the Guardian’s Facebook app, then here is a list of links to some of the things I’ve previously written about the app. And if you didn’t see me talking at the event...it’s...um...still a list of stuff I guess.

To save me the bother of taking loads of screenshots and clippings, I thought I’d just write up my review of British media coverage of the London 2012 Olympics now and get it out of the way...

Last week I was at news:rewired - full stream ahead, and this is the first of a series of blog posts inspired by the event.

Welcome to “Friday reading #11” - my weekly round-upof long reads and things on the intertubes I’ve found of interest over the last seven days, and which I think you might enjoy if you use them to load up your Kindle, Instapaper or Pocket app for entertainment over the weekend...

Legendary journalist Duncan Campbell spoke at Hacks/Hackers London about his lifelong crusade against state surveillance techniques, and his concerns about state attempts to monitor and intercept internet traffic in the draft Communications Data Bill. Here are my notes from his talk.

Anna Powell-Smith was talking to the Hacks/Hackers London group about her experience of having a small service she’d built gain lots of national press attention, and giving her ten tips for building great data-based interactives. Here are my notes from the talk.

A few weeks ago I spotted a tweet by Gary Ellis of Razorfish criticising “naff, lazy functionality” in the Guardian Facebook app, namely the “Agree/Disagree” buttons that appear on comment pieces. “Bit like the ‘Right/Wrong’ dial from Brass Eye” he said. So why do it?

Friday reading - a collection of bits‘n’bobs I’ve liked across the intertubes over the previous seven days, and which I think you might like if you added to them to your Kindle, Instapaper or Pocket app for perusal over the weekend. It may include slightly more particle physics than usual this week...

One of the star turns at the Guardian’s London Activate Summit was Matt McAlister in conversation with Wordpress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. Mullenweg gave a great insight into how the company is run, in one of those talks that makes you think “Oh yeah, why don’t we all do that?”

Neal Mann and Simon Rogers appeared on the same panel at the Guardian’s London Activate Summit, talking about some of the ways that digital technology has changed the way that they carry out their roles as journalists. Here are my notes.

I’ve been laughing today at the Twitter hysteria surrounding the design of the slides that announced that CERN might just have made the most astonishing physics discovery for decades. Hey, forget what they’ve just achieved, let’s mock the scientists failure to pick a hipster theme in Keynote and choosing to use Comic Sans instead.

On Monday night I spoke at the inaugural meeting of Hacks/Hackers Canterbury. Here is an essay version of my talk.

Nicola Hughes, aka @DataMinerUK, was talking at the first meeting of the Canterbury Hacks/Hackers group, giving her ten top tips for working with journalists and “proper” programmers if you were just starting down the road of being a datajournalist. Three things struck me as particularly important, and applicable to a wider circle of activity.

At the weekend, Julian Barnes wrote a piece for the Guardian Review lamenting the death of books, and describing ebooks as identikit publishing, books which hold information rather than knowledge. I think he his wrong, and that the ebook heralds a golden age of story-telling.