Posts by Karl
Table for One
Table for One Britizens (which is my new portmanteau for British citizens) will know all about Today – the quite frankly rather good radio news programme that airs every weekday morning on BBC Radio 4. It’s a perfect mix of John Humphreys shouting at politicians, John Humphreys shouting at foreigners and John Humphreys shouting at [...]
The Three Google Plus Features I Want Today
The Three Google Plus Features I Want Today I have a confession to make. Even though it’s becoming fashionable not to, I still like G+. I like the flexible Circles metaphor that enables me to organise content and friends. I love that these can be shared. I really like the posting tools. Simply editing and [...]
New news? The jokes on you.
New news? The jokes on you. It’s often observed that online journalism and social media are quicker than traditional forms. They report first and fastest, with eyewitness accounts tapped out in situ, visual evidence gathered by a million glass eyes. But what we don’t often take into account is that online journalism is persistent, connective [...]
A curious thing I noticed about this article…
A curious thing I noticed about this article (aside from the fact that it misses out some really obvious tunes) is that it appears to be using YouTube videos for audio playback only. Took a look at the CSS and there’s a custom class called “youtube” that positions the embedded video object so that the [...]
When I started using the web
When I started using the web – which was when the web was born, in 1992, my usage patterns were what I would describe as “rhizomic”. It was branching and organic. Hypertextual, in short. One link would take me somewhere new – then to another somewhere new. Now I find my web use is clustered [...]
The Value of Creative Work
The Value of Creative Work (or “Shit Clients Say”) My significant other is a fashion photographer and retoucher. She recently had a conversation with a new client who’s runs a hair salon. It went like this: Hair Bloke: Hey, I’ve got a lead for you. Do you retouch passport photographs?My GF: Not usually. It depends [...]
iBooks Author: We Nearly Made It There
iBooks Author: We Nearly Made It There was a brief moment of euphoria, wasn’t there? iBooks Author was going to be a game changer. In a digital publishing landscape that is either expensive (Adobe Digital Publishing Suite) or clunky (Kindle Direct Publishing), iBooks Author was going to be free and easy. And then people remembered [...]
Smart TV needs to Dumb Down
Posting in reaction to SOPA and PIPA, tech writer and dev Paul Graham calls for us to kill Hollywood and posit alternative modes of entertainment. Among the ideas he flings out there are games and interactive TV shows and things that “look a lot like shows but are more interactive”. Paul, welcome to 1992. Reading [...]
iPhone Photography
The BBC reports todaythat London’s Kensington and Chelsea College has launched a course about iPhone photography. The course is ” thought to be a UK first.” It may be the first “full course” – but it’s not the UK’s first provision. I know because modules I developed for BA Journalism and BSc Photographic Journalism at [...]
I Want a Kindle Fire
I wanted a Kindle Fire before it was called “the Kindle Fire”. You don’t need a crystal ball or a degree in tea leaf divination to know that brand + price point x Amazon’s attention to detail (and distribution back end) is pretty much destined to equal TEH SPARKLING SHINY AWESOME. But I have a [...]