Month: March 2013

  • Trance

    A new Danny Boyle film is always something to be welcomed, and given that his last two ventures were the Olympics opening ceremony, and Frankenstein at the National Theatre, it’s been a while (although I did see Frankenstein at the cinema). Trance is a chance for Boyle to really let go of the reigns. In…

  • Good Luck With Those Paywalls

    That title sounds a bit insincere. But I really do mean it. Because, to work, they’re going to need some luck! In the last twenty-four hours, both the Telegraph and The Sun have announced the raising of paywalls on their sites. This wasn’t unexpected. The Telegraph had been experimenting with its overseas users for a…

  • In Praise Of… What?

    Here’s a curious thing. The Guardian has a regular “In Praise Of…” column on its leader page where rather than just moaning about things, it’ll sometimes, well, praise something. It’s quite a refreshing change to read something positive in that part of the paper. Last night, I saw the column above published online, and while…

  • Alex Cox on Kickstarter

    I’m beginning to wonder if my new way of watching films is going to be via Kickstarter. I’ve now backed two films in the last two weeks. The first was the wildly successful Veronica Mars movie. That was always going to achieve its $2m goal, and indeed it hit its target within 24 hours. At…

  • Google Keep – Here To Stay?

    It’s been really interesting to read the response to Google’s new product launch this week – Google Keep, a multi-platform note taking application. Most of the discussion seems to have been less about how good the product is, and more about whether it’s worth getting too reliant on it in case Google, down the line,…

  • Advertising Week Europe – Guardian Breakfast

    The inaugural Advertising Week Europe conference kicked off in London this week, and the very first session was The Guardian Founders Opening Breakfast with The Guardian’s Editor in Chief Alan Rusbridger. Listening to live jazz music at Ronnie Scott’s at 8am was a different experience. As I sat down with a cup of tea and…

  • Killing Google Reader

    I suppose that we’ve all known that it was coming. But Google is finally killing off Google Reader completely. Their reasoning, buried away in a brief note about “Spring Cleaning” (i.e. things they’ve started and decided to finish with) is that usage had fallen. Not visiting the Google Blog on a daily basis, on the…

  • RAJAR – Predicting the Future

    Here’s a copy of the presentation I gave to the Radio Academy’s London Branch earlier today. It was part of an evening called All About RAJARs which saw RAJAR‘s Lyndsey Ferrigan, Hallett Arendt‘s John Shorter and myself talking a bit about RAJAR. Matt Deegan was our host. Rajar radio academy – adam bowie from Adam…

  • Wearable Technology

    Last week I spent fifteen minutes in a queue in Piccadilly Station. There’s a chap in a booth there who’s the best person in London, in my view, to get watches fixed or their batteries replaced. He does everything. He’s been there for years. I was having a Casio Pro Trek watch’s battery replaced. It…

  • The Essay – The Sound and the Fury

    I really enjoyed The Essay this week on Radio 3. Writer Andrew Martin suffers from phonophobia – a condition that makes extraneous noise particularly annoying. Cheekily called The Sound and the Fury (coming just a couple of weeks after BBC Four’s excellent and completely unrelated series on twentieth century music completed), the five essays detailed…

  • Time Team and Channel 4

    Today saw the final regular Time Team of the current – and last series. There are a couple of specials in the next two weeks, as well as the odd special in the future. But that was the last of the regular three day digs that Time Team has been doing for the last twenty…

  • Ignoring The Leveson Obvious

    As stupid politics ruins a perfectly good, and vitally necessary libel reform bill, I again get back into the quagmire that is Leveson reforms. Her Majesty’s Press sitting there refusing to have any kind of legislation oversee them, while Leveson seems to have done his best to work around this issue. But it all feels…