My phone’s been blacklisted

Well, it hasn’t really – not for a while anyway – but it’ll do as a title. The massive problem of mobile phone handsets being stolen led in 2002 to a marvellous bit of innovation. If a phone was stolen,…

The Pugwash Effect

Today’s false memory syndrome in relation to dates supposedly appearing in the Back to the Future films reminded me of the Captain Pugwash urban myth. You’ll probably have been told at some point that the risqué names “Master Bates”, “Seaman…

Bonfire of the cliches

Those bonfires in full

1995 Bonfire of red tape 2006 Bonfire of government laws 2007 Bonfire of the bureaucrats 2007 Bonfire of regulations 2009 Bonfire of quangos 2010 Bonfire of cultural projects 2010 Bonfire of middle-class benefits 2010 Bonfire of policies 2010 Bonfire of…

Are you being served?

What good customer service looks like: I have a small problem with my web hosting: permissions have been scrambled somewhere and a file can’t be created on the server. I know how to resolve it – an email to my…

Wake up Wikipedia – it’s NOW

I am probably at the bottom end of the interest scale for World Cup matters. But I do try and spot an opportunity to make people’s lives easier, if it can be done with little effort. I also do the…

There’s data, and there’s data

I’m enjoying the latest flowerings of open data, and the recent quality posts from Ingrid Koehler and Steph Gray on what it all might mean. As well as quality action from Rewired State and others to actually demonstrate it in…

Why does Twitter unfollow people?

It’s happened to me. And to lots of people I know. It might have happened to you. (A hundred anecdotes make evidence, naturally. Here’s a live search link. See for yourself. Maybe. It’s real-time.) You find out one day that…

The Hypotoyeze

Take a walk in Parliament Square. Try and find this. (It is still there; I checked today.) Take a picture of it and post it. Perhaps even find out who made it, and what it means. See if there are…

Sit down and be counted?

Online interactions between people and government fascinate me. Which is just as well, given I’ve spent a long time working on innovation and programmes that attempt to do this sort of thing. I’ve written before about some of the challenges…

Picture of Grant Shapps taking a mobile phone photo of David Cameron

Digital exclusion, porn and games

Grant Shapps had just finished talking at the Big Society launch when an earnest chap rushed up to him. Mr Shapps had been lyrical on the subject of the role that mobile technologies could play in citizen engagement and empowerment.…

It’s all about me

I don’t know where this story ends. I know where it starts though. At various times since the dawn of technology-enabled government – since information about some of the big things in your life was held on computers – the…