Walking Over a Digital Grave

As part of SXSW, I contribute to the SXSW Baby website with a daily podcast from the conference floor. Because of that, and like many at SXSW, I came under the wonderful embrace of Brad Graham. Brad suddenly died in January, which has put a tinge of sadness over SXSW for many, including myself.
The tradition [...]

Move Over Conan O’Brien, Terry Wogan Just Beat You

Remember all the talk of what would Conan O’Brien do after he left The Tonight Show? And many in Silicon Valley were looking to him to take up the mantle of the one and only true online talk show that matter?
Well, Coco, you missed your window.
This weekend saw a rather interesting experiment by the BBC. [...]

The TED Conference, Elitism and South by Southwest

Sara Lacy laid into the rise of even more elitism on display at the TED conference last week, but this quote, from her rant about the TED conference caught my eye:
Now when the day’s sessions are done there’s a hierarchy of parties throughout the LA-area with strict lists and security. Cliques within cliques, if you [...]

SXSW Interactive Social Breakfast – 2010 Edition

As South by Southwest looms on the events horizon, all the little bits and pieces of other smaller parties and get together that are happening in Austin pop up. The Social Breakfast is my contribution to the calendar of SXSW Interactive.
This year is the third official year of the breakfast, and as always the premise [...]

Conan Online

I’ve been watching the fun and games over The Tonight Show with a mixture of awe and incredulity. It shouldn’t be a surprise to regular readers that I have a huge amount of respect for Johnny Carson – in fact the single phrase I pushed as the “takeaway” from my “How to interview people” session [...]

Who will buy news online? Lots of people!

So if 77% of readers won’t pay for news online… that means 23% will! Even with the rounding errors, it’s a good rule of thumb to say that 23% will pay somewhere in the media of the figure asked by the Harris Interactive poll, which would be $5/£3 a month.
Given that Rupert Murdoch is looking [...]

Picked up by the Nationals

The Daily Dust, the “good news newspaper” Kevin Dixie and I have been working on in the background had a good 2009, and it continues to grow in the new year. The promise of a quick read newspaper (naturally online) with just good news, no war, famine, death, destruction or being run over by cows [...]

My first batch of Companies at Travelling Geeks

Here are some of the companies from the first full day of my recent time with the Travelling Geeks project in Paris. I’m not going to write about all the companies that I met during the trip, just the ones that caught my eye and made me want to know a bit more for various [...]

Thoughts from The Dread Pirate Roberts on the launch of Square

Jack Dorsey brought Square into the public view this week (and he’s hitting the stage with it at Le Web, lucky chap) and like everyone else I’ve looked at what’s he and the company are attempting and…. I have questions.
But you know what? These will be the same questions asked by the investors and the [...]

The CrunchPad will be remembered as a signpost to new computing

And so the CrunchPad is placed by it’s spiritual father, Michael Arrington, into the Dead Pool. I doubt it’s the last we’ll see of the device, but it’s certainly the last we’ll see of it with the CrunchPad moniker. The legalese may be in motion but some warehouse is going to churn these out within [...]

keep looking »