Category Archives: UK

Technology, UK

Paying for The Times Online…

This I’d not foreseen…

“Why would I get any of my clients to talk to the Times or the Sunday Times if they are behind a paywall? Who can see it? I can’t even share a link and they aren’t on search. It’s as though their writers don’t exist anymore..”

Winds howl over the deserted moonscape behind Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper paywalls – Boing Boing.

Does this mean that the writers need to be paid more to write for a non-public site. It probably does, but I’m not sure that the writers at The Times would understand the economics of it!!!

Politics, UK

That’s got to hurt someone…

Mainly, right now, it’s just a forest of figures: 12% wiped off property prices in a year; new mortgage approvals down by 71%; house sales at a 30-year-low; bank lending to homebuyers down by £12.1bn; one in seven homeowners in negative equity within two years; repossession orders up 24%; 45,000 families set to lose their homes.

Jon Henley on Britain’s attitude to bricks and mortar | Money | The Guardian

France, UK

The market doesn’t always work…

As I watch in disbelief from a distance as the facade crumbles I keep on having the same thought whenever I read things like this…

Overlooked in the McCellan coverage (Scripting News)

Maybe the BBC isn’t that bad. At least they (used) take their role in society seriously.

So I think Sarkozy has to be careful what he wishes for.

UK

£400m for UK Media…

TechCrunch UK » Blog Archive » With Highfield gone, the BBC must now open upWhat should the BBC do with a £400m budget for new media? I have one suggestion; forget the technology!Being so large the BBC could (and should) have the ability to change the game. I’d use the £400m to open up the archives. Wouldn’t be great if we could see all the archives pre-1995. If the BBC worked on the legal side then start-ups could work on the technology.How much would you pay to hear the radio bulletin of the day that you were born? Or that old TV show that you loved aged eight that nobody has ever heard of?

Technology, UK

25 years ago…

In 1983 I went into a new room in my comprehensive school in England and sat at a BBC computer for the first time.

It looked exactly like this…

BBC Micro creators reunion tonight at London Science Museum – Boing Boing

Same machine, same screen (a cub) and the same dust!!!

It’s like looking back in time.

IT, Technology, UK, US

The future of Amazon…

Nicolas Carr makes a series of good points…

“Amazon isn’t about to close down its physical warehouses, of course. But its digital warehouses could eventually become the center of its business. That may be good news from a financial perspective. Amazon has invested a great deal of money and ingenuity into fine-tuning its physical logistics operation, and that operation has given it an edge in online retailing, but the cost of storing, handling, and shipping physical goods has always been a drag on its profitability. That cost largely disappears when customers buy products as bits rather than atoms.”

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Amazon’s river of bits

How about another plan? Amazon could spin off the logistics business. Remember, they have non-Amazon clients on their books. Once they reach a critical mass they could spin off the physical business and concentrate on the bits and bytes.

This also raises the possibility that the logistics business could be worth far more to FedEx, UPS and the others than as a seperate company.

News, UK

BBC Correspondents Map…

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Now you can see how the BBC rates the importance of each country. Just compare the number of reporters.

Italy is more important than Spain, California less than Brussels and China more than India.  Can’t help that there are so many in Paris because they like living here and because it provides easy filler “death of the baguette” stories every three months etc.

BBC Correspondents Map