Philip John

Category: Rants

  • A quick rant about Local People

    Yes I’m biased because I run Lichfield Live which is obviously a competing service but I’m still gonna whinge about Local People. This week Lichfield Live launched a business directory, in part because the alternative is so out of date! Today I’m annoyed because they’ve decided to be all community-hugging and have the residents of…

  • Comment on Journalists: We know we care, but do our readers?

    On occasion I post a comment somewhere I’d like to keep hold of. So here’s my comment on a post by David Higgerson talking about something I said at news:rewired. Blimey, I really need to stop ranting at news rewired! If only because I end up wanting to explain myself. You’ve done that for me…

  • Stop obfuscating your e-mail address and use a decent e-mail service!

    I hate this: phil AT philipjohn DOT co DOT uk I’ve seen worse, too. I hate it because all it does it show the world that you need to obfuscate your e-mail address because you get a lot of spam. Presumably then, you’re a good target for spammers because your spam filters (if any) are…

  • How to waste public money: a litter brand survey

    Via the excellent Inside the M60 I learn that Keep Britain Tidy is urging lots of people to pick up litter and write down the brands they find. What will this do exactly? Show that most of the litter starts at the likes of fast food chains, snack manufacturers and soft drinks companies. Brilliant, because…

  • Staffs Police reach 5,000 followers, expect pat on the back for not engaging.

    This morning, Staffordshire Police tweeted the following; “Nearly 5,000 followers on force social media sites http://bit.ly/foyiNn“ Brilliant. Good for them. It’d help if they actually engaged though on those social media sites. Or maybe the force is socially inept as an organisation. Twitter I actually went through all of @StaffsPolice‘s 1,463 tweets. I found 21 replies…

  • How to protect your data: don’t give it away! And how Facebook isn’t to blame… much.

    This won’t be popular, I know, but the election did show me very well how we can all have very differing opinions and get along like a house on fire at the same time. So here goes… I won’t regurgitate the details, if you’re reading this you probably know what it’s about. Let’s look at…

  • There is no web 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0

    This is deliberately similar to my first Posterous post, “There is no new vs. old media“… There is no web 1.0 or web 2.0 or even web 3.0. There is only the evolving web. I despise the use of the phrase “web 2.0” when it relates to web design, for example – it implies that it…

  • There is no new vs. old media

    I’ve said it many times at various events this year but I decided a short but sweet blog post was needed (and what better place than my as yet unused Posterous). Here goes… There is no new and old media. There is only evolving media. Right now it’s going through what I consider to be a paradigm…

  • Would you go into a high street shop that if it required handing over your name and address to do so?

    I’m gonna assume the answer is no. Giving info like full name, postal address, e-mail isn’t the kind of thing you expect to have to do purely to browse around. So why do so many web sites insist on asking for exactly that? I got a little irate earlier this week (maybe ’cause I’d been…