Philip John

Category: Opinion

  • Two wrongs don’t make a right. Why discrimination loses my vote in the general election.

    This week, David Cameron announced that he is prepared to impose all-women shortlists for the next general election. The Labour Party has already used all-women shortlists and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said he would consider introducing them if the number of women MPs in his party didn’t ‘improve’ at the next general election. The…

  • What part of your privacy does Google StreetView encroach upon?

      Right from the start I’ve been fairly dismissive of privacy concerns over Google StreetView. In my view, Google are just snapping what any general member of the public can see in that place at that time anyway. It’s already “in the public domain”, so to speak. I haven’t had the fortune to come across…

  • The Twitter settings update as a lesson in web usability

    Twitter went a bit potty today over a change made to the services settings. Yesterday, Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, blogged the change saying, “Based on usage patterns and feedback, we’ve learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow… however, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to…

  • A step backwards? New service makes it hard to e-mail people

    Usability is all about making things easy to use. That’s common sense though, right? Maybe not. I came across a new service today called Scr.im. It’s (very noble)  aim is to help prevent spammers getting hold of your e-mail address by scraping it off of web sites (such as forums) where you might have reason…

  • But 37signals are just neglecting their customers

    There’s been a bit of a spat between 37signals and Get Satisfaction today, after Mike Stanley took offence at Get Satisfaction’s efforts to get companies to take notice of their customers. I really admire Get Satisfaction for the way it sort of shames companies who don’t provide good customer service. I’ve never experienced 37signals’ customer…

  • Government asks for 2Mbps, Virgin offers 200Mbps

    First, let’s forget those who don’t want broadband for a second and consider only those who have and use broadband services. I’ll keep this short. How can the UK Government possibly think that asking for 2Mbps in it’s preliminary Digital Britain report is anywhere near acceptable? Virgin, theoretically, can achieve 200Mbps with their fibre (aka…

  • Citizen journalism: Friend or foe to traditional media?

    Recently I’ve become involved in a relative new project, The Lichfield Blog. As you may gather from the name it’s a blog, about Lichfield. I’m really proud to be part of something that has such a switched on and engaged little team behind it. It was especially gratifying to watch as the story of a…

  • The Guardian should know better

    I like the Guardian, probably because it’s so tech savvy, but I was dissapointed reading Simon Hoggart’s column (via The Lichfield Blog) having a bit of a moan about Michael Fabricant MP’s use of Twitter. Hoggart takes the typical response to seeing Twitter; “I don’t understand it, therefore it’s just full of toilet trip talk…

  • Microsoft, Yahoo Deal Would Strengthen Google

    I’m getting might pissed off with all this talk about some “deal” between Microsoft and Yahoo now. I don’t see how Microsoft forking out $15 billion for Yahoo’s search business would have any impact on Google‘s share. Sure, on paper, Yahoo’s share would drop to 0% and Microsoft would jump from 8.5% to 29%, but…