Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
The price we pay for a free web
August 24th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
“The business model of the internet is surveillance. We build systems that spy on people in exchange for services. Corporations call it marketing.” This is a quote from security guru Bruce Schneider in a column by John Naughton in today’s “Observer” newspaper. It is the explanation of how web services can be ‘free’ and the […]
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Why the Internet giants need to do more to support public services
August 18th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were […]
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How worried should we be about the growing number of potholes on the Information Superhighway?
August 15th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
It’s amazing how well the Internet performs considering that so many different organisations supply the infrastructure and that so many different demands are made on the network and that so many individuals and companies all around the globe are using its services. But, on a typical day, outages normally affect 6,000 routes and, earlier this […]
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A few fascinating facts and figures about Wikipedia
August 3rd, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Wikipedia was founded by Jimmy Wales who is the subject of a profile in today’s “Observer” newspaper. It is a not-for-profit organisation. It is funded by some $50 million a year in donations. The site went live on 15 January 2001. In 2007, I devoted one my regular columns on Internet matters to the question: […]
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Today my web site is 15 years old
July 2nd, 2014 by Roger Darlington
I suppose that, like most non-technical people, I first became aware of the Internet around 1995 when world-wide the number connected to the network doubled. Besides e-mail, for me the great benefit of the Internet was the web. I’ve never been interested in newsgroups or gaming and make limited use of social networks. The more […]
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Are you on Facebook? Do you know how its newsfeed algorithm works? Do you know how to control your newsfeed?
July 1st, 2014 by Roger Darlington
During a January week in 2012, around 700,000 English-speaking Facebook users were chosen, without their knowledge or consent, to be emotional lab rats. The researchers found that, if you tweak what people see in their Facebook newsfeed – the scrolling information on your page –to suppress or heighten certain emotive words, readers’ emotions will shift […]
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The seven digital deadly sins.
June 7th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Find out what pride, lust, greed, gluttony, envy, wrath and sloth mean in the digital world – and cast judgment on the guilty. Check it out here.
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Eight lessons on the use of social media
June 7th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Do you use social media? Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn … Well, Tom Phillips who is a senior writer at Buzzfeed, has some lessons for us social media types which you can check out here.
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Do we really live in “this grumpy democracy where everyone has a voice”?
April 30th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Recently, I was a speaker at a breakfast seminar organised by the Westbourne Communications agency in central London. The title of the session was “Stakeholder Challenge And Influence: Lessons For The Utilities Industry”. I was invited in my capacity as the Chair of the Customer Challenge Group at South East Water to talk about different […]
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Never mind monitoring my e-mails and my phone calls. Is anyone storing my web site?
April 7th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
At the level of principle, I object fundamentally to the notion that GCHQ in the UK or the NSA in the USA might be routinely recording my e-mails or phone calls. At a practical level, however, I don’t care that much – such messages are ephemeral and I always try to communicate in private as […]
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