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The Way of the Weasel
There is a super book by Scott Adams, creator of ‘Dilbert’, called ‘The Way of the Weasel’. In a semi-lighthearted manner it deals with the less honourable methods that people in the workplace have of ‘weaseling out’ of difficult situations. Well, it’s good to see that our elected representatives here in the UK have managed
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The Lost Boys of English football
I’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge of football is minimal, and my interest in the game is not that great either. However, for the last couple of weeks it’s been incredibly difficult for anyone in the UK to avoid the story of John Terry, ex-England Captain, and his personal life off the
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Where next for space?
I have to admit to being quite saddened by President Obama’s announcement cancelling the NASA project to carry out manned missions to the moon. Perhaps it’s something to do with my age; I can remember the Apollo moon missions as a schoolboy, along with the feeling that by 2001 we might actually have a world
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Engagement, pandering, patronising or exploitation?
There is nothing new in the efforts to engage pupils at school by combining what is taught in lessons with what interests them in the outside world. In many respects it’s a good way forward – some years ago there were efforts to encourage reading in boys by basically getting them to read anything –
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Bad Science? Bad Reporting? Or the bleedin’ obvious?
I guess that I’m primed for this sort of story at the moment, having spent the last few day’s re-reading Ben Goldacre’s excellent ‘Bad Science’, but when I do read a story like this it makes, figuratively speaking, reach for my revolver. A study by Leeds university academics of Internet users found that 1.2% of
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Twitter – voluntary spam?
In a recent article, it’s been suggested that Twitter is becoming a major route for spammers to peddle their wares. This seems to be a feature emerging of all social networks right now, but in today’s piece I want to focus on Twitter. The view expressed in this article is pretty strong – probably an
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The next, next, next thing!
Hands up whoever has heard of the Red Queen’s Race? That was the athletic event in Wonderland where the participants had to run very hard to stay exactly where they were. I’m becoming convinced that we’re entering in to that sort of event in the online marketing and PR world – and probably beyond as
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Google to phase out IE6 support – first shots in their war for browser dominance?
I really dislike IE6. I hate having to support it for some of my clients, and really wish they could work out how to convince their customers to upgrade. But, my clients are real world guys; they deal with nuts and bolts, ironmongery, bank accounts, etc. Their customers tend to be real world people as
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Innovative is not the same as useful
I recently found this on my Twitterfeed: @jakebrewer: Yes! Note from newly devised Hippocratic oath for Gov 2.0 apps: “Don’t confuse novelty with usefulness.” It is so true – and that comes from someone who spent part of his MBA working on the management of creativity and innovation. There is a science fiction story by
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Is this a valid test of Social Media Newsgathering?
A few days ago I came across this news story, in which a group of French journalists are to be holed up in a farmhouse somewhere with no access to normal news media but with access to Social Media – Twitter, Facebook, etc. The idea is to see whether news can be effectively and accurately reported via