“What makes video go viral in emerging markets?” – Cat Jones at #qznextbillion

I’m spending the day at Quartz’s event “The Next Billion”. Here are my notes from the talk by Cat Jones, looking at viral video. “What makes video go viral in emerging markets?” – Cat Jones Cat Jones is Product Director…

A week is a long time in politics. This time last week I was hammering out story after story for Mirror Online, UsVsTh3m and Ampp3d, covering the General Election in a shift that lasted from 6pm on the Thursday night…

All change again for the BBC News website

The BBC News website will be getting a redesign today, as the desktop version is switched off, and everybody gets served the mobile/responisve site. Dave Lee has written a piece about the likely reaction to the change, which includes some…

I realise that writing this blog post makes me a hypocrite and part of the problem, but tough. I’ve drafted it enough times in my head that not publishing it will make me explode. Men, on the whole, you are…

Terry Pratchett died and we had no words

An odd day today. Terry Pratchett died. I’m not a fan myself – never read one of his books – but my sister has been an avid reader over the years and it was obvious from the outpouring on social…

5 reasons I can’t get myself worked up about that Gawker MailOnline piece

Gawker have published an interesting article about what it is like to work for the MailOnline in the US – “My Year Ripping Off the Web with the Daily Mail Online” It’s getting retweeted a lot in my timeline but…

The BBC announces myBBC – for the third time in 15 years

A funny thing happened to me today. I got struck by a sense of internet déjà vu so strong that I felt I turned into some kind of one-man-https-black-hole sucking the future into the past and then regurgitating it not…

Wittgenstein is the sincerest form of flattery

On Friday afternoon, at the height of #TheDress, I thought to myself, what is the silliest possible article that I could write on this topic? The one that will be held up as an example of how the media lost…

I’ll be at Hacks/Hackers London tomorrow. I used to be a die-hard regular, and would frantically blog every talk. Those days have gone. Two children under the age of six have severely curtailed my ability to go out at night….

Typography claims hoist by own petard

There’s a lovely essay here on Practical Typography about whether Medium’s look and feel is good typography, or more like a frozen pizza i.e. “Not as whole­some as a meal you could make your­self, but for those with­out the time…