Friday, October 29, 2004

New roles for digital writing
Most new mobile phones purchased in the UK now have picture messaging facility, some do short movie clips. Mizuko Ito charts an interesting development in etiquette with the cameraphone in Japan where users text first to check availablity. Read about it here.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Local knowledge
Graffiti on hoardings around Sheffield claims that God is real. I was pleased to learn, this morning from another writer's addition that God is really Nigel! That explains a lot.
Jack's been talking to me about some of the fascinating work he's been doing over in Rotherham (and elsewhere in cyberspace). This is showcased on his website 'Personal Demons'.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Thinking with my fingers
I love the idea of thinking with your fingers. It builds on some of Frank Wilson’s ideas in his book ‘The Hand’. Torill Mortensen uses this to title her blog (which is full of interesting stuff). Meanwhile back at home, I now have Sonia Livingstone’s survey of
UK children online, based on a survey of 1,500 9-19 year olds and 900 parents of 9-17 year olds. The links on the sidebar too!

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Making tracks in cyberspace
What will happen when bloggers get easier access to mobile technology? Justin Hall who's looking at trends in the US and Japan writes about the possibilities of moblogging. Meanwhile media debate in Japan is addressing the ethics of news blogs and how blogging is changing the face of journalism. At the same time here's more tracks in cyberspace!

Monday, October 25, 2004

My footprints
Wet footprints are the memory of my appearance at the office. They say that Thoth invented writing after watching the webprints of the marsh Ibis. This reminds me of how Vygotsky described writing as mnemotechnic. Now, in webrings and bloggings we print our footsteps in cyberspace.

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Art, music, life...

Just discovered the work of Martin Hill who does minature Golsworthy-like stuff with stones and pebbles. I loved the film Rivers and Tides which features Andy's work at Eden. You can see other stuff here.

French jazz has often been good, perhaps at its best with Cameroon-born Manu Dibango, but a new niche in 'world jazz' takes off with the arabesque flavours of Didier Malherbe. Life goes on.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

What's news?
Well, first there's official recognition of the rise of news blogs and then our friends at Firebox resurrect the Tamagotchi (here). We must be living in a retro world.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Live links/dead links

Unfortunately, the fabulous hip hop link is now dead :weep: So, to compensate for that I'm now showing a couple of papers on the sidebar. And keeping up with the unofficial literacies subvertising themes here's a gallery of the work of Banksy who operates in Bristol and London. And this is the Banksy site (here).

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

My birthday and other ephemera

Yes, just a bit older, so I'm keeping up to date with hip-hop (click here: you'll need sound) and thinking of creating a digital archive of all those old cassette tapes in the glove compartment of my car with this.

Thursday, October 07, 2004

The art of the flashmob

In the summer the BBC harnessed the power of the flashmob phenomenon to create Flashmob the Opera, a tastefully disruptive event staged at London's Paddington Station. This is now showing on Channel 3.

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Remember those little brushes...

Remember those little brushes you used to get to clean typewriter keys? Another part of writing paraphernalia safely consigned to the past. But it's a whole new set of problems when you try to keep new writing tools clean. Remove those snack crumbs and dead skin from your keyboard with this little gem: the keyboard vac.

Then again, maybe that clunky keyboard is just a throw-back to the times of typing. What about a virtual keypad for your PDA - click here