http://cliffordsinger.com Clifford Singer's blog: design, technology and politics Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:52:15 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en … I may have bitten off more than I can chew in launching this blog on top of my three other sites. So I'm leaving the Blue Cat in quarantine for now. But do visit my other projects: Bubblewrapped, The Other TaxPayers' Alliance, or, for a more musical fix (Gil ... http://cliffordsinger.com/on-reflection%e2%80%a6/ Gordon Brown interviewed in yesterday's Observer: Do you have no regrets, no feeling that there is anything you could have done in the last 10 years that would have better positioned us for this storm? The truth is that not even the heads of some of the major financial institutions knew what ... http://cliffordsinger.com/browns-known-unknowns/ Whenever a client asks me to add a discussion forum to their website, my first questions are: Do you have anyone to moderate it? And will anyone use it? Here's what can happen if both answers are negative. The Future of the NHS Forum was launched in 2006, on the 60th anniversary ... http://cliffordsinger.com/vacuum-packed-spam/ This blog claims to be about DTP – design, technology and politics – but it was another type of DTP – desktop publishing – that got me here in the first place. Twenty-one years ago this month, I and two friends, Ben and Tim, launched the long-forgotten Manchester Left magazine, pledging ... http://cliffordsinger.com/dtp-saves-the-day/ Is Apple's robotic censor getting carried away? A friend recently searched for lullabies for his two-year-old daughter at the iTunes Store. Here's what he found: Disappointingly, the offending word wasn't bleeped out in the song itself. (PS. Apologies if you found this page via Google because you were actually doing what the ... http://cliffordsinger.com/searching-for-pussy-on-the-net/ I recently made contact with an old colleague, Paul, whose longstanding Never Trust a Hippy blog puts my Johnny-come-lately effort to shame. A few days later he invited me to be his friend on Bebo. My thoughts were: He seems a bit keen – we've only just got reacquainted. Why is he asking ... http://cliffordsinger.com/never-trust-a-button/ The Facebook group I set up to accompany the (Other) TaxPayers' Alliance recently gained its 100th member. Only 800 members to go and we'll have overtaken the original Alliance. I was feeling quite pleased with this until I saw that the group RIP BABY P x gained 131,000 members over a similar ... http://cliffordsinger.com/baby_p_on_facebook/ "Ladies and gentlemen, Barack Obama is our new president," announced US talk show host David Letterman. "And I think I speak for most Americans when I say, anybody mind if he starts a little early?" In fact he probably spoke for most of the world. But shouldn't we be demanding that ... http://cliffordsinger.com/keep-obama-out-of-the-white-house/