Update 27/10/2009 - I've received several replies - scroll down to read. After reading EU Parliament's credibility undermined by back track on citizens' rights on the Open Rights Group blog, I was moved to write to my MEPs. FOR THE ATTENTION OF: Sharon Bowles MEP Nirj Deva MEP Nigel Farage MEP Caroline Lucas MEP Marta Andreasen MEP Catherine Bearder MEP Peter Skinner MEP Dear Nigel Farage, Marta Andreasen, Caroline Lucas, Sharon Bowles, Nirj Deva, Peter Skinner and Catherine Bearder, …
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On Sunday, I attended the Feminism in London 2009 conference. This Is What A Feminist Looks Like (AKA spot the odd one out) The conference was inspiring, depressing, uplifting and infuriating in equal measures. That's probably a good thing. I'll briefly discuss some of the sessions I attended and also what I think the organisers could do better next year. The Conference Kate Smurthwaite expertly chaired proceedings and kept the event running to time. Not an easy task with several hundred …
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Is there an alternative to privatising the Post Office? Given that the workers control the means of production - could they also own the means of production. In short - could the workers purchase Royal Mail? The idea isn't as crazy as it first may seem. We need to take the market value of the Post Office's shares - then divide them by the number of workers willing to put their money where their mouth is. According to the CWU, roughly 80,000 postal workers voted in their latest strike ba…
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Vodafone Update is a combined Twitter, Twitpic and Facebook client for smartphones. I rarely comment on Vodafone specific topics, but as I've already reviewed Dabr and UberTwitter - it would be a shame to leave out Vodafone Update. The usual disclaimer applies - I work for Vodafone Group, but I do not speak for them. Vodafone Update was developed by Vodafone Germany - I don't think I know anyone involved with it though. First, a word of warning. Because this application was developed by…
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At the Connect Biennial Conference, I proudly stated the case for Connect's merger with the Prospect Union. Our other choice was the CWU. Unions - in the UK at least - are democratic structures. What gets proposed at conference has to be approved by a majority vote of members - not just those who could take a few days off to go to Blackpool. Casting My Ballot The irony is that the strikers at the CWU will be delaying our votes from reaching their destination. I'm sure the bad press and…
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VoteUK is no more. In order to precisely show you where your electoral registration office was, I needed to take its postcode and covert it to latitude and longitude. That's the service Ernest Marples provided. A few days ago, the Post Office - in their infinite wisdom - set their legal dogs on those running Ernest Marples. The Post Office charges for the file that they generated which converts post codes to location. It can cost anywhere from £1,000 to £4,000 per year to get accurate data…
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So, I've hit my first snag with the Humm Duet Energy monitor. As I mentioned in my first post, the device doesn't have any Internet connectivity. Instead it records everything onto an SD card. In order to visualise the data, I have to manually upload the files to the Green Energy Options MyEnergy site. Rather than a simple web based uploader - GEO have decided to go with Adobe Air as their platform for uploading and viewing the data. Here are the steps I had to take to get the service wo…
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I read most of my news through my mobile - if your website isn't mobile friendly, I won't be bothered to read it. I've greatly enjoyed the BBC's Mobile News service and Guardian Mobile - but now there's a new player - The Times has a mobile site. This is a quick review of what I like and what I dislike about The Times' mobile venture. Discovery The first I knew of the site was this advert nestled away on their website. No mention of the URL on the advert The URL is the rather ta…
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At the Connect Conference in Blackpool we voted to merge our union with Prospect. The other potential merger was with CWU. There's a plethora of articles about the CWU ruining businesses. Is this really the union people want representing them? Let's face facts, the postal service is dying. I literally can't remember I posted a letter. Email does for me. To tie our fortunes to a sector which is rapidly vanishing is madness. Some talk of the synergies between CWU and BT. Well, that may ha…
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It's really difficult cutting through the hype to see which browsers one should support when designing a website. There are many different measures of popularity - but many sites are only visited by techies, or only ever visited when at work, or are skewed towards the young or the old. Yesterday morning I asked the Number 10 Downing Street web team if they could provide their statistics. I figured that the PM's website gets enough readers from a wide selection of the web community to give a …
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