Over the last week I have been tweeting quite a lot about Jawbone and the really shockingly bad customer service experience that I have had. As an American in my adopted home country of Great Britain I’ve come to accept that customer service is just terrible here. It really is. Continue reading
I’ve been thinking about Egypt quite a lot the last few days in light of the current round of protests. The lastest uprisings are the next in what I think may be a long line of them. Clearly Egypt is finding its way after the Arab spring. It is nearly impossible to say how this will work out and indeed how it is going at the moment, but I have one specific experience with Egypt that will always be on my mind during these days. Continue reading
In an excellent column for CityAM today, Stian Westlake makes the argument that optimists need to run the economy in order to foster economic growth. This is an argument that I have been making for years and in various forms. It is the same argument that the prescient Virginia Postrel made in her 1998 book The Future and its Enemies. Optimists and risk takers, often one is the same, are the future of business, technology, industry, education and everything in between. Let’s take a quick look at why this is so. Continue reading
As you all may know, I’ve been attending the WCIT-12 in Dubai. We are at the very end of the treaty negotiation and the UK will not be signing. Here is a transcript of the UK’s intervention making that statement (from the ITU’s transcript service)
UK: thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank you for your continues — continuing efforts to find an acceptable outcome.
Like the United States, I now find myself in the position and with enormous regret of having to explain the position of my delegation. Continue reading
Over the last few years there have been many times when people ask me the same question: why on earth did you decided to study architectural history instead of information systems for a phd? It is a reasonable question, but one that I am tired of answering. I do digital policy and strategy. If we lived in an offline world I would most likely be involved in research and policy work anyway, but it just happens that we have a communication and information medium that faces issues and I enjoy the work that I do around it. But why not do research in this area instead? Continue reading
Yesterday Google hosted a Big Tent event just outside of London. The UK’s best and brightest were invited and attended a rather action packed day full of panels and speeches. Though I was invited, I didn’t manage to due some other responsibilities, but I followed the event closely through friends and Twitter.
No not the song, but the new collective.
It has been ages since I have blogged about anything. I am doing some work over at Fake Empire (a new music and letterpress collective that I am starting with my friend Zoe). Health warning – the site is far from being done, but perhaps worth a quick look if you want to buy some Christmas cards.
I am also in the middle of a Net Neutrality debate here in the UK. Lots of fun stuff going on around that issue.
And I have finalised my PhD work. More soon!
I have two post over at Big Brother watch. One on Twitter and link activity archiving and one on Ping’s privacy. For the record, I am not going to activate Ping on my iTunes. I just can’t be bothered to log onto another social media service.
I have a post here about how Medway spent nearly £250,000 on a new council website. Unbelievable.
As an aside, in the post I mention that most major label artists don’t spend nearly that much. That brief comment is a result of two out of many experiences I have had in the music industry. First, Simon Cowell’s label does well – so well that it props up Sony in many ways – that he spends cash on his artists. The cost of those sites amount to roughly £50,000 or more, but not much more. Second, a friend of mine is working with a really popular young band and their new and highly interactive website comes at a price tag of around £100,000. So there you have it.
I have a new post over at Big Brother Watch on the US Government and GPS tracking.
DOMINIQUE LAZANSKI 