The digital economy act to kill start-up culture in the UK | April 17, 2010

The recent passing of the UK Digital Economy Act has generated outrage amongst the web community. Large media business have effectively lobbied government under the spurious claim that without protection the future of the digital economy in the UK is at threat. However the future of digital isn’t locked inside a few big content companies distributing their goods electronically. The future of the digital economy is in empowering a creative class to produce new and as yet unheard of business opportunities on the web. So rather than protecting the digital economy, the Digital Economy Act will have the effect of protecting outdated business models and harming innovation in the UK and handing over initiative to more liberal and less restrictive countries.

Posted at 1:52 PM | Comments (10)

The Internets Never Forget | February 27, 2010

On the one hand, the Internet can freeze youthful folly and a small transgressions can stick with you for life. So that picture of you drunk and passed out in a skip, or that heated argument you had on a mailing list when you were twenty can come back and haunt you. This is something that the Facebook generation is beginning to discover as they enter the job market only to have their potential boss Google their antics. Surely everybody deserves the anonymity of youth; to screw up a few times and not have it haunt you for life for ever. I’m a pretty decent chap and felt sorry for the guy, so was definitely tempted to strike his transgressions from the history books. I know that I’d want somebody to show me some compassion if the position was reversed.

On the other hand, by removing this information aren’t we effectively rewriting history? I’m sure we’ve all written dumb things on the Internet in the past, yet we don’t all go around asking for this information to be doctored. Shouldn’t people be force to standby their mistakes and carry them with honour and dignity? Isn’t it important to know that the MP now campaigning for family values once smoked pot and screwed around? Similarly isn’t it useful to know that somebody who now makes their living writing standards based code once said…

“Standards cronies have now latched on to the disabled ‘the starving African children of high technology’ for leverage. Spend time reading A List Apart, and you’ll soon get the impression that accessibility is bigger than cancer, and we’re all about to go blind and lose our mouse-bearing limbs. The solution? Web standards!”

So what do you folks think? Should youthful folly be let to rest or is ther a moral obligation to keep this information around?

Posted at 12:06 AM | Comments (39)

My response to the question of speculative pitches | February 11, 2010

A few nights ago I attended a UX-Bri session where one of the speakers floated the idea of doing free usability testing in order to win projects. I asked about the moral implications of this and was surprised by the response. While the audience largely disagreed with the idea of speculative design work, it seemed that speculative UX work was somehow more acceptable. The speaker later cc’d me into an email question from one of the audience members querying my negative reaction to speculative pitching so here was my response…

Posted at 9:22 AM | Comments (9)

Clearleft offers free training to budding conference speakers | February 3, 2010

In order to get more people in the design scene speaking at events like SillSwap, BarCamp and even dConstruct or UX London, I’ve been toying with the idea of organising a free public speaking course. It would be held on a yet-to-be-determined Saturday at the Clearleft offices in Brighton and would focus on practical, hands-on tuition.

Posted at 4:57 PM | Comments (26)

The best products sell them selves | January 27, 2010

The concept of ‘Pull Marketing’ is all the rage at the moment. In the age of the Mad Men, selling a new product was easy. You’d be handed a commodity product like toothpaste or washing powder and set about building a brand to set it apart from the competition. You would then buy advertising space on a small number of influential marketing channels and wait for the sales to roll in. The growth of multi-channel TV, the commercialisation of radio and the rise of desktop publishing in the 80s fragmented audiences, making it hard to get the message out. However it was the appearance of the Internet that changed marketing for ever.

Posted at 9:18 AM | Comments (6)

Information Anxiety | January 23, 2010

One of the problems of working in the knowledge economy is the constant need to keep abreast of current trends and thinking. This would be fine if you worked in a mature industry or one with a limited number of books, papers and conferences appearing each year. However in the knowledge economy of the web, more information is being published every day than could be consumed in a year. What’s more, that pace is increasing.

Posted at 9:47 PM | Comments (23)