Finding the chase and cutting to it

It happened this Wednesday: Facebook finally took the top spot globally according to alexa.com. Of course, by the time I write this blog, Google is back up there but what helped Facebook outpace a search engine?  How long before youTube overtakes Google? Over course, it helps to understand what the top ten sites are: we […]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  Surfing habits are not significantly different since April this year, apart from the obvious swap between the positions of Twitter and Amazon. Good news for the on-line trader but is this a seasonal blip?  Would you expect surfing habits to move from the twits to the shops? Amazon is […]

I wrote the original pump tools back in 2002 as a JavaScript calculator.  As I moved into web service development, I ported the crude calculations library to a Java bean interface to a set of libraries.  I put a jsp front end to collect data from the user. This is great and one of the […]

 Many of our earliest written records focused on economic transactions and approved histories. Personal records didn’t begin to be treasured until paper and school made such enterprises easy, perhaps the best known diary and letters were kept by Samuel Pepys in 17th century London. Letters were being sent between individuals during these times: often to […]

It’s been a busy year, but I thought I’d take the opportunity to share my experiences of living with a Kindle. Figure wise, it looks like hope over reality Books downloaded = 84 Books read = 25 But actually, this is deceptive. I use the Kindle as a reader for work documents (obviously not the […]

I love the system of politics in the UK. Living in a small suffolk village, it is a real reminder that despite having a great job, influencing many council departments and being an ambassedor for science and technology, I am a woman and therefore do not count on the canvassing list. Five minutes ago, Terry […]

The One Show often has stories which don’t make the main news streams.  As a keen web 2 advocate, the one story about people helping find their missing dogs, Dog Lost, caught my eye. Once finding their treasured pet is missing, an owner can upload pictures, a description and contact details to the site.  These details are quickly […]

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and has a happy new year awaiting them. I really enjoyed catching up with friends and family but find myself in an interesting place.  I have long had a presence in what is being termed the cloud and indeed have used the cloud to catalogue both my […]

Twitter has easily replaced RSS as the communication channel of choice. Only 5 years ago, RSS was seen as the most effective way to allow web viewers to receive federated content. Two things changed this. First: Firefox 2 and IE 7, launched within days of each other in October 2006, both chose to only render […]

Mathematicians are not generally known for being team players.  Mathematicians are seen as being scary, clever in a sit down and think kind of way but definitely not team players.  You don’t think of Netwon in a lab surrounded by a bunch of fellow mathematicians or Einstein having a coffee with David Hilbert while discussing […]