Earlier this week Prime Minister Gordon Brown delivered an interesting speech to the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference in Oxford. He talked of the power of today’s technology in organising and uniting communities around the world on particular issues, such as climate change, the financial...
This week's NESTA sponsored Reboot Britain conference brought together a mix of government, business, banks, technology, media people from the UK, and visitors from the USA that saw left leaning Labour/Liberal Democrat political views engage and collaborate with conservative Tory representatives...
The Government – pioneered by the departing Communications Minister, Lord Carter – today unveiled its final Digital Britain report . There is welcome acknowledgement of the contribution digital advertising – in particular targeted advertising - will make in helping to monetise online content. The Government...
A parliamentary body of MPs and Peers – the All Party Parliamentary Group on Communications – is to conduct an inquiry into internet traffic, including behavioural advertising and online privacy. The Group asks whether the Government should intervene over behavioural advertising or whether it should...
We should all welcome Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s return to YouTube this week. He was criticised by Cabinet colleagues (aka our ‘Communities’ Minister, Hazel Blears) and widely ridiculed by the media for his ‘MP expenses’ video late last month. But Brown knows only too well that we now live in a world...
Last Friday’s Digital Britain Summit at The British Library was themed as an event to discuss the ‘plumbing’ (ie broadband infrastructure) and ‘poetry’ (ie the content) – this is Lord (Stephen) Carter’s very own analogy. Its importance to the Government was on show for all to witness: four senior government...
Over the last few months I’ve written a number of blogs about the Digital Britain project, the Government’s blueprint for the UK’s digital economy. This kicked off last November with a blog arguing that the internet will help the UK economy out of its current recession, followed in late January with...
Government ministers have, in the past, got into hot water for merely mentioning the words ‘green shoots’ when times are tough. We all know the UK economy is officially in recession. However, unlike Starbucks’ Howard Schultz, I won’t be talking the economy down. I fear the wrath and another four-letter...
Communications and Technology Minister, Stephen Carter, today finally published his eagerly awaited Digital Britain interim report . The ‘talk’ and speculation in the run-up to publication had been about the BBC and public service broadcasting/publishing and ‘broadband for all’. Would the Government...
These are the words of Barack Obama who, next Tuesday, will be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America in what is one of the greatest spectacles in the political calendar (although it only happens once every four years). We all know that President Obama has some pretty pressing...
