The earliest known journalistic product was a newssheet circulated in ancient Rome called the Acta Diurna. Published daily from 59 BC, it was hung in prominent places and recorded important social and political events. In China during the T’ang dynasty a court […]

Interface and Society is a conference and exhibition in Oslo that I’m going to have to try to get to: INTERFACE and SOCIETY investigates artistic strategies and practices which deal with and build upon the transformation of our everyday life through information […]

Ah, another round of this discussion – how should we react when students cite the Wikipedia in papers? I used to say no, you can’t, not unless the fact that it’s the Wikipedia is the point of your argument. Then I eased […]

I found an article by Philippe Lejeune, the prime theorist of diaries for the last several decades and author of the first scholarly monograph about online diaries, “Cher Ècran”: Journal personnel et ordinateur. Paris: Editions de Seuil, 2000, asking “How do Diaries […]

I spent a while this morning hunting for the full text of Brecht’s article about radio from 1932 – the one where he points out that’s there’s no technological reason why radio should be a mass medium rather than a peer-to-peer form […]

Ever wondered whether you’re breaking DRM legislation or now? Even the experts don’t quite know what’s legal, as this recent Norwegian survey shows. I translated the results into English for your reading pleasure; for the Norwegian original follow that link. As Jon […]

Nokia’s LifeBlog creates a chronologically organised blog from all the SMSes, emails, videos and photos that have passed through your phone – Waymarkr takes it a step further by continuously taking photos. Install the free, beta software on one of many Nokia […]

Microsoft’s new mp3-player, Zune, will add DRM to anything you put on it, even if it has a Creative Commons licence that expressly prohibits DRM and states that the work is for sharing freely. A Microsoft employee blogs a response to a […]

Right, I’m going to BlogTalk in Vienna in a couple of weeks time. I’ve been dithering about registering and getting the plane ticket and all the rest of it, but now I’ve done it (nothing like having a deadline to make me […]

This spring I was asked by Andrea Drugan at Polity Press whether I’d be interested in writing a book about blogging for their new series of books on new media. A few weeks ago, I signed the contract! So that’s my big […]