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Posts under ‘politics’

Jay-Z and Tony Blair

When reading non-fiction I tend to have multiple books on the go, sometimes the books are related; most times they’re not. But the last two biographies I read surprised me with their similarities. I found it really interesting to read the stories of Jay-Z, an artist who’s provided a lot of the soundtrack to my [...]

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Being an Ox

Happy Chinese New Year! Welcome to the year of the Ox! According to Wikipedia: The Ox is the sign of prosperity through fortitude and hard work. This powerful sign is a born leader, being quite dependable and possessing an innate ability to achieve great things. As one might guess, such people are dependable, calm, and [...]

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Phew, 2008’s done. Bring on 2009.

2008 was a pretty intense year for us, all of us. Okay that might have been a bit of an understatement. We – the bee and me – moved to Switzerland, the world suffered through the worst economic crisis since the depression. That’s looking like a tie right now. We got to visit Rome, Portugal, [...]

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Where were you when

I remember where I was the planes crashed the towers. I remember where I was when the US invaded Afghanistan. I remember where I was when I found out that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States… bed. Switzerland’s 6 hours ahead of Eastern Standard time so I slept not so [...]

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The first web powered US election

Like most of the rest of the world, I’ve been really interested in the US election this year. It’s been the most anticipated and tightly fought battles in my lifetime and I think it’s very cool to be an adult with so many American friends and family living in America at this time. But the [...]

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2 way communication or respect da comments

I find it interesting, actually make that I find it perplexing, yeah perplexing sounds right… I find it perplexing that people who write blog posts and articles don’t respond to comments that are put on the post or article. If you’re enabling your community to comment on your post then you should take the time [...]

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A moving picture tells a gajillion words

I deal with a lot of data. I sometimes find it difficult to present data in a way that allows people to really make decisions or draw insights easily. That’s why I was thrilled to come across a great graphic/flash tool from the New York Times that shows how the different demographics voted in Democratic [...]

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Access to information and the democratisation of the web

This morning I saw a headline and story that bothered me on my feed reader, Obama under fire after fundraiser remarks (Reuters) Reuters – U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama came under fire on Friday for saying small-town Pennsylvania residents were “bitter” and “cling to guns or religion,” in comments his rivals said showed an [...]

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The web as the midwife of true democratisation

Cathy pointed me to the LordsoftheBlog.net today. It’s about page describes it as: “a collaborative blog written by Members of the House of Lords for the purposes of public engagement.” Last year I discovered David Cameron’s blog, I was skeptical (sk or sc? Seems like it can be spelt both ways) and unsure as to [...]

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Spending online does not equal winning online

SAI had a post the other day talking about how much the US presidential candidates were raising and spending online. The bottom line was that they were spending little but raising lots. That’s been my whole argument around interaction and brand advertising. The candidates don’t need to spend money to get their messages online, but [...]

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