I hope to get time (today’s hospital visits allowing) to post more fully about this whole TechCrunch UK & Ireland debacle. However, in the mean time, one thing is clear: I have been locked out of the TechCrunch web site’s backend WordPress system. Update: I hadn’t planned on making this public but I feel I need to explain my slow response to the above issue. My wife was diagnosed with

Those who know me personally will know that today I was out of action accompanying someone from my family to hospital. That meant I wasn’t online most of the day, and the reason I couldn’t attend “Le Web 3” in Paris this week. So it’s come as a surprise, to say the least, to see what has happened with TechCrunch UK & Ireland and my colleague Sam Sethi. Although I

I wrote an article for The New Statesman on the business and economics of the video games industry, and one on Alternate Reality Gaming. It’s in this week’s edition, but there is also a free download PDF of the supplement the articles appeared in here. It was a huge pleasure to be commissioned by former NS Web guru Kathryn Corrick and to appear alongside some other writers whose work I

I have a new gig editing TechCrunch UK. Fairly soon I’ll be outlining what I plan to do with this blog next and some other ideas, assuming it’s of any interest to anyone, which I doubt!

I heartily recommend this Orwellian analysis of what is going on in the world – and where it all started – by the author Martin Amis: “The age of horrorism: On the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, one of Britain’s most celebrated and original writers analyses – and abhors – the rise of extreme Islamism. In a penetrating and wide-ranging essay he offers a trenchant critique of the

Interesting: “While some researchers focus on alarming fertility rates in poor countries, which grew by 16.3 percent from 1995 to 2005, the US population grew by 10.6 percent in that period, or 29 million people, the report noted. Europe during that time grew by 504,000 people, or less than 1 percent…. Americans consume like no other nation — using three times the amount of water per capita than the world

So, a little more on my trip here. I got here Sunday, contending with the now familiar terror scare , to find Tokyo sweltering in heat and humidity. Luckily the evening was bearable enough to venture out for a meal in a down-home local place. The next day a short trip out of the city showed a little more of the real Japan – miles of rice paddies (all subsidised

How can you be dynamic and conservative at the same time? Tokyo seems to pull off both, at least from the outside. First impressions are of a hustling, bustling city at the forefront of modernity. But come across any person and you will soon be met with astounding formality. Don’t shake hands, bow. Don’t say who you are, present a business card, while bowing of course. Smile all the time.

Remind me never to go to Heathrow when there is a security scare on. It took about 4 hours of chaos and queueing to get to the departure gate, then another hour to get through the takng off of shoes and the patting down of clothes. Although I sprinted to the gate, the plane ended up not taking off for another hour while the captain had the bags of the