Dave

Interesting article on Michael Howard’s signal of his intention to resign as leader of the Tories on the BBC. The last thing the Tories want is another instant resignation similar to William Hague’s the day after the 2001 election defeat.…

Blunkett returns in new Cabinet, according to the BBC: David Blunkett has returned to the Cabinet as work and pensions secretary as Tony Blair reshuffles his top team. Patricia Hewitt has been appointed health secretary – with John Reid moving…

Am working on a large list of links of pages I regularly visit. At the moment it is very incomplete, so have temporarily password protected it.

Backpack is a genuinely brilliant site. It is essentially an online personal information manager, giving you the ability to maintain an online diary or keep todo lists, posts photos and all sorts.   Steve Rubel explains it far better than…

And here is my del.icio.us page. Both this and the Furl one have RSS feeds to subscribe to. del.icio.us/theclosedcircle

Furl is a bookmark manager, rather like del.icio.us, I think. I am going to give both of them a try and see which is most useful, if either. Here’s the link for my Furl page which as yet has only…

So, another Labour government, albeit with a much reduced majority. Probably the best result all round. Here are some interesting snippets from The Guardian‘s coverage this morning. Tony Blair alone bears the blame – Polly Toynbee The Tories’ Michael Foot…

This from John Naughton is priceless! DIY declassification Ho, ho! The Pentagon released a heavily-censored PDF version of its report into the shooting, by US troops, of the Italian secret agent who was escorting a freed hostage to safety. But…

Interesting post on Microsoft Monitor about the future of Windows:  What Microsoft really needs to do is transcend the traditional user interface and fundamentally transform how people interact with the operating system. But not in some newfangled way that would…

Thought it might be of some interest to share details of what software and services I use on a regular basis on my PC. Then again, it might well be incredibly boring. Here goes anyway. I use FireFox most of…

Really thoughtful article here from the BBCs Stephen Sackur on his return to the UK after 15 years of foreign jaunts. Until I was 18 years old, I had never met a black man or woman. Nor, knowingly at least,…

Watched Shaun of the Dead last night, an Amazon Rental DVD. The only one of the three that arrived on Friday without a crack in it. Still, it was an excellent, funny film and I recommend it. I emailed Amazon…

A friend mentioned today that she had visited The Bowes Museum in County Durham. Quickly googled it, and what an impressive building it is: The reason this cropped up? The Raphael painting The Madonna of the Pinks is currently on…

Just bought a few tracks on ITunes: Razorlight’s brilliant new single Somewhere Else A few tracks by mid ’90s brit poppers Shed Seven: On Standby, Chasing Rainbows and Where Have you Been Tonight? The Boo Radley’s great Wake Up Boo!…

It looks like the Gbrowser is in development after all, just as many people thought. From Micro Persuasion: …now comes word from MarketingVOX that bloggers have spotted the browser in their server logs.

How good does this look exactly? From The Guardian: The problem with popular culture is its popularity: if lots of people like something, it is by no means a guarantee that it is going to be any good. And the…

Thoughtful piece here by Vic Gundotra about Microsoft ( he work for them). It’s currently in vogue to discuss the “End of Microsoft”. A stock price that has remained flat for some time, recent high-profile departures, repeated slips in schedule…

Just bought 3 books for the price of 2 from Waterstones, my first book purchases for some time. Here’s what I got, along with a relevant review from The Guardian. Small Island – Andrea Levy Andrea Levy’s narrative switches between…

I joined the new (to the UK) Amazon DVD rental scheme this week. Here’s how it works: Amazon take £10 a month from my debit card each month. In exchange, they send me 6 DVDs a month, I can have…

Jason Kottke provides a very thorough roundup of the various views being put forth here. For background, here is the BBC online article: Adobe buys Macromedia for $3.4bn Shares in Macromedia have risen 10% on news its US rival Adobe…