In the autumn of 1997, a group assembled from across the BBC and beyond gathered to take part in a seminal moment of broadcasting history: the launch of the BBC’s first 24-hour news channel. The 24-hour…
Peter Tschmuck, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
Spotify is currently the world’s largest music streaming service with 24 million active users. Founder and CEO Daniel Ek has stated that the company will pay out roughly $500 million to rights owners in…
The US National Security Agency and the UK’s GCHQ have upped the stakes in the battle for internet privacy by targeting users of Tor. Not only have the NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden up until this…
While broadband internet services get faster and faster for some, there are communities in the UK that are not fully benefiting from the technology. It has recently become clear that many communities in…
Twitter has finally announced its much anticipated initial public offering, revealing at the same time some pretty impressive user figures. The IPO documents show Twitter has around 200 million monthly…
Figures published recently suggest that more than 90% of newspaper reading still happens in print. This might come as a surprise given the gloomy assessments often made of the state of print media in the…
The number of people in Britain who are using the internet has risen substantially, reaching 78% of the population aged 14 years and over as compared with 59% in 2003. But according to the latest survey…
If you think it’s enough of a chore trying to stop thieves stealing your credit card details and hacking your Facebook, imagine trying to stop them getting into your pancreas. Advances in healthcare mean…
The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee set out some fairly strong views last week about how its members think the UK should approach copyright reform. I have an interest to declare in…
WARNING: This article contains a spoiler. Don’t worry though, it’s not what happens in the final episode of Breaking Bad. Even academics don’t get early access. This week, Netflix has created a handy service…
The World Bank is to provide a $1.2 million grant to fund the Open Data Partnership for Development, a project with the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Open Data Institute. The aim is to help developing…
A little known UK government initiative is underway to release vast amounts of personal data from companies to citizens with the laudable aim of handing power to the consumer. The midata initiative aims…
You might think social networks couldn’t possibly gather more information on you than they already do. That in a world where your every move is tagged, flagged and logged, there is nothing more that could…
This week the Office for National Statistics opened a consultation on the future of the decennial national census. Two options are on the table: continuing the census, but with a switch to online collection…
We’ve come to expect something radically different from Apple every time it launches a new product and sure enough, the fingerprint sensor unveiled as part of the iPhone 5s, seemed like a revolution in…
Computers have been an important part of many industries for decades already and have replaced humans in many jobs. But a new wave of technological development means that even positions that we once saw…
Another day brings yet another “revelation” based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden. This time, Der Spiegel revealed the details of an NSA programme known as “follow the money”, through which the agency…
Leslie Willcocks, London School of Economics and Political Science
A report from the Public Accounts Committee has revealed that the National Programme for IT in the NHS has cost the taxpayer close to £10 billion, despite having been abandoned. The committee’s chairman…
Using an e-reader may help some dyslexic students understand what they read more effectively, researchers at Harvard University argue. In a paper published in the journal PLOS One, the authors found that…
Massive Open Online Courses landed in the UK today with the launch of FutureLearn, a project led by the Open University and including around 20 universities from the UK, Monash University in Australia…