Richard's Kingdom

The Power of Information Task Force, championed by Tom Watson MP, has announced a fantastic new Open Government initiative: a public-data mashup competition!
It’s great that the Government is soliciting new ideas for re-using public information, but what’s even better is that this competition is accompanied by a whole raft of new public APIs, and the [...]

During the recent local Government elections, the Liberal Democrat candidates for my area campaigned in part on a ticket of installing more CCTV cameras. They didn’t really explain the benefits or trade-offs for the community, but they did claim the proposal was part of their strategy to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour. I emailed them [...]

Various reports are circulating that Microsoft is using Digital Restrictions Management to prevent users of Windows Media Centre from recording certain programmes. The company confirmed Tuesday that its software had disabled recording of the US TV show “American Gladiators” at the request of the broadcaster NBC. Microsoft claim this so-called “broadcast flag” mechanism was installed [...]

Microsoft have this week demonstrated the dangers of buying into DRM-crippled systems by announcing that their unloved software PlaysForSure (oh the irony) will be switched off on 31 August. After this date, content encumbered by the system will still play, but it will become locked to a single computer or device. You will no longer [...]

The Guardian is reporting that pupils as young as 10 in Padstow, Cornwall, may have been posing as paedophiles online in order to bully their peers.
“Police initially believed a local man was trying to groom the children by befriending them online and arranging to meet them.”
The subsequent discovery that it was probably just a bunch [...]