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RAJAR Q3 2026
This post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the many years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product, contact Deryck Pritchard via…
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Email Overload
It’s difficult to explain just how satisfying it is to get 2,800 emails in my inbox down to a slightly more manageable 35.
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ITV Luddites
OK – that’s not my headline. I lifted it from the editorial in last week’s Marketing magazine. They carried a story which I’ve only just got around to reading that says that ITV is trying to limit Freeview PVR technology. With Sky+ being by far the market leader in PVRs, the Freeview consortium has been…
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Black Juice
I think that Black Juice, a collection of short stories with a vaguely fantasy/science fiction feel to them, might count as kids fiction, since the protagonists in most of the tales are children – well apart from the one that’s an elephant. I found the overall collection a bit hit and miss. It opens quite…
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A Good Year
A Good Year is Ridley Scott’s latest film. Once again, he’s working with Russell Crowe who plays Max, a bond trader in London. Max inherits a large Provencal house with its attendant vinyard. As a tough, cruel money-making man, he doesn’t suffer fools and his immediate response is to sell the place for as much…
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The Man Who Went Up In Smoke
With a never-ending stream of Nordic authors currently assailing UK crime fiction publishers, it probably wasn’t going to take long for someone to dust off the novels of Swedish husband and wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Together they wrote a series of detective novels based around the character of Martin Beck. Some while…
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How the Standard Might Fight Back
It seems that the Evening Standard’s great idea for fighting Murdoch’s new thelondonpaper is to put the Standard’s price up by 10p to 50p. The thinking behind this is that this gives them a £7m warchest somehow (At 300,000 copies daily x 10p x 5 days a week that’s £150,000 a week which means it’s…
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Threat Level drops to SEVERE
I’m sure you’ll be as relieved as I am that the UK Threat Level has been brought down to SEVERE which means “an attack is highly likely”. Obviously, having come off CRITICAL, when an attack was “imminent” we can rest a little bit – but not too much! In the meantime, airport security restrictions have…
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Windows Live Writer
With any luck, if this post is published correctly, it means that the just-released beta of Windows Live Writer has successfully worked. It’s a WYSIWYG blog entry editor that works with the majority of blogging software. It took me no time to set up and seems to at least allow me to work on, and…
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The Sea
I’ve just spent the weekend down on the coast. Yesterday the weather was horrible (this happened just up the coast the other side of The Wash), and completely scuppered any chance of observing the Perseids last night. I took a few pictures today.
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Bebo Questions Answered
Mediaguardian had the founders of Bebo in the other day answering questions. I’ve mentioned in the past that Bebo – enormously popular among kids – has some inappropriate advertising. So I asked about this and was given a very fair answer.
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Cynicism
There are some awfully cynical letters in today’s Independent. I’m very cynical myself!
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Taking Liquids on Planes
You don’t want to take any liquid onto a plane – it might be explosive. Still – best to get rid of them in a large vat in a crowded airport lounge.
Hadrian’s Wall
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