27 October, 2006:

Posted at 18h00. Permalink.

Please tell me the most profound thing you can. Don't worry if I might not understand (I will try as hard as I'm able). Use an anonymous email service; don't sign the message. I won't reproduce your message here.

16 October:

Posted at 19h44. Permalink.

According to Plant Power at the London Natural History Museum, these 18 plants each played a part in human development:

• Sugar
• Cinchona (it enabled colonialism)
• Lichen
• Rose
• Potato
• Papyrus
• Grape
• Tea
• Rubber
• Gourd (music)
• Coal
• Mulberry
• Poppy
• Wheat
• Yam (the contraceptive pill)
• Oak
• Cotton (slavery)
• Algae

The museum has articles and videos on plants and fungi.

Posted at 16h32. Permalink.

Disappointing: I just had a call from Radio 4's PM news programme about personal privacy infringements and YouTube (they'd heard about my new new media talk)... said call developing into a conversation about evolving social norms, concepts of fairness, and how an awareness of the public and new genres have emerged in email (we know our emails can be forwarded on so we're more careful) and video blogs (I was surprised to see lonelygirl15 accepted as a fiction and still cared about, rather than vilified). Fascinating. The disappointing bit? There was the chance I could be interviewed on the radio, on a show presented by my favourite news broadcaster (Eddie Mair; sharp and dry), but I'm in Oslo from first thing tomorrow till Saturday so it couldn't happen. Darn.

6 October:

Posted at 11h03. Permalink.

Two bits of work news. First up is that Schulze & Webb now have a weblog, Pulse Laser, on interaction and the new world of product. We've posted about model railways, mouthfeel, mechanical mobiles and social printers so far.

Second is that Jack and I are visiting San Francisco, last week of November, so please do get in touch if you'd like to meet. Very exciting. More details here.

Update: ...or rather, we aren't visiting, not for a bit longer. Darn, I was all excited! But when you're trying to arrange a trip that depends on the confluence of a whole bunch of things, these things happen. Oh well!