Alex Singleton

In the current issue of Linux Format - the UK’s best-selling Linux magazine - I have a one-page article and in the next I will have a four-page feature. Although I’ve written widely in the IT press, especially in Personal Computer World, I’m pleased to have had my first piece in a Linux magazine.
With Linux-based […]

I have a two-page review of Aperture 2, Apple’s all-in-one photography tool, in the new (April) issue of Macworld, the world’s best-selling Mac magazine. I give the software the thumb’s up, concluding:
Before Aperture 2, there was a case for choosing Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom, especially if not using a particularly high-powered machine. Photographers working under both […]

On Telegraph.co.uk, I suggest a change in the government’s approach to IT:
Government IT could be revolutionised by having, for example, groups of NHS trusts creating their own systems. Where they need to exchange data with other trusts and Whitehall, they could introduce published file formats. Open sourcing the custom-written code would enable different trusts to […]

In a webcast to over 700 churches and thousands of churchgoers, Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard has announced he is to spend $189 million of taxpayers’ money “cleaning up the internet”.
It is always worrying whenever politicians talk about the internet, and there is no reason to believe the initiative will be anything other than a […]

BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show today hosted a discussion on whether the UK government needs to impose new laws on the internet to counter internet cons. The debate was between Lord Broers, chairman of Britain’s House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee, and Tom Clougherty, Director of Policy at the Adam Smith Institute. […]

Various US government-funded researchers, spearheaded by the National Science Foundation, are exploring the idea that today’s internet should be scrapped and replaced by a properly-designed alternative. According to MSNBC:
The idea may seem unthinkable, even absurd, but many believe a “clean slate” approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that […]

Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop, announced to much fanfare last year, falls down as a sensible approach to increasing IT provision in developing countries because of its reliance on massive government purchasing and distribution of free computers. As this site has pointed out previously, governments and donor agencies have limited resources: it is unlikely that giving […]