kierenmccarthy.co.uk

I’ve been looking further into the animal rights protests taking place in Oxford over the new animal holding centre the university is building in the heart of the city, and have learnt some interesting, and some disturbing things.
More than anything it looks as though trouble is brewing. Thames Valley Police has applied for and […]

ICANN has produced a revised version of the controversial new dotcom agreement with VeriSign - that will give VeriSign complete control of all dotcoms forever.
To ICANN's credit, it has made a few changes. And it is in the almost impossible situation that despite being the deciding body in this contract, it is the weakest […]

Something I've always found intriguing is people's egos. As a journalist you get to meet alot of interesting, and frequently rich and powerful people. But the most bizarre are always those with incomprehensible self-regard.
They are definitely not someone you would want to know personally, but doing an interview with someone who for some reason […]

This is one really only for the IT online media industry, but I've just heard that “Mad” Mike Magee has sold his break-away IT news website The Inquirer to VNU.
What an extremely odd sale. I don't know how much Mike got (hopefully plenty) but this has to be one of the most unlikely deals […]

I've done another Technobile for The Guardian, in the Technology section today. There is a cracking pic with it which I have emailed the illustrationist to ask if he will let me put it on this post. Hopefully he'll say yes.
Actually I should do links to other technobiles I've written. Will add it […]

I've just finished Andrew Marr's My Trade, a “short history of British journalism”, and it has cheered me enormously. Especially since it is another miserable, too-dark January day.
Marr is one the UK's best journalists. He has worked as a reporter and a columnist on a wide range of publications including The Express, Observer, […]

Very few people are aware of it but several *open* discussions in the next few months are going to decide on the formation of a new forum that could well grow to become one of the most important bodies on the planet - the Internet Governance Forum.
The IGF's creation was agreed at the World […]

I love this. A new band is rocketing up the charts, is set to become the fastest-ever something and the biggest-selling something else. And it has all been done by word of mouth.
Yes, the Arctic Monkeys have come from nowhere, there are a symbol of the new Internet world where everyday citizens are bypassing […]

One of the very worst facets of modern journalism is the use of “surveys” as a news item.
Such surveys are nearly always produced by a company with a vested interest and they usually have a hopelessly small survey group, making the “results” doubly pointless. What they are, however, is free and neatly packaged […]

Well, it had to happen eventually. The West Wing - one of the best TV shows produced in the last ten years - has finally been axed. It will finish at the end of the seventh series with a new president being sworn in.
The show first aired in 1999 and immediately shone. The […]