James Thornett The views and opinions expressed here are my own and not those of the BBC, my employer.
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Conversations on a train #1
Location: Virgin Train travelling between Nuneaton and London Euston. Time: Approx 7.40am, Wednesday 22nd September, 2010. Scene: A packed train of business commuters heading towards the capital for another day of meetings, important phone calls and numerous cups of strong coffee. Laptops and mobiles are in constant use while passengers who boarded the train North [...]
Stickers needed, urgently!
One Panini South Africa 2010 sticker album looking for the following stickers to spend the rest of our lives together in happiness and the joy that comes from being complete. The following stickers are especially desirable: 1, 80, 91, 110, 133, 137, 138, 174, 175, 185, 250, 266, 273, 289, 310, 315, 336, 341, 352, [...]
Twitter Updates for 2010-05-02
RT: @paulbradshaw @psychemedia What do you need? # Powered by Twitter Tools
Twitter Updates for 2010-04-30
Have firmly decided that my new website will launch on Monday. Must finish building it. # The excitement of getting a shiny foil sticker certainly hasn't diminished with time #paniniworldcup # Powered by Twitter Tools
Twitter Updates for 2010-04-29
How lovely, they've managed to find me a seat on the plane after all. The least they could given i'd paid for it several months ago. # Flight overbooked by 11 people. despite paying & arriving 2.5 hrs before departure i can't leave holland unless 11 other people dont turn up # My day 2 [...]
Twitter Updates for 2010-04-28
Day 1 summary of The Location Business Summit in Amsterdam http://bit.ly/dzL0Se I particularly enjoyed @vicchi @edparson @toffehoff #locbiz # Great presentation on the over hyped nature of, and difficulties in delivering, hyperlocal services from @vicchi. #locbiz # Comparing recent rise of GPS in mobiles with rapid addition of cameras – "Nokia now the world's largest [...]
Turning The Place Over by Richard Wilson
Saw the most fabulous piece of art today whilst taking the open top bus tour around Liverpool. Turning The Place Over was commissioned as part of Liverpool’s 2008 Capital of Culture year and was designed by artist Richard Wilson. Definitely worth a look if you’re ever in the area… the open top bus tour is [...]
Currently migrating sites from Blogger
I’m currently migrating jamesthornett.com and straighttothepoint.net from blogger onto WordPress, and combining the two together in the process. Normal service should be resumed in the next couple of days.
Blog redesign
I’m slowly creaking my way through a redesign of the blog over the next few days, largely to make more room for my twitter posts which are far more frequent and up-to-date than some of the longer articles… things have been very busy of late! If you spot anything broken or have any suggestions then [...]
Finally… Twitter has ‘got’ me
It was really only a matter of time and two days ago, on Wednesday 28th January 2009, it happened. I finally ‘got’ Twitter. Or Twitter finally ‘got’ me, I’m not sure which is more correct. I signed up with a Twitter account some time ago but have never really understood why it was deserving of [...]
‘Kitemark’ could distinguish journalism from ‘web noise’
From Press Gazette:- A ‘digital kitemark’ to differentiate quality journalism from ‘the noise of the web’ should be introduced, according to a new report published this week. “A digital kitemark… would identify and differentiate professional journalism amidst the noise of the web,” the report says. In my experience websites are already pretty good at providing [...]
Turning the web into print
Thanks to Matt Locke for pointing me in the direction of this lovely newspaper, created by the Really Interesting Group and featuring web content from 23 friends that they thought would work well in print. Mine only arrived yesterday (#163 from a print run of 1000) and they are now sold out according to the [...]
My 2008
The last 12 months may not have been the best year ever, but it certainly was not the worst either. I managed to walk the Great Glen Way from coast to coast in the Scottish Highlands, re-vamped the garden (before -> after), finally printed some photos onto canvas frames for the lounge, and raised £405 [...]
Guitar for sale
I own four guitars. I want to buy another one. This seems slightly extravagant so I’ve decided to sell my largely un-played classical guitar to raise funds for the new purchase. Details on eBay of course, but if you can’t be bothered to click then here they are: RRP: £185 Details below from the UK [...]
Help end hunger and learn something useful at the same time
Just spotted FreeRice for the first time and thought it was both simple and fantastic… choose a subject area to focus on such as learning a language, improving your grammar, or knowledge of the world, and help donate rice to the United Nations World Food Program. FreeRice began on October 7, 2007 and over 50 [...]
An open source approach to tackling climate change
Cquestrate have an idea for reducing the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and are hoping to turn theory into reality by using an open source approach to tackling climate change. Watch this brief introduction and head over to the Cquestrate site if you want to know more or get involved. [dailymotion id=k69d6A2dF6wEAHPmoO] Animation [...]
Going for a run?
This morning I ran 6.6306 miles. The first mile was very much downhill but the 6th mile was a very steep uphill climb. During the run I burnt 937 calories*. This is all good news**. What is even better news is that I know all of this information without having spent a single penny on [...]
Show me where I can go on holiday, please.
Surely I am not the only person that, once in a while, thinks “I’d like to go somewhere next week, I wonder what my options are?“. Yet all of the holiday/travel websites I have ever used are based around you knowing which airport you are departing from and where you want to go. I’m generally [...]
Getting ‘On The Wagon’ to run two half marathons
You may have noticed the justgiving.com widget that’s appeared on the right hand side of this page. What’s it all about? Well, despite common sense suggesting otherwise, I decided it would be a good idea to attempt two half marathons just one week apart and, given my usual pathetic attempt at training for these things, [...]
My 2004/05 Travel Photo Diary
In October 2004 I left the UK with a rucksack, a one way ticket to Sydney, Australia, and no idea what I was going to do for the next 12 months. Each day I took one photo on my 35mm Fuji compact camera with the date function turned on. I have now, nearly four years [...]
Huffington Post goes local
From Media Guardian article – Huffington Post starts local news push. The Huffington Post is planning to expand into local news across the US, founder Arianna Huffington said last night, beginning with a site edited for the community of Chicago. Huffington said the Chicago site would aggregate news, sports, crime, arts and business news from [...]
Northcliffe re-vamps local websites with geo-coding on stories
Northcliffe Media have begun geo-coding stories produced on their “thisis” websites as the group prepares to introduce geographical targeting on the “next generation” of local news websites. The 10 remodeled sites, including thisiscornwall.co.uk, are part of the plans to re-vamp the 55 existing sites and to add 35 new regional websites under Northcliffe’s ‘thisis’ brand, [...]
About Me
I am currently the Executive Product Manager for Local and Location Services within BBC Future Media and Technology. This includes responsibility for the development of regional and local interactive services across the UK, improving the delivery of local content and location services across bbc.co.uk, and coordinating the use of maps/mapping technology on the BBC’s interactive [...]
Just testing…
I’m still a couple of weeks away from being able to say that this site is fully up and running. However, for future reference, and in case you care, this post shows that the website was first published on Friday 13th (June 2008).
