The UK government is looking to remove Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) from the core curriculum and remove funding for it entirely. Anna Debenham, who recently attended a Think Tank organised by Naace, just wrote a blog post on what was discussed that summarizes the status quo. In it, she states:

I was saddened to learn that many of the people in the room were in the process of being made redundant. Schools are already axing ICT from their offerings, before the government has even announced anything. Their whole budgets cut, they see the subject as expensive and expendable. The process was described as "slash and burn".

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Last week marked the inaugural Frontend 2010 conference in Oslo and I was honored to present the opening keynote alongside such a stellar lineup of speakers. The conference was – a miscast MC and a poor sponsor choice aside – a resounding success (the lovely folks at IXD, which organized the conference, were very receptive to feedback on those issues and assured me that they'd be taking greater care on those points for next year.)

Day 1

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Last Wednesday, I gave Twitter a break for a few days so I could examine its impact on my life. The experience has been rather enlightening.

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Both times I attended SXSW I've wanted to stay on for the music festival – I think I'm finally going to this year. One of the cool things about SXSW is that it includes Interactive, Film, and Music under its umbrella but it does feel like the three are still somewhat disperate. Which is surprising to some degree since most web/interactive geeks I know either are musicians or have been involved with film and other mediums in one capacity or other.

So, I was thinking, why don't we invade SXSW Music in 2012 (it's too late for 2011) with a band of our own? A Geek Robot Superstar band or something (I don't know where the "Robot" bit came from, really.)

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3mobilebuzz.com contacted me before my talk at WebDirections @media to see if I wanted to try out the Three MiFi unit and blog about my experiences (don't confuse this with the MiFi that's sold outside the UK, which is known as the Novatel Wireless Hotspot and is notoriously difficult to find here.) Having just lost the T-Mobile USB dongle that had served me well for the last two years or so, I decided to take them up on the offer.

If you haven't had the chance to see or play with a MiFi, it's a portable WiFi hotspot that takes a SIM card and shares your mobile connection with up to 5 devices. It has a brushed-aluminium-and-white-plastic case that resembles a metallic version of Eva from Wall-E. The user interface consists of three little buttons on the side and a screen with five colored icons.

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