On Wednesday 11 January 1989, I went to Loftus Road to see Manchester United play QPR in an FA Cup 3rd round replay. As usual, we went for a pint in our favourite pub, ‘The Greyhound’ (or similar), on Shepherd’s Bush Green before finally spurning one last beer and reluctantly making our way to the ground. Loftus Road was packed. The United section behind the goal was full. Stewards opened up another section along up to the half-way line to accommodate the large away support. ...

It’s fair to say it took me a while to fully ‘get’ microblogging. In fact, initially Twitter left me as cold as a corpse in a deep freeze. Inevitably, things change and like an old woman, I reserve the right to change my mind more frequently than my underpants, and in 2008, I started using Twitter to post a continuous bytestream of inane drivel in less than 140 characters. Last July, when identi.ca launched, I immediately signed up for the open source microblogging service. I even built my own Laconi.ca instance - not necessarily because I intended using it but just to see how easy (or hard) it was to install and configure the software. ...

Since I started this blog, I have maintained an interest in various blog commenting services. Back in November 2007, I experimented with SezWho and also reviewed three more similar comment tracking services before finally settling on Disqus. Competition is obviously a good thing but this is proving a tough climate for small, Web 2.0 companies competing in a small, overcrowded marketplace and we have recently seen some consolidation in this area. SezWho - Unfortunately, SezWho ceased trading yesterday with a recommended upgrade path to JS-Kit. Disqus - still going strong with recent announcement of improvements to performance and UI. coComment - still going albeit with a horrendous interface. co.mments - consigned to the dead pool. commentful - still alive. For now. The two main commenting services that appear to represent serious competition for Disqus are IntenseDebate and JS-Kit although I have no personal experience of either product. Anyone out there used them ?

Recently, I started messing around with DokuWiki as a replacement for Google Notebook (which Google have helpfully decided to ditch) and Diigo (after the well publicised and unfortunate collapse of another cloud bookmarking service - ma.gnolia). In recent months I have also contributed to the Habari Wiki (MediaWiki), looked briefly at WikkaWiki and read Michael’s interesting, thought provoking article about his Wiki nirvana wishlist with interest. Last night, a throwaway post by Douglass Clem about TiddlyWiki resurrected my interest in my own long neglected, unloved local TiddlyWiki which I then upgraded to the latest version and then pondered consolidating that content into DokuWiki. ...

My longest standing and all-time favourite Oracle blogger is Doug Burns of Edinburgh, near Scotland. In addition to his sharp, analytical Oracle skills, helpful attitude and easy going manner, Doug does a great deal of unsung, unpaid work for charity (although, obviously he doesn’t like to talk about it) and is a fully paid up member of Amnesty International. Doug is also passionate about the the causes of data privacy, security issues, the freedom of information and continues to fight an unceasing battle for the rights of the individual against the evil spectre of Google Corporation. ...