At the back of my mind there has always been the knowledge that London is a prime terrorist target – I had hoped that we would be spared given the time that has passed since 9/11 and Madrid – evidently not.

Thankfully, we are safe and so far nobody we know has been directly affected though of course some people we know have been inconvenienced and a close friend’s wife who could have been near one of the blasts was not heard from for five and a half nerve wracking hours before turning up unharmed at home.

It’s striking that for at least five hours after the blasts there was no UK helpline for people worried about those who are missing (though the State department set one up earlier “For information about American citizens who may have been affected by the July 7 bombings in London, please call 1-888-407-4747”) and it has taken several hours even to get a consistent count of the number of explosions (three on the tube, one on a bus). Some news outlets were still quoting seven for hours afterwards – presumably because where trains were blown up between stations survivors were evacuated in both directions, seemingly doubling the number of tube explosions. The casualty hotline here in London is 0870 1566 344.

Ironically when my parents lived here with me in the 1970s they also had to put up with bombs and scares – at that time from the IRA (and I was here when the IRA bombed Canary Wharf and the City of London).

I’m hopeful that Al Quaeda has now ‘done their worst’ for the moment and since they missed us our lives can return to normal. We’ve been here before and (sad to say) we’ll probably face this again…

New GPS-based bus tracking will replace the never-accurate ‘countdown’ system based on roadside beacons starting in two years’ time, the BBC and Silicon.com report. I wouldn’t mind paying a small fee to get a text message when a bus is about to arrive at the stop nearest me, although these days they arrive so often we never have to wait long…

A bit like voice over IP now that I think of it – it became easy to talk to people over broadband just around the time that conventional telephone rates here using alternative providers (who probably use VOIP anyway) sank to nearly zero anyway making free computer to computer calling not nearly as advantageous…

Traditionally if you wanted a WordPress weblog (open source so free to use and arguably the most feature rich blogging product around) you needed to be techie yourself or at least have a techie friend with server space spare. Certainly it is only thanks to my own connections in the tech fraternity that I have been able to have this blog hosted using first Moveable Type and now WordPress.

Recently, however, I have discovered that blogsome offers a free hosting service similar to blogger‘s so anyone reading this could have a blog like mine. I’m a little concerned that blogsome don’t have any apparent means of gathering revenue to offset the cost of hosting so they could disappear one day – particularly if they get popular – but my guess is that by the time they do there will be lots of other places able to take over hosting.

If you are already running a weblog using another service you may need a little help getting your archives across to this new platform but once you have taken the plunge I’m sure you’ll agree it was worth it to get features like categories, password protected posts and an extensible architecture for people to add features.

I am not using blogsome myself – instead this weblog, like my other group weblog at the LSE is now generously hosted by Tim Duckett.

Hope you enjoy the new look. Feel free to comment with suggestions and do let me know if there are any problems.

P.S. If you are in the UK don’t forget to vote!

I just added a “post about global broadband penetration”:http://groupblog.workasone.net/index.php?p=20 and a few days ago I posted about research on “hit counts as a predictor of the number of citations”:http://groupblog.workasone.net/index.php?p=14 for academic articles published online. There have also been some recent postings by other blog members on “literature reviews”:http://groupblog.workasone.net/index.php?p=13 and the “use of the Internet for politics in the UK”:http://groupblog.workasone.net/index.php?p=18. I have some postings yet to come there about search engines (you should look there for any future information on search engines – especially as one of my colleagues there is studying them for her PhD)…

P.S. If you want an easy-to-remember address for the site (which does not yet have its own ‘proper’ domain) you can get to it by typing “http://get.to/lseblog”:http://get.to/lseblog.

The BBC provides a case study of what happens when an enthusiastic teacher encourages students as young as seven to blog.

Some of the children who attend the club have improved their knowledge of IT far above what is required of their age group by the National Curriculum. The Government target is for 80% of children of this age to reach level 4 by year 6. All of the webloggers have done that, and some have reached level 6. They are doing what 14 or 15-year-olds are expected to do.

You can see the kids’ weblogs “here”:http://www.hangletonweblogs.org/.

I cannot understand why this government feels compelled to liberalise gambling laws in this country. I find it extraordinary that the Government would see casinos as a means of regional regeneration. Of course not all the bill is bad – it does ban advertising for online casinos and bans fruit machines from places without proper supervision like takeaways and minicab offices – but it also allows for more and larger casinos.

I can’t cite the relevant research but from what I remember the evidence suggests much of the money spent on gambling comes from the poor and the elderly and it flows to large multinational corporations (if anyone can refer me to hard data on this I would be interested). There are already 400,000 ‘problem gamblers’ in the UK and the Henley Centre suggests this bill could add another 300,000. According to Gamcare for each problem gambler 15 others are affected.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists found serious problems with the bill – in fact the joint committee heard from five groups all opposed to the bill. In addition the NHS’ Health Development Agency has produced an excellent article outlining some of the dangers.

I don’t recall any groundswell of popular enthusiasm for increased gambling being expressed – in fact one poll suggests 90% are opposed to further liberalisation.

I can’t understand why there isn’t more protest around this issue. The Salvation Army has responded to the government’s proposals but while it is criticising the bill it does not seem to be running any kind of online campaign.

To my dismay, not only did there seem not to be an anti-gambling lobby group on the BBC’s iCan site – it provides information on how to run a lottery to raise money for your cause! There’s an anti-gambling bill campaign there now however and I encourage you to join it and if you are in the UK see what your MP says about the bill and lobby him or her to stop it

I just discovered I have a powerful ally on this issue (if a strange bedfellow) the Daily Mail is running a campaign against the gambling bill as well. If you are in the UK you can join their campaign by emailing casino@dailymail.co.uk, giving your name and address, and saying you also oppose the gambling bill.

Tom Steinberg pointed out a while ago that the “Daily Mail”:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ – arguably the most dangerous newspaper in Britain – now has “message boards”:http://chat.dailymail.co.uk/dailymail/index.jsp. A chance to get a peek into the heads of their europhobic, often paranoid readership? Or perhaps an opportunity to change a few minds?

P.S. To get an idea of the Mail’s point of view on the world and get a good laugh at the same time try the (satirical) Daily Mail headline generator.

I thought I was doing pretty well with a combination (Telewest and “Telediscount”:http://www.telediscount.co.uk/accessnumbers.php) that cost me 10 pounds a month, a 6p connection charge and between 1 and 3p a minute to call the UK, France, Canada or the US (depending on whether it’s daytime, evening or weekend).

I am still stuck with the 10 pound line rental but now I find 1899.com has a 3p connection charge, lets you call any UK landline for free (except 0845 and 0870 numbers), mobiles for 2p a minute weekends, 10p weekdays and Canada and the US for .5p a minute (France 1p)! An alternative provider “18866”:http://www.call18866.co.uk/printer_version.php charges somewhat more but with a connection charge of just 1p.

When I first came to the UK from Canada my phone habits changed drastically – I was used to paying nothing for local calls to my friends – now I had to pay for every call I made, so I kept my calls short. Now I suspect the boot is on the other foot – certainly my father pays around 50% more for his line rental and I’m guessing I pay less on a per-call basis (except for the fact I still have to pay 3p per call while his local calls remain completely free).

I suspect too that since companies like 1899 rely on word of mouth and (I’m guessing) people finding their website it’s (ironically) the wealthier, better connected people in the UK who can find and take advantage of these deals while poorer people without the time or skills to shop around end up paying much more.

But does it have to be the clownish conservative Boris Johnson? In France they have a serious politician blogger, “Dominique Strauss Kahn”:http://www.blogdsk.net/

We Are What We Do is a book with accompanying website that offers 50 suggestions for small things you could do to help others and/or the planet in your daily life.

Something a little odder but in the same vein is “Join Me”:http://www.join-me.co.uk/ – an international movement started by a British comedian, Danny Wallace, who simply asks its members to do RAoKs (random acts of kindness) on Fridays (hence Good Fridays). You can buy his book and listen to a radio interview made with Danny in Wisconsin (of all places!) “here”:http://wpr.org/book/040328a.html. What I find truly heartening is that thanks to something Danny started as a joke over 100,000 good deeds have been inspired. I must get around to posting him a photo and signing up…