Went to my first London Bloggers meeting last night.

I was a bit late, due to a previous meeting, however the get together proved to be a sociable and worthwhile event, held in the legendary Coach and Horses in Soho.

Will definitely be attending again!

Another good Grand Prix at Malaysia during the weekend.

Not as many thrills and spills as Australia but this was expected as the Malaysian track is a more conventional modern configuration.

The ITV streaming this time was the correct aspect ratio – not surprising since the coverage was 16 by 9 which was displayed in a 16 by 9 box on their website!

Shock announcement on the UK television coverage rights, moving from ITV to the BBC two years before the end of the current contract.

This is good if, for nothing else, there will no advertisements intruding into the coverage.

Bernie Ecclestone gives some background and there’s interesting analysis in The Guardian on the reasons behind the rights change.

Memories of the BBC Micro from four of the architects of the machine from the early 1980’s.

The BBC Micro was, for many in the UK, their first introduction to home computing.

Fantastic machine – I had one and cut my teeth on BBC BASIC.

Inspired by WordCamp Dallas 2008 I’m floating the idea of WordCamp UK at some point this year.

The idea has already gone around a number of WordPress mailing lists and elsewhere, and in the light of feedback I’m posting this to ascertain the level of interest.

Don’t hesitate to add a comment to this post so the practicality of such an event can be gauged.

I’m happy to take part in organising such an event if it seems to be a good idea – it would be useful even at this early stage to see if anyone else is prepared to be involved in making arrangements etc.

Here’s one description of WordCamp:

WordCamp is a (semi) BarCamp-style conference where users of the Open Source blogging software WordPress can meet and share tips and experiences with one another.

Some initial thoughts to get the discussion going:

• Format: A little more structured, such as WordCamp Dallas 2008, or more BarCamp, as WordCamp Hamburg?
• Size: Number of attendees?
• Location: London or other city? Take into account travelling and accommodation.
• Sponsorship: Would be good to subsidise the event!

Finally a list of previous WordCamps I’m aware of:

• WordCamp Hamburg
• WordCamp Argentina
• WordCamp Israel
• WordCamp Melbourne
• WordCamp Beijing
• WordCamp 2007
• WordCamp 2006

Plus WordCamp Report for reference.

Update Saturday 22 March 2008 at 1531: I’ve set up a WordCamp UK mailing list.

Update Monday 24 March 2008 at 1522: Here’s the RSS feed for comments to this post.

Update Thursday 27 March 2008 at 0649: WordCamp Melbourne and Argentina added to list above.

Update Monday 31 March 2008 at 0028: I’ve now set up a WordPress UK wiki.

Yahoo has announced support for semantic web standards as part of its search system.

This is definitely excellent news!

Here’s some commentary on the announcement.

Good summary of the current situation surrounding Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.

The piece concludes:

The conversation [with Dean Hachamovitch IE general manager] shows that while Microsoft is clearly serious about implementing better web standards in IE8, the battle for control over which technology dominates the web is not over yet.

Facinating 27 minute video interview with World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee on the BBC News site.

The interview covers privacy, choice, social networking, openness and the future of the web.

There’s also an interesting accompanying blog entry by interviewer Rory Cellan-Jones.

kottke.org is 10 years old.

I’ve long followed Jason Kottke’s site, which is one of the longest running blogs on the web.

Here’s to the next 10 years – congratulations Jason!