http://www.spada.co.uk Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:46:24 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In Australia, an Australian court recently allowed lawyers to use Facebook to serve a couple of with a default judgment. In Canada, esthetician Crystal Bell was recently fired via Facebook. In America, Carolyn Elefant suspects that a social media sacking would not be contrary to employment law (of which there isn't all ... http://www.spada.co.uk/a-social-media-sacking/ Could selling front page advertising space help save the newspaper industry? The New York Times thinks so. As this story from the Australian confirms, it's joined the growing trend of US newspapers offering prime time ad space. But is it too little, too late? We suspect that media commentator Roy Greenslade ... http://www.spada.co.uk/newspapers-must-innovate-to-survive/ There's a thoughtful piece over at WealthBriefing on the likely stance of HNW Investors over the next 12 months. Interestingly, risk is not wholly off the table. Click here to learn why (clue: there is a hint of some all too rare good news in the phrase "markets are likely ... http://www.spada.co.uk/hnw-investors-not-as-cautious-as-you-might-think-for-2009/ Since this blog began, Blade and his colleagues have banged the Web 2.0 drum. That's eight or nine months of drumming, though perhaps we made the most noise in August last year, in accompaniment to the melody occasioned by the publication of Spada's White Paper, The Laity Bytes Back? Regular ... http://www.spada.co.uk/web-20-it-might-just-save-the-world/ It's that time of year again. The time when Lake Superior State University issues its annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. As Lucy Mangan notes in today's Guardian, this is the University's 34th such list. The first list, in 1976, ... http://www.spada.co.uk/banned-words-for-2009/ Blade is intrigued by a suggestion which wends its way from Australian journalist Evan Whitton, a columnist with the online legal journal Justinian. Whitton is no shrinking violet when it comes to acerbic commentary on the legal profession. Indeed, anyone who has authored hard-hitting books such as Serial Liars: How Lawyers ... http://www.spada.co.uk/recession-opportunity/ It's back. Yes, a new series of Channel 4's covertly Proustian analysis of societal mores, Celebrity Big Brother, returns to our screens. Here at Swordplay, we can't wait, for one of the housemates - alongside rapper Coolio, a former Sugababe and Ulrika "£175,000 (allegedly) for three weeks" Jonsson, to name but ... http://www.spada.co.uk/for-those-who-love-lists/ Blade and his fellows from deep within the labyrinths of Swordplay would like to wish all readers a Happy New Year. It may, for many of us in the professional sector, be an even more difficult one than 2008, but there is no alternative but to keep on going on, as ... http://www.spada.co.uk/web-20-2009-still-here-thanks/ Christmas is all but here, but its eve brings a problem. We speak not of the endless doom and gloom in all newspapers (for this is the season to be jolly, and we're jolly well going to be jolly, thank you), but of the dread realisation that one has not ... http://www.spada.co.uk/last-minute-web-20-solution-to-christmas-card-failure/ There's an interesting piece in the Independent today hypothesizing that this Thursday might just be "the last Christmas Day on which everyone in Britain watches the same programmes at the same time." The reason is not, sadly, because next year the country is set to awaken from its decades-long mass ... http://www.spada.co.uk/time-to-give-up-tv/