freeg131: Philip Gamble

Following a link from Mr Needlestone’s blog I came across the blog of Drew Buddie, head of ICT at the Royal Masonic school. The latest post contained some facts about children’s usage of technology in the UK that are certainly believable but I actually found quite scary.

• 93% of all children have their own PC

I do, but it is about 8 years old and doesn’t have Internet access.

• 8 is the average age for a child to have their first mobile phone

Not sure why, but I find this a bit sad. I am now 18 and have never had a mobile phone. Go me!

• 1.4 million children own their own webspace

Not surprising at all. Especially with the rise of social networking sites in recent years.

• 2.7 billion searches are carried out on Google every month - so are children now asking Google instead of their parents?

Yes, for sure. There are lots of things I either Google purely out of curiosity, I tend to use Google as my first port of call when looking for any kind of information. But much of the material we would have simply not found in the past or would have had to ask our parents for even though they are unlikely to be specialists on solutions to take multiple deprivation in MEDCs…

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Oh the joys of using an old, and temperamental, digital camera.

This photo was taken with a Canon PowerShot A70, renowned for its E18 Error, currently selling on eBay for about £12 (~$22).

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Google AdSense is widely regarded as one of the best ad networks to use to generate revenue from your website and it is used on thousands of major and minor websites around the globe. As I recently turned 18 I decided I may as well give it a go, as I was looking for ways to increase my revenue from my most popular website, GameMaker Blog.

Jonathan Cox has used AdSense for a long time on Icebrick, the free online games website that I have long championed at my school (and converted a fair few people to as it wasn’t blocked). I must admit it has been quite satisfying on occasions to walk into the sixth form Library and see people playing games at Icebrick.com. I dug up an e-mail from 2004 in which Jon said he was getting around 5,000 page views and £2-3 from Adsense a day.

When I registered I was surprised to see that my account uses USD. M any of the other networks I use pay in USD and I fully understand the reasons for this - I more often than not pay for web services in dollars and discuss the valuations of websites in USD with other people from the UK. Although I had thought AdSense had a GBP service and assumed as I was registering with a UK address my accounts would be set up in this way. I can’t see any way to convert my account over to GBP, not that it matters, using USD will make it easier for me to see how AdSense compares to the other networks I am using. A downside however is that it will probably get me levied with a cheque cashing fee come payment day.

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I recently turned 18 so this year (May 1st) will be the first time I am able to vote.

About 3 days after my birthday I received a birthday card from the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Watford, Ian Oakley. Quite why he (or his office) were sending me a card I don’t know. If the elections this year were for parliament I could understand it, but this year’s elections are only for the district council where Ian Oakley is not standing.  Still I suppose it is nice that at least one party is trying to get the youth vote.  I wonder if he is sending cards out to everyone who turns 18 in Watford or is just targeting certain areas or perhaps just the time period up to the election.

As usual it looks like Park ward will be a two-horse race between existing Liberal Democrat councillor George Derbyshire and the Conservative candidate Malcolm Meerabux. Last year Park had the highest voter turn out of any of the wards which is unsurprising considering the close run battle a year previously when only three votes separated the top two candidates.

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