Curated computing is no substitute for the personal and handmade | Cory Doctorow

Bespoke computing experiences promise a pipe dream of safety and beauty – but the real delight lies in making your own choices The launch of the iPad and the general success of mobile device app stores has created a buzzword frenzy for "curated" computing – computing experiences where software and wallpaper and attendant foofaraw for your device are hand-picked for your pleasure. In theory, this creates an aesthetically uniform, and above all safe and easy, computing environment, as the curators see to it that only the very prettiest, easiest-to-use and most virus-free apps show up in the store. I'm all for it. After all, I've spent the past 10 years co-curating Boing Boing , a place where my business-partners and I pick the websites that interest us the most and assemble them into a kind of deep, wide, searchable catalogue of things that you should know, do, and marvel at. We've recently launched a store, the Boing Boing Bazaar, consisting of the most interesting inventions, clothing, gadgets, decor, and assorted gubbins that our readers have created, as picked by us. My Twitter account mostly consists of retweets from other twitterers – my collection of the best tweets I've seen today. I am a born curator, and have spent my life amassing collections and showing them off. But there's something important to note about all these curatorial roles I enjoy: none of them are coercive. No one forces you to read Boing Boing, and if you do, there's nothing that prevents you from reading another weblog (or a couple hundred other weblogs). Order as many gizmos as you'd like from the Boing Boing Bazaar, we'll never tell you that you can't fill your knick-knack shelves from anyone else's curated wunderkammer . Follow me on Twitter if it pleases you, and feel free to follow anyone else you find interesting. The beauty of noncoercive curation is that there are so many reasons we value things, it's really impossible to imagine that any one place will serve as a one-stop shop for our needs. Two categories in particular won't ever be fulfilled by a curator: first, the personal. No curator is likely to post pictures of my family, videos of my daughter, notes from my wife, stories I wrote in my adolescence that my mum's recovered from a carton in the basement. My own mediascape includes lots of this stuff, and it is every bit as compelling and fulfilling as the slickest, most artistic works that show up in the professional streams.

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Curated computing is no substitute for the personal and handmade | Cory Doctorow

Watchmen’s Dave Gibbons on graphic art, computers and the dreaded Comic Sans

The Watchmen co-creator on how computers have liberated him as an artist – and the dubious honour of inspiring Comic Sans Dave Gibbons, the man who co-created Watchmen in 1986 with the writer Alan Moore, is in demand. Interest in the world's best graphic novel – described as the Citizen Kane of comic books – has been given a fresh boost by the appearance of a movie adaptation directed by Zack Snyder, and by Watching the Watchmen, Gibbons's new book about its creation

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Watchmen's Dave Gibbons on graphic art, computers and the dreaded Comic Sans

Which (British) computer magazine?

Now Personal Computer World has ceased publication, Tim Heeley wants something else to read Personal Computer World has been my tech bible over the last two decades for learning about computing. Where do I turn now to get my monthly fix? Tim Heeley PC Pro is my favourite read (and, to declare an interest, I've written for it), while the fortnightly Computeractive is friendly and very easy to read. PC Advisor is also worth a look. Computing guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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Which (British) computer magazine?

Personal Computer World magazine to close

Incisive is pulling the plug on Europe's first personal computer magazine Personal Computer World was, I think, Europe's first personal computer magazine (there were American ones, such as Byte) and first appeared with an undated issue in 1978 . You can see the first cover here PCW was very popular in the 1980s, partly because it covered the whole field from the Sinclair Spectrum to the IBM PC, and for some of us, because of Guy Kewney's idiosyncratic but extremely readable news column. PCW was never the same without him. Its market was, of course, rapidly undercut by the growth of more targeted magazines, with one or more titles appearing for almost every computer platform and numerous special interests. Under the circumstances, perhaps PCW survived longer than many might have expected. PCW is now owned by Incisive Media Ltd, which bought it as part of VNU Business Publications in 2007. According to Press Gazette , "Incisive has blamed the closure on the 'unprecedented adverse economic climate'." In the early 1980s, I edited what was probably Europe's second personal computer magazine, Practical Computing, which many considered a rival. In fact, of course, we were all friends, and later I wrote a column for PCW. In this kind of market, the real competition is made up of photography, hi-fi, car, boating and other rival interests. Magazines Computing guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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Personal Computer World magazine to close

Ted Nelson returns, with a book

Ted Nelson was a sort of father to the personal computer revolution, before PCs really existed, coined the term hypertext, and invented a sort of World Wide Web long before Tim Berners-Lee. As a New York Times story says: "A generation of young computer enthusiasts who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s was deeply influenced by Mr. Nelson's ideas." Having influenced the world with books like Computer Lib , Nelson, now 71, has a look back: In his self-published new book, "Geeks Bearing Gifts: How the Computer World Got This Way" (available on lulu.com), Mr. Nelson, 71, takes stock of the computing world. The look back by this forward-thinking man is not without its bitterness. The Web, after all, can be seen as a bastardization of his original notion that hyperlinks should point both forward and backward. Both Ted Nelson and Bill Gates announced they were starting software companies at "the one and only World Altair Computer Conference, Albuquerque" in 1976. You can see how that turned out. While Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and many others made lots of money from products during the PC revolution, Nelson didn't.

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Ted Nelson returns, with a book