Last week, I chaired the “All in hand: Working with handheld devices conference”, which took place at the Royal College of Surgeon in London. It included various presentations from small- to large-scale UK museums discussing their experience with mobile interpretation.

As you may know if you follow Cogapp on twitter, each Thursday we all pile into a local pub and learn craft skills from our very knowledgeable colleagues! So far we’ve had four-week introductions to knitting, drawing and origami courtesy of Joe, Eleanor and Martin.

There’s a lot of talk about “paywalls”. It’s usually about newspapers, and it’s almost always just about news. It shouldn’t be.

Nor should Rupert Murdoch’s introduction of a pay-to-view model be regarded as an act of desperation. This could be the moment newspapers finally begin to get it right.

Am I willing to pay for a trusted digital offering that helps make my life better, more prosperous, and better informed? Definitely.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to take part in a workshop run by D&AD, called 'Typography - Love Letters'. It was part of a wider group of design orientated professional development courses that they run; they're definitely worth a look. The course was run by Phil Baines, professor of typography at Central St Martins, where the course was held. The basic premise for the workshop was to spend the day as far away from a computer as possible*, get our hands dirty with good old pencils, paper, scissors and glue, and have a good look at some letters.

We started the day by drawing out lots of letters, many times. Phil provided us each with two pencils sellotaped together that looked at bit like this - 

Two weeks ago our interactive installations for the Magnificent Maps Exhibition were unveiled at the British Library. It was a project that Cogapp felt particularly proud of and thoroughly enjoyed working on. To mark the occasion, it seemed only right that our Cake Thursday was dedicated to a show’n’tell of the Magnificent Maps Project. What made this event even more momentous wasn't just that it fell on the day of the general election but also the fact it was the final of the great Cogapp bake-off, a highly anticipated event that would determine Cogapp’s most superior treat maker and a title earning both respect and a little resentfulness in the Cogapp studio. 

Last week before the Volcano overshadowed any events, Joe Baskerville and I headed over to Denver for Museums and the Web 2010- a major international conference for Museums in the digital space. The conference is a hub of information from the sector with a series of lectures, workshops, conferences, and presentations all exploring the issues of museums online.

WITHIN minutes of speaking to the Queen, the Prime Minister had sent me a quick email. I wasn’t surprised. It was the fourth time he had been in touch in recent weeks.