This is surprisingly moving; it’s lovely how he can’t shut up in space and can’t find the words on the ground.
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Spy Plane To Space…
Thursday, August 19th, 2010
Lesson 1 – Its about profit not market share…
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010With 3% market share Apple now makes the majority of profits in the mobile space.
Executives at Nokia should cry themselves to sleep every night.
I wonder how much profit Vertu makes? They cost a packet I can’t see the value.
Redesigning the Boarding Pass…
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010Redesigning the Boarding Pass – Journal – Boarding Pass / Fail
Every single suggestion is better than the original. The original is the only one that someone was paid to design!
I’m willing to bet that the original design was either “evolved” from an original engineering prototype or approved by committee.
Beautiful pictures…
Saturday, July 17th, 2010“The Mercury features an extended nose section that is vital to the aerodynamics of the train, allowing it to attain speeds of 225 mph. The train also includes a very inviting, bright and comfortable interior. The top deck has windows that curve up onto the roof allowing for views of the landscape as the train races down the tracks. The 400 meter-long train also includes some private berths for families or private parties that include bars, work areas, and couches. Even a child’s play area will be integrated into the train, along with a luxurious first class section for those who want to travel in style.”
And when will this train service start? Never, it’s a press release!
The big difference with Concorde, the Spitfire, Rolls Royce and the Routemaster bus is that they never had a press release but they really did exist!
Paying for The Times Online…
Saturday, July 17th, 2010This I’d not foreseen…
“Why would I get any of my clients to talk to the Times or the Sunday Times if they are behind a paywall? Who can see it? I can’t even share a link and they aren’t on search. It’s as though their writers don’t exist anymore..”
Winds howl over the deserted moonscape behind Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper paywalls – Boing Boing.
Does this mean that the writers need to be paid more to write for a non-public site. It probably does, but I’m not sure that the writers at The Times would understand the economics of it!!!
Design counts…
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009Imagine that you work for Microsoft and you have to battle against comments like the one below.
Where do you start? At this point I don’t think that they have anywhere to go.
“I know Windows is awful. Everyone knows Windows is awful. Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it’s there, and there’s nothing you can do about it. OK, OK: I know other operating systems are available. But their advocates seem even creepier, snootier and more insistent than Mac owners. The harder they try to convince me, the more I’m repelled. To them, I’m a sheep. And they’re right. I’m a helpless, stupid, lazy sheep. I’m also a masochist. And that’s why I continue to use Windows – horrible Windows – even though I hate every second of it. It’s grim, it’s slow, everything’s badly designed and nothing really works properly: using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981. And I wouldn’t change it for the world, because I’m an abject bloody idiot and I hate myself, and this is what I deserve: to be sentenced to Windows for life.”
Entourage becomes Outlook on the Mac…
Friday, August 14th, 2009This is an interesting comment…
“they’re pre-announcing this so far in advance to discourage current Entourage users from switching to the new Exchange-compatible versions of Apple Mail and iCal in Snow Leopard.”
If this is the plan then they’re on the route to failure. Moving desktop mail client has a minimal cost. You just plug in the new client and start syncronizing the mail server. It’s a two minute job.
What seems to be happening here is that Outlook is becoming a server only tool. The poor desktop client (is there anything slower?) is killing the fanchise.
Issue sending mail on an Orange ADSL connection…
Thursday, August 14th, 2008So you’re on holiday in France. And your hosts have given you a wi-fi connection using their “Livebox”.
Of course, this took longer than anyone expected simply because everyone had forgotten that you had to press a button on the back for the first connection from a new machine. That remembered, everything is working perfectly except one thing. You can’t send mail.
Doesn’t matter how many times you try. It can’t reach the smtp server.
Well try this. Change the port that you send the mail out on to 587. Orange blocks some of the standard ones. No idea why.
Hopefully, this will help someone out there.
Why Twitter is like Word…
Thursday, August 14th, 2008Steve Gillmor is obsessed with Twitter an especially Track a specific function within Twitter that allows you to vanity search the service in real-time. Gillmor runs the wonderful Gillmor Gang podcast and every episode includes a plug for Twitter and specially a complaint about the Track functionality not being available.
All this reminds me of Word in the early 90s.
In the early 90s there was a long running functionality fight between the various word processor applications. Every few months a new version would appear with yet more functions. Every few months the magazines would run articles comparing the different packages and tell their readers which to buy.
During this period Word would often be labeled as incomplete, and missing key features. What was it missing? Word Count! Every few months, Word would be reviewed and it still wasn’t ready. Microsoft even produced a Macro to display a Word Count but the journalists just called that a fudge and not integrated.
In the end, Microsoft produced a Word Count with added extras, readability scores and such. Journalists happy; Microsoft went on to world domination.
Why is this like Twitter?
Well the Track function is fantastic is you’re Steve Gillmor, it’s what he wants. In fact, it’s also why Scoble likes FriendFeed I believe. However, they’re of no use to 95% of the users who just want to talk to friends and family.
What we’re seeing is journalists push applications developers into helping journalists and not the majority of their users.
Want another example? Who on earth needs over 2000 followers in Twitter or Facebook? Outside the world of PR and journalism it makes no sense. Let the complaints begin.
Ed Brill takes one job posting and changes reality…
Monday, August 11th, 2008Ed Brill works at the IBM Software Group and has repeatedly made claims that Accenture didn’t migrate off Notes as publicly claimed by Accenture and Microsoft.
“I have a slide in the presentation that is based on my “Then and now, episode 2″ blog entry from February. The slide shows the same two graphics that are in the blog entry — Accenture/Avanade’s claim around when they migrated off Notes, and the reality of Accenture hiring Notes developers (and using hundreds of Notes applications) today.”
And…
“It’s clear that Notes is not only not gone from the Accenture IT environment, but rather that it is still a key technology.”
It would be nice if someone from Accenture put his straight officially but nobody seems bothered. Therefore, I’ll do it unofficially…
Notes isn’t a key technology at Accenture, hasn’t been for a while. As far as I know, it exists as client software mainly so people can read their old data but Accenture is very clearly a Outlook/SharePoint shop.
So why are they hiring Notes developers? To help clients. Accenture doesn’t have a supply chain to manage but you’ll see a lot of adverts for supply chain expert jobs.
