Jul 11 2007
0

The distinction between blogs and newspapers blurs

Posted by | design | No Comments

The distinction between blogs and newspapers blurs. A few years ago I used to get laughed at when I suggested that the model for amateur online diarists would be that for global media corporations. De facto, this is now true. There is something so fundamental and powerful about the reverse chronological list that it couldn’t be any other way, however recently something interesting has happened. Blogs are becoming more like news sites like CNN, a cover page with multi column snippet digests being slapped on the front to draw people in. The Huffington post was the first blog to do this and now Talking Points Memo has followed suit. Chatting with Nick Denton the other day we came to the agreement that traditional blog layouts don’t pull repeat readers (not SEO traffic) into the site, off the front page, very well. News sites like CNN get 10 page views per…

Read More
Jul 11 2007
0

Not if, but when, will Google be bigger than Microsoft?

Posted by | predictions | No Comments

Not if, but when, will Google be bigger than Microsoft? Google has grown 400% over the last 3ish years, while Microsoft has basically flatlined. If the current trend continues, then Google will be bigger than Microsoft before the end of 2008. In many ways that doesn’t seem unrealistic – Microsoft may be more like IBM and Google more like the fictitious Tyrell corp. Some other interesting things have happened in the tech rebound. Apple, which is less than half the size of Google, is now worth more than the entire gaggle of Internet behemoths other than Google (Amazon, Ebay and Yahoo), put together. And some things haven’t changed. Oracle is also worth about the same as Amazon, Ebay and Yahoo. Since Web2.0 largely runs on open source DBMS unlike the original Oracle powered dotcoms, this might come as some surprise. But one can never underestimate the value of enterprise and…

Read More
Jul 05 2007
0

The Obit to end all obits

Posted by | diary | No Comments

Count Gottfried von Bismarck…was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies. Ouch. Count Gottfried von Bismarck | Obituaries | News | Telegraph

Read More
Jul 02 2007
0

The iPhone Agony and the Ecstasy

Posted by | technology | No Comments

I eventually got my iPhone activated, yet 2 days later the number hasn’t processed, and ATT won’t accept anything other than a ‘fax’ (yup no sms or email can be sent to a sodding phone company), to get my international plan up and running because I have had less than 3 addresses in the US. Then I had to get a replacement iPhone because the speaker was broken. As Dave Winer would say – Oy! — And you know what? Despite the fact that ATT continue to behave like the kind of company that has a 200 yard wide dinosaur-extinction-type asteroid thingy headed for it. Its actually worth it, The iPhone is the kind of superior intelligence that can only emerge as the dinosaur’s fade. A truly innovative and disruptive piece of technology. The kind of product that will aid the fall of companies like ATT as iTunes did to…

Read More
Jul 01 2007
0

Jesus Phone Crucified by ATT

Posted by | diary | No Comments

Jesus Phone Crucified by ATT And it came to pass that on the morning of the Sabbath, there were no lines at the Apple Store in Soho. For lo, there were hordes of people on the previous eve. It was decided that the Lord had shined down on me and I wouldn’t have to wait in line like those who had not been chosen. Three score and ten seconds later I had the one they call ‘Jesus Phone’. And indeed it was truly a wondrous thing from the one they call Steve. I tapped the button and there was light – and a little slidey thing and emergency call hotline-to-God thing. But not much else before activation with the people of ATT. But the activation by the people called ATT did not work, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth and hours of moronic playing with the single…

Read More
Jun 29 2007
0

Facebook: honeymoon over.

Posted by | technology | No Comments

Here here! Jason has an excellent post about Facebook as the new AOL. Its a comparison that people don’t want to admit to being accurate, because AOL is everything that is considered unfashionable amongst the web’s key influencers, whilst Facebook is quite the thing. I must admit this short lived enthusiasm mirrors my own feelings. A couple of months ago I was breathless about it, largely because of its minimalist design. And now I find it pretty amateur and useless, despite its slick appearance. In short, there is something about Facebook that doesn’t feel like its a step forward in the development of the web. Facebook is the new AOL (kottke.org)

Read More
Jun 18 2007
0

The Design of Facebook

Posted by | design | No Comments

Almost as many people are going gaga about Facebook these days, as the iPhone and the knee-jerk reaction seems to be to focus the discussion on the ui design, since it is so conspicuously different from Myspace. Myspace is a ‘fugly’ mess, when Myspace was hip amongst the geeks, then fugly was hip. Successful things on the web, it was argued, are about customization and flexibility. The sticker-book-full-of-crap style of Myspace would do better than the stifling control enforced by some graphic design Nazi. Facebook is different, it really is well designed, and now I’m hearing some of the same people who debated the virtues of fuglyness promote facebook. Interestingly, not many people have picked up on the fact that Facebook is as different from what has become the web 2.0 style, as the Myspace style. Web 2.0 sites tend to use a lot of extraneous CSS and HTML to…

Read More
Jun 14 2007
0

Apple’s future rests on the keyboard – or lack of it.

Posted by | design | No Comments

NYTimes “If there is a billion-dollar gamble underlying Apple’s iPhone, it lies in what this smart cellphone does not have: a mechanical keyboard.” This pretty much sums it up. Apples nailed the perfect form factor with the iPod (a cigarette packet rather than the disastrous Newton brick). However, things have moved on since, in the world of smartphones and the Blackberry style keyboard beneath screen is ‘good enough’. I feel myself drooling over the iPhone but wishing it had a keyboard. And that seems worrying.

Read More
May 18 2007
0

T-Mobile Instant Message Scam

Posted by | Uncategorized | No Comments

T-Mobile charge 10c for every line of an IM conversation! Its worth checking the small print of your cell phone plan: Amazingly, T-Mobile are charging me 10c every single time I hit return, while using AIM on my Blackberry. They treat each individual line in an IM message as a separate text messag – which seems like a total scam. Can you imagine the outcry if using Instant messenger cost this on a computer? “Instant Messaging Use your existing username and Yahoo! Messenger or AOL Instant Messenger to see who’s available, then chat instantly–just like on your computer. Each instant message sent or received is charged or deducted as a text message. You may also be charged for all the administrative functions such as buddy list updates or signing on and off. “

Read More
May 16 2007
0

In defense of Technorati

Posted by | search engines | No Comments

After 911 AltaVista scored some rare Brownie Points against Google, in the press, because Google didn’t have news search, but AV did, via Moreover. Google News was built largely as a result of 911. It proved that Moreover was a news search engine, but it was too late. Our PR company had told us that ‘search is dead’ and without a revenue model for search engines, there was pressure from all sides to make Moreover something else – which resulted in all sorts of convoluted bullshit and meant that Moreover never had decent technology for full-text search. Eppur Si Muove. Technorati is in the same boat, there is probably a great deal of pressure not to call it a blog search engine, and perhaps for a different reason than Moreover – that Google is too difficult to take head on. I may sound arrogant, but I cant help feeling that…

Read More