Posts by MattWPBS 38 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jan 2010
Swiss Army Knife is the analogy I always use.
You can trim branches with the little saw blade, you can slice up food with the knife blades. If you end up trying to run a lumber business with Swiss Army Knife though, you want to take a step back and think about what you're doing.
Seriously. You can use it to do enough small different things reasonably enough. Like you can use it to open a wine bottle, open a tinned can, or trim a branch.
Problem is when people try to use it for a bigger project, get to the level where it's the equivalent of where you should use a chainsaw to chop down a copse of trees.
No, I'll happily install one using the Google/Apple API, but I have doubts about the NHSX app. It's partly that I trust Google and Apple keeping an eye on each other, it's partly that they've designed it to avoid a centralised data store that can be abused, it's partly that I don't have enough faith in the British government to swiftly build a tool containing this much personal information in one place, without screwing up somewhere along the line and accidentally exposing it.
More worried about cock up than conspiracy.
"But once Google has a preferred hardware partner that it owns outright, it is hard to see why its former partners – now rivals – would wish to continue with Android.
Expect to hear a splashing sound as dozens of OEMs dump their green plastic robots overboard. But where will they go?"
Why would they ditch it? Unless Google starts pissing about and pre-releasing stuff only to Motorola, the change is that Google now has a LOT more skin in the game, and a lot more ammunition to defend Android. Like I said, predicated on Google not pissing about and favouring Motorola. Given their model's driven by advertising, rather than hardware, I can't see them trying to shut the ecosystem like that.
Here's what you're missing (as far as I can see where it's going), these are the URLs for Google+:
www.google.com
www.gmail.com
www.youtube.com
www.blogger.com
www.picasa.com
www.google.com/calendar
www.google.com/ig
maps.google.com
news.google.com
docs.google.com
etc
etc
It really seems as if this isn't an attempt to launch a new Google product, it's Google linking everything it does together.
My guess is that the market did not expect a 100% switch to Windows Phone 7. Maybe the expected the introduction of some Windows Phone 7 phones, and maybe some Android phones as well, but not the wholesale "sod Symbian, sod MeeGo, we'll put everything on WP7".
They've just trashed their current portfolio at a stroke.
So I'm assuming that Canalys will be including all smartphones in their PC figures as well? If an iPad, a Galaxy Tab and the like are PCs, why would a couple of inches difference in screen size remove something from the category?
Or how about XBox 360s and PS3s? They've got ample processing power, and a number of applications you can download. Guess they should be counted as well.
"With screen sizes of seven inches or above, ample processing power, and a growing number of applications, pads offer a computing experience comparable to netbooks."
Like the quote says, it's "video processing and rich media customers". These are the guys offloading a lot of processing from the desktop to the servers, and they've just seen their back end hardware plans go "pft". What do you do then? Stick with Apple, without the ability to rack stuff in the data centre, or take the opportunity to look elsewhere?
Remember that Blair offered an inquiry on electoral reform, and nothing came of it. Once bitten, twice shy. Think it's going to be "referendum on reform or no deal".
For anyone who suggests that LabLib would not be legitimate:
ConLib coalition - 59.1% of the vote.
LabLib coalition - 52.1% of the vote.
Con - 36.1%, Lab - 29.1%, Lib - 23%.
If the Tories can't come to middle ground with the Lib Dems, and Labour can, then that coalition has the more legitimacy than a minority government in my mind.
http://labs.timesonline.co.uk/blog/2009/11/12/do-music-artists-do-better-in-a-world-with-illegal-file-sharing/
Interesting analysis from the Times. Music industry revenues pretty much steady overall from 2004 to 2008 (in terms of live, recorded, etc), but with revenue shifting from the record companies to the artists themselves. The problem for the labels is that the costs of production and entry to the market have plummeted - you can get a good record sorted without having to spend tens of thousands on it, but they've still got the large structure costs. Used to be that live performances were almost a promotional support for the records, now it's more that the recorded output is promotional for the live performances.
I'd recommend reading Flat Earth News by Nick Davies, if you haven't already. It's a great primer on the way that the news industry (broadcast and print) has dumbed down and 'streamlined' in the last few years. Term he uses for the reprinting of press releases is Churnalism. There's some horrific statistics in there about how the number of journalists has reduced across the regions, and how this has affected coverage of court cases and the like.
My personal opinion is that there's got to be a real shift in the relationship between a newspaper and its readers. Not in terms of user generated content, but in terms of what we expect, and what we're paying for. Tell me that my money's going on proper investigative journalism, show me the results and drop the unchecked churn, and I'll pay a good amount of money for a subscription (in print and online). It's the idea that we're investing in sustaining investigations that I think is key.
Put the summaries of the stories out in the open, and put the detail behind a very flimsy paywall. Make it clear that the reason for the paywall is that the income is needed to fund the very production of the stories that people are after, and go for their guilt to make them pay.
Never mind the entire fact that it's getting easier and easier to block online advertising, so that's probably a daft thing to base a business model on.
(also - I'm glad there's comments on Orlowski articles now, always reckon they'd be good for drawing some interesting stuff out)
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