Posts by Tom Slee

Uber, Lyft and cutting corners: The true face of the Sharing Economy

Re: One word: disintermediation

Compared to waving down a cab and paying the driver with cash, an iPhone, an app, a credit card payment system, and a price set by Uber seems like a lot of intermediaries.

Airbnb might get $10bn price tag ... despite its legal woes

Language

The terms used in Airbnb's report are adorably vague. "generating" £502m in economic activity? "supported" 11,629 jobs? what do those things mean? The 300-word report certainly doesn't say.

Google News serves up...Wikipedia links

But why?

I agree that Google is boosting Wikipedia, but I really don't understand why it would and will remain sceptical until I see a reasonable explanation. After all, Wikipedia is a huge pile of AdSense-free and double-click free pages; it's difficult to see it as anything other than a thorn in google's side.

Analyst forecasts Apple Kindle-killer for 2010

It's the screen

The distinguishing feature of an ebook reader is a non-luminous screen, for long periods of reading. Will a non-luminous screen host a browser in a year? I would have thought it would take another few before response times become acceptable.

Satanic net neologisms - nominations invited

repurpose

all over again

monetize

"profit from" does just as well in any case I have seen, without the prat quotient.

Google questions Verizon 'open network'

Oh quit your whinging, Google

Of course, Google could have actually reached into its pocket and put one of its many bags of actual money on the table. Criticising from the sidelines is a pastime that should be reserved for those of us who don't have the aforesaid bags of actual money.

From on-premises to on-demand

Premises

I am very glad to see you avoid "on-premise" and take all those extra pixels and syllables to spell out "on-premises". I've been trying to tell people that "premise" is not a word - at least, not one that means a singular of "premises" but no one listens I tell you. No one.

A database solution is more than database software

Synchronization matters too

[disclaimer - I work for Sybase]

Your point about it being "not just the database software" is a good one. It will be interesting to see how quickly developers working on mobile phones move towards thinking about storage in relational terms, and I hope you are right that SQL Anywhere 10 catalyzes that change. Given the changes in data storage and wireless networks it has to happen sooner or later, so it might as well be sooner.

There is another part that matters though, which is data synchronization. Data on the phone is rarely isolated - especially if it is for business use -- so sclable and efficient data synchronization matters as well as data storage. Which is one of the reasons that we think SQL Anywhere is a particularly good solution for developers' needs, and not just one more database that can fit in a mobile phone.