This blog came out of the crater of the dot com bust and wireless growth. Wi-Fi was transforming the way we used the internet at home. I used to have my Mac next to my router on top of a cupboard that contained the house fuse panel and the telephone line. Many people had an internet room and used a desktop computer like a Mac Mini or an all-in-one computer like an iMac. Often this would be in the ‘den’ or the ‘man cave’. Going on the internet to email, send instant messages or surf the internet was something you did with intent.
Wi-Fi arrived alongside broadband connections and the dot com boom. Wi-Fi capable computers came in at a relatively low price point with the first Apple iBook. I had the second generation design at the end of 2001 and using the internet changed. Free Wi-Fi became a way to attract people to use a coffee shop, as a freelancer it affected where I did meetings and how I worked.
I was travelling more for work at the time. While I preferred the reliability of an ethernet connection, Wi-Fi would meet my needs just as well. UMTS or 3G wireless data plans were still relatively expensive and slow. I would eventually send low resolution pictures to Flickr and even write a blog post or two. But most of the time I used it to clear my email box, or use Google Maps if I was desperate.
4G wireless services, started to make mobile data a bit more useful, even if the telephony wasn’t great
bijin-tokei（美人時計）official website – bijin tokei is a relatively simple creative idea, really well executed. In bijin tokei pretty Japanese ladies were photographed holding a board with the time on it. This was then turned into a clock. It is a website and an iPhone app.
H.P.’s Hunk of Burning Light – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com – interesting update on optoelectronics in computing. This is an area that has been talked about since I worked in a technology lab at Corning’s old Optical Fibre business in Deeside in the mid-90s. That site is now a greenfield inside the fence of the Toyota engine plant. Optical interconnects still haven’t filled the potential of optoelectronics in computing. Instead while optical processing has been done with optoelectronics in the laboratory; it hasn’t had commercial success yet.
Reposting the Chinese Premier’s speech at Cambridge Uni « Perspectives – interesting speech by Wen Jiabao – The Chinese Government maintains that countries should: firstand foremost, run their own affairs well and refrain from shifting troubles onto others; second, carry out cooperation with full sincerity and avoid pursuing one’s own interests at the expense of others; and third, address both the symptoms and the root cause of the problem. A palliative approach will not work. We should not treat only the head when the head aches, and the foot when the foot hurts. As I reiterated at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, necessary reform of the international monetary and financial systems should be carried out to establish a new international financial order that is fair, equitable, inclusive and well-managed. We should createan institutional environment conducive to global economic growth. Let me talk briefly about how China has been responding to the crisis. The fallout of the financial crisis on China’s real economy is becoming more evident. Since the third quarter of last year, our exports have declined sharply, economic growth has slowed down, and the pressure on employment has been rising. In the face of the grim situation, we have acted decisively. We have made timely adjustment to the direction of our macroeconomic policy, promptly introduced ten measures to expand domestic demand, and formulated a series of related policies.
Mega Echelon Option – Cryptome has a very politically skewed but interesting piece alleging that MegaUpload was done in with the help of the intelligence community
Is Venture Capital Dying? – some interesting stuff here Paul Kedrosky points out that technology is a mature sector and green tech is way off prime time. This provides a disconnect that will ripple through to investors, markets and subsidiary sectors like technology integrators, resellers
Telecoms
Cisco Plans Big Push Into Server Market – NYTimes.com – this maybe a bridge too far for Cisco, after all what is a router but a couple of line terminators (ADSL, Ethernet, wi-fi, GSM, WCDMA), a server motherboard and a look-up table. Something that IBM, HP or Sun Microsystems could easily throw together and sell at cost just to crush the competition
Microsoft Executive: Netbooks Risk Cannibalizing Windows – netbooks are considered to be part of a wider consumer trend on downshifting technology. Consequently netbooks affects a business that relies on the consumer believing that continual innovation is a good thing. ASUS’ iconic eeePC netbooks even ran a Linux desktop application. Netbooks were a realisation that a lot of people use the web to check their email and create basic content. I don’t think that Google’s thin client Chromebooks are the antidote to netbooks either due to patchy networks.
ElfYourself by OfficeMax – Powered by JibJab – viral from OfficeMax for Xmas 2008. Interesting the way they went with the same concept. This isn’t as sophisticated (from a technical perspective) as their previous viral
New York Times Finds Success with Facebook Campaign – ClickZ – reading this is a bit meta: media company which makes its money by advertising, uses Facebook advertising to successfully market itself (presumably offsetting the amount it spent in acquiring traffic by advertising on Facebook with selling advertising on its own site)
UK media set for thousands more job cuts-analysts By Kate Holton LONDON (Reuters) – British media companies could cut tens of thousands more jobs in the coming years as the economic downturn hits an industry already ravaged by the Internet revolution. British newspaper groups and broadcasters have…
Nintendo announces new version of DS gaming handheld: the DSi » VentureBeat – interesting new design on the DS with the Nintendo DSi. The Nintendo DSi features two digital cameras, supports internal and external content storage, and connects to a Nintendo DSi Shop. The Nintendo DSi supports ‘physical games’ in addition to DS games with DSi-specific features and standard DS titles. The only exceptions in backwards compatibility is any DS products that use a Gameboy Advance slot.
Facebook Redesign Succeeds: Widgets Are Dead – interesting article on how the Facebook redesign has killed the basic widget Facebook application. Clearing this clutter will hopefully make Facebook a more useful and rewarding platform to use. I still personally dislike it however.
Social media and brands in 2009 – Shiny Red’s vox pop survey; nicely done. Wouldn’t necessarily agree with some of the trends such as the semantic web, but otherwise good material. More related content here.
James Earl Jones has one of the most distinctive voices in the entertainment industry as you can hear in this Sesame Street clip. You might recognise from his appearance in Conan the Barbarian film, but James Earl Jones has a surprising variety in his career across film, television and stage performance. James Earl Jones has done voiceover work for everything from Disney’s The Lion King to CNN station idents.
Hollow Spy Coins – talk about niche businesses, this is definitely on the long tail. You have to admire their dedication to engineering this.
Economics
Boomtown of Dubai feels effects of global crisis – International Herald Tribune – Until recently, credit in Dubai was growing by 49 percent a year, according to the Emirates’ Central Bank — a rate almost double that of bank deposits’ growth. That unnerved some bankers here, who felt it could lead to a collapse. “In the U.S., the challenge is about keeping the banks going,” said Marios Maratheftis, chief economist for Standard Chartered Bank. “Here, the economy has been overheated, a correction is needed, and it’s about making sure the slowdown happens in a smooth, orderly manner.”
Klein Verzet: Freaking doomed – the premise is that the demand for shipping of raw materials like coal, bauxite and iron ore have ground to a stand still and soon even the factories of China will be a lot quieter – so the economic outlook is nothing short of ammegeddon
P&G to launch washing gel that cleans at 15 degrees – Brand Republic News – Brand Republic – “According to P&G, Ariel’s Cool Clean campaign encouraged more than five times as many customers than normal to switch to low-energy washing programmes, with Ariel customers twice as likely as the average consumer to wash at a lower 30 degrees temperature (28% of Ariel customers in 2007 versus 13% of those using other brands). P&G has a partnership with the Energy Saving Trust, which encourages people to use energy efficiently and reduce their carbon footprints.”
I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Data Debasement | PBS – cloud computing versus DBMS, interesting reading, I need to go back and look at it a few more times to understand it fully. But initial take is that parallel computing as well as parallel processing changes how computing works and databases have to be adapted (like Oracle’s Grid database concept from the tail end of the dot com era and cloud computing. It’s the failings of Moore’s law rather than progress that is driving this change
Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman – while I have sympathy for some of what Mr Stallman says, his argument misses the point about the benefits of social software. Open formats and APIs allow you to move from one service to another as needs must.
I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Collateral Damage | PBS – interesting take on the mobile market, not one that I necessarily agree with, but interesting none the less. Cringely expect that Microsoft Windows Mobile software will fail and has some interesting ideas around the why. I think Microsoft has everything to play for with enterprise users and can leverage items like security authentication and Outlook email access – they might not be dominant but they could still be in with a shout
Beginning of end of megapixel marathon – Pixel count gives phones and cameras the ‘Dixons Factor’ – being able to be sold easily by some pimple-faced oik; but doesn’t mean you will have better quality pictures. I have a digital SLR which takes pictures at 5.1 megapixels and a phone camera that will do the same – no prize for which one takes the better pictures.