Why Twitter (or alike) should replace email

I get a lot of email. I also have quite a few people who talk to me via Instant Messenger. On top of that there are the blogs I read. And then there’s Twitter where you can have a conversation, albeit somewhat public for the most part (though private messages are supported). Twitter-like services are … Continue reading “Why Twitter (or alike) should replace email”

I get a lot of email. I also have quite a few people who talk to me via Instant Messenger. On top of that there are the blogs I read. And then there’s Twitter where you can have a conversation, albeit somewhat public for the most part (though private messages are supported).

Twitter-like services are a contender for replacing email as they provide a method of controlling spam. That’s my main message here considering how much email spam I get all day. I spend a lot of time identifying messages as junk or taking the risk and deleting junk messages from my junk mail folder without a second glance.

I set my instant messenger to only show my presence to friends. And modern IM services allow you to send messages to offline people so they pick them up when they log on next time. Spam is controlled.

I pay attention to the blogs I read because the people there have something to say. With the exception of news.bbc.co.uk I don’t visit any other sites for news. I dump blogs which contain too many ads or which just talk about themselves all the time.

I say all of this after half a dozen spambots just followed me on Twitter. I glanced at their profile names and didn’t follow them. They’re not even in my field of vision.

Why else could it work better then email?

  • Updates by RSS (over http rather than smtp/pop/imap which would work through proxies better)
  • You follow who you choose rather than just attempting to filter out the crap they send you for free.
  • RSS has support for attachments. Isn’t this the only reason to really use email anyway?

7 Habits of Highly Successful People

A bit of satire for a Friday afternoon courtesy of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Skiing Yachting Snorkeling Golf Polo Dinner parties Shopping Related posts: ADBE: Nearly there ASPIRE Successful companies Videogames don’t kill people, People do.

A bit of satire for a Friday afternoon courtesy of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency:

  1. Skiing
  2. Yachting
  3. Snorkeling
  4. Golf
  5. Polo
  6. Dinner parties
  7. Shopping

Armchair CEO on FastCompany.tv

A while ago I ragged on Robert Scoble (almost silently because, let’s face it, who read my tripe?) because he was talking about marketing and startups and worked at Microsoft. See the oxymoron there? Working at arguably the most powerful corporation in the world (yeah, they know the backdoor codes for every copy of Windows) … Continue reading “Armchair CEO on FastCompany.tv”

A while ago I ragged on Robert Scoble (almost silently because, let’s face it, who read my tripe?) because he was talking about marketing and startups and worked at Microsoft. See the oxymoron there? Working at arguably the most powerful corporation in the world (yeah, they know the backdoor codes for every copy of Windows) and giving advice about marketing and startups – one thing that Microsoft has legions of people working on and the other hasn’t been a feature of Microsoft since the seventies. I remember disagreeing with Robert (from the comfort of my chair) at the time with an indignant “What the hell does he know! but I have to accept that the guy is an expert at what he does. And defining the ‘what he does’ becomes important.

When Robert left Microsoft to go to a short gig at Podtech, he said that working for a startup was exciting. Fair enough, Robert, this still isn’t what most of us were doing from day to day. We were running our own startups.

So, not long after, Robert moves to FastCompany.tv as the Managing Director and that’s his first real experience of a startup. He’s got an established brand (no matter what you may think of Fast Company), he’s got some funding, he’s got the A-list blogger hype machine and he pulls in some old pals to help him. He has advantages that most startups never have (yeah, start again by being a nobody, having a 300 sq ft office, 5 employees who have just been laid off from the last bit of work, £10 000 in your personal savings and no clients – you have enough money to pay salaries and taxes for one month and that’s your nest egg gone – now tell me it’s hard work).

So he gives it a go with all of this.

And it’s a disaster.

I’ve yet to finish a Scoble video because halfway through I just click off. Is this attention deficit on my part? I guess I can take the blame?

Tyme White writes about the recent stink with Fast Company, Loren Feldman and Shel Israel:

“The core problem, in my opinion, is that Fast Company picked the wrong people to accomplish their goals. These people are probably “good” people (nice, kind, considerate, etc.) but they aren’t placed in positions where their strengths would benefit the company. There isn’t a system in place to overcome their weakened positions. It is my opinion if people were placed in positions they were more qualified to fill, these issues would not have happened in the first place and now that they have, they would be mitigated.”

What’s my take? I’m broadly in agreement with Tyme. Robert Scoble is an A-list blogger and he has enough interest from the net to make someone a shedload of money. But why put a ‘producer’ in a ‘manager’ position if not just for the kudos. The recent hubbub with Shel Israel just highlights how Robert isn’t a hiring manager (and Shel doesn’t have a thick enough skin yet to take the criticism that being a public figure buys you.). You want to be an internet sensation, you have to be able to take the hits too. Robert has, for the most part, weathered most hits but it seems inevitable to me that his idle boast of ignoring 17000 people on Twitter is going to bite him in the ass at some point in the future. You can’t manage a company and fulfill the ‘legend’ of Robert Scoble. Not just because there isn’t enough time but because only one person can fulfill that legend and he’s not a manager (yet).

Of course, I’m a classic armchair CEO pointing out the discrepancies in someone else’s work and I’m 100% sure that my own little companies bring in a small percentage of the revenue required to keep FastCompany.tv ticking over so there may be something I’m missing. I know my brand sucks.

Teacakes

Reporting the breaking news of the day we have the BBC “UK tax officials acknowledged that chocolate teacakes had been wrongly classed as biscuits in 1994, prompting M&S to launch a legal battle to have the wrongly-paid VAT returned.” Anyone want to see if the price of M&S chocolate tea-cakes decreases by 17.5%? How are … Continue reading “Teacakes”

Reporting the breaking news of the day we have the BBC

“UK tax officials acknowledged that chocolate teacakes had been wrongly classed as biscuits in 1994, prompting M&S to launch a legal battle to have the wrongly-paid VAT returned.”

Anyone want to see if the price of M&S chocolate tea-cakes decreases by 17.5%?

How are M&S going to return this £3.5 million to the people who were erroneously charged VAT?

I think the Treasury should refund the consumers directly to anyone who shows a receipt and the remainder used to line the pockets of our nation’s top politicians.

Lunch

Considerably better than the school canteen out at $BIG_COMPANY is pretty much everything else. Even McDonalds (because they at least give you WiFi). Today I had lunch at Kainan Cafe, at the end of Royal Avenue. They have a blog as well which impresses me no end. What you can see there is Pork bellies … Continue reading “Lunch”

Considerably better than the school canteen out at $BIG_COMPANY is pretty much everything else. Even McDonalds (because they at least give you WiFi).

Today I had lunch at Kainan Cafe, at the end of Royal Avenue. They have a blog as well which impresses me no end.

What you can see there is Pork bellies with Black Pudding, Sour Soup (Yum!) and Pork Brisket. The Pork bellies were a little sweet for me but still very tasty. The brisket had some bones but was delicious. All very reasonably priced as well.

It was intimate, comfy, no-frills and very friendly. Me like.

Who wouldn’t want to get started in movies?

Look at this. “…four guys, a car full of props and gear, and a boatload of post-production time, can recreate the Normandy Invasion of WWII. All it takes is a lot of creativity, patience, and running. Lots of running, climbing, and, well, falling down. Mike Cane on modern film-making: “I bring up Danger Man for … Continue reading “Who wouldn’t want to get started in movies?”

Look at this.

“…four guys, a car full of props and gear, and a boatload of post-production time, can recreate the Normandy Invasion of WWII. All it takes is a lot of creativity, patience, and running. Lots of running, climbing, and, well, falling down.

Mike Cane on modern film-making:

“I bring up Danger Man for an important reason.
Why isn’t something like this being done on the Net?
Why are people taking all that wonderful, affordable digital production technology and producing absolute shit with it?
There were some sets in Danger Man that couldn’t have been more than ten feet deep and comprised of only two walls.”

Nuts

Using dried fruit and nuts to keep me off the chocolate. But, you have to ask, why is it that a nut can look fine but when you chew it, it tastes like the devil shat in your mouth. Why is it just nuts that behave this way? Related posts: Second course at Old Hansa, … Continue reading “Nuts”

Using dried fruit and nuts to keep me off the chocolate. But, you have to ask, why is it that a nut can look fine but when you chew it, it tastes like the devil shat in your mouth.

Why is it just nuts that behave this way?

Streaming Video: who pays the cost?

From the BBC: “A row about who should pay for extra network costs incurred by the iPlayer has broken out between internet service providers (ISPs) and the BBC. ISPs say the on-demand TV service is putting strain on their networks, which need to be upgraded to cope.” So, Mr Whiny ISP guy, why not upgrade … Continue reading “Streaming Video: who pays the cost?”

From the BBC:

“A row about who should pay for extra network costs incurred by the iPlayer has broken out between internet service providers (ISPs) and the BBC.

ISPs say the on-demand TV service is putting strain on their networks, which need to be upgraded to cope.”

So, Mr Whiny ISP guy, why not upgrade your network with the cash you’ve been raking in?

The theory is: now we can catch up on Easties if we’ve missed it, the ISPs networks are starting to experience some strain. But, I hear you say, I have a 6 Mbit download from my ISP and the BBC iPlayer only takes up a fraction of that. And yes, that’s true, but the ISPs have been dishonest with us, taking the same backbone and selling it hundreds of times over to us.

For example, an ISP might buy a 100 Mbit link from a backbone vendor and then sell that to a hundred people, offering them speeds ranging from 512 Kbit to 6 Mbit. They oversell the bandwidth they have because they know that not everyone is going to use it.

They’ve benefited from the fact that most of us only send the occasional email and browse the web (and even then only during the daylight hours) a little while taking in subscription fees. They’ve come down hard on people who abuse the network because their advertised “Unlimited” accounts actually have hard limits.

This time I’m siding with the BBC. The ISPs need to suck it in. I’m paying for my 6 Mbit and I demand the right to download whatever legal content I want. This is a cynical attempt by ISPs to get the BBC to foot the bill for their lack of vision and their dishonesty to customers. They already have mechanisms to prevent abuse of their networks via capped limits and small-print fair use policies.

We the consumer are paying for these bandwidth speeds and, presumably, the ability to use them. We can expect that many poorly-run ISPs will quickly raise their prices in order to pay for the backhaul network upgrade.

This comes mere hours after I was pleased to hear that the BBC and Nintendo had inked a deal where iPlayer would be available for the Wii.

SXSW Slide

No idea who posted this. If you can attribute it, hit the comments section.   [UPDATE:http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/913-question-your-work – thanks to Paul Baily] Related posts: “Music: an aperitif for the maw of Digital” Make it more… Infurious at SXSW 17/500 panels at SXSW are about women in tech.

No idea who posted this. If you can attribute it, hit the comments section.

 
[UPDATE:http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/913-question-your-work – thanks to Paul Baily]