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I’m kinda wondering how Murderdrome can get rejected multiple times from the App Store due to “content” and Silent Hill can make it in? I mean – Silent Hill is scary, interactive and promotes the murder of faceless healthcare professionals. Evidently a metaphor for the NHS. Related posts: I Want A Facetime Availability Tool … Continue reading “Silent Hill on App Store”
I’m kinda wondering how Murderdrome can get rejected multiple times from the App Store due to “content” and Silent Hill can make it in?
I mean – Silent Hill is scary, interactive and promotes the murder of faceless healthcare professionals.
Evidently a metaphor for the NHS.
This is something that annoys me as much as it does Zachary. Content Silos. I’m wary of putting my data into other people’s servers. I’ve seen them fail, I’ve seen them disappear with other people’s data and I’ve seen the fallout it can cause. Why is Momentile going to be any different to Friendfeed or … Continue reading “Content Silos”
This is something that annoys me as much as it does Zachary. Content Silos.
I’m wary of putting my data into other people’s servers. I’ve seen them fail, I’ve seen them disappear with other people’s data and I’ve seen the fallout it can cause.
Why is Momentile going to be any different to Friendfeed or Brightkite or any of these other services which are vying to be our biographers? We see the use of having an automated chronicler, but is it worth it when we’re just creating pipelines to automatically populate these various services from one source. I update Twitter and my blogs. They in turn update Facebook, FriendFeed, laconi.ca and any of the other daft services I’ve signed up to. The repetition is pointless and you end up dissolving your message into a dozen different streams.
What would make me use one over another? Quite simply- heartshare.
Tom Raftery (of Greenmonk) writes: …these servers will be almost entirely idle for eleven months of the year. The alternative is that the owners put the site on a cloud platform and dial up the resources associated with it, as and when needed. This is obviously a vastly more efficient option for the site owners. … Continue reading “Green Cloud”
Tom Raftery (of Greenmonk) writes:
…these servers will be almost entirely idle for eleven months of the year. The alternative is that the owners put the site on a cloud platform and dial up the resources associated with it, as and when needed. This is obviously a vastly more efficient option for the site owners. However, that doesn’t mean that cloud computing itself is Green or efficient.
For cloud computing to be efficient, the individual servers need to be doing more work than they would be doing if not in a cloud infrastructure. The main cloud providers include Amazon, Google, IBM and more recently, Microsoft. As far as I know, none of these companies are providing utilisation data per unit, so it is not possible to know just how efficient cloud computing actually is.
I think you have to at least trust the business model of cloud computing. The whole point is that each core is utilised constantly – or as close to constantly as possible. The power sources for these datacentres can be sourced from renewable sources. The cores involved are going to be used for a wide variety of tasks therefore there is, in a global cloud, less cores created and powered overall (assuming not everyone has their demand surges at the same time.) The actual energy and materials required to create these cores are massive (compared to the size of the finished product)
The only caveat for large datacentres is that they require large amounts of air conditioning which as far as I can see, is not particularly green (though if it acted as a heat exchanger for apartments built around a datacentre then it would at least be greener and have a social consciousness element.
Where I consider Cloud Computing to be less than efficient and less than ‘green’ is in the spare capacity, in essence, how many cores are sitting waiting for the next surge of demand?
I wrote a post on digitalcircle.org today about the new Grant for R&D from InvestNI. Much like the stuff I’ve written about R&D Tax Relief and R&D Tax Credits (both of which are available), there’s some clearing up around the term “R&D” that needs to be done. During a conversation last week with Marty from … Continue reading “Research and Development? What it is.”
I wrote a post on digitalcircle.org today about the new Grant for R&D from InvestNI. Much like the stuff I’ve written about R&D Tax Relief and R&D Tax Credits (both of which are available), there’s some clearing up around the term “R&D” that needs to be done.
During a conversation last week with Marty from NoMoreArt in the Black Box Café, I said “Every line of code is…” and we both finished the sentence in entirely contradictory ways.
He said “Derived”. I said “Novel”.
Thing is, we’re both right.
Research and Development in these terms is difficult to define for software development and it galls me that R&D in these terms does not include the creation of digital content in any way despite the amount of time, technology and expertise that might be required to create that content.
In these terms, it means either “industrial research” or “experimental development”.
Industrial Research is defined as “Planned research to acquire new knowledge and skills to develop new (or significantly improved existing) products, processes or services (including prototypes).
Experimental Development is defined as “Existing knowledge/ skills used to plan/design new or improved products, processes or services.”
When writing a new application, you’re likely to be using “existing knowledge / skills” until you hit the wall where you have to do something new.
i.e. writing an image viewer is no big deal. Writing an image viewer that also handles audio, video, layers, multiple languages and internet content is “hard”. Especially when no-one else has done it.
To a degree I think software development gets a raw deal here. The work is as technical, as challenging as material science (for example) but the definitions don’t assist in the availability of grant aid. The province is looking forwards towards becoming a knowledge economy as we witness the manufacturing bastions of our past fall away.
We have to show our value here and while I think it’s a little harder to demonstrate real innovation in software in Northern Ireland (due as much to the lack of innate, home-grown talent capable of judging it for it’s real value), I think the possibilities for product-based, forward-thinking companies is immense.
Following on from yesterdays post – how much time have you spent writing on Twitter? Add to that you’ll have to guess how much time you’ve spent reading Tweets. Are we feeling productive yet? Related posts: DE-clutter Twitter: so how does it make money? Ten Apps I Want… iPad Adventures in TwitterLand
Following on from yesterdays post – how much time have you spent writing on Twitter?
Add to that you’ll have to guess how much time you’ve spent reading Tweets.
Are we feeling productive yet?
Bob Walsh of 47Hats.com tells us to stop stealing: But I know you’re stealing – and so do your friends, your coworkers, the girl you’re trying to impress. We all know. What you’re stealing is time from yourself. You grab a few minutes here, a web site there, pop an IM with a friend, check … Continue reading “Thief of Time! Stop!”
Bob Walsh of 47Hats.com tells us to stop stealing:
But I know you’re stealing – and so do your friends, your coworkers, the girl you’re trying to impress. We all know.
What you’re stealing is time from yourself.
You grab a few minutes here, a web site there, pop an IM with a friend, check out a cool new and shiny thing online and you don’t even remember doing it 10 minutes later. When you do things that hurt yourself and you can’t remember doing them, you need help.
I’ve made a super conscious effort to remain as productive as I can and this week, it’s come out in the form of finishing off a heap of blog post drafts I’ve been neglecting, finally sorting out the AdSense stuff I meant to do ages ago, getting my Paypal account in order, re-writing another chapter of the book I’m reprinting in the new year and tomorrow I’m going to de-procrastinate on two important things I’ve put off too long (one of them being to get new tyres on the car).
I think it is important, however, when you’re comfortable with the new social media networks like FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, that you use them to your benefit. It’s important to realise that a lot of data which flows through these networks is just like a river. You walk up to a river and appreciate the beauty of the water flowing but you don’t lament the water which flowed yesterday and you’re not concerned about missing the water which will flow tomorrow. That’s what Twitter and these other networks should be – it’s about the present – and not about what you missed and what is yet to come (and highlights the utter stupidity of using an @message to pass important information).
He follows up with “5 Strategies to stop stealing time from yourself”. There’s no secrets here. It’s why apps like WriteRoom did so well – people know they need to remove distractions to get things done – (which is why I sequestered myself in a side office the other day and why I spent today away from the office. I needed to think and didn’t want to get involved in the day to day banter and allow myself to get distracted.
Matt Gemmell writes about the complaints about the iPhone NDA, DRM and requirements for certificates. You’re talking about Linux, for christ’s sake. What the hell is wrong with you? If that’s your bag, sod off and install SUSE on your brick and have fun writing your own GPL’d Bluetooth stack. We’ll all still be here, … Continue reading “Experience and Attention”
Matt Gemmell writes about the complaints about the iPhone NDA, DRM and requirements for certificates.
You’re talking about Linux, for christ’s sake. What the hell is wrong with you?
If that’s your bag, sod off and install SUSE on your brick and have fun writing your own GPL’d Bluetooth stack. We’ll all still be here, using our teeny-tiny touchscreen motherfucking sex-phone which is actually going to still be around and commercially viable in 2 year’s time. With AppleCare
This is definitely how I feel about the iPhone when related to OpenMoko and the LiMo linux-based phones though I’m somewhat more confident about the Android efforts. While I think Android will have it’s own job cut out for it by entering a marketplace already hard-fought with Nokia’s Symbian, Windows Mobile and Apple’s iPhone (I suppose we can add Palm in there? Maybe?).
Android brings with it a glut of software. Some will be good, some will be bad. What’s missing from the Android solution seems to be a viable ‘business plan’ other than making money from advertising. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again – I’m the only altruist I trust and Google, with their massive advertising network, is not going to be giving an operating system away free. They care about making sure that as the web goes mobile, they own the sidewalk.
The fact remains, however, if you want handset ‘freedom’ then develop for Android or Symbian. But you take your risks when you do that, like anyone else. We don’t know how that market will play out, whether there will be a market for non-free software at all. And being paid in ‘eyeballs’ doesn’t ring right to me.
By ‘market, of course, I mean ‘money’.
The market for web apps seems to be all about ‘attention’. It’s whether you can keep someone’s eyeballs focussed on the screen long enough to provide them with some advertising to look at. Looking at web based applications, I have to still wonder about the business plans and I fear the lonegvity of any business plan that relies on advertising. On the other hand, I can see people paying to avoid advertising, whether that’s to a service/software provider (a la Twitterific) or to a company which will block advertising using proxy/blacklist/DNS hacks.
In contrast, I would hope the market for mobile software (exemplified by the iPhone) seems to be in ‘experience’. I chose my Twitter client for the iPhone based on experience: Twitterific and Twittelator just didn’t cut it for me and Twinkle provides the right amount of access to my tweets with the added advantage of seeing everyone ‘nearby’.
I’ll for the experience and it takes hard work to create an app that provides experience rather than one that just demands attention.
Dealing with Governments Well of course a customer can ask for whatever they want and demand whatever they want and throw out whatever proposal they want. Fine, but it’s “their loss.” I’m just mystified why some organizations operate that way, but they do. When dealing with monolithic organisations you have the choice to do it … Continue reading “Contractual negotiations”
Well of course a customer can ask for whatever they want and demand whatever they want and throw out whatever proposal they want. Fine, but it’s “their loss.” I’m just mystified why some organizations operate that way, but they do.
When dealing with monolithic organisations you have the choice to do it “their way or the highway” so the post linked above is typical and, frankly, a good pre-amble to going into any public procurement process.
It might even make you laugh.
Link “Macintosh share is still just a small fraction of Windows’ share, but Microsoft is treating Apple like not just a challenger, but as the opinion leader. Microsoft is responding to Apple’s marketing, and what’s worse, it’s bragging about it in public. What an incredible turnaround from Steve Jobs’ first days back at Apple, less … Continue reading “Hypenotized?”
“Macintosh share is still just a small fraction of Windows’ share, but Microsoft is treating Apple like not just a challenger, but as the opinion leader. Microsoft is responding to Apple’s marketing, and what’s worse, it’s bragging about it in public. What an incredible turnaround from Steve Jobs’ first days back at Apple, less than ten years ago, when Bill Gates appeared on the big screen and Jobs publicly kowtowed to him.”
I’d have to agree that the transformation is amazing but I think it’s premature to think that Apple is really winning anything – but Redmond is correct to respond to them as a challenger. Microsoft knows they have traditionally been slow to respond to proper challenges which is, after all, how they managed to lose the Internet the first time round (to Netscape) and the second time round (to Google).
What else would you do in their position?
Of course, you’d be working on trying to identify possible challengers and killing them when they’re small. If you let them get too large then when you make your move everyone starts screaming monopoly.
I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.7 and it wasn’t without it’s hairier moments. Was it the fact that half a dozen plugins stopped working? Or that the first time I tried it, it crapped out because of a weird symlink that I don’t remember creating? Anyway – the rest seems to have gone without much of … Continue reading “The WordPress Big Upgrade”
I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.7 and it wasn’t without it’s hairier moments. Was it the fact that half a dozen plugins stopped working? Or that the first time I tried it, it crapped out because of a weird symlink that I don’t remember creating?
Anyway – the rest seems to have gone without much of a hitch though, as you can see, I’ve had to make some minor changes here and there and my twitter notifier seems to have some sort of spasm which means you’ll have to actually follow me or something.
I’m not looking forward to having to upgrade all of my WP blogs though. That’s a serious amount of updating to be done and I think I’ll wait til some more of the plugins have been tested with 2.7.