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Yahoo wants to be eaten by Microsoft

BBC link Microsoft has offered to buy the search engine company Yahoo for $44.6bn (Â£22.4bn) in cash and shares. Yes, that’s not going to be an immense culture clash. Related posts: SchrÃ¶dinger’s Microsoft Microsoft gives up on Yahoo. Who wants to eat dog food? Permanent Secretary of Cabinet Office wants Apple in Government

BBC link

Microsoft has offered to buy the search engine company Yahoo for $44.6bn (Â£22.4bn) in cash and shares.

Yes, that’s not going to be an immense culture clash.

Remove your assumptions

Jens Alfke’s latest blog post rambles about a couple of things but finishes on something that I really empathised with: Apple engineer: â€¦and the layout needs to take into account ligatures and contextual forms, where adjacent letters change glyphs depending on neighboring characters, or even merge into a single glyph. Sun engineer: Câ€™mon, is this … Continue reading “Remove your assumptions”

Jens Alfke’s latest blog post rambles about a couple of things but finishes on something that I really empathised with:

Apple engineer: â€¦and the layout needs to take into account ligatures and contextual forms, where adjacent letters change glyphs depending on neighboring characters, or even merge into a single glyph.

Sun engineer: Câ€™mon, is this important? How many people need advanced typographic features like that, anyway?

Apple engineer: [after a pause] Well, there are over 900 million of them in India alone, and another 200 million or so in the Arabic world.

Sometimes it feels like I’ve been bashing my head off a brick wall for, well, years. Motivating people to not do ‘half-a-job’ is actually hard.

Yesterday I almost had a stand up argument with a guy in my team in $BIG_COMPANY on the definition of ‘complete documentation’. I want documentation that can be read and understood by novices and managers. He wants it to be opaque enough so that you require understanding in order to work with it. In the end we sat down and he demonstrated it to me and I tried it. Within about 5 minutes we hit the first stumbling block in his documentation. He asked if I had the database interfaces set up. I replied “The what, the who and the where?”. So we need to add a piece about database interfaces. Then we needed to add another piece about how to log into the server. Then how to run an update. Then how to publish the updates. Then how to check the updates have been completed. In all, the additional bits were more than twice the original document and spawned two more wiki pages. In the end he agreed with me, the documentation was half done but the journey was a lot harder than it should have been.

Writing technical documentation is not an art. Writing it for non-technical users in order to help them learn is not an art. It just requires removing assumptions.

When building my second office in Mac-Sys, we had a square room to modify and the original assumption was to put a single wall, parallel to one of the other walls, in. By questioning the assumptions (that a single wall, parallel to another wall was the only way to go) we put in a ‘shaped’ wall which provided us with nearly 50% more wall space in a room where wall space was a premium (for shelving, storage, desks, etc).

If you’re in a job you don’t like and your choices are (or seem to be)
a. leave
b. suffer
Then you really should be looking for c.. I can’t tell you what c. is for you but when I was in Nortel it was as a simple as bringing in a laptop to work with me and increasing my productivity (and reducing my frustration with Windows NT). There may be ways you can change your work day in order to improve your work life. Would working part time from home make a difference? Would time-shifting your work day by an hour help? (I much prefer working from 07:30-16:00 as it removes a LOT of traffic from my commute).

Remove your assumptions and consider new ways.

There is always a c.

iPhone sales predictions

IFrogz, among others speculates if Apple will sell 10 million phones by the end of 2008. I like iFrogz, I like the cases and whatnot they do, though I’m currently using a Capsule from SwitchEasy which is excellent. If Apple is to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of this year they will have … Continue reading “iPhone sales predictions”

If Apple is to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of this year they will have to sell 200,000 more per quarter than they did over the hottest time of the year, the Christmas season. During that time last year Apple sold 2.3 million.

In the first six months the iPhone was on sale, it sold 4 million units. That was in 2 quarters in the US and less than 1 quarter in France, Germany and the UK. Steve Jobs aimed at 10 million iPhones out there by the end of 2008. A rather optimistic claim but one that everyone has jumped on.

If Apple only do 9, 200, 000 iPhone sales, will the entire affair be a flop. Do the math. The extra 200 000 units per quarter only adds up to an extra 800 000 phones in the remaining 4 quarters. If they only did 8 million iPhones by the end of 2008, would it be a flop? Of course not. Some heads may roll but the sky will not fall and the sun will still rise.

Some people speculate shaving $50 off the price of the phone would create an instant surge. Maybe, maybe not. I seriously doubt it. The issue most people have is the contract but, as we saw yesterday, O2 have just doubled their voice minutes allowance and increased the text allowance on the iPhone contracts they offer. I now have 1200 minutes and 500 texts and unlimited data which is more than I will ever use. People on the cheapest Â£35 tariff will now enjoy 600 minutes and 500 texts which is a huge improvement (from 200 and 200 respectively). This is where the innovation will come. With 1200 free minutes, I almost can’t be bothered wondering if Skype will appear on the iPhone unless I’m calling internationally (which is so infrequent I wouldn’t care anywway).

The iPhone is also just onto AT&T’s business tariffs and will be added to O2’s business tariff soon. This is excellently timed as the SDK is to be released in a few days and some early access developers (such as SAP) already have their client software ready to go.

So chill out on the numbers. It could be 9 million, it could explode to 20 million. We don’t know. What we do know is that a lot of the bloody things will be sold in the next 11 months.

OpenIsland tomorrow

OpenIsland is on tomorrow and will be another large collection of beardy-weirdies the way the FOSS Means Business conference in 2006 attracted them. There’s a couple more posts after that one which describe it in further detail. I want to go but I also have to work. There’s very little chance that $BIG_COMPANY is progressive … Continue reading “OpenIsland tomorrow”

I want to go but I also have to work. There’s very little chance that $BIG_COMPANY is progressive enough to entertain the idea of attending conferences on company time.

What’s missing on iPhone

A discussion on the NiMUG forums about the features missing on the iPhone sparked this post. Proper MMS support – to be honest I don’t miss this at all. Looking back on my previous tariffs I only ever sent about 1 picture a month (though my tariff allowed for 15) and I only received 1-2 … Continue reading “What’s missing on iPhone”

A discussion on the NiMUG forums about the features missing on the iPhone sparked this post.

Proper MMS support – to be honest I don’t miss this at all. Looking back on my previous tariffs I only ever sent about 1 picture a month (though my tariff allowed for 15) and I only received 1-2 a month. Since getting an iPhone in October, I’ve only received 2 MMS texts (which are accessed via O2’s web site). Is this worth getting upset over? I think not
Cut n Paste – this is much more serious. I really need some sort of text selection and cut feature to edit down the really long emails that come from the OSX-Nutters mailing list (the discussion on evolution of the mind was fascinating but almost impossible to reply to and provide proper editing. Apple is allegedly working on this but wondering about the implementation.
SMS forwarding – this doesn’t bother me at all. SMS Forwards tend to be jokes and I don’t really want to get involved in that. SMS Texts come from me and SMS Forwarding on my old phone didn’t include any attribution.
Contact Forwarding – Oh, man, this has bitten me two or three times this week. It’s really frustrating that I can’t send someone’s number or contact details via email or SMS without writing them down elsewhere and then re-entering them. Stupid Stupid Stupid.
Maps link Forwarding – again it seems obvious when a friend has asked you where something or somewhere is. i.e. I can use the location feature to find myself but I’d like to be able to email a link to Google Maps so someone else can find me. It should be part of the dropped pin feature or the slightly more obscure Maps bookmark feature.

Anything I’ve missed?

18/100 Just Jump Into Podcasting – Heres How

This is one that I’m going to be learning as I write. Technical The technical side of things is possibly the easiest to fix. Apple has a quick guide to Podcasting on their support site which covers a sample recipe for Podcasts and the bullet points in how to actually record sound and get it … Continue reading “18/100 Just Jump Into Podcasting – Heres How”

This is one that I’m going to be learning as I write.

Technical
The technical side of things is possibly the easiest to fix. Apple has a quick guide to Podcasting on their support site which covers a sample recipe for Podcasts and the bullet points in how to actually record sound and get it published via RSS. It’s a little high level but I guess this means that my mum would find it easier than me as I tend to overthink things.

Non-Technical
I’ve left the non-technical issues until last. This actually involves the content itself and is best covered by the Podcast Recipe on the link above.

Talking for 15-20 minutes is a tough job for a lot of people which is why you have to plan it. I’ve only ever been involved in one Podcast as a guest (The Spodcast (#28) and it wasn’t hard to fill the time – mainly because it was a conversation about interesting stuff that was timetabled and, at the end of the day, there were four people talking. 20 minutes of talk-time is a lot easier to fill when there’s four of you.

Accessibility Issues
Not to be sniffed at, there are real problems if you’re producing podcast content and that is simply accessibility. The first issue is obvious – anyone who is deaf or has a severe hearing impairment will probably not be able to access your content. In the US that’s possibly 2% of the population (link). If you include any kind of hearing impairment it rises to almost 14%. The solution here therefore is to offer a transcript which, as you can guess, is a poor substitute, but if your content ain’t rubbish then it shouldn’t be much of an issue.

Another problem related to accessibility is what is required to listen to your content. MP3 and AAC formats should be fine because one is a defacto standard and the other is an actual standard. Once you start making a political statement (like Ogg Vorbis) then you’ve just thrown away another chunk of listeners. This becomes even more problematic when a format is owned wholly by a company, like WMA, and is poorly supported on other platforms.

There’s also the problem of file size. A minute of conversation might take 512Kbytes, which is the same as about 500 pages of plain text (or seven and a half lines of text in Word 2008). Using plain text means you can feed it into a braille machine or a screen reader or magnify it to ungodly levels without much distortion. A 20 minute podcast is a much higher bandwidth and storage sink compared to the same amount of content as text.

My recommendations:

Get a Mac – using GarageBand will just make your life easier. If you’re in love with Windows, then keep using it I guess but you’ll have to find your own killer podcasting app.
Find a Friend – I don’t think Podcasting is a lone activity and some of the least interesting podcasts come from people who do it alone. Look at popular talk radio shows – Chris Moyles seems to have about 17 people stuffed into his booth.
Do it regularly – Weekly is probably what people expect. Don’t disappoint them.
Careful with Commercials – no-one likes commercials. Everyone wants to skip them but if you do accept sponsorship then make sure you don’t ram them in your listeners faces. Try to be objective about and don’t just think of the “free” money. It’s not going to score you a Mercedes or anything.

I don’t know how useful this was, taking podcasting advice from someone who’s never really done it. A lot of it is common sense. But I’m going to be starting topic 19 from Chris Brogan’s 100 blogging topics. If any of my readers (yeah, both of you) do a podcast, chuck the URL in the comments as I’m interested to listen.

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

Google, Dell to produce piss-poor smartphone.

: Both Google and Dell are collaborating on a handset, says a new claim by ad magazine MarketingWeek. Reportedly contacting “senior industry sources,” the publication believes that the two firms will announce a phone as soon as the Mobile World Congress show in mid-February.

Considering the DELL efforts before with the ill fated AXIM PDA running Microsoft software and the fact they had their market cut out from them by Microsoft with the “PlaysForSure” debacle, this would seem to be a sound strategic partnership. Google has yet to screw over any partners, it saves that experience for customers of companies it acquires.

Of course, it’s possible that these two industry giants could be teaming up to flood the market with another piss-poor smartphone

iPhone 2007. Windows Mobile 2009? Maybe?

Mitchell Ashley, Microsoft apologist for NetworkWorld tells us why he thinks the iPhone is doomed The iPhone is certain to fade into history as another cool Apple innovation, that others soon rushed competitive, like-products to market, blowing away any significant lead Apple might have. The iPod mp3 player is an industry Apple essentially created, the … Continue reading “iPhone 2007. Windows Mobile 2009? Maybe?”

Mitchell Ashley, Microsoft apologist for NetworkWorld tells us why he thinks the iPhone is doomed

The iPhone is certain to fade into history as another cool Apple innovation, that others soon rushed competitive, like-products to market, blowing away any significant lead Apple might have. The iPod mp3 player is an industry Apple essentially created, the iPhone isn’t. Too many major players are in the mobile phone market, who have and will bring iPhone-like products to market over the coming months and years. LG has already done so with the LG Voyager phone, and now Microsoft’s plans for Windows Mobile 7 OS have been leaked and described in considerable detail by InsideMicrosoft blogger Nathan Weinberg.

Does anyone remember what the market was like before Apple released the iPod in 2001? There were certainly lots of MP3 players on the market, some of them flash based and some of them with laptop hard drives in them. There wasn’t any decent way to buy music online and there was only really MusicMatch JukeBox for syncing your tunes that you did have (ripped using WinAMP or MacAMP).

To claim Apple invented the Mp3 player market is simply a lie. A massive straw man argument designed to help prop up the further argument that the iiPhone will fail because Apple did not create that market.

Apple has a 70%+ market share in MP3 players. Are we expecting them to take the same in the phone market? Of course not. They’re never going to release a Â£10 phone you can buy down in Tesco along with Â£10 of free minutes. The vast majority of the market are these low end handsets, so feature-free that I was surprised they still existed (until I bought one as an unlocked emergency handset a few months ago).

Apple did manage to snare 19% of the smartphone market in 6 months which is a much more interesting market – one where people will actually pay for the use of a technology device. Isolating that market aside from the most basic handsets begins to crystallise out Apple’s intended market: paying customers.

The article is fluff, tripe and full of FUD. It’s meant to make you hold out for the next big thing from Microsoft. Yes, it took Microsoft six months to copy key features of the iPhone and create mockups of what they plan to ship sometime in 2009. Yes, six months to invent photoshopped images. And you’ll have to wait over a year to use this stuff.

And of course, Apple will be standing still during this time…