September 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Google “say their goal is to gather all the... →
A useful reminder, and one that gains significance after the recent fuss over Google+ and the use of real names.
1 tag
The Internet is great because it is decentralized.... →
A simple truism from Scripting News.
4 tags
You could not ask for a clearer trend line: The... →
Interesting ZDNet article. Will TV viewing habits shift again – from broadcast, to digital record-now-watch-later, to streaming services from the likes of Netflix and iTunes? (My prediction: yes, it will.)
August 2011
1 post
7 tags
HP loses the tablet battle, Apple victorious?
The CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Leo Apotheker, has announced they are killing off their tablet offering (the TouchPad) and their WebOS based product lines in general. From his statement: “The tablet effect is real and sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations.”
TechCrunch sum the announcement up like this:
But wait, then why is he exiting the tablet space after only a matter of weeks?...
July 2011
2 posts
4 tags
The rebirth of animated GIFs: 'liberation in...
I’ve just enjoyed Anil Dash’s paean to the enduring art of animated GIFs.
I agree that the recent revival of the format has reached a whole new level of sophistication. I’ve been a huge fan of if we don’t, remember me for some time (the source of the image above). In taking a few judiciously chosen frames from a film, iwdrm creates something new, something distinct from the original film, yet...
8 tags
The Email Charter: spread the word
Thanks to Elliot Jay Stocks for pointing out the Email Charter, an inspiring effort to draw up guidelines for email best practice.
It’s almost irresistible to go on a good solid rant here. When it comes to email, everyone has their pet peeves. But the Email Charter is a serious initiative, with the aim of bringing the swathes of time spent managing our inboxes under some kind of control.
I can...
June 2011
4 posts
9 tags
Will Lytro really start a photographic revolution?
Despite getting caught up in the excitement and pure wow-factor of the Lytro camera previews currently getting a lot of attention on the webs, I’m suspicious of the hugeness of the claims, and I’m struggling to figure out what it is they will actually deliver.
And the claims are fairly nebulous at times. They call the images “living pictures”. Techcrunch writes that “Lytro is developing a...
12 tags
Apple and the TV rumours: how does this fit the...
Another day, another Apple product rumour. This one has been circulating for a while, and the latest instalment updates the thread with anonymous comments by an alleged former Apple executive.
So what’s the gist of the speculation? In brief: Apple might launch it’s own line of TVs. And, to be clear, we’re not talking here about the existing AppleTV product — the little black set-top box — but...
7 tags
RSS is not-dead
The software’s job is to bring people articles that they’d like, or need, to read. Think of the app as a reader, not as an RSS reader strictly. (How the articles come in is not important. RSS will still play a major role, but it should be invisible to everyone except those geeks who get it.)
via inessential.com
I’ve been looking for some elaboration on this “RSS is dead” meme...
7 tags
Carriers Pissing Themselves As Texting Growth...
There’s a reason why dozens of startups as well as the big guys like Apple and Nokia are now going after this market: it’s ripe for disruption. Two key factors: complacency and greed.
In other words, the carriers’ calling cards.
via parislemon.com
I’m very, very glad the mobile operators are scared. I’ve long been annoyed by the complacent raking in of cash, apparently described...
November 2009
1 post
8 tags
The Amazon Kindle and the future of the web
Something on the cover of The Guardian recently caught my eye: the hook for an article on the Amazon Kindle, soon to be available here in the UK for the first time. ‘Why the Kindle will never kill the book’ it said, apparently the opinion of Nicholson Baker, a writer I’ve heard good things about but haven’t quite gotten around to reading. I shuddered. Always a bit of a...
September 2009
1 post
10 tags
A history of bookmarks
I had a sleepless night recently. The type of sleeplessness where your mind ticks over frantically, jumping from subject to subject. At about 5am, as I stared numbly at the dawn glow creeping round the edges of the Velux blinds, I tried to work out how old my internet bookmarks are. You know, as you do.
Back in the early 1990s my first computer was a Windows PC without a modem. In those days...