james & internet

The Switzerland of the South

Thu, 31 May 2012 10:22:32 +1000

The Boston Public Library just released this collection of travel posters from the 1920s-1940s, including a couple from Australia. Absolutely gorgeous.

Who's Gonna Pay For That?

Thu, 24 May 2012 09:05:00 +1000

As some have already noted, the damage done to Midtown Manhattan in The Avengers could easily top $160 billion, all told.

That’s a lot of money. By comparison, as the link notes, the total impact of the September 11th attacks was about $83 billion and Hurricane Katrina cost about $90 billion. This is about as much as the two of those put together.

So… who’s gonna pay for all that?

I love this article on the legal ramifications of The Avengers movie. Ryan Davidson breaks down exactly how the climatic battle in The Avengers would shake out in dealing with the aftermath, including how insurance policies would be impacted, whether S.H.I.E.L.D is considered part of the US government’s military forces, even contemplating using salvaged alien tech to fund the damage clean-up.

That whole blog is fascinating; here’s another post stemming from the original on what it means to be at “war” from a legal standpoint, including a discussion about whether Nick Fury can make a tactical determination about whether a state of war currently exists during the events that unfolded during the movie.

It’s where comic book nerds & law nerds collide. So good.

via Law and the Multiverse

Lazy Harp Seal Has No Job by Parry Gripp I cannot get this song...

Fri, 18 May 2012 12:45:00 +1000

Lazy Harp Seal Has No Job by Parry Gripp

I cannot get this song out of my head.

I Hate Unmetered Content

Thu, 17 May 2012 15:54:00 +1000

A couple of days ago, I noticed that Foxtel launched a ‘Catch Up TV’ service. It’s a new service that allows you to download content directly to your Foxtel IQ box.

You’re probably thinking, “didn’t Foxtel already have this?” Well, not exactly; before the introduction of Catch Up TV, their Foxtel Download service allowed you to download to your computer, & their Foxtel On Demand service let you stream to your IQ box. There was no way to download anything to your IQ box. Catch Up TV essentially fills that gap.

This means that as a Foxtel customer, you get access to a repository of downloadable shows on your Foxtel box. Even better, if you’re a Telstra customer, these downloads aren’t counted toward your download cap. Pretty great, right?

I don’t think so.

I have a problem with umetered content, and it’s growing every day. Increasingly, I see ISPs (like Telstra & iiNet) using their unmetered content as a wedge to drive sales to their door.

Let me give an example; you’re a Foxtel subscriber & you want to use this brand-new Catch Up TV service, but you’re with iiNet. You’re happy with both of these services. What are you going to do?

switch to an iiNet plan with a larger cap (keep an eye on that meter though)
switch to iiNet’s fetchTV (unlikely)
miss out on Foxtel’s new features (annoying)
switch to Bigpond (ooh, and get a sweet bundle deal!)

Slowly but surely, Bigpond finds itself picking up formerly happy iiNet customers. That’s really hard to do. Bigpond sales teams are high-fiving all over the place.

That consumer decision-making can even works in reverse too; hey, I have iiNet, and all the content on the iTunes Store is unmetered, so I’ll just get it there. Oh and better still, next time I’m up for a phone contract I’ll just get an iPhone, because of the unmetered thing, and I’ll have all this iTunes content I paid for already.

That’s the trouble with unmetered content; when it was introduced, it only influenced the PC on your desk. You might favour one game server over another, or download some software from one place over another. But now it’s a part of the decision making process for far too many mediums; TV shows, music, movies, apps — even devices like mobile phones & tablets are now affected.

How does a small company who wants to challenge Foxtel even begin to compete in this environment? Truth is, you don’t. The deck is too rigged. That’s why content delivery on TV is evolving so slowly & painfully. The competitive environment you exist in is terrible, and is primarily owned by the companies you’re competing against. So all the smart people who had great ideas about the next generation of content delivery go off, and find other areas to disrupt.

I’m really a big believer in small players challenging big ones in all areas of technology. These kinds of insidious rules make it really difficult for disruptive innovation to happen, especially in Australia. In North America, where there are media conglomerates far bigger than our own, there’s a hyper-vigilance to maintain net neutrality; these kinds of shenanigans wouldn’t fly (yet).

I’m hoping as time goes on, and download caps go up, this problem will sort itself out, and companies’ unmetered content fades into irrelevance. I wouldn’t bet on it though.

Unmetered content is like the fast food of internet. Tastes good going down, but it’s bad for you in the long run.

"My goal is for you to hear a bit what’s going on inside me. I want you to read my blog and..."

Wed, 16 May 2012 22:36:00 +1000

“My goal is for you to hear a bit what’s going on inside me. I want you to read my blog and recognize that it’s ME on these pages.”

- Nathan Kontny

Sticking with Tumblr

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:57:23 +1000

One of the things I thought about when re-designing my blog was whether I should (or shouldn’t) stick with Tumblr.

There’s a couple of good reasons to stay:

I’m kind of a schizophrenic writer. Sometimes I’ll post longer, multi-quote, embedded-video-and-image pieces on Microsoft. Sometimes I’ll write two words about a Samsung TV remote. I’m not sure where any given day will take me, so I’d like to have a blog that works for any kind of post. Tumblr is pretty good at this.
It’s totally customizable (if you want to go there). There’s an ‘Edit HTML’ button in the admin interface, which allows you to change any part of how the site looks directly from the website; no third-party programs needed. I think that’s really convenient. In fact, the only development tools I used in this most recent redesign was tumblr.com itself, and the Chrome developer tools (oh, and Typekit too).
It’s free.
It works with most 3rd-party writing apps. It also allows you to post via email.

Now here’s the downsides as I see them:

This content I’m writing is not on a server I own
I can’t host images myself
Tumblr goes down more than I’d like

Those 3 reasons might eventually make me change, but I’m happy enough with those compromises for now.

Now on all the screens

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:54:00 +1000

Now I’ve got some spare time up my sleeve, I decided that the first thing I wanted to change-up was my own personal blog. It’s been on a free Tumblr template for a really long time, and it was long overdue for an update.

Here was my design brief:

Most blogs I read have lots of unnecessary stuff in them; tags, sidebars & social media buttons. Most of them are designed to pull you away from what’s actually written in a post. In other words; I wanted my blog to act a bit like Instapaper in website form.
If you’re reading something long, it better look nice. I wanted great-looking fonts.
I also wanted it to look good on screens of all sizes. I also wanted to avoid a generic ‘mobile-optimized’ scheme. Mobile sites can look good too!

Based on that, the theme I’ve chosen is a heavily customized version of the premium theme by PixelUnion entitled ‘Sticks and Stones’. I’ve pulled out a lot of their font & icon choices, and replaced them with my own from TypeKit (font nerds, I’m using Museo Sans for body text & Cubano for headers). I’ve also done lots of work with CSS media queries, so the site looks nice on screens of all sizes (go on, drag your window narrower, I dare you).

I hope you enjoy it!

Diablo 3 open beta nets 2 million participants | Joystiq

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:11:14 +1000

Diablo 3 open beta nets 2 million participants | Joystiq:

I was one of them. Can’t wait for 15th of May!

Don’t forget though, (and annoyingly) Battle.net access won’t be switched on until 5pm AEST. So don’t buy the game in the morning, go home & expect to be able to play it.

Building a ramp

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:42:00 +1000

Smart acquisition — Evernote acquires Penultimate

I’m Ben, the creator of Penultimate, and today I’m proud to announce that Penultimate is becoming part of the Evernote family.

Dumb acquisition — Zynga acquires OMGPOP, makers of Draw Something

A new report shows that in the past month, Draw Something has lost nearly 5M Daily Active Users (DAUs), bringing the total down to 10M from 15M when Zynga first made the purchase.

Evernote buys products (like Penultimate, or Skitch before that) that contribute something valuable to their core mission; remembering everything. Likewise, Zynga buys popular games in order to contribute to their core mission; getting ads in front of eyeballs.

A lot of people thought the purchase was dumb because Draw Something was a fad. I don’t think that was the problem for Zynga; nearly all their games are fads. Draw Something’s timeline just happened to play out incredibly fast — too fast for even Zynga to capitalise on. That cuts to the heart of Zynga’s fragility as a company. Zynga builds (or buys) waves; riding the popularity & inevitable decline of their games.

Evernote is not building waves — they’re building a ramp.

Wake Up

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:16:00 +1000

Is RIM Behind the Embarrassing Wake Up Stunt?

I think this whole fiasco proves a couple of things:

Ripping on Apple is clearly identified these days as Samsung’s marketing angle. If you’re a company, don’t take this tactic. You risk having your marketing budget co-opted by Samsung.
Tech sites need to check stories more thoroughly before printing. I know this story has all the hallmarks of a page-view bonanza, but really. Make a call or something before you publish that “SAMSUNG DECLARES WAR ON APPLE” headline.

Also, the last thing in the world I want is to be dragged into a conversation about how you aren’t (or are) a journalist. I don’t care. Keep that crackerjack epiphany in your pocket, Clark Kent.
None of this has actually been confirmed by RIM themselves. Clearly the evidence is starting to stack up in favour of them being behind the whole mess, but it’s still just a bunch of theories until they come out and either make it official or deny it.

(Though, if they are actually behind this whole Wake Up thing, they’re in much worse shape than I thought.)

I just wanted to end this by noting that this whole thing started after I came home from a night at the pub with some work-mates & couldn’t get to sleep. Let this be a lesson to all would-be stealth marketers; this is what nerds do at 4am on a Saturday morning; poke around your source code.

So next time pick one; totally sweet Doubleclick stats, or a hugely reduced chance some random dude will pick up on the scent of your awful marketing.

Update: They’ve made it official this morning — it was indeed RIM behind the campaign.

Made with Paper

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:06:24 +1000

Made with Paper

About this NetSpot/Blackboard thing

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:52:29 +1000

I found out this morning that NetSpot, an Australian company I’ve had the good fortune to work with on a few occasions, is being acquired by Blackboard. NetSpot primarily run with Moodle, a competing LMS to Blackboard’s offering (Blackboard Learn).

I don’t think I’m particularly worried about the LMS battleground part of this. One thing is abundantly clear to both sides; the war to ‘win’ in education (whatever that means) won’t be decided by the LMS. It will be decided by the bits around the outside complementing the whole.

Does this mean Blackboard is giving up in the LMS space? Probably not. They’re just hedging a little bit; having a foot in both their closed-source products, whilst keeping in touch with (or even funding development of) open source products.

And that’s sort of the crux of this whole thing. It doesn’t seem like any normal organisation goes 100% with either closed or open products. It’s a mix, and it’s whatever gets the job done best.

Blackboard seem to have now factored this into their thinking and strategy. Which, I think, is good.

Here’s the one thing that bothers me about the whole situation: I know a few of the NetSpot guys who are actively working on making life easier for teachers, lecturers, and admin staff right now. Their best asset (in my opinion) is their ability to be in touch with the needs of educators in a very real way.

I think if I asked a NetSpot employee who their customers were, I think they’d say ”educators”.

If I asked a Blackboard employee, I think they’d say ”educational institutions”.

That’s a subtle difference, but a very important one.

just awful

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:29:13 +1000

just awful

tommy's tenacious tumblr: What I've Learned About Smart People.

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:56:46 +1000

tommy's tenacious tumblr: What I've Learned About Smart People.:

tmac721:

I can of course make no authoritative claims here, but I have noticed one overarching theme among smart people: they ask questions. When someone explains something new to me, I’ll usually just nod my head like I know what they’re talking about. If I don’t understand something, I’ll just Google it later. After all, I don’t want this person to think I’m a moron. Smart people are different.

Question everything.

Microsoft makes legitimate point about Google, promptly blows it

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:23:42 +1000

Microsoft made an internal video last year entitled ‘Gmail Man’. It basically made fun of how Google scans your email for keywords, and delivers targeted advertising against it. WIth Google’s recent privacy changes, they’ve now taken it a little further and put it up on their official YouTube channel.

Fair enough, right?

Well, no. Not really.

Here’s a page on Microsoft Advertising extolling the virtues of targeted advertising in Hotmail. Hotmail uses 2 types of targeted advertising; domain advertising, and industry advertising. From their site:

Domain targeting allows you to target Hotmail ads at those receiving your own emails, giving you control over the environment in which your email appears, increasing visibility and driving opens, click-throughs and response rates.

Through Industry targeting, Hotmail ads reach those consumers who are signed up to receive emails from your broader industry sector. Targeting Hotmail ads in this way allows you to increase brand profile amongst a pre-engaged audience and ensure that your message is front-of-mind at a key point of influence.

Domain targeting seems to be relatively harmless. It basically allows you to put Pepsi Max ads in Hotmail when someone gets an email from @pepsi.com. Fair enough.

Industry targeting seems to be a bit more nebulous. It seems like Hotmail is making a decision behind the scenes about what industry sector your email belongs to, and delivers relevant ads against it.

Here’s a case study on how the clothing label OTTO used Hotmail targeted ads. From the case study:

Commercial email targeting displayed OTTO’s 160x600 skyscraper ads within users’ Hotmail inboxes whenever those users received a retail-related email. This ensured high-impact exposure for the swimwear range amongst an engaged group of consumers who had opted to receive retail emails.

How does Microsoft make a decision about what constitutes a ‘retail-related’ email? It seems pretty unclear to me. They don’t explain it on the site. As a certified armchair pundit, it’s hard for me to imagine how they’re achieving this other than some form of email scanning.

That’s not all the options available for people who want to sell ads against Microsoft’s properties, though. There’s far more, and according to the site, “Available for all brand campaigns running on Microsoft media properties including MSN, Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger.”

Options include:

Those in contextual-ad glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Thorsten Heins, New RIM CEO live blog @ The Verge

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:20:41 +1000

11:24 pm “We have fantastic devices and a fantastic ecosystem that we’re building on.” He restates that RIM is about its network and its strength as a cohesive whole. He won’t split anything up.

11:24 pm “If it makes sense strategically and tactically,” he’s open to licensing BB10.

*11:25 pm But his “focus 1” is to develop RIM’s own products. It’s the same focus that “another fruit company” has.*

11:25 pm “You’re successful when you have the biggest value contribution” to your customers.

Thorsten Heins, reinforcing my pet theory that any modern CEO can’t resist comparing their approach to Apple’s, even if they have no idea what that actually means.

Monster Cable wants to be Apple, has no idea how to actually do that

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:35:00 +1000

“We’re competing with ourselves,” Lee (Noel Lee, Monster Cable CEO) says of the Beats products he’s trying to outdo. “We can be the Apple of the headphones space, with or without Beats…”

“…He showed off the company’s offerings, which became available for preorder to distributors on Jan. 9. One $200 pair of in-ear headphones bears the name of the ’70s soul act Earth, Wind & Fire. A Miles Davis line has earbuds shaped like trumpets and a volume controller that looks like piston valves. In all, there are eight new lines in 50 different styles. “We hope people will recognize what we’ve done in terms of sound with the Beats products,” Lee says.”

Eight new lines, 50 different styles. Ah yes, that’s the Apple I know and love.

(via Business Week)

I'd Like To Try a Galaxy Nexus, but I Think it Would Drive Me Nuts

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:09:00 +1000

…Where it all goes wrong is with the space bar. It sits right above the system’s home key:

I find when I’m really on the move skating, I’m always hitting that home key by mistake rather than the space bar and so exit out of what I’m typing. This never happens with the iPhone or the Droid Charge, because they use “hard” menu buttons that you have to physically depress. You can’t accidentally push them.

A someone who is constantly pressing the dictation button on iPhone instead of the space bar, getting yanked out of an app for an accidental keypress would drive me mental.

(via marketingland.com)

Aged to Perfection

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:17:00 +1000

Love that old 1st-gen iPhone. I read in the Steve Jobs bio that he thought that a stainless steel finish (like the back of the iPod line) aged really well over time. That scratches & dings in the material really added to the device’s character, and that covering them up with ugly cases stopped that from happening.

Can’t help but think that the current line of iPhones has no way to age well that I can see; there’s no finish that is really susceptible to aging like the iPod & original iPhone. Even the newer plastic-based 3G/3GS models don’t age particularly well.

(via designmind)

Android Loses the Magic

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:34:29 +1000

Andrew Munn:

“A laggy UI breaks the core affordance language of a touch screen. The device no longer feels natural. It loses the magic. The user is pulled out of their interaction and must implicitly acknowledge they are using an imperfect computer simulation. I often get “lost” in an iPad, but I cringe when a Xoom stutters between home screens. The 200 million users of Android deserve better.”

A long, but really interesting discussion on why Android is still laggy, and why it won’t be fixed until they do a major overhaul of the entire operating system. Also of note is this quote:

“Beyond the perception issue, lag is a violation of one of Google’s core philosophies. Google believes that things should be fast. That’s a driving philosophy behind Google Search, Gmail, and Chrome. It’s why Google created SPDY to improve on HTTP. It’s why Google builds tools to help websites optimize their site. It’s why Google runs it’s own CDN. It’s why Google Maps is rendered in WebGL. It’s why buffering on Youtube is something most of us remember, but rarely see anymore.”

This is a great point. For a company who crows over optimising search results by mere milliseconds, who introduced displaying search results before you have even finished typing, it seems bizarre that this hasn’t been priority #1 for the Android team.

Google engineers: less face unlock, more dedicated UI rendering thread development.