Archive for May, 2008

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My bad back


31 May

Posted in Blogging, Me, News, Space | Comments Off

Ok the blogs been quiet, and that’s due to the fact that I have been pretty much rendered useless (more than usual) by my re-occurring back condition. This is the 5th time I have been struck down with it and when it happens it hurts like hell. It’s called Sciatica, and it laid me off my day job for 3 days this time. When it happens sitting at my desk is nearly impossible. The only way to rest it is to lay down and keep pretty still. It sucks but I just have to put up with it.

Anyway enough complaining. I have a HUGE list of things to blog about and I am going to get them done over this weekend.

Stay tuned!

p.s Don’t forget there is a shuttle launch today. All info can be found here

A

I accept a challenge


26 May

Posted in Me, News, Technology, Web | Comments Off

So this morning Dave and I were talking about the Opera browser. I had just installed it on my phone and was showing him some of the neat features that it had. We moved on to talk about the desktop version. In that conversation Dave said he is considering moving from Firefox to Opera on his desktop, to which I replied “oh it’s not as good as Firefox”. He then said try it for a week and see which you think is better at the end.

So that is what I am doing from today till next Monday I will use Opera only and at the end I will draw conclusions and let you all know!

This ought to be interesting!

A

Posts will now be tomorrow


24 May

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Ok tonight is a total write off, nothing got done. Blame Dave, Ben and Jamie for that.

Post will come tomorrow now.

 

A

Space Updates


23 May

Posted in News, Space, Technology | Comments Off

Ok just a quick post tonight as I am way behind on paper work and it is getting late.

1st; May 25th is set to be the landing day for the Phoenix spacecraft onto the surface of Mars. The spacecraft launched Aug. 4 2007 and Sunday is set to be the culmination of all the hard work to get the craft to the surface. Phoenix will be approaching Mars at about 12,750 miles per hour. After it enters the top of the Martian atmosphere at that velocity, it must use superheated friction with the atmosphere, a strong parachute and a set of pulsing retrorockets to achieve a safe, three-legged standstill touchdown on the surface in just seven minutes.

NASA TV coverage of this starts at 6.30pm Eastern Time (11.30pm UK time Sunday night)

2nd; STS 124 is scheduled for a May 31st lift-off to the international space station. Discovery’s 14-day flight will carry the largest payload so far to the station and includes three spacewalks. It is the second of three missions that will launch components to complete the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory. The crew will install Kibo’s large Japanese Pressurized Module and Kibo’s robotic arm system. Discovery also will deliver new station crew member Greg Chamitoff and bring back Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman, who will end a three-month stay aboard the outpost.

Launch is scheduled for 5.02pm Eastern (10.02pm UK time) and can be seen live on NASA TV. Tune in up to 6 hours before for the latest news and video from the space center.

Right on with the paper work

A

p.s I have a load of posts to do tomorrow night so keep watching for them!

 

Fresh coin mintings


22 May

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Thanks go to Chris Riley for this:

The New Designs are Revealed

Above is a picture of the new coinage that is slowly being entered into circulation here in the UK.

Click here for the full description of them.

I am not sure if I like them or not to be honest, my immediate reaction was roughly “GAH” combined with a bit of “they’re awful” but as I have looked at them more and also as I am writing this post the seem to be growing slightly on me.

Well there is not much I nor anyone can do about it now, so I guess I will just be living with it.

What do you think on the matter??

A

Yahoo + Microsoft + Facebook = Scary proposition UPDATED 2


19 May

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YahooOk so here is a quick re-cap on the proceedings so far:

1. Microsoft makes a bid for Yahoo to totally acquire them, after weeks of negotiations Microsoft gets fed up and walks away

2. Google and Yahoo make an agreement to test the use Google ads on Yahoo pages (negotiations were happening as the Msft Yahoo merger was discussed)

3. Yahoo’s board takes a beating in the press and on blogs

4. Carl Icahn forms a slate and buys 59 million shares in an attempt to force out the current board of Yahoo with a view to merging with Msft.

5. Yahoo rebuffs the claims of Mr Icahn, stating that they were acting in the best interests of the shareholders.

and so we reach today:

The big news that has bombarded my Twitter stream and feed reader this morning;

Microsoft to buy Yahoo’s search division and Facebook for a cool $45 billion. Apparently the Yahoo search part of the deal will be completed within the week. Now Scoble, naturally has been all over this like a rash (of the good kind) - see his post here.

He (Scoble) does have a great point though. Facebook does not let it’s information onto Google. Search for an event and you will not see a Facebook page appear in the listings. Search for a person and you won’t see his/her Facebook profile appear anywhere on Google. Now if Microsoft buys Yahoo search and Facebook (which they will keep closed as it is now), all of a sudden Microsoft will have a search engine that has a lot of data that Google cannot get too.

This excerpt from Robert’s post shows exactly how powerful this issue can be;

“Loic Le Meur did a little test with me a couple of weeks ago. He listed his Le Web conference on both Facebook and Upcoming.org. Here’s the Facebook listing. Here’s the Upcoming.org one.

The Facebook one can’t be seen if you don’t have a Facebook account. It’s NOT open to the public Web. Google’s spiders CAN NOT REACH IT.

He put both listings up at exactly the same time and did no invites, nothing. Just let people find these listings on their own.

The Facebook one is NOT available to the Web. It has 467 people who’ve accepted it. The Upcoming.org one IS available to Google and the Web. It has 101 people on it.”

In April, Google’s share of the search market hit 67.9% whilst Yahoo’s was 20.28% and Microsoft 6.26%. Now combine the two and that’s nothing special, but give the Yahoo search a lot of data that Google does not have and people will start migrating to somewhere where they can get ALL the data.

This does mean a big change in the way the web works and is going to evolve however. Data portability is a piece of dead wood if these two deals happen, Microsoft will have a huge share of data that they could and would just deny Google access too, and so that idea of all data being available to everyone from anywhere goes flying out the window. We could well return to a walled garden web like AOL was/is. (After mulling the idea I am not sure I agree with what I said here anymore.)

This could be quite bad for the Internet, I feel a big monopoly forming and it’s not a good feeling.

 

A

Stay tuned for more info as it appears.

UPDATE 2 . The Google 3, (Brin, Page and Schmidt), are meeting tonight in London after attending day one of Google Zeitgeist conference. They will issue a statement in due course

Yahoo has something to hide


17 May

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Quote from an Associated Press article found here

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Yahoo Inc. is seeking to conceal large portions of a shareholder lawsuit alleging the Internet company’s board improperly thwarted Micrsoft Corp.’s $47.5 billion takeover offer, raising shareholder questions over the motives for the secrecy.

In a letter sent Friday to the judge overseeing the case in Delaware, a lawyer for the shareholders argued Yahoo is trying “to whitewash embarrassing documents” because the company thinks the information will damage the board’s efforts to repel a challenge by activist investor Carl Icahn.

Yahoo, it appears, has quite a bit they want to hide. Items such as employee severance plans and conversation notes between Yang and Ballmer amongst other things.

This information, if it were to be released, could be very damaging for the board if it goes on to suggest that they in anyway took deliberate steps to block the deal between Yahoo and Microsoft. 

The documents include estimates about how much Yahoo’s employee severance plans would cost Microsoft in a takeover — information that could be of particular interest to shareholders trying to figure out if the current board acted in their best interests.

Well well Jerry Yang, is your time nearly up?

A

Yahoo board to be replaced?


16 May

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Looks like Yahoo’s current board of directors have got some big problems ahead. The WSJ states

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn Thursday filed a proxy slate to unseat Yahoo Inc.’s board, accusing its directors of acting “irrationally” and setting the stage for what could be a battle for control of the Internet company.

Mr Icahn is, it appears, rather disappointed by the boards refusal to sell Yahoo Inc. to Microsoft for the $33 per share that was offered. In an open letter to Yahoo Icahn stated

“Yahoo has acted irrationally and lost the faith of shareholders and Microsoft” 

He goes on to explain how he has created a 10 person slate and purchased 59 million Yahoo shares in the past 10 days, in preparation for a proxy fight to remove the current board, replace them and complete a merger with Microsoft.

Mr Icahn’s full open letter to the board of Yahoo can be seen here.

Yahoo responded to Mr Icahn yesterday afternoon, clarifying exactly why they did not sell to Microsoft. This can be seen here. 

Mr Icahn concludes his letter by saying he hopes that a Yahoo merger with Microsoft is expedited and thus heeding the wishes of the Yahoo shareholders and “making a proxy fight unnecessary”.

So the saga continues and a merger might still be on the cards!

A

When a craze becomes a Service (Part 2)


14 May

Posted in Technology | 2 Comments »

So why is becoming a “Service” so Important to a web app?

If they (web apps) do not make the transition fast enough from craze to service then they run a considerable risk of being drowned out by the next craze that comes along. Popfly for example, when that launched in May 2007 people like Pirillo and Scoble picked up on it and thought “HEY this is cool”, and it was. Now though, I hear almost nothing about this app and know of no one who uses it on a regular basis. It was a craze for a while but now it has been drowned out by other things and continues to go unnoticed.

Youtube on the other hand has well and truly made it to the service stage. They got there by getting a good jump on the competition and being first to market with their service as well a pile of initial funding and then being bought by Google which lets face it is always going to help. As a result YouTube is around for the long term and has progressed on to other stages of the web life cycle.

Then you have Seesmic and Friendfeed. Both of these apps are still in the craze stage. I personally am struggling to find a regular use for them. I know Scoble loves his Friendfeed or has he and others have dubbed it “World Wide Talk Show” but for me it’s a lot of noise rather than totally useful info. Twitter shows me probably 80% information and about 20% noise Google Reader shows me nearer 90% info, where as with Friendfeed I am only seeing 30% info at best.

Now that does not mean by any stretch that these apps will not go on to be successes and make it to the service stage. I’m not important enough to even contemplate influencing that, I do however have an idea of the criteria needed to make a web app a fully blown service.

If the transition does not occur for these web apps then they will get lost in the multitude of other information that continuously flows across the web. The amount of data that is uploaded and processed by people everyday is phenomenal, and if you don’t get on and ride that wave of data then you will very easily get drowned out. That’s why, to me, becoming a service is so important.

A

When a craze becomes a Service (Part 1)


13 May

Posted in Technology | Comments Off

We have seen many Internet based crazes over the past 2 years, things such as Twitter, Ustream, Stickam, Seemsic, Friendfeed and recently Qik. What I have been contemplating though is, at what point do they change into services? Firstly let me define what I mean by a craze and a service.

A Craze:

When a new web app is launched and starts getting noticed it can quickly become a “craze”. Get a few prominent people to use/see/recommend it and it jumps into light-speed mode. Everyone wants to “try” it everyone wants to see how good it is. Everyone goes on to voice opinions on how it could be improved, or attempt to “mash” together parts to make personal solutions.

A Service:

This is for me, the stage after craze, it is when a web app takes it’s place in the mainstream. No longer do people want to just “try it” they “use” it regularly for weekly or even daily tasks. It’s also the point where general knowledge for the app has grown to the stage that your average Joe Public knows about it. For example, when Person A asks Person B “what do you use to steam video” That person will instantly be able to recommend a service such as Ustream. It does not take a lot research or “Googling” to find a solution to the question. When you reach that stage your a service.

The step from craze to service is an essential one (see tomorrow’s post for why) but at what stage can you class an app as a service? Are my definitions right? Is it more about regular user base rather than the amount of people that know of a specific app? Am I even correct in saying that there is such a thing as a “craze” stage? There is definitely a stage that can make or break the app in question and it’s this point where it is a craze, everyone is talking about it and wants a piece of the action. This is the hardest point for a new web app, it’s the point where it MUST work, it MUST have high percentage of uptime and MUST listen to it’s audience and evolve appropriately in a timely fashion. Fail to do this a people lose interest and move onto the next craze. Fail there and your a lame duck, it’s game over with no continues left!

That’s my view, what do you think?

A

See tomorrow’s post for why I think it’s essential for an app to progress from craze to service.

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