junklight

iplayer irritatingly only has stuff on for 6 days after transmission. BBC 4 does repeat their material pretty regularly. It will say on this pages when it does:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s3vdm

(in fact it looks like it was already repeated on BBC 2 from that page but it will come up again).

Would also highly recommend:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/music/features/african-rock.sht...

Fascinating stuff on people like Youssou N'Dour (to pick one of many examples) who have gone back to Africa after western success and are now building Africa labels for African artists.

So yes - the western consumer machine has not penetrated so well.

But that does not mean they are not on the map at all - if you saw any of the recent "Africa" season on BBC 4 in the uk it was clear that mobile phone usage is high, there are big cities (like Lagos) with loads going on, film industry, music industry.

It all seems a bit chaotic to my western eyes but its clearly vibrant and resourceful and there is a huge amount of drive. In the Lagos programs a lot of the people featured had the endless inventiveness and ability to rise to challenges we would all think was fantastic in an entrepreneur.

I suspect that Africa will emerge with its own technology ecosystem - not dissimilar to ours but with an African slant. I also suspect it has probably had enough of the west coming and telling it how and what to do.

You don't know though - by the guys own admission he isn't a great business man. He might have driven the fledgling Apple into the ground by making some poor choices.

As for your own choice - go for it - you can't win if you ain't in the game.

I don't think you can fix it. You take risks all along the continuum - if you are standalone you have more control but you need to get user buy in. If you go to a busy popular platform then you risk falling into the sinking sands caused by someone elses control.

in both cases people will fail from things out with their control - its just easier to point at if its someone else changing the rules. (and easier to grumble about)

edit: like the guy above says - you need to tailor your risk. On someone else's platform - look for quick rewards and work on the basis its only a matter of time until it goes away

The bottom line is - they know you exist. If you are a real threat to them then they will find out anyway - how hard is it to ask a mate to sign up on your behalf and forward the email or use a disposable account.

They aren't doing their job properly if they aren't watching you like a hawk. (and, by the same token, you of course you clearly are doing yours properly because you know who your competitors are and and paying attention - which is a good)

You need to measure everything you say in public as if it is lowering barriers to entry/ giving a competitive advantage to someone else. If you are in a really competitive space then its going to be like this from here on in.

However its good to remember - its the execution that counts and not the ideas.

Good luck

Editor :- "I know what will get us more eyeballs: Another article about the iPad"

Journalist :- "But there is nothing left to say"

Editor :- "sure there is - start small - say, how you no longer love it. In a day or two we can do 'how the ipad ruined' my marriage. In a couple of weeks we can have 'how the ipad made me homeless', and THEN we will be scraping the barrel..."

The comment "hopefully encasing the oil" doesn't inspire much confidence either.

As a solution it has all the air of "give it a bang" and see it if fixes it.

Interesting.

The way I usually deal with this is to right click links I want to follow and open them in new tabs (and I have my browser set so it doesn't move focus to those new tabs). I can then follow up in my own time. I either eventually get to open tabs or for longer things instapaper them to read on my phone later. The fact I have a strategy for dealing with this would suggest I subconsciously see it as a cognitive load.

It would be really good to see some proper research on this - with a brain scanner and watching the cognitive activity in real time as people dealt with the article.

blimey! Yes - that is mental.

All over the world people believe all kinds of rubbish. But engineers look at things and say "I know how to do that" or "why don't you do this" - and you end up with stuff like this. Fantastic!

was watching thinking "ho hum".

Until the crane lifted the space shuttle. That is one serious crane. Like you say - the shuttle is kind of swamped by that shed.

That is some heavy duty machinery they have there

Ha - that is almost precisely what I was going to say.

All this winner and loser and X killer is a press and blogosphere invention.

Fortunately the companies themselves know better.

Competition is a brilliant thing

while all the commentators and media are wetting their pants about who has landed what blow on who I can't help feeling that the real winners are going to be us users.

Apple will lose if they don't respond - and it would seem likely that they will be forced to add some of these features - streaming from my media library being one I would particularly like.

Keep landing those killer blows guys and making your products better and better!

(mind you I have horrible suspicion that I will end up with devices from both camps - if the production android pad is cool will almost certainly buy one as well as an ipad)

There are sustainable fisheries. For example:

http://www.theecologist.org/how_to_make_a_difference/food_an...

And interestingly enough - the fish in Macdonalds fillet of fish is sustainably produced as well.

Again I can't recommend the book "end of the line" enough (as I notice others have on this page. Including me ;-) )

This already well underway. The book & film "End of the Line" is well worth a read. Also the massive disruption of the eco-system by removing large numbers of species has un-predictable knock on effects - for example massive numbers of jelly fish in some areas and of course the algae/plankton population explosions which in turn effect the ecosystem to the detriment of other species.

There is also a lot of deception in the naming of fish. Fish species are renamed in order to make them sound like fish we are used to. The fish species you get in British Fish and Chip shops are rarely the species our parents and grandparents ate

Can't believe I've never thought of this.

So just to be clear - your working directory is in dropbox and you edit, compile etc in place and no bandwidth, sync , whatever issues?

You go and tell that to all the people I know in real life that use facebook - the mothers in the school playground for example.

Facebook is so big most of its users don't care about any of that stuff. For them it has one simple function - its a good way to interact with friends and family.

These are people who probably couldn't program the VCR to record a program in advance, who shrugged their shoulders when our (uk) government left all their children's records on a train, whose technical knowledge is minimal.

Facebook is doing just fine - just techies who worry about the details who are going off it. For the mainstream it works just fine.

(and as an aside - one of the weirdest things ever is hearing people who would have thought that me and my mates playing D&D when we were younger was geeky and strange - talking about things like farmville in just the same way)

or he used a chamber pot I guess

Surely your last point does indeed point to a "re-creation".

Its a re-creation of the detailed model Conan Doyle had either in mind or in his notes. Which as you point out is supported strongly by the fact that a coherent model can be made from the stories

it certainly did.

I have to say I went for all the high tech solutions first - zappers and stuff. The fly paper won hands down. Sugary sticky stuff on some paper - sometimes the simplest solution is the best one.

I dunno - I bought some flypaper last year on the promise it would kill flies. And it did!

There has been a fascinating series on Lagos on the BBC recently (might still be available on iplayer) called "Welcome to Lagos".

One of the things that struck me was that for all the perceived disadvantage from a western perspective they have an incredible work ethic and a really cool attitude to doing the best with what they have. They have extended the city into the lake for example in a mad cross between venice and a shanty town.

These people are the future - not us with our soft comfortable lives.

I like "The employee also said he deliberately disabled a filter in Google to access inappropriate sites"

You mean: he turned off the safe search option. Given the rest of the content it seems odd to spin it so that changing an easy to alter option is made to sound like "hacking" but perhaps that is all being spun too!

Ha ha Kottke channeling the channel 9

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctaszjeaDK0

While I agree with the article I do think there is a single most important secret: "Don't give up".

(I might add its not the only thing - just like the article says - but without this one you are never going to make it. And I know it sounds obvious but I've met loads of people with the skills and ideas to make it but have not got the stamina to "do what it takes" to make it)

Ah - an almost perfect example of UK Tabloid reporting:

Moral panic over something that doesn't yet exist, and even if it does work is only going to give access to information people have chosen to make available.

But lets not let facts get in the way of fearing the internet.

I'd given up on QS and gone to google search box (or whatever it was called) - I happily am back on QS with this stealth release - much faster and don't remember the last time it crashed

Now I am sure this keynote was just trying to be provocative and make people think but: Really? Seriously?

You think that other skills - sales, marketing , financial , even secretarial type things require the same kind of thinking , the same kind of people as programming.

And you also think that someone that can program will either a) be happy doing a completely different job than their skill set or b) be worth using as a developer if their main skill is sales , marketing etc.

Now I am sure you can find the odd person who is a brilliant sales person (for example) and a great developer - but why? I don't want my sales people cutting code I want them selling stuff.

There is a phrase "jack of all trades, master of none" - sounds like the kind of people you will end up with

Stick with it - its a couple of clicks down:

http://steveblank.com/2010/02/11/it-must-be-a-marketing-prob...

its a good article

The main reason I hate this question when I'm away from work and work related contexts is that my company is all I talk about and think about for 99% of my time. And sometimes its really nice to have a small break from it. Also I know that once I start enthusing about it peoples eyes will be glazing over.

I certainly hate the idea of "normals" too - and I can easily explain what we do and am more than happy to if you are really interested. Just be sure you are because you might get quite a detailed and passionate answer.

rant on.....

Apart from the inconsistency in the article: the headline talks about moving from XP to Vista but then they refer to windows 2000 support as the rationale....

These are the people who are meant to be running the country and the short term, muddy, cart before the horse thinking sadly typifies a great deal of policy making as well.

Not only that but we have a huge deficit and we are walking eyes wide open into the more costly of two scenarios: Vista support won't last as long as XPs because it has a much smaller user base, it requires more resources and so either machines are more expensive or people are less efficient but hey spending a little money up front to speed the PICT testing through would just be stupid wouldn't it?

Ok. So it's not massive in the scheme of things - but its so typical and irritating.

rant off...