Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Skype outage
After promoting the service to friends and colleagues it's a bit annoying when Skype no longer works.
Hey Skype, you're a telco now. Telcos focus on things like reliability and minimising risk, not adding new flaky features all the time.
The simple equation for basic communication service is:
"Happy Users => More Happy Users"
... not to be confused with:
"More New Features => More Users"
But if you have a company organised around creating more software/features, then that becomes a goal in itself, and very difficult to stop - and unhelpful if you're a telco and not a software development company.
Hey Skype, you're a telco now. Telcos focus on things like reliability and minimising risk, not adding new flaky features all the time.
The simple equation for basic communication service is:
"Happy Users => More Happy Users"
... not to be confused with:
"More New Features => More Users"
But if you have a company organised around creating more software/features, then that becomes a goal in itself, and very difficult to stop - and unhelpful if you're a telco and not a software development company.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Monday, March 19, 2007
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
How does it feel?
Here's a thought about evaluating/designing interactive systems - what would it feel like to hold in your hand?
Does it feel like a squirming frog trying to escape, unpredictable and unpleasant. Or does it feel solid and well made like a high-quality padlock.
This goes far beyond the obvious physical/tactile aspects of interaction. It also captures something about what annoys me with a lot of advanced Flash sites or applications with "interesting" interaction techniques.
Does it feel like a squirming frog trying to escape, unpredictable and unpleasant. Or does it feel solid and well made like a high-quality padlock.
This goes far beyond the obvious physical/tactile aspects of interaction. It also captures something about what annoys me with a lot of advanced Flash sites or applications with "interesting" interaction techniques.
Life in the self-checkout lane ...
Photo taken with my new SonyEricsson K790i - pretty good for a camera phone!
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Monday, April 03, 2006
Monday, March 27, 2006
Sunday, February 19, 2006
In the snow
so this is what I do during my weekends... (I wish)... the cat takes us up the mountain, we ski down, through the trees...
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Networks v Content Providers
Lots of stories (like this) recently about network providers planning to charge content/service providers for delivering data over their networks. Pretty crazy, since the customers have already paid for their use of these networks.
The network providers must have calculated the cost of filling the expected bandwidth needs before deciding to go with a flat monthly fee, rather than a usage-based fee. Well, if their predictions were wrong, and users now need more bandwidth than expected, that was a risk they took.
The fact is that users are paying for broadband in order to access all the content and services available out there on the internet - in other words, the networks are making money because those services exist. Maybe it's the content/service providers that should be asking the networks for money - "if you don't pay us $X per month or visitor, we won't let your subscribers connect to our services".
Update (Feb 28): Deutsche Telecom wants to charge Google
The network providers must have calculated the cost of filling the expected bandwidth needs before deciding to go with a flat monthly fee, rather than a usage-based fee. Well, if their predictions were wrong, and users now need more bandwidth than expected, that was a risk they took.
The fact is that users are paying for broadband in order to access all the content and services available out there on the internet - in other words, the networks are making money because those services exist. Maybe it's the content/service providers that should be asking the networks for money - "if you don't pay us $X per month or visitor, we won't let your subscribers connect to our services".
Update (Feb 28): Deutsche Telecom wants to charge Google
Monday, October 17, 2005
Wireless devices for the home
From akihabara news: Location Free TV on PSP.
Which reminded me of an idea that "mobile" (as in mobile device) can mean just "mobile inside the home" rather than mobile everywhere. A device designed according to this would have a much more focused purpose, and fewer technical constraints: it can be much larger, battery life is not such an issue, WiFi instead of cellular, etc. It can even serve decorative/ambient display purposes.
It would be especially suited for home entertainment systems where everything seems to be getting more virtual (see above PSP link). Leave storage to the Mac Mini in the corner, and output to your TV/stereo, but allow control and browsing from a device large enough to actually list tracks/playlists/etc. Sonos already has something like this.
And hey, if the screen is big enough, put a browser on it too. And email. And IM. But don't turn it into a tablet PC!!!
This is something that's missing from Apple's music universe. They should make on of these, and Om Malik hints that they will, but for some reason all the excitement is about using it to download tunes in Starbucks...
The Nokia 770 should be mentioned here too - if it's the same size as the 7710 it may be smaller than I had in mind. Check www.maemo.org for some interesting stuff happening for the 770, the maemo platform, and the Hildon UI.
Which reminded me of an idea that "mobile" (as in mobile device) can mean just "mobile inside the home" rather than mobile everywhere. A device designed according to this would have a much more focused purpose, and fewer technical constraints: it can be much larger, battery life is not such an issue, WiFi instead of cellular, etc. It can even serve decorative/ambient display purposes.
It would be especially suited for home entertainment systems where everything seems to be getting more virtual (see above PSP link). Leave storage to the Mac Mini in the corner, and output to your TV/stereo, but allow control and browsing from a device large enough to actually list tracks/playlists/etc. Sonos already has something like this.
And hey, if the screen is big enough, put a browser on it too. And email. And IM. But don't turn it into a tablet PC!!!
This is something that's missing from Apple's music universe. They should make on of these, and Om Malik hints that they will, but for some reason all the excitement is about using it to download tunes in Starbucks...
The Nokia 770 should be mentioned here too - if it's the same size as the 7710 it may be smaller than I had in mind. Check www.maemo.org for some interesting stuff happening for the 770, the maemo platform, and the Hildon UI.
