Best commute ever

I did a tandem sky-dive on saturday. One the way down (you have plenty of time to chat up there), my instructor told me of his commute. It is without a doubt the best commute ever...

Him: That's Apeldoorn over there, and Zwolle to the north.

Me: Oh? Where do you live?

Him: See that house over there, with the red car? It looks very small from up here.

Me: Yes I can see it.

Him: That's where I live.

Me: Right. So do you just parachute into your garden last jump of the day?

Him: Yes I do.

Japanese strangeness

One of the lesser-known Japanese idiosyncrasies is their widespread fascination with little anime / hentai plastic dolls. When I was in Tokyo (a couple of years ago now), I witnessed this in action. Middle aged men going into a specialist store and drooling over these 10cm dolls with a strange look in their eyes (in the eyes of the men, not the dolls).


I honestly can't tell you what they do with them. Just put them on top of their PlayStations I'm hoping?

Picture from Tokyocraiger

BBC drops the ball

In an act of particularly impressive myopia, the BBC is about to go live with its new iPlayer service for Windows only! Curious indeed that a publicly funded organization with a mandate to provide services to an entire population went with a system tied to a single DRM and operating system. And I do wonder how much public money has been sunk into Microsoft licensing fees and 'closed' technology.

At least they've promised to have a Mac version some time in the Autumn. Good luck with that. I'm curious what DRM they're planning on using...

Personally I think the BBC should drop DRM on its content and just let anyone access it. Yes there are reasons against this ('TV' license fee plus resale of content internationally), but frankly, stuff it! Sometimes its just a matter of getting your priorities straight.

The Widget Song

Sung to the tune of the Tigger song.

The most wonderful thing about Widgets
is Widgets are wonderful things.
Their tops are made out of graphics,
their bottoms are made out of code.
They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy,
Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun!
But the most wonderful thing about Widgets is,
They can be used by anyone.

Oh, the wonderful thing about Widgets is,
Widgets are easy to use.
They're loaded with vim and vigor.
They love to bring you your news.
They're jumpy, bumpy, clumpy, thumpy,
Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun!
But the most wonderful thing about Widgets is ...
They can be used by anyone!

iPhone revolutionizes the mobile phone business?

I've read way too many iPhone articles lately. To summarize, so you don't need to read them, it comes down to:

- The are very nice to look at
- People come up to you in public when you whip it out
- Some people like the on screen keyboard, some people hate it
- They will revolutionize the mobile phone business

I have no problem with all of these points, except the last one. Not that I necessarily disagree, but in the blogo-echo-chamber-thing, everyone keeps repeating this point without backing it up. If you're going to say that the iPhone is going to revolutionize the mobile phone business, please say HOW.

It's not the design. Touchscreen phones... yes, sure, but no, that's not the revolution.

The big deal is business side of things. The relationship between the handset manufacturer (Apple) and the operator (AT&T). Apple has structured a fundamentally different kind of deal than any of the other handset people: different financially (no subsidy), different from a software / service point of view (seeing that iPhone users will all actually upgrade their phone software regularly, unlike any other handset), and different from an exclusivity point of view. Also, and very significantly, the manufacturer is as much (if not more) in charge of the relationship with the end consumer than the operator.

Which is revolutionary, I guess you can say. But the question is this: how is this revolution going to manifest in the mobile phone business at large? So far, amongst the countless statements about the imminent revolution, no one has explained this part. Namely, what the revolution will actually be.

Well, except one. Roughly drafted does a good job, albeit in an oblique way.

I know what I think will happen, but that's for another post. In the mean time, try this for a thought experiment: 'how could the iPhone be launched in Japan'. Bear in mind that currently the manufacturer brand is 99% concealed behind the operator brand there.

How green is green?

The glut of 'green' marketing is deeply deceptive. To label a product 'green', it appears to not be a case of making a green product, but rather making your currently massively 'un-green' product only slightly less damaging. Hence we have adverts for cars with leaves coming out of the exhaust pipes because they've ever so slightly improved the fuel consumption and slightly lowered the emissions. Lets conveniently skirt the fact that combustion engine driven cars are one of the primary causes of environmental damage, any which way you spin it. Bicycle anyone?

Boeing appear to be leaning on this with their new 787 (taken from the guardian)...

I don't think a jet with 20% less fuel consumption can be labeled 'green'. Certainly it's an improvement, but 80% of 'very polluting' is still seriously polluting.

The problem is that we have no yardstick for 'how green is green'. Am I justified in marketing my new product as 'green' if it now bio-degrades in 200 years instead of 400 and uses 5% less fossil fuels in its production? And if I am, then where is the incentive to make truly green products, since we are able to convince consumers that we are green without really having to be. And lets not be naive: companies are being driven to be greener not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because it's become a baseline requirement for marketing. Meaning it is enough to be perceived to be green, actually being so is a luxury.

I guess I just balk at seeing products like cars and jets being marketed as green. It's like marketing guns as safe and processed food as healthy.

Alternative newspaper model

I've been reading about the possible take over of the Wall Street Journal by Murdoch with dismay. The problem with the news business is that it, like any other business, is a business. Meaning being at the mercy of advertisers, corporate ownership and the attendant pressure to publish what you're supposed to. The result: a reductive news media that increasingly won't step outside of a set of narrow political and social confines. A media that lacks the ability to do its job properly.

Online this is being challenged primarily by blogs. Through independent bloggers, you can access a wide range of diverse opinions on any issue you choose. You'll read ideas that thankfully fall far from 'conventional wisdom'. The problem is, this blogosphere is limited to a particular group: namely the online / aware. Much of the mainstream misses out.

Perhaps a newspaper could be made that just comprised a compilation of the best of the blogosphere from the day before? The paper acts as editorial and printing, but not authoring. This would provide the means to bring the wide range of opinions and analysis that bloggers are providing to a more mainstream audience. The bloggers would have to agree to provide their work for free, but I would imagine most would, especially if sufficient credit is given to them (plus a link to their blog).

The editorial role could be distributed easily enough through technology. A set of 100 active blog readers (with a balanced set of areas of interest and political leanings) could flag suitable articles, which in turn could be aggregated and included. Kind of like a closed-digg. Different local editions could emphasise locally relevant content.

The result: a very cheap to produce newspaper containing some of the best writing out there, with a range of subjects and opinions that roam much wider than traditional newspapers are able to provide.