Archive for October, 2007

The threat to labels

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Oasis, Jamiroquai and Madonna. What do they all have in common? They dislike the record labels as much as we do. Expect others to follow soon and labels to either fall or change completely.

Funny how the threat to record labels is exactly what they have always said it is; the internet. Now if they would only evolve and join the revolution, not resist it.

Informatics at Enterprise Ireland

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007

Richard Rodger presented FeedHenry at the Enterprise Ireland Informatics event this morning. There was a great mix of ideas and early companies presenting alongside us; SUV rollover prevention technology, hand-wash health compliance monitoring, floating-point conversion software, wireless quality regulation and even a pill dispensing unit. I must not forget our colleagues Zimbie who got their bot in gear and got good laughs from the audience. Take a look at the PDF for some of Ireland’s emerging technology talent.

Sapiens gesture app launcher

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

Sapiens is an app. launcher that instead of being fired by the keyboard is opened via a circular mouse gesture. I use the track-pad on my MacBook Pro and didn’t have a whole lot of luck with it but if you use a separate mouse then you might want to give it a try.

Quicksilver is still my app. launcher of choice.

Sign out of Amazon

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

While Infoworld and its readers are overly dramatic (accusing Amazon of negligence leading to fraud) they are right in requesting an easier sign-out process on Amazon. The site redesign is great but it does need a sign-out link.

Please put it back in Amazon or I’ll never sign in to Amazon from a non-personal computer again.

Using your hands

Monday, October 1st, 2007

Each day I spend using the iPhone is another day adding to the growing desire for open, affordable and ubiquitous multi-touch interface technology. With Microsoft’s Surface making waves on table-tops and Apple’s multi-touch revolutionizing the mobile handset the user interface is returning to a hand driven model. No abstraction through the mouse, just use your fingers and hands as you have been doing since you were born. Drag, swivel, push, pull, tap, fling and touch.

Come on Apple. Open the iPhone. Release an iMac with multi-touch. Release a MacBook Tablet with multi-touch.

Otherwise Microsoft is going to beat you to it.

Dilbert on newspapers

Monday, October 1st, 2007

Well, Scott Adams on newspapers. But he is Dilbert as Bruce Wayne is to Batman. Right?

What I’d like to see is a newspaper that is a hybrid of social voting, such as you see on web sites like www.reddit.com and www.digg.com, but further filtered by human editors who weed out the redundant, the juvenile, and the stuff unsubstantiated by facts.

Interesting comment that. Juvenile I get but you’d think Digg and Reddit would by their very nature weed out redundant and unsubstantiated stories. People don’t hit the Digg button without reading the story, right? Surely they don’t vote for a story 5 minutes after they’ve just read and voted for something similar, right? Do people want their favourite information site favouring unsubstantiated and redundant stories?

Otherwise Scott has some good points. Though I do wish he’d scope his comment to the developed world. Back home in South Africa it is going to take more than two rounds of mobile phones to kill the printed newspaper. I imagine India, China and many other countries are the same.

Name your price for Radiohead

Monday, October 1st, 2007

Radiohead In Rainbows

Radiohead is releasing their next album on the 10th of October in a variety of ways. One is as a download from their website. The interesting bit is you get to say how much you want to pay for the In Rainbows album. I just bought it for €10, a cent more than if it had been available on iTunes.

Anyone know if the digital album will have DRM or be clean MP3s?

iPhone, SMS and Zyb, problem found

Monday, October 1st, 2007

One of the chaps at Zyb emailed about my post on Zyb sending SMSs that crash the iPhone SMS app. The Zyb team did some investigation and found out that SMS senders with “alaphanumeric characters” cause problems for the iPhone.

Podcasts, what have they become?

Monday, October 1st, 2007

Churbuck.com asks When was the last time you listened to a podcast?

I listen to podcasts almost every day, often 2 to 3 hours of podcasts. But they aren’t Gillmor Gang, Ricky Gervais, Thought Leaders (sorry, Tom) or any other information podcast. Instead I get free music through podcasts. Ministry of Sound, Queens of the Stone Age, Electronic Periodic etc.

It is a great way to get music to fill the background as you work.

As for information podcasts, I’ve never been a fan. Sitting through 45 minutes of some chap talking about Web 2.0. isn’t my cup of tea. I get that information on-screen and a lot faster.