China's three-horse mobile bet: Repeating America's mistakes – "We’ve seen from the last big experiment in multiple standards that competition doesn’t always lead to more choice and lower prices. That experiment was the US – the place that leads in technology, internet and computer design, yet trails in mobile phone technology."
'Visions link' to coffee intake – My alma mater finds a connection between coffee and hallucinations. I was saying the same thing to a pink elephant only the other day…
Market Yourself An iParadigm – "The part I love the most is that the people making the 'just market your app!' comment have no real idea how much effective marketing costs. Oh sure, you can go far on viral and word-of-mouth marketing, but it all pales in comparison to even a small banner graphic in the App Store." Making your application visible is hard.
Robbery suspect left his address – "Chicago police have arrested a man who allegedly robbed a bank using a threatening note written on the back of his own pay cheque." Brilliant.
Reliving Cuba's revolution – Interesting to see this on "film." They wouldn't let us take cameras up there when I visited in 2004. (Plenty of other pictures of Cuba on ZX81.org.uk though!)
What Carriers Aren’t Eager to Tell You About Texting – "Once one understands that a text message travels wirelessly as a stowaway within a control channel, one sees the carriers’ pricing plans in an entirely new light." I worked on text messaging software back in the late nineties and, at least for GSM, is absolutely true.
Internet sites could be given 'cinema-style age ratings', Culture Secretary says – "Giving film-style ratings to individual websites is one of the options being considered, [Andy Burnham, British Culture Secretary confirms]." The government still seems not to understand how the internet works. If implemented, this will basically result in a system that's easy to circumvent and is paid for with higher ISP connection fees. We all lose.
Happy Birthday Earthrise – "Oh, my God! Look at that picture over there! Isn't that something…" Still very much awe-inspiring even forty years later.
Fearless: Apple's Macworld Expo exit is part of its DNA – "In Apple's estimation, the best time to kill off a successful product or brand is 'as soon as possible.' Dropping a winner means creating a new winner to replace it, and that's exactly what Apple has decided it must do to be successful: create great new products again and again."
Ars Book Review: "Patent Failure" – Interesting book review about the effect of patents on an industry. Apparently cost more money than they make in anything but chemical and pharmaceuticals.
Lucky to be a Programmer – I don't program as much as I used to but this explains why I love to when I get the chance.
WordPress 2.6 – Usual drill. I've upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, the underlying software of ZX81.org.uk. If you see anything wrong please let me know!
Peep Show for free! – If you're in the UK this is a must-have download: the first episode of the new series of Peep Show. It's perhaps the best comedy show on British TV at the moment. Highly recommended.
Billy Bragg: Why should songwriters starve so others get rich? – "I never bought that Home Taping Is Killing Music shit in the 1980s that the record companies tried to lay on us. In fact I printed on the front of my fourth album that Capitalism is Killing Music. And that's what's happening now. The powerful start-ups a
What Idiot Wrote These Ten Commandments? – "Where's the stuff we can use? Where's 'No pushing'? Or 'Bag your leaves so they don't blow around in your neighbor's yard?' And don't even get me started on right-of-way. Didn't they have real problems back in Bible days?"
Photography, opinions and other random ramblings by Stephen Darlington
