Kiwibloke » Technology

Twitter For Restaurants In New Zealand (Video)

GregR — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:14:47 +0000

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

A young Kiwi Entrepreneur has developed a Twitter service for restaurant service. The “twitter” service allowsÂ restaurateur to read the feedback in real time.

Microsoft Between a Rock and a Hard Place

GregR — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:32:54 +0000

Uploaded on Flickr by TylerIngram

Yesterday Microsoft took the usual action of filing a suit against the popular GPS provider TomTom. The case revolves around patents involving file management as well as in-car navigation features. The trick is that TomTom runs Linux as does most of the navigational vendors.

Linux is where the twist is in this case and where Microsoft is in tricky waters. If Microsoft does not get TomTom to license their patents, they run the risk of creating a precedence. Patent law has some unusual twists that a holder needs to take care with. Because patents are an offensive right, you have to have reasonableness in applying those rights. This means that they need to push TomTom into a licensing agreement that adds to the validity of those rights (and reinforce the other license agreements).

If TomTom chooses to dig their heels in then Microsoft runs the real risk of having to defend itâ€™s patents against Linux. Now this is going to be a nightmare for Microsoft. Aside from the fact that they run straight into the ravenous band of Linux zealots right on the heals of the Windows 7 release, they also run straight into the European Union bureaucrats who are still smarting from the way they have been given the run around from previous skirmishes with the Redmond giant.

But more importantly this will open up a huge prior art can-of-worms that Microsoft does not necessarily want to open. Windows as an operating system was late to the operating system party. What I mean by that is Windows itself is based on a lot of code and technique that predated the inception of DOS and Windows NT (read Pascal Zacherys book). The vast majority of operating system and file management intellectual property does not reside with Microsoft, it resides with IBM and the former AT&T labs and is encapsulated in IBM MVS and AT&T’s Unix code. Toss in CPM and Digital Research for good measure and you have a godo

Microsoftâ€™s strength of their core operating systems portfolio is in itâ€™s ability to coerce competitors rather than the merits of the portfolio itself. By preemptively striking, you run the risk of exposing weaknesses. Which is why Microsoft will settle with TomTom and move on.

What has Facebook and Michael Phelps Got in Common?

GregR — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:19:52 +0000

Uploaded on Flickr by Donna62

This weeks embrulio about the change in terms of service for the Facebook terms of service has unlined an immutable truth about social networking. Facebook has done an about face on the terms but this has not stopped speculation that Facebook is doing an end run around it’s users.

However of more concern is the longer term impact of Facebook and it’s archive capabilities on a users future. Our perspective of the future at 20 years old, is vastly different from one in their 20s or 30s or 40s. In your youth you are far more inclined to view camera photos, goof off video, or that bong photo can be seriously problematic in the future. The Facebook incident has clearly shown that there is an uneasy alliance between the commercial requirements of the network and the privacy of the users, and without a certain vigilance this is always going to be the case.

Consider the Michael Phelps Mea Culpa:

“I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment,” Phelps said. “I’m 23 years old and despite the successes I’ve had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to…

[New York Times - 1st Feb 2009]

In a statement on Sunday, Phelps said that “despite the successes I have had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way……[f]or this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public-it will not happen again.”

[College News- 2nd Feb 2009]

“I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment,” he said in a statement, and he promised his “fans and the public it will not happen again.”

[Greenville News - 15th Feb 2009]

Phelps learned that lesson quite early in life and it had a considerable negative impact on his income with a number of endorsers rethinking their support for him. Nonetheless the photo cannot now be removed from the collective archive known as the internet.

This incident only exemplifies the fact that your information, that your provide online is a permanent record and you need to treat it as such. Although there are rudimentary privacy features and rules in place on social networks, it is unreasonable to expect that this information will not leak out. This is because although you control your friends and their access, you do not control what they do with that photo or video.

The broad rule on the internet is that everything is public and you should treat it as such. Michael Phelps learnt that lesson the hardway.

Top Gear’s Richard Hammond Talks about his Life (Video)

Kiwi Bloke — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:54:11 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy1yHUzUcbs

While in Auckland New Zealand, Top Gear’s Richard Hammond speaks his mind this week about Top Gear and it’s cultural phenomenon in a 1965 Lincoln Town Car Continental.

Linux Silverlight Goes Live Destroys My Linux Netbook

Kiwi Bloke — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:06:28 +0000

Aside from my MacBookpro, I have a Dell D600 which served a purpose about 3 years ago. Luckily it is now repurposed as a Linux Netbook running gOS 3.1, a version of Ubuntu Linux specifically tailored to maximise the Google Experience on a laptop. It also however attempts to follow design elements from the Mac including the dock and widgets. What I mostly use it for is an alternative media streaming tool to listen to NPR, watch TV online or browsing. Unfortunately when you attempt to use it for TV watching you smack straight into Microsoft’s attempt to unseat Adobe Flash at the default video streaming technology.

Microsoft has attempted to break Flash’s dominance by paying media companies to embed their technology into their online offerings over Flash technology. This has resulted in Linux being locked out of areas including some Discovery Channel and NBC offerings.

Aside from the fact that Silverlight is a completely redundant technology, I saw that the Novell Mono project has released a version of Silverlight for Linux called Moonlight. This resulted in me mistakenly downloading and installing the Firefox plugin to allow me to watch Landrover G4 Challenge.

After installing the plugin, a dutifully restarted Firefox and hell broke lose. Firefox would not restart, sorry would not stay started. The plugin kept crashing the browser. I then had to google around to figure out how to delete the plugin. My response was to delete the plugin from the Firefox plugin directory, which I did and Firefox restarted normally.

Then a strange thing happened, my sound card stopped working. After some more googling, and a lesson on the difference betwee ALSA and OSS, I attempted to restore my sound card settings which failed miserably.

Thank god gOS is incredibly easy to reinstall……

Twitter Lands $35Millions Worth of Time

Kiwi Bloke — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 04:08:10 +0000

Molecules

Although I think Facebook has a real future if it concentrates on building out it’s me centric hub, the future is less clear despite buying $35M worth of time to figure it out according to Todd Chaffee from IVP:

From a business perspective, it is a media property that is growing very quickly. These newer media properties that have emerged are massive compared to older media properties.

[Some people say] Twitter is whatever you want it to be. But at the end of the day you have this open, one-to-many network, and to enable that is this platform. But who cares? The reality is that it is a network/platform which has millions of users and thousands of applications.

He goes on to explain how Twitter does three things; firstly it facilitates social connections. Yep this is true, however people that follow Robert Scoble are acting in a hub and spoke relationship not a peer based relationship. Secondly it taps the wisdom of millions of people. This is a bit more dubious because it is hard to see a lot of wisdom flying around inside 140 characters, it is however a great popular voting mechanism. And thirdly it is for social expression for the masses. That is of course people are listening, and mostly they are listening to the few who have the ability to build a community of interest.

Twitter may indeed be open, real time, scalable and persistent but the proof is going to be in whether enough people care to make a difference. The numbers we don’t have is where those communities of tweeters are combining and what velocity those binds are held.

This is just like chemistry where there are very strong atoms (big time tweeters) who are bound with a group of followers to create a compound social interaction. The big question is whether these bonds are worth anything, that it can it be monetized.

Will Mantracker Have Your Google ID?

Kiwi Bloke — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:39:21 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHc9NI2FRDk

On OLN in Canada is a program called Mantracker that I watch quite regularly. This is where experienced Search and Rescue tracker, Terry Grant from the Foothills Search and Rescue Team in Alberta tracks down contestants in the mountains of remote Canada. Each week he and a buddy track down two individuals who team to get to a finish line 40kms away from the start. Using only his tracking skills, looking for clues in the dirt and mud, he skillfully hunts his prey over the course of 36 hours.Â He employs a technique of reading tracks called forensics. This is where elements are bought together to paint a picture of the prey’s whereabouts.

Meantime I am looking through all the accounts that I have online and realize that all tracks seem to lead back to my Gmail account. Aside from the obvious mail, flickr, Blogger, Google Sites, adwords, adsense, You Tube, and Maps, it is also attached to Facebook, Stumbleupon, Mybloglog, Gravator, Newsvine, Reddit, Digg and many others.

It would not take much for Google to employ forensics to create a full and complete view of my actvities online and paint a picture of how and what I do online to a much greater degree than what is possible from straight search logs. Indeed search logs only reflect about 10% of my activity and are exceedingly boring (most research on what to blog about).

What it does however is show to Google, and any other interested party, a complete picture of how and what I think on a wide range of subjects. It so happens that I commit many of those thoughts to blog postings, but there is plenty of stuff that I would prefer not or explicitly don’t express an opinion on.

The challenge will be in the future will be for the keepers of this information on the straight and narrow, to keep the information inside boundaries of what the information was originally intended for. Are we really ready for large corporations to know so much about us. We of course already surrender vast amounts of information to financial institutions but this is different. Are we to trust these companies at their word or will the time for legislation to protect users be nearing?.

Google Latitude, The Beginning of the End

Kiwi Bloke — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:14:14 +0000

With release of Google Latitude and the birth of wide spread people tracking technology, we are onto the next stage of improved social tools at the expense of privacy. From the Google Blog:

Latitude is a new feature of Google Maps for mobile, as well as an iGoogle gadget, that allows you to share your location with your friends and to see their approximate locations, if they choose to share them with you. You can use your Google account to sign in and easily invite friends to Latitude from your existing list of contacts or by entering their email addresses. Google Talk is integrated with Latitude, so you and your friends can update your status messages and profile photos on the go and see what everyone is up to. You can also call, SMS, IM, or email each other within the app

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-Oq-9enE-k

With a few simple clicks of the mouse, a whole new world of detail can pervade one’s existence and create opportunities for the less scrupulous of us. With the addition of location information along with credit information, corporations can track to an even greater depth what you can and cannot do.

Recently it was reported in the New York Times that American Express was changing your credit limit based on where and whom you shop with:

In recent months, American Express has gone far beyond simply checking your credit score and making sure you pay on time. The company has been looking at home prices in your area, the type of mortgage lender youâ€™re using and whether small-business card customers work in an industry under siege. It has also been looking at how you spend your money, searching for patterns or similarities to other customers who have trouble paying their bills.

Not only is it possible to see your transactions at the local Cash Converters or Value Village, simply being in the vicinity of a Dollar Store makes you a credit risk. This ability will soon be available to any developer:

In the meantime, with Latitude Google is moving to commoditize both the map information and the location beacon. Google is using triangulation data from cellular networks, and Wi-Fi positioning along with GPS data for its Latitude offering. It is only a matter of time before this location information is made available to other developers for free, especially Android app developers. After all, Google needs apps for its Android platform, and more importantly it needs developers to think differently.

The issues do not stop at intrusive corporations, according to Privacy International it can also extend to unwanted attention from unsavory types:

“The company has a long way to go before it can capture the trust of phone users. As it stands right now, Latitude could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jealous partners and obsessive friends. The dangers to a user’s privacy and security are as limitless as the imagination of those who would abuse this technology.”

Couple that with long time Google wannabe, Microsoft Live Maps and you have a potential problem waiting to happen.

Next up, pre-crime….

London Stock Exchange Dies On Critical Day

Kiwi Bloke — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 01:27:06 +0000

Reuters reported today:

The London Stock Exchange suffered its worst systems failure in eight years on Monday, forcing the world’s third largest share market to suspend trading for about seven hours and infuriating its users.

“This halt today clearly has once again damaged (the LSE’s) reputation as a leading exchange, especially on a day like today, highlighting that it may have been unable to handle the volumes this morning,” added another trader.

According to the LSE Live Announcement site, “connectivity problems” started to occur from 9.07am and continued through to 4pm and then onto the close. At various times during the day, connectivity was returned to users, but then pulled from them. Users were at various times of the day able to add to their order book but no execution of trades occurred to make it fair to all traders.

However according to the IT World in London:

The LSE said the system had been hit by a “connectivity issue” and insisted that the problem did not lie with its flagship TradElect trading platform.

The schedule of events suggested database problems (from my experience), not network problems. Network problems are usually described as access issues.

What is of interest is that this system is not based on highly-available systems such as Concurrent, IBM or Tandem but based on Microsoft Windows technology. To my knowledge this is the only mission critical trading system in theÂ world that is based on low end technology.

Other speculation including Telegraph:

Traders said the exchange suffered an “overloading” caused partly because the FTSE 100 ended down sharply on Friday, so dealers who were betting on further falls in the index would have had to close their positions.

This may suggest there was problems on Friday. However it remains to be questioned, why there is no backup and redundant systems:

City veteran David Buik told AP: “For the life of me, I cannot understand why the LSE system is not run in duplicate. So much and so many clients rely on the LSE’s durability. They cannot afford to be let down.” He said European clients were furious at the lost day.

Continuing…..

Update: LSE CEO is gone and Microsoft System is dumped for a Linux System.

Kiwi Software Companies at Cebit

GregR — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:41:20 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXh0Ue7znvU

Mobile Times They Are A Changing

Kiwi Bloke — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:28:02 +0000

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

2007 will go down in history as the turning point where smartphones became mobile phones. With RIM on a roll with itâ€™s business ready blackberry, to Apple charging onto the scene with their user (and app) friendly iPhone, to Googleâ€™s Android mobile platform, 2007 was packed the sort of tipping points that make Malcolm Gladwell giddy.

Each of the â€œnewâ€ vendors are predicated on the user experience as the dominant need, not the need of the carrier and their business model. Indeed I have argued before that existing manufacturers (eg Nokia, Motorola) are subjected to the limitations their market and have acted accordingly. The carrier decides what features will be provided to whom and the manufacturer created it. Sure their was some give and take, but the immutable law was that the carrier decided what was on the phone and the manufacturer build it, and the sales person sold it.

So the key limitation was not that phones were not offered by the manufacturers but that phones were delivered consistent to what the manufacturers believed would be accepted by the carriers in their network. However 2007 was characterized by a fundamental change in how the consumers view the mobile phone lead by Apple.

Subsequently two new business models have arrived, the Apple iphone alternate reality and the Google application goodness reality.

Right in this mix you have an extremely clever consumer products organization that knows how to play hard ball. It is no secret that ATT was on the receiving end of negotiations with Apple over the iPhone. Apple received concessions that were unheard of in the industry up to that point. What is lesser known is that Appleâ€™s iPhone pricing strategy is exactly that a strategy. The original $599 price was there to straddle the market. What that means is that you price the product close to the perception price when you launch it (ie $599) to capture the early adopters and to set R&D budgets for competitors because they had to respond to the product. Then 6 months later drop the price back to an aggressive position ($399) and again make the competitors respond. This is a technique used simply to slow down the competition by creating two reaction points. (This also allows consumers to react as well. Consumers react to changes in prices not absolute prices.) Apple brings a degree of marketing and product sophistication that has not been seen in the mobile market.

Much to the chagrin of the traditional model, Googleâ€™s Android platform is largely subsidized by search and advertising revenue. It is main premise is to allow developers and customers to come up with a platform that appeals to the widest audience. It is largely based on open source and hence is very extensible.

More importantly it has the support of Googleâ€™s core applications including search, docs, maps and others. It dominant motive is to provide a consistent platform for the delivery of Google goodness, and the extensibility to allow new applications (such as say traffic reporting system based on GPS, Google maps and real time traffic data. The Android platform has an anchor tenant so to speak.

2007 provided much in the way of change for the mobile market. It was a world of change from the beginning of the year to the end of the year in how the consumer viewed their role. However this has only opened the flood gates of change. The Block C auction in the USA proved that the open access rule does not destroy the value of the network as the carriers threatened, Apple and Google (and Symbian) are pushing the value of mobile applications, and Intel and ARM are pushing the limit of whatâ€™s possible with CPUs and by extension personal mobile devices.

Kiwibloke » Technology

Twitter For Restaurants In New Zealand (Video)

Related Posts:

Microsoft Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Related Posts:

What has Facebook and Michael Phelps Got in Common?

Related Posts:

Top Gear’s Richard Hammond Talks about his Life (Video)

Related Posts:

Linux Silverlight Goes Live Destroys My Linux Netbook

Related Posts:

Twitter Lands $35Millions Worth of Time

Related Posts:

Will Mantracker Have Your Google ID?

Related Posts:

Google Latitude, The Beginning of the End

Related Posts:

London Stock Exchange Dies On Critical Day

Related Posts:

Kiwi Software Companies at Cebit

Related Posts:

Mobile Times They Are A Changing

Related Posts: