Once in a while, there is a disaster. Phone lines go out, the Internet breaks down, and mobiles don't work. Then the Ham Radio Operators save the day. Amateur radio is one of those things I'm only vaguely aware of. It chugs along in the background unnoticed. It doesn't follow the fashion of today's industry, nor does it chase growth at all costs. It is an open standard, run by a decentralised group of people rather than a corporation, and it favours relentless practicality rather than KPIs. I …
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I've been using Android since before it was released in the UK. When I was working at Vodafone, I got a pre-release HTC device with an early version of Android on it. I've been pretty much in the Android ecosystem ever since. Recently, I treated myself to an upgrade - a Pixel 8 Pro. The biggest, fastest, fattest, AI-stuffed Android phone yet. It's pretty good! The camera is excellent, the heat-sensor is crap, the battery is gorgeous, the weight is annoying. Google's software was too needy, so …
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I was saddened to hear of Kris Nóva's untimely death a few weeks ago. I had her book "Hacking Capitalism" on my eReader for several months, but hadn't got around to reading it yet. Never put these things off. The book is a complicated but fitting legacy. It absolutely showcases Nóva's ideas, ideals, and potential. Perhaps a little overwrought in places, and a little underpowered in others. It's clear that her heart was in the right place and she was making a huge impact in the world. The s…
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Computers, eh? Leave them for five minutes and they become obsolete. Leave them for five years and they become legacy infrastructure. How do we deal with a tower of "quick fixes" which are older than Moses? What strategies do we need to stop teams going mad as they try to upgrade a Spitfire into a 747 while in flight? This is Marianne Bellotti's attempt to explain how we get there and - just maybe - how we stop legacy cruft from building up in the first place. I found myself highlighting…
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I'm always interested in when anachronistic technology pops up in the media. Whether it's Kelly Rowland trying to send an email using Excel, or people in spaceships developing film photographs, or futuristic moonbases which use BS 1363 plugs - I just love it! So, I was watching that absolute banger of a tune "When You're Gone" by Bryan Adams (featuring Mel C) - when I noticed this: It appears to be a desktop videophone! The interlacing looked artificial to me - but I've noted before that…
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I don't follow football - or any sports - which made me an unusual choice for this particular pitch. Let's wind back the clock a decade... A relatively unknown hardware company has just released one of the first "fitness trackers" which can measure a wearer's physiology. As well as counting steps, it now has the ability to measure heart-rate and a bunch of other things. They think that athletes and exercisers will be interested in knowing these vital statistics. But they're wondering if…
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Tom Dolan has an excellent blog post which touches, in part, on comparative cost. If you're working for, say, a TV company - then you know exactly how much an hour of TV programming costs on average. If you want to do something like build a website, it's quite natural for people to evaluate its budget in terms of how many hours of TV it costs. That can be a useful metric. It allows people to benchmark the impact your non-core project is having against the investment. But, in my experience, it …
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Many years ago, I worked as a product manager for pre-smart phones. Remember that old Nokia phone you had? Yeah, them! This was a common complaint we heard back then: "Ugh! Why do phones have all these useless, overcomplicated, random functions? People only want their phones to do three thing - calls, texts, and..." And... And that's where the problem was. That third thing was different for everyone. For some it was a calendar, for others a calculator. Some couldn't live without Snake, and…
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Picture the scene. You're in a pub and order, say, a cider or a cocktail. The local pub bore pipes up "What are you drinking that for? Real men drink..." and then names a brand of generic, piss-weak lager that is his substitute for a personality. He's the same guy who insists that "real men" watch football, and can't quite believe that you have no opinion on last night's cup final. This sort of behaviour is sometimes terms "fragile masculinity". It isn't that masculinity itself is a weak and…
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Amazon Alexa is losing billions of dollars. Self Driving Cars are losing billions of dollars. The Metaverse is losing billions of dollars. Are we about to witness the biggest crash in technological progress? I'm particularly fond of the Rule of Credibility which states: The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time. How true is that! If you've…
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This is a little story about standards, technology, civilisation, and the modern world. I know it is tempting to only talk about the various ways technology disappoints us, but sometimes it can be quite magical living in the future. A few week ago, I took a trip to a foreign country... I waved a rectangle of black-and-white squares in the vicinity of an optical scanner. The tiny computer's eye caught a fleeting glimpse of the barcode, de-skewed, rotated, and deciphered it - then checked its…
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We live at a time when billions have access to unbelievably powerful technology. The most extraordinary tool that has been invented in the last century, the smartphone, is forcing radical changes in the way we live and work - and unlike previous technologies it is in the hands of just about everyone. Coupled with the rise of social media, this has ushered in a new era of deeply personal technology, where individuals now have the ability to work, create and communicate on their own terms,…
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