Nick Carr has a good article in The Guardian about how consumer IT is now a service.
The big switch may turn off jobs | Technology | The Guardian
Of course he’s right, but he doesn’t talk about how this is going to affect corporate IT departments. Most IT staff are not running dating sites or YouTube; they’re running payroll and finance applications for corporations.
blog.pmarca.com: When non-technologists write about technology
This post reminds me of something that my Dad used to say; “I’ve never read an article about a subject that I know well that was correct”. It always made me wonder but I’ve spent years since reading articles about subjects I know looking for the exception; I’ve not found it.
The Economist is an extreme of this, I read it for over a decade and was subscribed for years. Then I realized that all articles about technology, the UK and France annoyed me because of their gross oversimplification and constant application of “Economist hope” over experience. However, the rest of the paper made sense.
Then I got thinking…
If that’s the case, does it mean that the worst written articles were always on the subjects that I knew best, or simply that I agreed with the other articles because I didn’t understand the situation and the Economist was over simplifying it?
In the end I unsubscribed and read more blogs instead!
As I pointed out a couple of days ago, the Top 100 brands was dominated by old western brands. However, it seems that the world will be changed 41 times just by the Chinese!!!
41 Chinese Companies Are Changing The World – China Law Blog.
Either their going to grow brands quickly; which makes a mockery of the Top 100 brands valuations or they just won’t need brands; therefore making a mockery of the Top 100 brand valuations!!!
It’s time for the annual nonsense list of brands…
BusinessWeek Online: Top 100 Global Brands
Some quick notes;
From here the list looks like the Top 100 middle American brands that mean something to the baby boomers.
I’m a sucker for these sorts of things…Â newsmap
Britain’s Data Chernobyl: more lost CDs full of thousands of personal records – Boing Boing
OK, I admit that I didn’t expect the news of the lost CDs to disappear overnight but the fact that it is still being reported as news is interesting.
In the long term, I think that this will have a massive effect on politics in the UK, US and Oz. These countries has gone from no ID laws to compiling massive lists of people post-911.
The pendulum will now swing back. It’ll be interesting to see if it swings back in such a way that the government is restricted in doing its job. After all; the government needs those bank details to pay social security money. If the government is restricted from holding that sort of information, it won’t be able to run social security.
The next step in the next step (Scripting News)
Now I’m really looking forward to LeWeb3; seems that Mr Winer has something to tell us.
PS – If he can also tell us about how the SlingBox has been setup I’d be more than grateful!
Google Mobile Maps PinPoints Your Location Without GPS
This is a great technology; in fact, so great I’ve been using it for the last three or four years.
In France, Orange offers this to all their subscribers with real-time traffic information. Of course, nobody uses it (or at least I seem to be the only user) because they advertize it so badly and have hidden it half way down the menu screen and behind a three page ULA.
I’m always by the amount of statistics that are produced by the average American sport. What I didn’t realize was that the Americans would be able to apply the same analysis of political debates. Trailhead : Debate By NumbersYou have to ask what all this is going to be used for. In four years time are we going to compare the figures against this race? “History shows that in the third debate the second placed candidate should mention social security at least three times and directly criticize the other party’s candidate twice”.Â
Remember when Real Networks started putting adverts in all the wrong places? Adobe seems to have hired the same team. BBC NEWS | Business | Yahoo to put adverts in PDF files