After the storm

After the storm

Originally uploaded by tim_d.

Taken from an upstairs window with my new toy…

iPod reboot

For some reason (probably a protest about my lousy taste in music) my Nano locked up - nothing short of running it under the wheels of a car seemed to be going to make any different.

After a bit of Googling, the following solution presented itself:

• Toggle the hold switch ON
• Toggle the hold switch OFF
• Press and hold the Menu and centre buttons together for about 5 seconds
• Err
• That’s it.

Nano is once more a happy iPod, and filled with dubious crap.

I Can Think Clearly Now

Courtesy of Projects@Work:

You know how you feel when you have a ‘light bulb’ moment, when suddenly the solution to a problem becomes crystal clear. What if those were regular occurrences instead of elusive moments? Here is how to eliminate three bad habits (often mistaken as qualities) that can cloud your thinking and decision-making skills.

Unsuprising news on software patents

I told you so:

Silicon.com: EU attempting to legalise patents ‘by the back door’

The European Commission is attempting to legalise software patents through the introduction of the EU Community Patent, according to an anti-patent campaigner.

Trend tracker: Blogs and wikis

Inside Knowledge points out that good ideas tend to find their own spaces:

If you think that your organisation does not use blogs or wikis, then you may need to think again. Just as instant messaging appeared informally a few years ago, blogs and wikis are appearing as skunkworks projects across a large number of organisations.

 

[Inside Knowledge Magazine]

The long Lego tail

I find the long tail a fascinating concept - basically the idea that technology advances is moving our culture away from concentrating on a few massive hits and towards a situation where the market is spread across a much larger number of less popular items.

The classic example that gets quoted time and time again is Amazon versus bricks-and-mortar bookstores - the marginal cost for Amazon to hold a copy of a title that sells one or two a year is virtually nothing, whereas a highstreet bookstore has a finite - and expensive - supply of shelfspace, so concentrates on a much smaller number of bigger sellers.

And there are numerous other examples, from iTunes to eBay - I bought a camera a few months ago which has been out of production for well over ten years, something I would never have been able to do without an online store connecting me with the seller.

One of the examples I hadn’t considered up to now is Lego. But according to Chris Anderson’s Long Tail blog, Lego is actually a great example of how the long tail effect has not only changed the market, but also how the company has reacted to that:

It’s worth pausing here and considering the Long Tail implications of this. At least 90% of Lego’s products are not available in traditional retail. They’re only available in the catalogs and online, where the economics of inventory and distribution are far friendlier to niche products. Overall, those non-retail parts of the business represent 10-15% of Lego’s annual $1.1 billion in sales. But the margins on these products are higher than the kits sold through Toys R Us, thanks to not having to share the revenues with the retailer. And because the virtual store can carry products for all Lego fans, from kids to adult enthusiasts, and not just the sweet spot of nine-year-old boys, the range of prices can be a lot greater online, from $1 bricks to the aforementioned $300 Star Wars kit.

What’s also startling is how wide a distinction exists between industries that do get this - i.e. Lego - and those that don’t seem to, like the RIAA-affiliated music business. There are numerous highly-detailed examples of how long tail effects could affect the music business, if only the music business would sit up and take notice.

And I couldn’t help but notice how much cooler Lego has become - I sometimes get the feeling I missed out, having been brought up a generation before the online Lego store selling bespoke kits and Mindstorms…

(More) habits of the young

More on today’s Guardian story about the media habits of 14- to 21-year-olds: Neil McIntosh, who’s a Guardian hack himself (although not involved in this story, it seems) picks up another angle:

This young group is already spending big - “an average of £27 a month on their mobile phones [...] and spend an average of five hours a week playing on their games console”. Who’s going to get the business as these soon-to-be consumers mature and start earning real money?

Habits of the young

There’s a big piece (a slice of the frontpage, a double-page spread AND a leader column) in today’s Guardian about the change in media habits of the current generation of 14 - 21 year olds. It’s an exclusive ICM/Guardian poll, so you can sort of forgive the sheer number of column inches - and the conclusions make for interesting reading as well.

The extent of the personal publishing revolution has been revealed by a Guardian/ICM poll showing that a third of all young people online have launched their own blog or website.

Millions of young people who have grown up with the internet and mobile phones are no longer content with the one-way traffic of traditional media and are publishing and aggregating their own content, according to the exclusive survey of those aged between 14 and 21.

The implication of all this that isn’t mentioned in the article is that within the space of the next 10 years, this generation of the ultrawired are going to be joining the workforce. Their expectations of what technology can deliver will be radically different to us old farts - so while we’re going whoopies over the lastest Outlook plugin, they are going to be conducting business over blogs and IM. Where does that leave the corporate IT function?