tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-131599302007-12-05T10:49:40.576+07:00Paul JardineBlogger159125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-25207227675858539602007-11-30T09:25:00.000+07:002007-11-30T20:11:59.745+07:00

A lot of the reviews of Amazon's Kindle have been remarkably upbeat, given the usual derision meted out to e-book readers. Amazon have been innovative and have pulled off something that I was beginning to think I would never see. Now that it's happened, I wonder if it is the start of bigger things? I'm not talking about the design of the Kindle, or its use of E-Ink to give long battery life, or

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-81233778797486786382007-10-28T22:42:00.000+07:002007-11-30T20:15:34.292+07:00

I've said this before, email is being slowly strangled by the amount of Spam that finds it's way around the network. Ok, I can filter most of it out, so I don't have to look at adverts for V1@gra and various sex sites, but my gmail spam folder has 21,000 emails in it, which equates roughly to the amount of spam I get in a month. My idea was that we should be paying for email. Hardly

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-10158656424231411832007-10-28T03:06:00.000+07:002007-10-28T03:38:11.966+07:00

I was just playing down at my local course and there have been a few changes recently. Golf is now embracing technology in a big way. The whole course is now covered in WiFi hotspots at the tees. Instead of scorecards we were given Nokia N810 tablets running a scorecard application and course information. Clicking on the link for each hole gives the yardages and using the inbuilt GPS marks your

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-42160836131656210492007-08-31T15:07:00.000+07:002007-08-31T16:16:42.183+07:00

I've always felt that the alliance between mobile operators and handset manufacturers was on the way out, or at least should be on the way out. Operators want consumers to pick their network, handset manufacturers want consumers to pick their equipment, but the consumer picks both based on factors that are often superficial. The place where an alliance between these two works best is where there

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-54506841485181264412007-02-23T13:56:00.000+07:002007-02-23T14:34:27.810+07:00

Or 'Thoughts on the Postal system' I am away from my house in the UK for long periods, and I don't want the post office to forward my mail on to the country I'm in. Firstly, because it would probably be prohibitively expensive, and secondly because it is around 80% spam. However, registering the fact that I am out of the country with official bodies, such as the council, the IR and DVLA etc, is

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-36932921208544837102007-01-23T21:30:00.000+07:002007-01-23T22:06:16.992+07:00

For someone of only 2 and three-quarters, I have a pretty large collection of DVD/VCD/CDs, probably about 70 or 80. They range from cartoons to music videos, educational shows to feature films. Most are original, but there are a few picked up at Thai street stalls. Hey, I live in Bangkok, it's hard to be an angel! The thing is that my favourite DVD is 'jeng' again (broken). My daddy says it's

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1167373970467525512006-12-29T12:31:00.000+07:002006-12-29T13:32:50.540+07:00

Muli Koppel writes about how we select our Programming Languages based on the credo of their creators, and that each creator can be viewed as a Sociologist or philosopher. In my case at least, it's a very astute observation about why we use the languages we do, in order to create systems. You could almost think of each language as an artistic style: - Ruby : Monet, Zen Art - Perl : Dali!

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1167027651822095332006-12-25T11:40:00.000+07:002006-12-25T13:20:51.910+07:00

Alex Saunders writes some more on 'New Presence'. I've been thinking about this subject for a long time now, and my conclusion was much the same as Sean's in that people generally can't manage complicated presence. In discussion with a good friend of mine, he suggested that it really came down to 3 'circles', your family and close friends, your colleagues and acquaintances/friends (but not so

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1165572118697053792006-12-08T13:09:00.000+07:002006-12-08T17:01:58.840+07:00

Ari Jaaksi attended an Open Source in mobile conference and felt that the participants had it wrong. "Cell phones exist in a very restricted ecosystem. Phones that you can buy today are closed; they include features, such as SIM locks, walled garden browsers, DRMs, MMS's, and other stuff desired by the ecosystem but ignored or hated by end users" He's right, but if you put Linux on a phone it

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1162285207457690492006-10-31T14:07:00.000+07:002006-10-31T16:00:07.586+07:00

Most of the time I think people have spotted these trends, but then it seems they haven't. Who knows. Anyway, here's a top 10 list of things that could be meaningful in the wonderful world of communications: - Identity is becoming a big issue, we all have several identities yet all the applications assume we have one! - Office 2.0? Isn't that a contradiction in terms? - Device : Network is

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1161256266064845172006-10-19T17:56:00.000+07:002006-10-19T18:11:06.080+07:00

From El Reg : "Voice over Internet Protocol phone service Skype increased users by 20 per cent to 113m. Revenues were $50m, an increase of 13 per cent from the second quarter of 2006." Really pretty unimpresive stuff! Both Ebay and Paypal, the other 2 axis of evil elements in the Power of 3 thingy did better. Is there just too much competition in the VoIP space now? And what has Skype brought

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1161058031505520162006-10-17T10:18:00.000+07:002006-10-17T17:37:55.276+07:00

There's been a lot of discussion of Carphone Warehouse and the debacle (as it appears to someone who is now an expat) of their UK Free Broadband offering. Dean Bubley has a good insight into what's wrong with the CPW business model. It's not possible to sell all brands and provide great support. Dean hit on the right analogy, Car Dealerships. There are some that deal in multiple brands, but

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1160458439105112782006-10-10T12:14:00.000+07:002006-10-18T10:48:53.783+07:00

Could I resist commenting on Google buying the 20-month old IP video toddler? No, of course not. $1.65 billion, probably not that bad a deal in the end, though it is somewhat galling that 'value' can be created so easily. That seems to be the underlying meme of the naysayers in this drama. 'How can YouTube possibly be worth $1.65 billion, after 20 months!' Well, we live in interesting times, and

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1159847087903068622006-10-03T09:42:00.000+07:002006-10-03T10:44:48.016+07:00

I've been trying to organise some things on both sides of the world. Here in Thailand I am trying to get my broadband connection working again, or get a new provider. In the UK I'm trying to do some banking and cancel some subscriptions to services I don't use. I'm starting to get a Pavlovian response to Call centres! Whenever the phrase "Our operators are very busy at the moment, but please be

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1159443133163661412006-09-28T16:52:00.000+07:002006-10-02T02:18:51.380+07:00

James Enck posts about xG Technology doing an IPO to raise $30m. I find this a little absurd. Why would a company that claims it is sitting on the most revolutionary new wireless technology, that it claims will allow any corner shop to set up a network capable of supporting broadband speeds at huge range and consuming low power, go to the market at this early stage in order to get a paltry $30m?

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1158723995551509582006-09-20T10:39:00.000+07:002006-09-20T10:46:35.573+07:00

Last night there was a coup here in Thailand! Not a complete surprise, but still hard to believe. Thaksin was out of the country and the military seized the opportunity to effect some changes while he was gone. Lessons for Thaksin: - Don't believe your own hype - Don't f*** with the Military! The full extent of the shit that went down over the past few years may now be known. Rumour has it

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1157946479273046862006-09-11T09:38:00.000+07:002006-09-11T10:47:59.330+07:00

I just read this article about the launch of a new HSDPA router from Sarian Systems. The fact that people can now openly come out and say that "Super-3G" is just going to be a "backup for M2M communication" shows how far we have come from the heady days of 4 billion pound bids for a bit of 3G spectrum. Duncan Ellison hits the nail on the head with this - "3G has so far failed to drive growth

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1157451523808425512006-09-05T16:20:00.000+07:002006-09-19T17:28:06.216+07:00

This is not a post about terrorists or fanatics, but more about people needing to believe an absolute truth, to classify things into particular spaces and then refuse to contemplate evidence that contradicts the current classification. So, what exactly is 'the mobile internet'? Is it, as many people try to tell us, accessing information over a mobile phone? Or is it just accessing the internet

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1156246524033946642006-08-22T18:03:00.000+07:002006-08-22T20:15:30.783+07:00

I saw some articles on the RSS delivery tool, Rasasa. The interesting part of this application is not its ability to send RSS messages to IM or Email or even SMS. That's all been done before, several times, verging on the ad nauseam. What is newish, is the features that allow filters to be defined to escalate the attempt to reach you through IM to SMS. As the escalation level increases, the

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1156160249436304612006-08-21T14:04:00.000+07:002006-08-21T18:40:40.126+07:00

Seth Godin's Alexaholic Web 2.0 list was interesting, especially given all the different stats analyses that have been posted around the blogosphere related to Alexa. I'm inclined to think Alexa stats are a pile of crap, but who knows, it could be that everyone elses stats are a pile of crap too. I had a look at some of the sites in the list that I hadn't seen before, and in my ultra-cynical

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1155643315809783952006-08-15T18:50:00.000+07:002006-08-15T19:01:55.820+07:00

Something I'd like to do, but doubt if I'll ever get around to it until it's already been done... Set up a Desktop PC with TV card, large disk, internet connection, analogue controller for those hard-to-reach devices, wifi router to connect speakers, clocks, printers, fridges and other (spuriously) connected appliances. Then, set up a web server and write a pile of Ruby or PHP to get control of

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1155640903309163492006-08-15T17:27:00.000+07:002006-08-15T18:21:43.363+07:00

There are dozens of PDAs/Smartphones around nowadays, I recently saw Lenovo offering a new example. They all run Windows CE or Windows Mobile. I'm beginning to wonder if the MS machine is not going to succeed in dominating the mobile market as completely as it does the PC market. To me, to only real contender in the long term is Linux. But what about Symbian? Well, who is offering Symbian phones

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1155191921412203982006-08-10T13:34:00.000+07:002006-08-15T18:47:32.946+07:00

Having seen a few Corporate blogs around, some are good and some are very bad. It's a risky medium and getting it wrong is worse than not doing it at all... I remember working for a company that set up a forum for employees in which it promised to discuss real issues with no censorship. In the end it became a management mouthpiece that no-one believed because all negative opinion was censored.

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1154322042374313232006-07-31T11:25:00.000+07:002006-07-31T18:53:56.563+07:00

I've had several discussions online with Tomi Ahonen over on the Communities Dominate Brands blog. Tomi's not afraid of coming out with bold statements about the future of the mobile market and then finding some 'statistics' to back them up. Most of the time I only disagree with the premise that a mobile phone will be umbilically tied to a specific mobile network and be a universal 'Swiss army

Paul Jardinetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-1154069746208200612006-07-28T11:26:00.000+07:002006-07-28T13:55:46.266+07:00

Mark Cuban recently put out a challenge to get someone to come up with a solution to get 5 million people off their collective butt and into the movie theatre at the weekend. There was a job for anyone who came up with a good idea (perhaps as spin-doctor for the next President of the US?) It wasn't exactly clear whether he wanted them to go to see a specific film or just any film, but Robert

Paul Jardine