There are some readings which bring a smile and Wow to your face. I just had that moment. Paul Adams who works in the UX team at Google has shared a deck outlining how Real Life networks need to be looked at when designing social networks. It’s 224 slides long but you can finish it in one go. Great way to finish the weekend.
Looks like Pigeons (atleast St Louis ones) don’t like Rock Music.
Kings of Leon forced off stage by incontinent pigeons
Kings of Leon were forced to cancel a show last week after being showered with pigeon droppings. The flock of avian music critics brought the St Louis concert to a cooing halt after just three songs. "You may enjoy being shit on," explained the band's drummer, "but we don't."
Sorry. You will have to wait. Till then Microsoft reigns supreme.
Microsoft Reports Record Fourth-Quarter Results
Microsoft Corp. today announced record fourth-quarter revenue of $16.04 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2010, a 22% increase from the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $5.93 billion, $4.52 billion and $0.51 per share, which represented increases of 49%, 48% and 50%, respectively, when compared with the prior year period.
“This quarter’s record revenue reflects the breadth of our offerings and our continued product momentum,” said Peter Klein, chief financial officer. “The revenue growth, combined with our ongoing cost discipline, helped us achieve another quarter of margin expansion.”
Most of my friends from India are now on Facebook and growing. When I talk to younger lot, there certainly is a shift from Orkut to Facebook over last one year in India.
Your CAR will ALSO tweet now.
The car that could Twitter is AJ, a 2011 Ford Fiesta that’s a test bed for company engineers exploring the boundaries of what’s possible when an automobile is connected to the Internet and all of its concomitant services. In May, a team of Ford engineers drove AJ from Ann Arbor, Mich., to San Mateo, Calif., to participate in the Maker Faire. Along they way, AJ sent out Twitter messages.
“It’s getting pretty dark; time to put the headlights on,â€
Paul Graham writes about how we think. Great Read. Applies to me atleast (and I know I won’t be alone).
I realized recently that what one thinks about in the shower in the morning is more important than I'd thought. I knew it was a good time to have ideas. Now I'd go further: now I'd say it's hard to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower.
Everyone who's worked on difficult problems is probably familiar with the phenomenon of working hard to figure something out, failing, and then suddenly seeing the answer a bit later while doing something else. There's a kind of thinking you do without trying to. I'm increasingly convinced this type of thinking is not merely helpful in solving hard problems, but necessary. The tricky part is, you can only control it indirectly.
Apparently Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) found a new Business Mantra in Steve Jobs denial of iPhone 4 issues when he said, “We're not perfect. Phones are not perfect. We all know that. But we want to make our users happy”. Scott calls it “High Ground Maneuver”. Good read.
…Jobs changed the entire argument with nineteen words. He was brief. He spoke indisputable truth. And later in his press conference, he offered clear fixes.
Did it work? Check out the media response. There's lots of talk about whether other smartphones are perfect or not. There's lots of talk about whether Jobs' response was the right one. But the central question that was in everyone's head before the press conference - "Is the iPhone 4 a dud" - has, well, evaporated. Part of the change in attitude is because the fixes Apple offered are adequate. But those fixes easily could have become part of the joke if handled in an apologetic "please kick me" way.
…
For example, if a military drone accidentally kills civilians, and there is a public outcry, it would be a mistake for the military to spend too much time talking about what went wrong with that particular mission. The High Ground Maneuver would go something like this: "War is messy. No one wants civilians to die. We will study this situation to see how we can better avoid it in the future."
Notice that the response is succinct, indisputably true, and that the context has been taken to a higher level, about war in general. That's what Jobs did. It's a powerful technique, and you can use it at home.
Only Tendulkar can command such a price.
Luxury Lit: A Book For $75,000
Luxury publisher Kraken Opus mixed in a pint of Mr. Tendulkar's blood with paper pulp to create the signature page for a book celebrating the renowned batsman's career. The 10 limited-edition copies, which comes out in February, cost $75,000 each and have already sold out.
This is what Dave Winer would say to people who bought iPhone 4 about the Antennagate.
Does Steve Jobs really love his customers?
"Well, we got a little too big for our britches there, and damn if we weren't thinking more about us and less about you. That's wrong. We're here to serve you, and we failed at that. We are going to try to do better in the future, but I can guarantee that we will fuck up again. When we do, I hope our customers, who we know have a deep commitment to us and our products, will continue to support us. We're just human, but we do our best, all the time, and we hope you'll stick with us, as we try to learn to be the big powerful and successful company that we have become."
Something like that. I'd get down off the pedestal as quickly as possible and cop to being human, and ask for forgiveness, not just now, but in the future. And buy the flowers, and hold open the door, and always say you're sorry.
My grandfather figured that out and taught it to me. "Always pay for your sins," he said. The reason is simple, you're going to pay for them whether you want to or not. The payment is much smaller if you don't resist, so it's good business to tell the customer, repeatedly, over and over, how right she is.
Some more takes here:
Slate/Farhad Manjoo writes on Apple's condescending iPhone 4 press conference.
Apple Outsider writes on Thoughts on the iPhone 4 Press Conference
Official statement from Research In Motion in response to Apple's iPhone 4 Antennagate propaganda!
A Raging, Rambling Debate About Antennagate, Followed By A Fanboy Intervention
My Take. Apple blew up a chance to connect with the users and media and accept the design flaw. We saw a case of Arrogance diminishing Wisdom. And Arrogance doesn’t take you far.
All said and done, Google is still a One-trick Pony (Search) and that is the issue. A new Pony is in the town and it’s name is Bing.
Google Earnings Disappoint Investors
Like an impatient audience at intermission, Google’s investors are waiting for its second act.
Google’s headquarters in California. Google has been testing new sources of revenue from display advertising and mobile phones.
Google continues to dominate in its core business, search advertising, which accounts for more than 90 percent of its revenue. But as Google grows and search becomes increasingly competitive, analysts and investors are beginning to wonder what is next for the company.
Finally.
If you think you are safe of heart ailments because you exercise daily before watching hours of TV, read below and think again. If you follow the corrective action, you will be healthy and your wives HAPPY.
Phys Ed: The Men Who Stare at Screens
Men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars (as passengers or as drivers) had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less. What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised. Quite a few of them said they did so regularly and led active lifestyles. The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting.
…
You can, however, ameliorate the dangers of inactivity with several easy steps — actual steps. ‘‘Look for ways to decrease physical inactivity,’’ Ms. Warren says, beyond 30-minute bouts of jogging or structured exercise. Stand up. Pace around your office. Get off the couch and grab a mop or change a light bulb the next time you watch ‘‘Dancing With the Stars.’’
Connect your Inbox to Facebook and Windows Live with the Outlook Social Connector
Starting today, you can plug-in Facebook and Windows Live right into Microsoft Outlook through the Outlook Social Connector. You can view your social network as you look through your e-mail to stay connected with your friends, family and colleagues.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said today that several Windows-based slate devices would be coming to market this year to compete with Apple's iPad. I hope the move keeps Apple honest and increases competition.
Microsoft's Ballmer: Windows 7 slates are coming this year
Microsoft isn’t going to sit idly by and let slates from Apple and various Android backers run away with this market.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told the 14,000 partners during his July 12 keynote at the Worldwide Partner Conference to expect new Windows 7 slates before the end of this year.
Microsoft and its existing PC partners, including Asus, Dell, Samsung, Toshiba and Sony, will all be fielding Windows 7 slates in the coming months, Ballmer said. These slates will be available at a variety of price points and in a variety of form factors — with keyboards, touch only, dockable, able to handle digital ink, etc.
It's official. Consumer Reports' engineers have just completed testing the iPhone 4, and have confirmed that there is a problem with its reception. When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone's lower left side—an easy thing, especially for lefties—the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you're in an area with a weak signal. Due to this problem, we can't recommend the iPhone 4.
Twitter with its @earlybird Exclusive Offers handle has gotten into E-Commerce.
Twitter @earlybird Exclusive Offers are special time-bound deals, sneak-peeks, and events that are promoted by the official Twitter @earlybird account. We partner with select advertisers and retweet offers that they have crafted only for the Twitter community. Our advertising partners determine the terms of the offer, including availability, amount, and price. As with other forms of advertising from Twitter, we are focused on bringing value to our users and will keep your interests in mind as we develop this program.
Very Candid Interview given by Clay Shirky to Guardian. He speaks of Paywalls and critics. Very good read.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/05/clay-shirky-internet-television-newspapers
On Paywalls:
"Everyone's waiting to see what will happen with the paywall – it's the big question. But I think it will underperform. On a purely financial calculation, I don't think the numbers add up." But then, interestingly, he goes on, "Here's what worries me about the paywall. When we talk about newspapers, we talk about them being critical for informing the public; we never say they're critical for informing their customers. We assume that the value of the news ramifies outwards from the readership to society as a whole. OK, I buy that. But what Murdoch is signing up to do is to prevent that value from escaping. He wants to only inform his customers, he doesn't want his stories to be shared and circulated widely. In fact, his ability to charge for the paywall is going to come down to his ability to lock the public out of the conversation convened by the Times."
On Critics:
…
But if I started out on, say, the Guardian's Comment is free site, the sheer nastiness of many of the commenters would floor me like a train. If the web has unlocked all this human potential for generosity and sharing, how come the people using it are so horrible to each other?
Shirky smiles, confident that he has the answer even to this. "So, there's two things to this paradox. One is that those conversations were always happening. People were saying those nasty things to one another in the pub or whatever. You just couldn't hear them before. So it's a change in our awareness of truth, not a change in the truth.
"Then there's this second effect, that anonymity makes people behave more meanly. What I think is going to happen there is we are slowly going to set up islands of civil discourse. There's no way to make the internet not anonymous – and if there was, the most enthusiastic consumers of that technology would be Iranian and Chinese and Burmese governments. But there are ways of saying, while you're here, use your real identity. We need to set up the social norms which say in this space you need to use your real names, or some well-known handle.
"Whenever you say that, people cry censorship, but frankly? Fuck off." He breaks off, laughing. "You know, getting that right is important. The whole, 'Is the internet a good thing or a bad thing'? We're done with that. It's just a thing. How to maximise its civic value, its public good – that's the really big challenge."
Game’s been here in US for more than a century and it’s a pity we still don’t have a credible US International team.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/nyregion/05cricket.html
It was, as people said all day, approaching the 125th year of continual cricket at the field, once a portion of the Delafield estate but now owned by the city and known as Walker Park. The players who came out that day were not the British officers of yore, but Bangladeshi cabbies, Indian computer engineers and a Pakistani man who owns an auto-body shop. The Ladies’ Outdoor Amusement Club was not on hand to administer refreshments. Instead, there was D.J. Ralphie, of the so-called Chutney Bastards, blasting rowdy soca from a laptop.
“This is a momentous occasion,” said Clarence Modeste, president of the Staten Island squad. Mr. Modeste, a tall, slim man who is 80 and a native of Tobago, recognized the afternoon with a heartfelt introduction delivered to the teams, both dressed in their blazers and lined up facing one another on the field.
“We feel very strongly not only about our club,” Mr. Modeste said, “but also about our park. For us to have survived in the wandering world that is cricket in New York” — and here he shook his head above his microphone — “it is quite an amazing feat.”
Steve Jobs tells Bill Gates that he's sued over iPhone 4. And check the response of Bill Gates.
Via ReflectionOf.Me
