http://blog.twinloops.com Jan's thoughts on tech Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:05:34 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Mashable has a piece on FriendFeed and whether it's destined to remain a niche service. The main reason for believing that it will be seems to be the poor interface design, but there appear to be others too. But I tend to think that the key point here is that FriendFeed ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/07/22/friendfeed-needs-to-remain-a-niche-service/ So I just posted from the iPhone app and although I now have a shiny new post on the site it's clear that the app is a little glitchy (see screenshot). For some reason the app first posted an item with little title and text tags before posting my real ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/07/22/glitches-in-iphone-app/ Hurrah! WordPress finally released their iPhone app today, which was heavily trailed by WP. This is a test post that I'm writing using the app. Thank goodness for the auto correct feature on the iPhone which is preventing this from being an utterly tedious experience. I can't imagine writing a ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/07/22/wordpress-app-for-iphone/ So, I stood in line with about 100 other people outside my local AT&T store just under a week ago, in order to be one of the first to get my hands on the 3G iPhone. It was hot, and we were lined up down the side of the building ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/07/17/iphone-love-it-or-hate-it/ This popped up on Techmeme this week, and was an interesting reminder of Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory and its appeal but also its weaknesses. Kudos to Anderson for highlighting this research himself, and he does a reasonable job of illustrating why it's not totally contradictory to his own research. The ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/06/28/the-long-tail/ This past week or two I've been spending some of my spare time building up the professional side of my social networking profile. I've been a pretty active Facebook user now for a year or so and have Friendfeed and Twitter accounts that I've half-heartedly kept up with too. I'd ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/06/27/using-social-networking-for-more-than-fun/ This is intriguing. One of the "inventors of the Internet" (I've heard this title applied to quite a range of people, Al Gore included, of course), Lawrence Roberts, is involved in a company which is providing network boxes that throttle P2P traffic in order to allow other traffic to flow ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/06/26/interesting-net-neutrality-development/ This seems to be doing the rounds at the moment. It's the text of an email sent by Bill Gates to various Microsoft employees about an intensely frustrating experience he had using the company's own website and products - essentially, user feedback, from user number 1 at Microsoft. Here's how ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/06/25/microsoft-user-testing-by-mr-gates/ Advertising Age recently published its annual review of spending by the 100 leading advertisers. I was curious to see how the telecoms companies ranked in their data, and spent some time crunching the numbers. First headline: The telecom players ranked in the survey end up as follows: AT&T: 2nd overall, with spending ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/06/24/advertising-spend-and-scale-economies-in-telecom/ Following up on the last email I received which did something funny with my name, this one appears to illustrate the perils of auto-correct: January, sorry.  I will make sure you get the info. I guess they have their auto-correct set to replace the word "Jan" with the word "January". Haven't had ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/06/24/the-perils-of-auto-correct/ I got an email this week, the opening line of which was: Hi Jan (pronounced 'Yawn') It is pronounced "Yawn", at least in an American accent, but someone has clearly added that little factoid to the surname field in their contact management system instead of a notes field. As a result, ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/06/19/be-careful-when-you-mail-merge/ A couple of days ago I posted on Google's evil scale and although the post was mostly meant to be light-hearted, I also suggested that, at some point, Google was bound to start behaving like a big company, and that this was likely to be triggered by increasing criticism of ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/06/16/more-on-google/ I found this pretty entertaining - I guess it's a little dated at this point but still very relevant in light of the ongoing debate about Google's position on Chinese censorship. The attention to detail here is impressive - it's been created to look just like the corporate pages at ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/06/13/google-evil-scale/ I experienced two quite different sides of Apple today - the Steve Jobs keynote, and a personal experience with my troublesome MacBook. The keynote was everything you would expect it to be - well choreographed, lots of big announcements, the best left for last and so on. Even despite all the ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/06/09/two-sides-of-apple/ I've had a variety of experiences with Verizon recently - two this week, in fact - as a consumer, that have reminded me of the importance of consistency. We are Verizon customers for all our home services - TV, Internet and phone (I use a VoIP service from Vonave for my ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/06/04/verizon-and-a-lesson-about-consistency/ There's an interesting article on Generation Y and how it will change the web on the website ReadWriteWeb. It raises a number of important issues about Generation Y, but the most striking thing to me was this paragraph, on Generation Y's attitude to work: Work Isn't Their Whole World: Sure, they're ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/05/22/generation-y-in-the-workplace/ I came across two different articles / blog posts today that discussed the decline but also the staying power of legacy services. The first is a blog entry by David Pogue of the New York Times about dial-up. Here's an excerpt: From the mailbag: Dear Mr. Pogue: Can you explain why big ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/05/21/when-to-ditch-the-legacy/ I recently came across Tweetscan, which allows you to search Twitter postings for keywords or phrases. Why would you want to do this? Because people "Tweet" about your product, your company, you, and not just about the fact that they're on their way to the bathroom, or feeling really hungry, ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/05/20/tweetscan-for-searching-twitter/ Harold Wilson, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for parts of the 1960s and 1970s, coined the phrase, "A week is a long time in politics". I was reminded of that phrase when I read a post just now by David Pogue, the New York Times' tech columnist ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/05/17/analysts-dont-really-have-crystal-balls/ I posted a while back about a dinner I had with some other analysts with Dan Hesse, the new CEO of Sprint. At the time, I said that I came away from that dinner with more confidence than I had had in a while about Sprint's prospects. Well, I've just come ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/05/16/sprint-analyst-event/ I just tried to sign up for Google's new FriendConnect service. I filled in all the details and clicked "Submit" and then up came this page: It appears Google is using one beta service (Google Spreadsheets - specifically, the feature which allows you to use forms to create spreadsheets for databases) ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/05/13/friendconnect-registration-oops/ Mark Cuban recently posted on the topic of online video, and the likelihood that it would generate far lower advertising revenue than the equivalent video delivered through the traditional CATV systems. His analysis is centered on and borrows heavily from analysis by Craig Moffett of Sanford Bernstein. Quoting from that ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/05/10/advertising-and-the-long-tail/ There are reports that Sprint is considering spinning off Nextel. Interestingly, one of the options being considered: Sprint is said to be contemplating a couple of options for Nextel. The company has held preliminary talks with Nextel founder Morgan O'Brien, who now runs a company called Cyren Call Communications in McLean, ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/05/06/sprint-dumping-nextel/ Interesting news today on Verizon's approach to the open access requirements associated with the 700MHz spectrum it won in the recent auction: On Friday, Google urged the FCC to block Verizon Wireless' $4.7 bil. successful bid for the C Block band of spectrum in the recently completed 700 MHz auction unless ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/05/05/73/ Following on from the Qwest-Verizon Wireless news, and the negative impact on Sprint, there are lots of rumors this week suggesting that Deutsche Telekom is considering buying Sprint: Deutsche Telekom AG is weighing a bid to acquire Sprint Nextel Corp. that could catapult the German telecommunications giant's wireless arm, T-Mobile USA, ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/05/05/dt-two-incompatible-networks-not-enough/ Back in February, I posted about the Qwest analyst conference and a brief conversation with Ed Mueller, Qwest's CEO. Part of what I said was as follows: On the wireless side, the company is planning to rethink its partnership with Sprint and form a new partnership (possibly with Sprint again but ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/05/05/qwest-from-carrier-to-mvno-to-reseller/ At the time I wrote yesterday's entry, I hadn't yet seen the letter from Steve Ballmer to Jerry Yang about the reasons for calling off the deal. It does provide some more detail about exactly what Yahoo! was doing that was preventing the merger from going forward: Our discussions with you ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/05/04/more-on-microhoo/ Apparently, Microsoft is giving up in its pursuit of Yahoo!. (that exclamation mark always makes for some awkward punctuation). Officially, the reason is that: After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/05/03/no-microhoo/ I've just taken on a new role with Ovum, as leader of our telecoms strategy practice, which includes our Wireline Strategy, Regulation and Wholesale advisory services. As a result, I'm in London this week meeting the new team and a few other people and trying to get to grips with ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/04/30/a-new-role-and-transformation/ Several news sources this week covered the formal disintegration of Sprint's partnership with the cable companies, which had been marketed under the brand name Pivot. This news was a long time coming, and neither Sprint nor the cable companies had been investing in the service for some time. In fact, it ... http://blog.twinloops.com/2008/04/26/cable-companies-pivot-away-from-sprint/