tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-131599302009-10-22T15:26:59.563+07:00Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.comBlogger167125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-45005581857175421432009-10-22T15:17:00.002+07:002009-10-22T15:26:59.685+07:00

It occurs to me that Facebook users really want to spend money, but there are limited opportunites within the Facebook environment and no micro-payment mechanism to help the process.By allowing each Facebook user to have a balance of Facebucks to spend on all the crappy apps/services that are available out there, the company could rake in loads of cash.Just give away, say 100 FBs per hundred

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-53146201762612880002009-10-16T14:22:00.002+07:002009-10-16T14:27:05.285+07:00

The problem with the Semantic Web is that it assumes that more than 50% of the assertions are true more than 50% of the time.Much like democracy, it is open to manipulation.However, if we start to discriminate, then we start to make the pigs more equal than the other animals...It is not knowledge we seek, but truth, and from truth will come the ultimate knowledge.

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-51844694313863120152009-10-14T13:35:00.002+07:002009-10-14T13:56:57.833+07:00

Michael Dell recently gave a talk in Silicon Valley where he had little positive to say about Netbooks. “With the netbook,” he said “if you take a user who is used to a 14-inch or 15-inch notebook, and then give them a 10-inch netbook, a few hours later they want their big screen back.”I wonder if they did the survey in a room inside a building with the computers sitting on a desk. Do you think

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-64805548297454930802009-10-12T14:38:00.002+07:002009-10-12T15:08:09.420+07:00

I haven't gone religous, but I am beginning to see the light on the global marketplace for creative work.The western economy is driven by creating the need to own something; a car, a house, furnishings, LPs/CDs/DVDs, books etcI'm not sure we (at least my generation), can ever give up the feeling of owning that collection of books or records or even stickers (remember the old football sticker

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-55471535324892668522009-10-06T20:04:00.002+07:002009-10-06T21:00:38.075+07:00

There are a lot of interesting stories around at the moment concerning power/electricity.For example this story about Google getting involved in devices to monitor power usage in homes. or this demo of WiTricity, wireless electricity in its infancy, or this story about wind power in the middle of the oceans.I have mentioned before on this blog some of the issues we face with regards to power

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-7209433582499432362009-09-28T19:13:00.002+07:002009-09-28T19:39:30.152+07:00

While I'm waiting for the Nokia N900 to go on sale in Turkey, where I am currently located, here is a tasty experiment I made in the kitchen last night...Take a breast of chicken, a handful of red chillies, chilli powder (coarse), a clove or 2 of garlic, onion, chopped fresh ginger and fry in a generous scoop of butter. Add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. Wait until the onions are soft and

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-64823616253877208102008-11-05T11:17:00.002+07:002008-11-05T11:30:48.413+07:00

Congratulations to Barack Obama.Who knows what will happen, but optimism is high, not just in America, but across the world.I hope that the expectation does not weigh too heavily on his shoulders, as this is a huge opportunity for real change....Can one man restore the badly needed confidence to the economy?

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13159930.post-21973217128616302232008-10-02T10:24:00.002+07:002008-10-02T10:51:28.416+07:00

The news that the GSMA is embarking on a huge 'mobile broadband' campaign, which plans to pre-enable thousands of devices with data access 'out-of-the-box' shows that the GSM industry is worried.On the premise that these devices will actually work out of the box, with minimal hoops to jump through to get up and running then it might work as an alternative to WiMax. The key is going to be ease of

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag: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 Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com1tag: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 revolutionary,

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag: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 Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag: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 is

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com1tag: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 Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com1tag: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 Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag: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 Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com5tag: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 close

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag: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 Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag: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 no

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag: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 to

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag: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 Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag: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 if

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag: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 Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag: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 Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com2tag: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 that

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0tag: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 and

Paul Jardinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14174519230653332835noreply@blogger.com0