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Happy Birthday Kindle Research

March 31, 2006. Posted by Paul in Consumer technology, IT, Research. Comments (0) so far.

I was delighted to see that Kindle Research shares its birthday with Apple. Kindle will be 1 year old on 1 April and Apple will be 30. So while I will be celebrating with a humble but rather nice chocolate cake Apple have erected a 900,000 sq meter advertising board in Australia that is visible from space! (you need to zoom in).

Google’s Gmail service was also born on April 1 (2005), cleverly exploiting their history of announcing hoaxes. By launching faux-services like MentalPlex that read the searcher’s mind and offering job opportunities on the moon, lots talked incredulously about Google offering 1GB of email storage space for free.

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IP Games

March 29, 2006. Posted by Paul in Consumer technology. Comments (0) so far.

Here is some good clean fun for the public toilet. It’s a pressure-sensitive interactive game that sits in a urinal and entertains the pointer as well as apparently reducing the cleaning costs.

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Video nice

March 15, 2006. Posted by Paul in Consumer technology, Research. Comments (0) so far.

As a father of a nine-year-old son who spends at least 10 hours a week playing the online PC game Runescape, I was relieved to read this long-term academic study that he is learning important life skills. One interesting activity, and something that most of us did not have to deal with until much later, is learning to divide his time between work and play (you need to mine and smith in Runescape to buy what you need in the game).

This study also confirms this more popular study that argued kids are learning valuable problem-solving skills by using video games.

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Sony’s problems mount

. Posted by Paul in Consumer technology, IT. Comments (0) so far.

Sony’s shareholders are going to have to wait to capitalise on the growth of video-gaming however, as the launch of their PS3 is put on hold until November. This will mean they lose more ground to Microsoft’s Xbox360 and their plans to launch Blu-ray as the next generation video format will also suffer.

The delay is apparently to do with copy-protection which should come as no surprise to those who saw Sony shoot themselves in the foot over their flawed rootkit device. This software, which seriously undermined customers’ PC security just for listening to a legitimate CD, is no longer being used and Sony has been forced to refund anyone who bought one.

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Making money as an online publisher

March 8, 2006. Posted by Paul in IT, Information industry. Comments (0) so far.

Want to make money out of the web? This independent publisher claims to be turning over $20k a ~~year~~month. Not bad for one person with low overheads.

In this article he has sound advice for how to make money from blogs. It isn’t easy though – it is still a lot of work.

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Google conversations

. Posted by Paul in IT, Information industry. Comments (0) so far.

This video is interesting at so many levels:

- Seth Godin is an entertaining speaker who is talking about the power of people telling stories.

- Convincingly, he undermines the idea that great technology is enough to be successful. What matters is marketing and the conversations people have.

- He analyses why Google is a success – because people told their friends about it and they offer personal, relevant, timely ads.

- For continued success, he advises that any future developments need to be remarkable – ie worth talking about – and they need to be at the edge.

- But Google also needs to get closer to their users, to start a conversation and use that to create a platform for launching new developments.

- Most interesting is that this video, which was an internal presentation to Google employees was made publicy available. And here I am talking about it.

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Technology shaping open access

March 7, 2006. Posted by Paul in Information industry, Research. Comments (0) so far.

To what extent can technology drive changes in scholarly communications? New technology and the uses to which it is put are shaped by its environment and the goals and actions of key interest groups.

This article discusses the drivers of Open Access Publishing – the nature of research, Google, national interest – but also suggests that the end of the journal is an inevitable consequence of increasing electronic access and storage.

It also makes a plea for research about the future quoting from this article:

both the past and the future guide current action. When blended with the topics of social change and leadership, the value of futures research emerges as an absolute imperative.

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Chinese market principles

March 2, 2006. Posted by Paul in IT, Information industry. Comments (0) so far.

The US Congress has investigated US internet companies’ involvement in China following their well-publicised co-operation with the Chinese regime’s censorship policy. Recent leading examples are Google and Microsoft, Business Week has a good analysis of their statements and actions [here] and concludes:

In the end, the experience and interests of Internet users, which all of these companies claim to hold paramount, may be taking a back seat to smooth and unfettered access to China’s booming Internet market — already the second biggest in the world.

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All about Podcasts

March 1, 2006. Posted by Paul in Consumer technology, Information industry, Mobile technology. Comments (0) so far.

Here is a very friendly introduction to audio files on the internet. It starts with some basics about file formats and how to listen to them and then goes on to explain podcasts and the various uses they are being put to. I was interested to read that a hospital had placed iPods in the waiting room to explain patients’ procedures. It also recommends some directories for seeking out podcasts and a few sites. I’m already a fan of the BBC downloads but a new one to me – Science Friday – also looks great.

The article tends to treat podcasts as audio files you can download from the internet. But there is also the critical ability to ’subscribe’ to a site using podcast software that will then automatically download the audio file the next time the website publishes it (I use the free Juice). The BBC explain this process in fairly clear English here.

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We Think...

Happy Birthday Kindle Research

IP Games

Video nice

Sony’s problems mount

Making money as an online publisher

Google conversations

Technology shaping open access

Chinese market principles

All about Podcasts