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Social Intent

Back in 1971 Herbert A Simon noted the rising abundance of information and, in turn, the scarcity of attention:
…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
His views are likely the foundation of what we refer to now as the attention economy.

If we agree with the notion (and I do) that attention is one of our scarcest resources, then it […]

By |April 6th, 2013|General Tech, Microsoft, Social networking|1 Comment
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BinaryScript.net – A new language for low-level coders

It’s rare these days for me to get excited about a new language – because frankly it seems as though there are so many new ones, and yet so little value that they provide.

Which is why it’s pleasantly surprising, on this quiet Monday morning, to see the release of a new scripting language that actually improves the development experience. I’m talking of course about Binary Script – the new language paradigm aimed squarely at experienced developers, but being embraced quickly by assembler and microcontroller coders.

To get a quick look at how it works, head over to the binaryscript.net site, it has the initial overview and online compiler components available already:

How It Works
The concept is very […]

By |April 1st, 2013|Developers, Humour|0 Comments
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This Is What Losing Money Looks Like

The following graph shows the daily traffic for a quality consumer information site (I was brought in to analyse the issue this week):

The pain starts in early May and then turns to heartbreak as traffic declines over the following month. From almost 20K visits to under 2K visits daily. That’s a 90% drop in traffic. And for this site – where the business model revolves around referring visitors to suppliers and taking a commission – that’s a massive drop in income.

Here’s the similar trend in terms of their rankings (ie number of terms they rank for) drop:

So, what happened in early May? Well, that’s when they went live with a brand new site. New design, […]

By |September 15th, 2012|SEO|6 Comments
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Disposable Diamonds

It’s a strange video that Apple has put together for their iPhone 5 marketing. The first half is OK, with details about size and features (ie that’s the ‘benefits’ part), but the second half goes off on a self-congratulatory wank about manufacturing process and finish. Apple has always been praised for their design and construction, so it seems strange that they’d feel the need to spend close to 2 minutes of prime video time ramming this home.

The reason, I’m guessing, is that Apple doesn’t have much else to differentiate with.
“What makes iPhone 5 so unique is the way it feels in your hand.” - Jony Ive

Whereas a year ago Apple lead the smart phone market in […]

By |September 13th, 2012|General Tech, Mobile|0 Comments
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What Would I Know?

You know when you read lazy tech reporting and it just wastes your time? Yeah, I hate that. People who don’t really know much, but are more than happy to share their ill-informed opinions. Or worse, they’re a walking case study for ignorance parading as opinion… yeah, we all hate that.

So, why do I feel the need to contribute more of the same?

Well, basically, I find that writing down my thoughts helps me clarify them. The final result might well still be flawed, but it’s a lot better than where I started. And perhaps, if I’m extremely lucky, there might be some snippet of an idea that could stimulate you, dear reader.

As always, comments […]

By |September 13th, 2012|Clarity, General Tech, Personal|1 Comment
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Bing It On

Definitely one for this year’s ‘the horse has bolted’ award – Microsoft in their wisdom decided to run a Search Engine taste test. The so-called BingItOn campaign looks like it’s finished now (BingItOn links all redirect back to Bing – with 302s no less) but not before Microsoft managed to announce the amazing result that people prefer Bing results 2 to 1 over Google. I was hoping for some further updates, but the (perhaps ironically named) Search Quality blog is yet to deliver…

It’s a sad day when Bing wastes money like this, especially when Michael Kordahi did the same thing so much better back in 2009, and RustyBrick did a similar thing back in […]

By |September 12th, 2012|Bing, Microsoft, Search|1 Comment
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Microsoft Announces new language: Db.NET

In a perhaps unsurprising move, Microsoft has chosen this Sunday to announce their latest .NET language: Db.NET
The release comes a day prior to the lang.next conference commencing in Seattle on Monday.

Dubbed as vNext.NET the language features a number of key enhancements including the new Ostinato Framework,  Morendo Garbage Collection systems and Cantando Installer.

 

Read more about Db on the Next Language site, including the overview, tools and history of it’s development.

By |April 1st, 2012|Humour, Microsoft|0 Comments
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Insight into how Microsoft do daily stand-ups (Scrum meetings)

It’s always interesting to see how other people do things. Which is why I really like this video of the Microsoft TFS Agile team doing a daily stand-up.

Adam Cogan was able to shoot a quick video with the team whilst visiting them recently. There’s a short version and a long version (embedded below) based on his rules about daily stand-ups. It’s worth watching the full 12 minute long version. The interesting stuff starts around 1:46 (skip the guff with Adam at the start – he won’t like me saying that, but hey, he’s a good friend so I can get away with).

It’ll be interesting to see how people respond to this. Inevitably there […]

By |February 24th, 2012|Microsoft, TFS|2 Comments
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Finding a Great SEO

Marketing Infographic by SEO Book

By |December 28th, 2011|General Tech|1 Comment
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WARNING: DW024: The payload: Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 Core Error

If you’ve experienced the DW024 error when attempting to install Adobe Photoshop or one of the Adobe Creative Suites, then the following may help. The bottom line: Uninstall Adobe Reader. First, here’s an example of the error message: WARNING: DW024: The payload: Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 Core {08EF22BC-43B2-4B4E-BA12-52B18F418F38} requires a UI parent with following specification: Family: Photoshop Product Name: Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 Core_x64 This parent relationship is not satisfied, because this payload is not present in this session. There’s also DW033 and DW036 variations. I had this error when […]

By |July 2nd, 2011|General Tech|9 Comments
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Resolution

Life is a series of experiences. Some experiences are good. Some are bad. Life is also a series of relationships. Some relationships end well. Some end… not so well. Of those that don’t end well, it’s only rarely that we get the chance to revisit them and find out what went wrong. To resolve them. To find closure. This week I was fortunate enough to be given closure on a (business) relationship that went wrong a number of years ago. It had ended abruptly and badly, leaving me bewildered – floundering in self-doubt and guilt. A deeply significant event in my life. But that all changed this […]

By |April 1st, 2011|Personal|2 Comments
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SBTUG Web Content Management System Smackdown Presentations (UPDATED)

Here’s the presentations from our annual SBTUG smackdown event held tonight. Most of the presenters have sent me their presentations, only a few left to add. I wanted to say a big thank you to Nick Ellery (@nickellery) from Microsoft for looking after us on the night. Not only did Microsoft supply the venue (which they do every month) and free parking, but they also sponsored the night and supplied pizza and drinks for all the attendees (approx 60 people). Thanks! As an aside: Without launching into a fanboi speech too much, I have to say how impressed I’ve been with Microsoft and their support of the developer community. I’ve been […]

By |September 28th, 2010|General Tech|4 Comments
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Google Instant Roundup

It’s been a week now since Google Instant hit the news desks of IT blogs everywhere. I’ve started getting a few questions from clients and friends about it, so I thought I’d put together a simple collection of recommended links, and finish off with some of my thoughts. There’s been tons of discussion of course, but for a good summary of the main points, the following 4 or 5 posts will serve you well: SEObook – How Google Instant Changes the SEO Landscape Aaron Wall has a good overview of the announcement and summary of the main effects (and if you are an SEObook member a very detailed analysis inside) as […]

By |September 14th, 2010|Google, SEM, SEO|2 Comments
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Web Content Management System (CMS) Smackdown

I wanted to give you advance warning that we’ll be having our annual Web CMS Smackdown at SBTUG on Wednesday 29 September. Yes, September – roughly 6 weeks away. This was one of our most popular events at the Sydney Business & Technology User Group last year. If you’re already sold on the event and don’t need to know anything more, then just pop over and RSVP now on our Facebook Event. For those of you who might be a little lost as to what a smackdown is I’ll give a quick overview of the night and what we are aiming to achieve… Aim The aim of the night is […]

By |August 16th, 2010|Community, SBTUG|8 Comments
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Microsoft – Privacy versus Profits

Good leaders make tough decisions. They may not always be the right decisions, and usually not everyone likes those decisions, but they have to be made. Ed Bott’s post – Good Microsoft versus Bad Microsoft – highlighted this interesting piece from the Wall Street Journal. It’s about how Microsoft decided to kill off some of the planned privacy bits (in particular what was enabled by default) in Internet Explorer 8 coming up to its release in 2009. It’s interesting for a number of reasons: It highlights how two divisions within the company had different ideas about where IE should go, and how the dollar eventually won out. […]

By |August 4th, 2010|General Tech|2 Comments
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Things I Like

No particular reason for this post except to mention a few things I’m liking at the moment – feel free to move along now… Let’s Golf 2 – I’m not really a golfer, but this iPhone game has me hooked. Glenmorangie – taking a big risk and trying something different from my usual Macallan 12 yo, I’ve gone for a Glenmorangie Sherry Wood Finish. A bit stronger than I’m used to, but not too bad. Orianthi – surprisingly cool album from Adelaide’s guitar virtuoso. Is there any album John (Josh) Freese doesn’t play drums on these days? Good health – […]

By |August 4th, 2010|Personal|1 Comment
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All About Microsoft promoting Google Apps

Google certainly knows how to get it’s advertising in the right place. Take this piece on the ‘All About Microsoft’ blog (one of my favourite blogs by the way – Mary-Jo is a bit of personal hero of mine). It’s a post about Microsoft’s recent white paper (PDF) on improved efficiency in their datacenters. It’s a great result btw – 25% improvements in energy efficiency in some of their existing datacenters – but that’s not what interests me here. Instead check out the big Google ad, all beautifully tailored to fit into the zdnet site. And it gets better. Clicking on the little plus sign in the top right displays […]

By |August 3rd, 2010|SEM|4 Comments
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Microsoft Street Slide

I love the stuff Microsoft is doing with it’s mapping technology lately. This latest one from Microsoft Research is particularly impressive. It’s called Microsoft Street Slide (not to be confused with Microsoft Streetside) and takes the whole photo stitching paradigm another step forward. It’s best explained in the following video, but in a nutshell it allows you to navigate maps via ‘immersive 360 degree panoramas’. You ‘slide’ up and down streets via a very smooth panorama interface: The obvious question is whether this will make it into mainstream inclusion in Bing. I hope it does. It was unveiled at SIGGRAPH this week (perhaps as part of this) but that doesn’t necessarily […]

By |July 29th, 2010|Bing|4 Comments
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Andrew Coates has his head in the clouds ;)

Loved this little animated feature from Andrew Coates on the benefits of using the platform – if someone’s done the heavy lifting for you, then why not use it. Don’t worry about putting your own kids down the well . Available on Ch9 here. Andrew’s original Standing on the Shoulders of Giants piece here.

By |July 28th, 2010|Azure|2 Comments
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Introduction to Search Engine Marketing

Just realised I hadn’t posted this presentation I gave at the NSW.NET event last month. I was lucky enough to be presenting after Mark Vozzo who gave an excellent introduction to SEO, so my session on SEM flowed on nicely. In the SEM presentation (embedded below) I went through the following main points: How SEO and SEM work together (and covered the various definitions of SEM) Why you should use paid search to complement your SEO activities Advice on using AdWords effectively including coverage of 3 useful strategies: tight […]

By |July 28th, 2010|SEM, SEO|0 Comments
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