The home of Jack Tams
an opinionated techie
and mac user (more)
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Twitter Updates for 2008-05-15

Google Links for 05/08/08

Twitter Updates for 2008-05-07

  • another day of British summer thanks to global warming #
  • another set of iPhone headphones in the bin #
  • Something you should never really put on your resumé - I am fluent in many languages including Klingon and Elvish #

Is Yahoo! dead in the water?

After Microsoft left Yahoo! at the altar, its got me thinking is Yahoo! ever going to get back to what it was. Most of all the scorched earth policy that Yahoo! used against Microsoft has done them more harm than good.

Its apparent to anybody with any common sense, that Yahoo! has too many fingers in too many pies. Even down to having competing products within the same company, they have some stellar internet properties but mis-manage them or let them go cold and the talent leave.

Yahoo! needs to focus and innovate not play catch up (more) also they need a clear brand stratergy are they a search, advertising or community company. They cannot be everything to everybody in the short-term they just need a stellar product that works and can propel them to where they should be. Yahoo! Live is a good product but not enough time was invested at launch and it failed, del.icio.us and Flickr are also good but they haven’t really seen any development since their acquisition. Pipes is also another great idea (and powers some of the backend systems of this site) but is difficult to get into and under promoted.

Yahoos’ best bet is to pick one of its web properties such as del.icio.us and develop and innovate that platform and put some fire back into the thing, then move on to the next product. Build fantastic products in social areas such as Bookmarking, Photo, & Video and they could be in with a chance of re-gaining some market clout that they once enjoyed.

Links
Yahoo’s Tumbling House Of Cards - TechCrunch
del.icio.us - Social Bookmarking
Flickr - Photo Sharing
Pipes - Rewire the Web

 

Google Links for 05/07/08

Twitter Updates for 2008-05-06

  • the 1 day of British Summer has arrived and will probably go as quick #
  • its sunny outside and I end up doing differential equations what fun! #
  • google base = pain in the arse #

The problem with IT - More money Syndrome

The more and more I deal with companies and managing networks and working with the wonderful world of windows server, the more and more I realise how poor many companies deal with IT.

Q: “What is the problem?”
A: “I don’t really know, but we can solve it if we buy a new X “

Here in lies the problem, there a number of companies that get this crap answer. There is very rarely a person in the company who will take responsibility and make sure their current system works properly before trying new things or upgrading, at the end of the day new hardware is meant to be better right?. Small to medium businesses have less of a problem with this because the amount spent on IT directly effects there bottom line, and don’t have deep pockets for IT to begin with.

The problem becomes even more pronounced when you get to a school or college. There are obvious complexities with these system your dealing with a couple of hundred computers and about 10 times as many users, but when anything goes wrong more money ‘must’ be spent to solve the problem. Inevitably the systems breakdown within a couple of weeks or even days, because the real problem wasn’t tackled or even attempted to find a fix.

For the average user this is a minor or major frustration depending on which way you spin it, but for anybody interested or working in tech like me, its like having burnt sticks buried into the back of my eyes. It can’t be too difficult to get it set up right in the first place, I like buying new tech as much as the next man (probably even more) but you have to realise somewhere along the line what you are proposing is costing someone a shed load of money and that money could be used better elsewhere, especially in schools.

–Rant Over–

I almost get Twitter, I think.

OK, so I will be the first to admit I am quite the geek but I didn’t really get twitter. Fair enough I have had an account but it wasn’t until last night that the penny finally dropped.

So I have twitter in my AIM account, but have never really done anything with it. “track iron man” the 3 words that brought about the revelation that made twitter make sense to me.

Within seconds I had 30 messages, all relating to our favorite subject Iron Man. Not content with just one subject I added a couple more, and then shut down AIM. Unfortunately for my iphone it was ill equipped to deal with that many messages in one go, so mobile messaging is now disabled. I think twitter is one of those weird things you come across that you have to have being using it for a couple of weeks, before you actually get it. 

Heres to Twitter!!

Update:
Its one of those things that snowballs, I don’t think I post that much but the information I get out of twitter is invaluable. Like:

Stay until the end of Iron Man, there’s an extra scene.

Also its nice to just be able to post, that witty one liner you just came up with ;-).