Symbian goes head-to-head with Android [Competition is good]

June 25th, 2008

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Of course, couldn’t the same be said of Google Android?

But Geoff Blaber, an analyst with CCS Insight, questioned how open the platform will be.

“Can the new entity really be open when Nokia has such a vested interest? This may be the stated goal, but in practice it might be more difficult to achieve. We’ll have to scrutinise the fine print of the intellectual property rights and articles of association,” he said.


[From BBC NEWS | Business | Nokia in full buy-out of Symbian]

Jungle Disk » Blog Archive » Jungle Disk Desktop 2.0 Released!

June 24th, 2008

Jungle Disk 2.0 is released. It’s still my favourite online backup system.

[From Jungle Disk » Blog Archive » Jungle Disk Desktop 2.0 Released!]

Dry your eyes Time Warner customers: Australia has always metered DSL customer bandwidth

June 23rd, 2008

Fullscreen

Tomorrow night my ADSL bandwidth usage stats resets. Phew, I’ll have another 30 days of cake to eat.

Metered DSL is something I’ve slowly gotten used to living in Australia. It IS downright medieval, but the people suffer and pay, and just live with it (unlike those lucky Yanks).

Clear your head with Windows Live Writer

June 21st, 2008

Today I’m trying something new.  I’m blogging from Windows.

From Windows Live Writer to be precise.  This is inspired by a blog I read on readwriteweb on how to lose all your distractions and just focus.  The recommendation was to use WriteRoom or Windows Live Writer.  I’d played with Live Writer before, but didn’t realise it’s simple design.   It is simple.

Something else.  For me I have to run it in my virtualised Windows box.  So I’m cut off from the wonderfully rich and wonderful distracting Mac interface.  I’m in the Windows bucket. With not much else going on in here.  Lovely.  I can focus.

If I were you, I’d go onto writer.live.com and give it a try.  It’s so nice and clear.  And simple.  Lovely.

Foyles of London [Bookshops I must visit!]

June 15th, 2008

Bookshops are wonderful places. Whenever I visit a new city, one of the places I always end up in is the local bookshops. In the past couple of years, I’ve made it to Kinokuniya Tokyo, in Shinjuku, Kinokuniya and Asia Books in Bangkok, and Borders and Barnes & Noble in NYC.

I love bookshops.

I’m in London next month, and so I’ll be visiting the local bookshops there. One that I’ve never been to in London is Foyles, which was once the largest bookstore in the world.

Zappos pays folks $1,000 to quit

June 15th, 2008

A $1,000 filter to remove employees who wish they weren’t there.

[From Zappos pays folks $1,000 to quit]

Livestation hits seven years of viewing

June 15th, 2008

I’m loving Livestation. I can watch both BBC News (nice Western British bias), and Al Jazeera (for the rest of the world), depending on the mood.

Windows-only for now - install VMWare Fusion if you must.


Livestation viewers have already spent seven years watching live news on their PCs.
[From Livestation hits seven years of viewing]

Ecto gets better and better

June 15th, 2008

Ecto has a nice little bookmarklet function that opens up a new Blog post window in Ecto.

After installing the bookmarklet, you can create weblog entries from any webpage you are visiting. When viewing a page that you want to write about, select some text you want to quote, and then choose or click the “ectoize” item from the browser’s Bookmarks Bar. This will open a new draft window in ecto with text from and details about the current webpage.

[From bookmarklet for ecto]

Editor of Times of London explains Four financially successful blog types

June 15th, 2008

The former editor of the Times of London, Robert Thomson, spoke to students on Trends in Journalism, in August 2007, when on vacation in his home city of Melbourne Australia. He had some insightful advice on 4 types of successful blog.

  • The Branded Blog. A blog - someone famous, eg. The Huffington Post
  • Brilliant Writer Blog - you want to read it, Andrew Sullivan
  • Intelligent Aggregator Blog - eg. the Drudge Report - need specialisation or good judgement - not yet mature
  • The Journalist Blog - someone who knows their subject, has a wide range of contacts, will be read by that sector, there’s not enough of them

In setting up your blog, he suggests you visualise what the opportunity is - the best source of this visualisation is looking within

  • how do you use the web yourself?
  • how do you therefore see other people using the web?

The lecture can be viewed online at this address: Video - RMIT

RMIT Melbourne

Tim Ferriss explains 4-hour workweek to Google staff

June 15th, 2008



Tim Ferris:


Here are a few questions that can help you put on the productivity blinders and put things in perspective. Even when you’re not traveling the world, develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don’t, you’ll never find time for the life-changing big things, whether important tasks or true peak experiences. If you do force the time but puncture it with distractions, you won’t have the attention to appreciate it.

-What is the one goal, if completed, that could change everything?

-What is the most urgent thing right now that you feel you “must” or “should” do?

-Can you let the urgent “fail” — even for a day — to get to the next milestone with your potential lifechanging tasks?

-What’s been on your “to-do” list the longest? Start it first thing in the morning and don’t allow interruptions or lunch until you finish.