Note: This is a follow-up post to one I wrote a few days ago, The Facebookisation of the enterprise, given the kind of interest it generated. People seriously interested in the subject may wish to read my nine-part series on Facebook and the Enterprise from 2007. The first part remains my most-read post, apart from [...]
By JP
– January 7, 2010
Note: My thanks to Orin Zebest for all the photographs, provided via Flickr on a Creative Commons Attribution Licence. Orin, you’re Ze Best. And I’ve left all your original titles in!.
Note: I had some trouble with the photographs when viewed via the permalink. I’ve reloaded each one from a different “source” and with standardised parameters [...]
By JP
– December 31, 2009
I have the privilege of spending time with many startups, in a variety of guises: as incubator, as advisor, as investor, as chairman, as well-wisher, friend and supporter. The startups differ widely and wildly: they range in size from a handful of people to hundreds; they have annual burn rates in the thousands and in [...]
By JP
– October 11, 2009
[Photo credits: guitars: fotobicchio and shoes: Orin Zebest]
For some time now, phrases like “the customer’s in control” have been floating around the marketplace, yet “enterprise people” haven’t taken a blind bit of notice. You can’t expect them to. Many of them can’t understand what choice means in the context of the services they receive. And [...]
By JP
– October 1, 2009
I know my readership is “old” but most of you are not as old as I am. So that means you’re more than likely to have heard about the Kanye West/Taylor Swift incident a few days ago. I heard about it, found it at least mildly distasteful, despite Kanye’s apology; I was therefore glad to [...]
By JP
– September 17, 2009
Tried to get to twitter. Came across this instead:
I want my Fail Whale back!
By JP
– August 24, 2009
A few days ago I made some predictions about the “Ashes” Fifth Test at the Oval, a cricket match between England and Australia. My predictions were: England would win the toss, bat first, put up a decent score on the first day and part of the second day; that Australia would come in on the [...]
By JP
– August 22, 2009
I’m sure most of you have read quite enough about the Amazon “1984″ incident; it received somewhat less coverage than the Techcrunch Twitter incident, which itself is saying something. I’m not going to comment directly on the merits and demerits of either incident here and now; they deserve considered responses and in the right context, [...]
By JP
– July 19, 2009
I woke up this morning with blepharitis in both eyes. Not sure how it happened, but there you are. A considerable inconvenience, having to reschedule everything, go to the eye hospital, queue up, get seen and diagnosed, pick up the prescription, get the medications from the pharmacy, then go home. Start applying the stuff.
You could [...]
By JP
– July 13, 2009
I was born into a journalistic family in the fifties. My father was a journalist, as was his father. The family business was journalism. Financial journalism. Their models of vertical integration included owning a printing press and shares in ad agencies and restaurants. Which meant that as a child, I was pretty used to hearing [...]
By JP
– July 12, 2009
In this context of creativity and web, Jonathan Zittrain, or JZ as he gets called, made a number of critical points in his excellent book The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It 
One of those key points is to do with the “generative” web, the phrase he uses to describe the open and innovative and creative aspects of the web; JZ spends time articulating the rise of locked-down devices, services and whole environments as a direct response to the ostensibly anarchic nature of the generative web, with its inherent vulnerabilities and weaknesses. … ] The implied tension between “generative” and “secure” that is to be found in JZ’s book, resonated, in a strange kind of way, with some of the ideas in Carlota Perez’s Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: 
The book remains one of my all-time favourites, I’ve probably read it a dozen times since it was published.
By JP
– June 30, 2009
A few decades ago, I read a book called AI: The Tumultous History of The Search for Artificial Intelligence, by Daniel Crevier. In it, the late and brilliant Donald Michie is quoted as saying something like this:
AI is about making machines more fathomable and more under the control of human beings, not less. Conventional technology [...]
By JP
– June 28, 2009
I read a lot of books. For decades I used to average ten books a week, but nowadays it’s probably closer to two or three. Nevertheless, I read a lot. And I’ve been reading a lot for over forty years.
When it comes to choosing what I read, I have a variety of techniques:
1. Past-predicts-future: This [...]
By JP
– May 2, 2009
I like reading Andrew McAfee’s blog. I’ve known him for some years now, and count him as one of my friends. Reading his blog is a bit like chewing on good chillies or drinking decent sancerre, there’s a lot of value in the aftertaste. It lingers, pleasurably, and makes you think.
A few days ago he [...]
By JP
– March 27, 2009
This past month or so, I’ve been absolutely delighted with the sheer splendour of the web, the incredible richness and diversity of stuff out there. And all so easy to get to. Here are a few of the sites I’ve really enjoyed, mainly arrived at via Twitter or StumbleUpon. Some I’ve come across before, some [...]
By JP
– March 26, 2009
There’s a common mondegreen to do with Killing Me Softly With His Song: apparently, people hear the first words as “strumming my fate with his fingers” rather than “strumming my pain with his fingers”. But the title of this post is no mondegreen:
Yes, there’s now a decent guitar app for the iPhone: PocketGuitar, available for [...]
By JP
– March 23, 2009
Stu Berwick told me about this via Twitter: Stimulus Watch. What Stimulus Watch does is to take the list of “Ready-To-Go” projects published by the US Conference of Mayors, convert them into a wiki and thereby empower readers to comment on the projects, enrich the data, “vote” on the projects.
There’s lots to like about the [...]
By JP
– February 16, 2009
When I look at the digital implementations of social networks of today, they appear to have a core made up of five things:
a directory or address book
the ability to group people in the directory
support for different modes of communication between people
the ability to schedule meetings between the people
a way of notifying changes to the four [...]
By JP
– February 16, 2009
I spent a little time reading this Pew Internet survey on Twitter and Status Updating.
It feels strange to be close to the edge of this classification:
Twitter and similar services have been most avidly embraced by young adults. Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18 and 24 have ever used Twitter and its ilk, [...]
By JP
– February 12, 2009
I have some friends who talk to me exclusively through Facebook. My phone and my e-mail are displayed there for my friends. But most of the time, they talk to me through Facebook. Currently, the number of Facebook friends is somewhere in the 700s. They cover my family, my school, my university, my church, my [...]
By JP
– February 9, 2009
I’m a passionate person. I’m passionate about the people that matter to me, the ideas I believe in, the things that I enjoy. And I make no secret of this. Just read the About Me page on this blog and you will get what I mean. Or for that matter the Kernel For This Blog [...]
By JP
– February 8, 2009
I was delighted to hear of this: Someone called JS van Buskirk in Atlanta, Georgia, has now written Shakespeare’s entire oeuvre in tweets, one play at a time. Here’s the link.
“JS” has done quite a good job: I tried to guess the play by reading her tweeted synopsis (shielding the abbreviated title, of course), and [...]
By JP
– February 7, 2009
Some time ago I wrote about TinEye, a very useful little program that “reverse searches” the web for images. Particularly useful for two things: One, when you want to find the source of an image you’ve found and want to use, so as to obtain the right permission. Two, when you have a “free-to-air” image, [...]
By JP
– February 1, 2009
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