Archive for May, 2006

Broadband choices post updated

Friday, May 5th, 2006

I’ve added a map and a few more bits of advice to the broadband choices in Ireland post. It’s one of the most visited pages on this site. I’ve written one or two pieces for print media which had their foundations on the broadband choices post and once they’re published I’ll edit the post to add more advice and more details.

Pearl Jam at the point tickets wanted – Snowball’s chance

Thursday, May 4th, 2006

Yeah I know they’re like gold dust but if anyone can get me Pearl Jam tickets (standing if at all possible) I’d be eternally grateful. I’d sell my soul if it was mine.

04 05 06 Thursday Weirdness

Thursday, May 4th, 2006

Philips Shave Everywhere shaver.

Via Digg 10,000th shoplifter wins a prize.

I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere ..

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

Lyrics for “Transatlanticism” by Death Cab for Cutie

The atlantic was born today and i’ll tell you how…
The clouds above opened up and let it out.

I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
When the water filled every hole.
And thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
Making islands where no island should go.
Oh no.

Those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flood lands to your door have been silenced forever more.
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no.

I need you so much closer [x8]

When you have nothing to say, post some lyrics! Or sometimes if you don’t have the words to express it, then post lyrics.

I need you so much closer [x4]
So come on, come on [x4]

Irish Road Deaths Website with an Interactive map

Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006

Ken McGuire mentions that John Butler is going to build RoadDeaths.net.

I’m all for the creation of a website with a map of Ireland that lists all locations of the road deaths. What I’d love to see is a map that had more details in the popover such as time the accident happened etc. Perhaps additionally over time some stats could be run showing the worst places that accidents occur, per capita etc. There’s lots of stats out there but I don’t think they’re readily available and up to date on a web site. It might take a Freedom of Information request to get hold of the detailed information.

While it starts off with Google maps I’m sure over time that a nice mapping group might provide a free licence to use a more robust map. As we discovered with the broadband coverage map, it takes a while to load a map of Ireland with so many locations on it. Best of luck to John!

Scoble, fire your naming guy for wanting to cancel Christmas

Monday, May 1st, 2006

Scoble, fire the MS naming guy. Seriously. You said any marketing exec who did not have feeds on a marketing website should be fired. Your naming guy should be fired too. He’d easily get a job in another bureaucracy anyway with that backwards thinking. I watched the interview with MS Legal Army guy Don McGowan and yes I understand the ironic position MS is in. Since they try and utterly destroy anyone that uses one of their trademarks MS now has to keep going and find trademarkable names. Stop letting the lawyers run the company Scoble. Them fucking up the entertainment industry is testament enough that they shouldn’t be let off the leash. The more blood they get, the more rabid they become.

Apple can come out and call an operating system Jaguar or Tiger. They can call versions of their iPod Mini, Video and Nano. They have applications called Garageband and Aperture and OH MY GOD a mail program called Mail! All very common names for applications and versions of products. Creative have a music player called the Zen. Generic enough to be found in a LOT of Google searches. Sorry to be sarcastic but guess what? People are learning to use more than one word when searching. A p p l e Garageband. A p p l e Aperture. But here’s an intriguing idea and yes more sarcasm: The more people link to your page the higher up in rankings it’ll go so your product will appear first over time.

If this naming guy was around a few years back then hmmm, would there be Windows? Would there be Office? Would there be Word? Maybe the same reason that Apple can design a beautiful product and Microsoft can’t is the same for naming products. Creativity and freedom. Stop letting the bureacrats control how you breathe. I’m in total disbelief that you want to promote a “No Fun” rule when naming codenames. Lord almighty. If you are now getting all thought police on the codenames you are in no way going to be able to get down and have cluetrain moments with the general public. The only search test that should matter is “Microsoft products better than Apple products”. Will MS applications be found in that search reult?

Systems without guilt – Design objectives for a product

Monday, May 1st, 2006

Via Dave Winer: Dan Bricklin talks about guiltless systems:

Dave Winer writes that he stopped tagging the categories of blog posts. As soon as he missed one he felt guilty and then as the guilt grew he tagged less. He started just assigning things to a couple of categories and then not tagging at all.

Instead of making you feel bad for “only” doing 99%, a well designed system makes you feel good for doing 1%.