Tuesday, 3 Nov 2015

Microsoft's new flagship store is nothing like an Apple Store, honestly  

A great tongue in cheek article by Slate’s Will Oremus highlighting the many differences between Microsoft’s new flagship store and Apple stores.

The spokesman I talked to was at pains to point out that a unique feature of the Microsoft Store called the Answer Bar. It’s basically a giant desk near the back of the store where you can go to talk to a Microsoft representative about the problems you’re having with Microsoft products.

Sounds nothing like Apple’s Genius Bar, nothing like it at all.

And whereas Apple Stores often feature all-glass facades, the Microsoft Store’s facade is only mostly glass.

“only mostly glass” Gold.

Friday, 30 Oct 2015

Losing in London: Rugby at its best  

For those who are unaware, the Rugby World cup is drawing to a close with the Grand Final match between New Zealand and Australia kicking off in London at 4pm Saturday. Last weekend saw the semifinal matches between New Zealand, South Africa and Australia, Argentina. Harry Jones, a Springbok (the South Africa rugby team) fan in London for the game, wrote an epic account of his semifinal day in London.

Even if you know nothing about Rugby, this is a worthwhile read. Harry’s writing leaves you feeling as though you were there with him experiencing all the highs and lows of what was no doubt a memorable and somewhat disappointing day for him (New Zealand went on to beat South Africa 20 to 18).

The sky was grey in London in Leicester Square as I left the hotel. It was not far to Trafalgar Square where the two-mile Jog the Memory with the 1995 Springbok squad would begin. But I was early for the 7:30 start, and it was dark and cold, just as I like a run, and the best way to see a giant, busy city is on an early jog.

I went through Chinatown, past St. Anne’s Church which is just next to the House of Ho. I am not sure which of those institutions is winning, currently. The narrow streets were wet with the detritus of Friday night’s debauchery, but festooned above with paprika-hued lanterns and flags, allowing the East to meet the West in this great repository of wealth and capital and ideas and trade.

Running along an ale-slicked cobblestone street, past shops named Bubbleology, The Yard Bar, the Rude Bastard, Smog, Spice Joy, and Lick my Hose, and galleries dedicated to works of art like a glass of water on a table or a simple black dot on a white canvas, I saw a tottering trio of young women on heels too high, with skirts too short, take a heavy spill on the pavement, near the Mall. They shouted at me, in wholly unintelligible dialect, about doing something with them that sounded illegal, and then laughed in that delirium of sleepless binge.

Fantastic stuff, Harry’s personal account highlights many of the things that I love about Rugby and its supporters.

Thursday, 10 Sep 2015

Surfing Teahupoo Tahiti  

Filmed by Ashley Gasper in Tahiti in July 2015, this is some of the most incredible filming of big wave surfing I've seen.

How the surfer gets through the wave at 2:20 is amazing. Surfing in the video is by Raimana, Matahi Drollet, Niccolo Porcella, Matehau Tetopata, Oliver Kurtz, Russell Bierke and more.

Drone film work is becoming so common these days - I like it when you stop noticing its filmed by a drone, things like sudden panning or catching the shadow of the drone tend to spoil it a bit. There are a few moments in this film where you can see its by a drone but its still great footage.

Wednesday, 9 Sep 2015

Lasker Foundation awards  

Since 1945, the Lasker Foundation has been awarding those who help advance the treatment, diagnosis and understanding of human disease. The awards are regarded as predictors for future Nobel Prize winners - 86 Lasker laureates have received the Nobel Prize, including 44 in the last three decades. Not surprisingly, these awards have become commonly known as 'America's Nobels'.

This year there were three awards given, The Basic Medical Research Award, The Clinical Medical Research Award and The Public Service Award.

The Basic Medical Research Award was awarded to geneticists Evelyn Witkin, of Rutgers University, and Stephen Elledge, of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, for their research into how organisms adapt and survive from DNA damage.

The Clinical Medical Research Award goes to immunologist, James Allison, for his work in developing a treatment to allow the body to use its T cells to attack cancer tumors.

The Public Service Award went to Médecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) for their work dealing with the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

The three videos above are all well worth watching, really inspiring.

Via The Verge

Samsung to cut 10 percent of its workforce  

This would appear to be bad timing from Samsung, coming on the eve of Apple’s iPhone event tomorrow. Ten percent of Samsung’s workforce equates to roughly 10,000 employees. That’s a significant cut in anyone’s books.

Samsung’s problems have been two-fold — price pressure and the iPhone. Other Android manufacturers have stepped up their game in offering high quality smartphones at cheaper prices. On top of that, Apple introduced the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus last fall with bigger screens. Needless to say … they sold like hotcakes.

Samsung’s decline in the smartphone market has been alarmingly rapid, from their peak barely two years ago to this.

Monday, 7 Sep 2015

101 Ways to Save Apple (in 1997)  

In June 1997, shortly after Steve Jobs returned to Apple, Wired ran an article by James Daley titled 101 Ways to Save Apple (click here to view on one page). It was a checklist of items supposedly taken from a “cross section of hardcore Mac fans” that highlighted the many issues Apple faced at the time.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and 18 years later its interesting to see how many of these items were eventually achieved by Apple, many of them directly contributing to its meteoric rise to the top:

5. Straighten out the naming convention…
7. Don’t disappear from the retail chains…
10. Get a great image campaign…
14. Do something creative with the design of the box and separate yourselves from the pack…
19. Get rid of the cables…

There are plenty more in the list including the gem that Chris Dixon Tweeted that first got my attention:

50. Give Steve Jobs as much authority as he wants in new product development…

Its incredible how many of these items have been fulfilled. Others of course, proved to be completely wrong, including the first item on the list:

1. Admit it. You’re out of the hardware game…

Via @cdixon

Saturday, 5 Sep 2015

Brian Eno and the Windows 95 Startup Sound  

I don’t know why I didn’t know this, or maybe I did and have since forgotten (I seem to be doing that more and more these days) but Brian Eno was commissioned by Microsoft to create the original Windows 95 startup sound. Maybe it’s more obvious once you know this piece of information, but he created 84 clips of music before the final 3.25 second clip was chosen. For those who can’t remember, this is the sound Microsoft selected for the original Windows 95.

What I love however is that it sounds exactly like Eno’s creation when you slow the sound right down. It takes on a whole new feel and sounds beautifully ambient.

Here’s a sample of the sound slowed down by 4000%

Via MentalFloss

Monday, 31 Aug 2015

Apple is about to lay down its TV cards  

Matthew Panzarino @panzer has written a great summary of what to expect from Apple for the new Apple TV, expected to be announced at their September 9th event.

If Apple is able to launch an easy-to-use controller attached to a powerful enough engine to support the burgeoning casual games market, we could see the same kind of absorption that is happening as smartphones eat the portable console gaming market. As the Xbox and PS4 veer sharply into the hardcore gaming market, Nintendo, with its gunshy approach to thinking laterally about its gaming properties and other platforms, is set up to be disintegrated by a new king of ‘good enough’ gaming.

And attached to that is a platform that is ripe for movies, content apps and new classes of home automation and control apps that we haven’t even begun to see yet.

I think gaming is a no-brainer on the next Apple TV. The thought of a whole new range of games designed for large screens but with the affordability and simplicity of mobile games will be attractive to a large number of people. As Panzarino suggests, by building a platform that will (more than likely) attract large numbers of users, the content creators and cable providers will find themselves in a position where they can no longer afford to not be on the platform. This will give Apple the leverage it needs to bring them on board.

Friday, 21 Aug 2015

Google Alphabet explained  

With typical clarity, Asymco’s Horace Dediu explains the structure of Google Alphabet. Not a lot has changed really, apart from further separation of the non money making, experimental ventures from the main, money making parts of Google.

In summary, Google A is altruistic, Google B is pragmatic. Google A engages in research, Google B engages in commerce. Google A operates in a structure similar to a Bell Labs for the good of humanity[4], Google B operates in a structure similar to AT&T and collects monopoly rents but without any government oversight.

This was an effective construct for analysis which explained to me much of how Google operated and how it made decisions. So what do we make of Google’s new Alphabet? Is this a dissolution of the Google B/Google A dichotomy?

My initial answer is no. We don’t have a change in this core structure. What we have instead is a split of Google A into Google A and Google A+.