July 2011
1 post
May 2011
1 post
3 tags
Tumblin Berries
Finally got the tumblr app working on the blackberry. Perhaps ill be able to post more now, somewhat doubt it, but should get my finger out.
On the subject, blackberries are just vile for apps. First the appworld works, but the apps don’t then the security eedjits go through a policy revision and switch half of them off. Put this all together with the worst user interface in the modern...
June 2010
2 posts
1 tag
How to be yourself
I get a lot of advice to just be myself, for various situations, meeting new friends, formal business meetings, presentations, interviews, and the list goes on.
Problem is, how do you know what you are? you can do a lot of navel gazing, and try and figure out what you are and be that, but in the real world this doesn’t work. There’s research that says people make up their minds about...
2 tags
Probability, Fractals and Swans
I’ve been promising since I started this blog to write about Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, The Black Swan. Today is the day I finally make good on that promise…
Imagine for a second, that you know how the world works, it should be quite easy. Imagine further that you have a grasp on the causality of this world, certain actions lead to certain consequences. Imagine even further...
April 2010
1 post
3 tags
Cannibalistic Platforms
I’ve been watching the developments at Twitter over the past 2 months with some real interest. Other than the excellent engineering feats they accomplish, like Gizzard, elephant-bird and their work with Unicorn, they’ve made some interesting business decisions.
I’m specifically talking about their stance announced in February that they will start competing in the application...
March 2010
5 posts
1 tag
Best Business Model in the world
I came across a post by Anthony Tjan (a VC) on the Harvard Business Review which talks about how at their VC firm, they’re constantly on the lookout for business with the following monetisation model:
recurring revenue + fixed cost leverage = superior cash flow
I think he convolutes the message a little bit, and using a words like recurring and leverage just confuse the matter.
What it...
3 tags
High time for some science
Figured I’d finally put some CompSci stuff on here since I’ve just been warbling on about business and random crap.
There’s a research project in Berkeley that tries to tie up the various cluster computing platforms, and give a common layer below systems such as Hadoop and Dryad and allow them share resources, interact with running processes etc.
The paper looks interesting,...
1 tag
A Penny Saved is not a Penny Earned
I had lunch with an old boss and another exec recently. Among various topics we discussed, the following question came up:
What is more valuable, a dollar of revenue or a dollar of cost saving?
Around the table, both the execs and I knew which one we preferred and also knew that our preference is against the corporate line, for those of you playing along at home, the corporate line is cost...
2 tags
You won't see the future coming
Interesting confluence of ideas today. Firstly, there’s the buzz post by RRW that talks about whether we can ever get away from the good ol’ keyboard and mouse combo.
Secondly, there’s this post by John Scalzi, one of my favourite authors, carrying on a rather fractious and long running debate about e-books vs. print books. Which Scalzi points out, among other things, that...
1 tag
As good a time to start as any
Joel Spolsky, of Joel on software fame, is giving up blogging.
So it seems as good a time as any for me to start. Thought truth be told I’ve been looking for a reason or excuse a long long time.
Funnily enough, Joel’s reason for giving up is the thing that spurred me to give it a whirl, and also the same thing that’s been making me hold off doing it for so long.
He makes the...