Cardboard Spaceship

Excellent New Word from Labour Spinmeister

RIM have had the Blackberry service down in EMEA for the last three or four days, which is a disaster for a company that is so central to mobile comms.  Given that their products are pretty lacklustre right now, the one thing that everyone always said was "well, at least e-mail works."

Best comment of the stressed yuppie classes came from former Labour spinmeister Alastair Campbell who tweeted:

"day 3 of blackberry blackout. Some free advice. Explain while you fix. Apologise when you have. Recompense after. handling so far woefuk."

Woeful was the intended word, one assumes, but the type really sums it up nicely, a woefuk of a situation.

Are RIM and Nolkia in competition for the Digital Equipment Corporation Memorial award for taking brilliant companies and products, and pissing it up against the fence?

About Being Wrong - I Fail in Diagnosis of Internet iPad Problem...

I was foaming below about a new iPad that I got yesterday, and how come it was lacking basic elements of functionality.  Read on to see how we can sometimes reach completely the wrong conclusions, and so should spend life being modest and thoughtful in the face of other's assumed mistakes...   

This is what I was writing...

"In my job, I have to demonstrate the SAP applications, and the "user experience" is a big part of that.  On the PC and so on, SAP has been well understood for a long time, but with the Sybase acquisition, a lot of emphasis is now moving to things like Blackberry, iPhone, and iPad. 

I was sent a mail saving that I must order one so that I could get up to speed, and start seeing what we can use for banking on the platform.  Bottom line, SAP insists I get a free iPad.  Nightmare, eh?

Lovely, lovely piece of kit. I was not that convinced until I really used it, and it seems to be really very special, and knocks the Blackberry mobile thang into a cocked hat. 

I was lying in bed this morning, still recuperating, with full Internet access, and I then went and did something else, and came back later. 

Safari refuses to believe it is connected to the Internet, despite a working Wi-Fi connection that had offered access some minutes before, otherwise unchanged, and despite my best efforts, it refuses point blank to believe there is an Internet connection.  This is not isolated, we had the same problem yesterday in SAP Lausanne, and I see many complaints about this on the support forums. I've booted the router, the iPad, refreshed network and other settings, and so on.  Nada.  Zilch.

How can you get something as basic as a Wi-Fi connection refresh wrong?  It obviates the whole brilliance of the concept!   That's always what I have felt about Apple stuff, brilliant, until it isn't, and then there's nothing you can do with it.  I had a not dissimilar feeling when I bought a 27 inch iMac, that quickly went back to the (very professional and exceptionally helpful) shop."

STOP THE PRESS!

Turns out that the people demolishing the kitchen have cut the phone cable, by accidentally, as my son used to say.   Now that really would make the Internet unreachable, unless the electrons decide to form some kind of ant line across the smashed tiles to ensure my surfy goodness.  Unlikely.

Sorry Apple!  Your brilliance remains undiminished, and I should look broader for causes.  What a laugh!  I was actually reassured when Mrs Spaceship told me that, as I had begun to seriously think I was loosing my tech mojo...

Hugh of Gaping Void Unfriends Facebook and Twitter

Interestingly enough, Hugh Macleod of Gaping Void, an old friend from school days and since, has renounced Facebook and Twitter, for reasons that he explains in a thoughtful post. 

I spoke with Hugh on the phone for an hour or so the other days, for the first time in a long time, and he was sounding in very good fettle, life seems to be agreeing with him.   The call was prompted by him giving me a bit of support, and getting news about the now vanquished Attack of Lumps, and it was a timely and supportive thing to do, so I was very touched. 

So, while I really didn't talk about blogging per se with Hugh, I actually have been asking myself the question, in light of recent events, "why am I still blogging?" 

For me, it's become a kind of public diary that family and friends can also dip into, so I guess that I am never going to get 20 million hits in a day, but that's not now why I am doing it, it's just a good way to capture thoughts and musings for myself, and anyone who is interested. 

I tried Facebook and hated it, and I cannot for the life of me see the point of Twitter.  It would be like having a continuous flow of SMS spam on your mobile. 

"Much sound and fury, signifying nothing."  Too much network, too little signal, I can see exactly here Hugh is coming from on that one...

HP - Ouch!

Leo Apotheker was CEO at SAP in the interlude between the brilliant Professor Henning Kagermann, and the Dynamic Duo of Bill McDermott, and Jim Hagemann Snabe, who do sales and tech respectively, and are both rather good at what they do.  

He got ousted after nine months in the middle of some considerable pushback from the German workforce, who decided, more or less en masse, that they didn't like him.  (I have no special knowledge of the situation, but I have worked for SAP for nigh on 20 years and know that you can't fight the sandal wearing denizens of Walldorf without mighty peril.)

He is now CEO of HP, the largest manufacturer of PCs in the world, and has recently announced some radical changes in the organisation's goals:  quit the PC business, buy a search software company in the UK, and drop the WebOS that they bought of of Palm for some billions. 

Well, that saw a 20% drop in the share price, and a lot of very surprised people in the business, after all, HP was saying until recently that the PC and tablet space was one that they were in it to win it.  Except admittedly they didn't. 

We've seen some real tidy up deals in the business recently, Nokia's disastrous decision to implode and use Windows as the OS, Oracle buying Sun, (makes no sense to me at all that one), etc.  

This one strikes me as being similar.  We'll see. 

F-22 and F-35 Jet Fighters ALL Grounded...

I saw in the middle of a long Internet noodling session, where I was looking for the latest financial news, this little, totally unrelated, gem:  Both the US advanced fighters, the F-22 Raptor, and the F-35 Lightning are completely grounded due to technical SNAFUs.  The F-22 oxygen system doesn't work, and the F-35 has a serious electrical fault. 

Wow, 80 billion dollars worth of lawn ornaments.  Might be seen as being a bit inconvenient, but fortunately they are designed to fight other superpowers, not AK-47 and RPG wielding locals, so that's OK then. 

That also goes well for the UK, as they have contracted to build two useless aircraft carriers, and they are to be filled, eventually, with the F-35, so that looks like having non-functional aircraft carriers with non-functional aircraft, for a non-specified purpose. 

Result. 

Thank God I moved to a land-locked country.

Gaping Void on Zero Hedge!

My long time firend Hugh MacLeod's Evil Plan thang is being referenced on the finanical apocalypse / commentray site Zero Hedge as a go to read. 

Dunno, that's a crossover for me.  Well done Hugh, that's a tough crowd to excite, as most of them have already got several shotguns, and a lot of tinned food, not to mention the odd tin foil hat.

Nokia RIP

Ohmigod, they actually did it.  Nokia has agreed to use Windows Phone OS, dropping Symbian, and the putative MeeGo OS. 

This has to be one of the worst strategic blunders in tech history.   As many people in the wildly negative comments called it:  the Ratner moment.

1.  You announce that you think that your current product is shit...

2.  You announce that you're teaming up with the company with the worst track record apart from your own...

3.  You will sideline the existing product OS, and so suppport and so on is going to drop down.  Not to mention no-one will develop anything else for an end of life platform.

4. You announce in February 2011 that your new undeveloped strategic product will be here in about a year's time,  if all goes well. 

5. What could possibly go wrong!

Nokia and the Burning Platform...

Another from the good 'ole Grauniad (UK Guardian, which in the days of hot metal printing presses, used to be legendary for its typos.)

A memo, likely from the CEO of the once mighty Nokia.

Read it and weep. 

"We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us."

 

If this is really from Elop, then you need to sell any Nokia shares you might have now, because this is the worst cliché ridden rubbish I have seen from a Chief Exec in ages.  All he say is we are failing on all fronts, and he can't even bother to come up with an original metaphor. 

In the comments, VP tech at Nokia apparently comments on Microsoft co-operation.  "Two turkeys don't make an eagle."

Bloody hell Harry, that's not sounding too inspiring is it?

Be interested to see what they do in the end.

Oracle Laugh

Reading the news, about the SAP vs. Oracle lawsuit.  Not going to comment on that, as I have no knowledge of it, but I did see a great comment on Slashdot.  (Man, do the Open Source guys hate Larry Ellison.)

ORACLE = One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison. 

Laugh Out Loud. 

New Camera - Casio better than Nikon

As regular readers may remember I bought a Nikon Coolpix S225, and seriously thought it was absolute rubbish.  As I have been travelling a lot recently, I have been in airports, and airports mean airport electronic shops.  Fatal for me really, what with me being a total nerd.  So, I bought a 10X zoom compact, a Casio Exilim EX-H10.  Which works nicely, as you can see here. 

This is Scotty, and he and Wim the Most Intelligent Member of the Crew regular stop for a friendly bottom sniffing session on our regular walks.  Isn't he just so cute?

Nice blowing early summer day, and here is a view of the barley rustling in the wind.

I also wondered whether the 10X zoom would just be a gimmick, but now I wonder how I ever go by without it.  The camera also has anti-shake on-board, so the zoomed pictures are still usable.  Remarkable ability, as you can see in this composite shot taken with the wide angle and maximum telephoto of the same sign in a forest. 

Recommended, as a budget in-the-pocket travel camera.