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Last night, high-profile Google engineer Steve Yegge mistakenly posted a long rant about working at Amazon and Google’s own issues with creating platforms on Google+. Apparently, he only wanted to share it internally with everybody at Google, but mistaken shared it publicly. For the most part, Yegge’s post focusses on the horrors of working at Amazon, a company that is notorious for its political infighting. The most interesting part to me, though, is Yegge’s blunt assessment of what he perceives to be Google’s inability to understand platforms and how this could endanger the company in the long run. Google Engineer: [ continue reading Google Engineer: “Google+ is a Prime Example of Our Complete Failure to Understand Platforms” ] 15 October 2011  |  | category: empires flux, facebook, learning, social media tools, twitter, world of work  | comments are closed  15 October 2011 | | category: empires flux, Gallery of the bleedin' obvious, Google | comments are closed Great use of data “We’re house-hunting. And for me, like most coders, house-hunting involves lots and lots and lots of screen-scraping. As well as crawling Rightmove listings, I’ve been looking at transport and house-price data. [ continue reading train stations and house prices ] The United Kingdom Explained from C. G. P. Grey on Vimeo. Have some problems with this – not least being Northern Ireland coloured orange 8 March 2011 | | category: empires flux, location+, maps & mapping, one world, the state we're in, tribal | comments are closed We love the “RSS Is Dead” meme here at TechCrunch. Hell, we started it. And while RSS isn’t exactly dead as in gone, it is dead in that the vast majority of people who consume content on the web have absolutely no idea what it is and will never know what it is. But even that’s not necessarily bad news for RSS. What is bad news is that services that previously only relied on it are now moving beyond it. Today, Pulse, the visual news-reading app for iPhone, iPad, and Android, is announcing that they’re moving beyond RSS, and [ continue reading With RSS Face Down In A Ditch, Lifeless, Pulse Finds A Heartbeat Beyond It ] Our Society is: a place to be inspired by possibilities and celebrate achievements a place to share your struggles and engage in honest, open discussion a support network where you can ask for advice, offer help, promote your activities a learning exchange where you tell your story, hear others’ experiences, and find resources Our Society aims to connect people who are genuinely concerned to move power into communities and [ continue reading Our Society ] All of which brings me back to Egypt as the canary in a very large coal mine. It’s hard to overstate just how unexpected a transformation is occurring in Egypt. Death, taxes, and Hosni Mubarak — they were the three great certainties in modern Egyptian life. But just underneath the surface, the tectonic pressure of dumb growth was steadily mounting. Bogus prosperity’s like magma, filling the volcanic chamber of a society: you can bottle it up for only so long before it erupts, and spectacularly. Today, the world’s gaze is fixed on the pyroclastic flow: never-ending demonstrations, protests, people [ continue reading Egypt’s Revolution: Coming to an Economy Near You ] 3 February 2011 | | category: can't make it up!, empires flux, prognosticators, scofflaws, tolerated crime and hypocrites, social media tools, the new 'priest class', the state we're in, world of work | comments are closed Harry Beck’s map continues to inspire. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» European E-Road System as a Subway Diagram | Cameron Booth: .) 28 January 2011 | | category: art, location+, maps & mapping, transport, travel | comments are closed The biggest rocket ever to launch from the US West Coast has lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The 72m-high Delta IV Heavy was carrying a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The Delta IV Heavy features three core boosters strapped side by side. Each has a Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne-built RS-68 engine. These motors burn a tonne of propellant every second and produce 2,900 kiloNewtons (650,000lbs) of thrust at lift-off. With Tumblr recently experiencing a 24-hour offline stint and a reported single 9 of service reliability, there are plenty of jokes about the microblogging service’s infamous downtime (most I’ve heard have at least a tenuous WikiLeaks connection). Here’s the most Tumblr elaborate satire piece yet: Go to http://wellbebackshortly.com/ and hit refresh. Hit refresh again, and again. Created by Adam Hemphill, the site is a riff on the Tumblr “We’ll Be Back Shortly” page and generates over a hundred hypothetical excuses as to why Tumblr is down so Tumblr doesn’t have to. (Tumblr is currently UP, at the moment.) [ continue reading “Squirrels” And 100 Other Reasons Why Tumblr Is Down ] Speech by Robert Kennedy, 18 March 1968, University of Kansas. ”We will never find a purpose for our nation nor for our personal satisfaction in the mere search for economic well-being, in endlessly amassing terrestrial goods. We cannot measure the national spirit on the basis of the Dow-Jones, nor can we measure the achievements of our country on the basis of the gross domestic product (GDP) Our gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those [ continue reading happiness ] Dating hedges from subjective evidence Certain “indicator” plants can provide clues to the origin of a hedge, e.g. Bluebell (Hyacinthoides nonscriptus) , dogs mercury (Mecurialis perennis) and primrose (Primula vulgaris) are all species occurring in or at the edge of woodland. There existence in hedges strongly suggests a woodland origin that possibly dates back to the assarts of the 12th – 14th century. On the other hand we need to not overlook the possibility of secondary colonisation at a later date, especially in the case of bluebells that are sometimes escapees from gardens and waste piles. (CLICK HERE [ continue reading Hedgerow Dating – (I love stuff like this) ] “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!! #IAmSpartacus #twitterjoketrial “ 12 November 2010 | | category: Global Guerillas, scofflaws, tolerated crime and hypocrites, social media tools, the new 'priest class', the state we're in, twitter | comments are closed Many entrepreneurs idolize Steve Jobs. He’s such a perfectionist, they say. Nothing leaves the doors of 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino without a polish and finish that makes geeks everywhere drool. No compromise! I like Apple for the opposite reason: they’re not afraid of getting a rudimentary 1.0 out into the world. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» 1.0 Is the Loneliest Number — Matt Mullenweg: .) Not as slick as Arcade Fire and HTML5 but shows the merging continues. Does Flash have the scale to compete? The UK online trailer for Sega’s new Vanquish game cleverly uses Google Maps Street View to let viewers see their own houses being attacked.To view the trailer you have to enter a valid UK postcode. If you don’t know any UK postcodes you can try SW1A 0AA, which is the postcode for the Houses of Parliament. The Street View scene comes at the end of the trailer and (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss Street View used in Game [ continue reading Street View used in Game Trailer -Updated ] PHOTOS FROM MOEL-DDU. Social networks, those loose, busy and self-absorbing communities of Facebookers and Twitterers, have always invited analogies from the insect world. If we are to accept the most common of them, then in the past week, Malcolm Gladwell, provocateur-in-chief at the New Yorker magazine, has poked a sharp stick into the online ants’ nest. The twitterers have responded to his provocation by swarming on to blogs and websites to protect their uniting belief: that the future belongs to them. Gladwell is a spirited contrarian. His argument in the New Yorker was an attack on the prevalent idea that online [ continue reading Twitter and Facebook cannot change the real world, says Malcolm Gladwell ] Remember three years ago, when Microsoft paid a quarter-billion dollars for 1.6% of Facebook and the exclusive right to run banner ads across Facebook.com? Tell the truth, how many of you thought that was a killer business decision? I can’t say I did at the time. But as that deal is about to expire in 2011, Facebook’s status as a revenue juggernaut is rarely questioned any more. In fact, I have been mulling over data from both companies, and I’m ready to declare in public my belief that Facebook will be bigger in five years than Google is right [ continue reading How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today ] (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» Anthony McNeill MANL Twitter Dissertation: .) 2 October 2010 | | category: learning, social media tools, the state we're in, twitter, writing | comments are closed Paris Peripherique Street View MovieGMapify has created another video using Street View images. This one shows the whole of the Paris Peripherique. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss Friday Fun with Google Maps: .) Google today said it would introduce a new image format designed to compete directly with current JPEG standards. The format, named WebP and pronounced "weppy," promises to reduce file sizes by 40 percent compared to JPEGs, which could help websites load faster and reduce strain on networks…. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» MacNN Google’s new image format promises 40% smaller files: .) Last Wednesday, my life changed forever. I got an iPhone. I consider it the greatest thing to happen to the blind for a very long time, possibly ever. It offers unparalleled access to properly made applications, and changed my life in twenty-four hours. The iPhone only has one thing holding it back: iTunes. Nevertheless, I have fallen in love. When I first heard that Apple would release a touchpad cell phone with VoiceOver, the screen reading software used by Macs, I scoffed. The blind have gotten so used to lofty promises of a dream platform, only to receive [ continue reading My First Week with the iPhone | Behind the Curtain ] Awareness! The Headphone App lets you listen to your music with complete piece of mind, knowing that important sounds (warnings, shouts, sirens, alarms or conversations) won’t be missed. In other words, you get to hear the things you NEED, even when you’re lost in your music. Awareness! cleverly turns the microphone on when any sound exceeds the level of everyday background noise and delivers it to your headphones or earphones. This makes it safer to listen to music whilst travelling – driving, riding, commuting, walking, crossing the road, cycling and jogging. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» essency | [ continue reading essency, Awareness! The Headphone App ] Goodness knows where all this is leading to. The mapping revolution is barely six years old. What will be on offer 10 years hence? Maybe it will be live satellite imaging, so you can see when a car leaves a parking space in the next road, or try to track down Osama bin Laden from your mobile phone. The prospect of anyone in the world being able to make their own contribution to a map – thanks to free access to satellite positioning techniques – is awesome, but so is the downside. Some of the fears emerged at a [ continue reading We no longer go to maps, they come to us ] 16 September 2010 | | category: Google, location+, maps & mapping, social media tools, the state we're in | comments are closed … some dinosaurs flatly refuse to serve the public good. Chief among them is National Rail Enquiries, owned by the Association of Train Operating Companies, which continues to reject calls to open up its feeds — despite collecting huge taxpayer subsidies. When I asked why, a press officer said “it just isn’t practical to make [services] entirely open to developers” as data was constantly being updated and the system would face “extra strain”. Nonsense: it’s simply an excuse to maximise revenues by charging for data that should be freely available. In response, our new “open” prime minister should threaten [ continue reading Wired impatient with National Rail Enquiries ] Vice Admiral William Bligh FRS RN was an officer of the British Royal Navy and a colonial administrator. A notorious mutiny occurred during his command of HMS Bounty in 1789; Bligh and his loyal men made a remarkable voyage to Timor, after being set adrift by the mutineers in the Bounty’s launch. Fifteen years after theBounty mutiny, he was appointed Governor of New South Wales in Australia, with orders to clean up the corrupt rum trade of the New South Wales Corps, resulting in the so-called Rum Rebellion. After his exoneration by the Court Martial inquiry into the loss of [ continue reading William Bligh ] |  
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