Continuing the theme whilst I'm off on holiday... Now this one is all Apple's fault. In the old days there were files and directories on MS-DOS and the same in Unix. Then Apple got all fancy pants with MacOS and started talking about Documents and Folders (which to be fair to them, is slightly more … Continue reading Crap Tech Industry Metaphors: 3. Files and Folders
Category: Hobby horses
Numbers are an incredibly inhuman abstract construct. It's no coincidence that for some primitive tribespeople numbering systems progressed no further than "1, 2, many". Whilst pootling through the lanes of west Pembrokeshire this afternoon I heard the broadcaster Paddy O'Connell give a good demonstration of our appalling ability to handle things numeric. Standing in for … Continue reading Number blind
Whilst I'm off optimistically sunning myself in South Wales, I thought I'd get a few more of these rubbish metaphors off my chest. Second up - the concept of "Dogfooding", aka "Eating your own dogfood", aka running beta tests of new products amongst one's own staff before putting in front of real customers. Where, exactly, … Continue reading Crap Tech Industry Metaphors: 2. Dogfooding
If you read this blog with any regularity, you'll know I'm a bit of a metaphor junkie: the name itself stems from that love, and I've even performed on stage extolling their virtues. Now with analogy there is always a risk that one will descend into Swiss Toni territory, where using metaphor, analogy and simile … Continue reading Crap Tech Industry Metaphors: 1. Breadcrumb Trails
There have been a few events in the past week that have made me revisit a theme that I've had in my head for most of the last 15 years: that one of the crucial elements that holds back the Internet is a standard verifiable identity for individuals on the net, but that much … Continue reading Identity crisis
LinkedIn, or Facebook for boring people, is celebrating it's 200 millionth subscriber by informing people who sit in the top 1% of viewed profiles and top 5% of viewed profiles of that exciting news. I fall in the 1%. Which tells me a few things... Firstly, that "top 1%" sounds an awful lot better than … Continue reading One in 2 million: my part in the LinkedIn story
There are two unrelated news stories in the UK press this morning that have got me thinking about how it appears we need a really big crisis before change is easy to instigate. On the one hand there is the terrible story of organisational mismanagement in the NHS in the midlands, and on the other … Continue reading Change from crisis
My wife and I spent last weekend pottering around the sleepy villages of North Norfolk. Vegas it isn't, but having dropped the kids off with grandparents, we had two days to recharge and spend some time together. It was a nice little break, but one experience has stayed with me. We were queuing to pay … Continue reading An ageing digital population
According to the most recent episode of BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme, 2013 is going to be a very significant year in the world of food packaging: it's the year in which a government-sponsored, voluntary (but consistent) scheme for labelling food will be introduced, giving a traffic light system for giving consumers an at-a-glance … Continue reading Fifty Shades of Amber
So as to redress the balance, alongside the stats and facts approach, I thought it worth a little time for some slightly more subjective opinions to tell my story of 2012. It's undoubtedly been a year of change. On January 1st I had a team of over a dozen people, a focus on marketing to … Continue reading 2012 – the subjective view
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