Category: General

A couple of years ago, Wired editor Chris Anderson wrote a cover article entitled "The Web is Dead: Long Live the Internet". His argument at the time was that we were seeing a shift from Web development to App development, and that as such the Internet was becoming more a transport mechanism than a place … Continue reading Bye bye WWW?

I've been reading Mark Tungate's history of global advertising Ad Land over the past few weeks (reading books takes on a new time frame when you have toddlers). It's been an interesting background to the ad and marketing industry, and has given me a few surprises not least, how old most of the major ad agencies … Continue reading Art vs Science

From Twitter last week: @stevenackerman: Sainsbury's as a music retailer. Don't see that at all, but then again what do I know? http://t.co/zvtDXLhl @mattballantine: no doubt in late 1990s, "Apple as a music retailer" would have had a similar response... @stevenackerman: I really hope you're not comparing Apple and Sainsburys!! @mattballantine: I know, I know. Apple … Continue reading Pivots

I was flicking through my wife's latest copy of Living Etc this morning having had my interested aroused by the fact that there was a photo that included a computer on the front cover. If you aren't aware of it, Living Etc portrays an idealised, minimalist, modernist world of European furniture and houses where there is … Continue reading A matter of style

My slide deck for the Spring 2012 IT Directors' Forum: http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=itdfpresentationfinalmetro-13358830489337-phpapp01-120501094105-phpapp01&stripped_title=spring-itdf-presentation Scene Setting My LinkedIn page: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mattballantine Touch expectations: https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/03/21/touch-expectations/ The battlelines of consumerisation: https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2011/08/08/the-battlelines-of-consumerisation/ Green field thinking https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/01/26/a-green-field-it-function/ Positive reinforcement https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/02/13/motivating-through-games/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/02/20/positive-reinforcement-and-business-systems/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/02/14/skinner-the-art-of-motivation/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/02/22/theory-x-theory-y-and-the-strange-case-of-the-expenses-system/ Avoiding "stupider, faster" https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/03/27/avoiding-stupider-faster/ Providing a service https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2010/06/30/managing-the-client-experience/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2010/07/01/implementing-the-client-experience-model/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2010/07/14/lowering-expectations/ Fostering innovation https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/04/04/apis-everywhere/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/02/24/chief-playfulness-officer/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/01/24/when-is-an-it-strategy-a-business-strategy/

Sometimes I get fixated on random things... like press buttons on toilet cisterns. You know the ones - a circle, with two sections (usually a big "ying" and a little "yang"), one which does a long flush, and the other that does a short flush. The short flush is the more sustainable, less water used … Continue reading A UI Paradox

A thought has been bouncing around my head for a few weeks, and a check on Dictionary.com last night seemed to validate it (I'm not sure that that is a rigorous scientific method, but heck, this is 2012). The IT Industry, it seems, is the only place where the term "legacy" is used in a negative way. In most … Continue reading Negative legacy