If you spend any time amongst people in the London tech startup scene, it won't be long before you pick up on the influence that Eric Reis' 2008 book The Lean Startup has had on many people in fledgling businesses. The book describes a methodology for running a new (tech) venture that draws on both … Continue reading The Lean Startup and the implications for Apps development
Category: Themes
Twitter have announced the launch of a two-factor authentication service to try to reduce down the numbers of incidents of accounts being hacked. It's a good step for consumers, but in my view fails to address the fundamental issue that companies who use Twitter for corporate accounts face: if there is only one account, there's … Continue reading Two-factor
The "light-hearted" final story on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning brought together Brett Rogers, director of the Photographers Gallery, and Rachel Campbell-Johnston, chief art critic at The Times to discuss the issue of people taking photographs in art galleries. Given Rogers' role, it's not too surprising that she's against it, whilst Campbell-Johnston doesn't see … Continue reading Buzzword obscurity
There is a business that I pass on my drive to work most mornings that sells signs. Big signs, small signs, signs for the side of a van, signs for putting in a window. I know all of this because you can't help but notice that they sell signs because of all of the … Continue reading Signposting…
A couple of weeks ago we organised an interesting event - The Consumer at Work - that brought together people from traditional business software houses, some of our larger business customers, and some folk from digital and design agencies. The aim of the event was to explore themes around the impact that changing consumer expectations … Continue reading The impact of Apps in the workplace
There is a fairly old analogy about Cloud Computing being a bit like the emergence of the electrical grid at the turn of the last century. The short version is that factories used to be located near to sources of power - rivers for waterwheels, windy places for windmills, or where supply of fuel like … Continue reading The shock of the old
A couple of interesting articles have caught my eye in the last 24 hours: a reflective interview with Nick Carr 10 years after his bombshell HBR article IT doesn't matter, and a piece on ZDNet capturing the CIO zeitgeist on what's concerning them today. My take on Carr's original article, written on the cusp of the … Continue reading So maybe “IT” doesn’t matter…
It was quite a weekend to be a Watford fan. I get to say that roughly every seven years. Yesterday, after 180 minutes of hard-fought football, a startling 20 seconds at the end of the Watford-Leicester match at Vicarage Road resulted in the Hornets getting through to their third ever Championship play-off final. On Bank … Continue reading The most valuable game in football
An interesting theme has emerged in my conversations this week: that an impact of new forms of computing devices, particularly with touch screens, is that people's fear of exploring in software applications seems to be diminishing. In the world of WIMP, and desktop-based computing, the majority of people seem fearful of using devices. Many have … Continue reading Fear of exploration
Here's the slides from my presentation today at the Bing Maps event: http://sdrv.ms/10mKUkM There's a bit more commentary on the content here: https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/01/09/types-of-app-business-models/ and here: https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2013/04/18/seven-reasons-to-app/
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