A few years ago a debate raged in design circles. Skeuomorphism, the use of analogous reference to real-world objects for no practical purpose, was much beloved in the design language of Apple.From faux leather backgrounds to mock metal grilles, fragments of real world objects were littered all over the digital tools and services that people … Continue reading A return to skeuomorphism?
Category: Technology
Over the course of my career I've made a couple of significantly sideways steps to extend my experience and learning. The first came at the end of 2004. After a dozen years of working in the IT industry, and having had eight years working for the BBC, I needed a change. Technology was significantly changing … Continue reading Disrupt yourself
Yesterday and today I'm part of a discussion panel organised by Dimension Data looking at the move of telephony into the Cloud. The discussions, part of the UCExpo event, find me alongside representatives from some of the big telecoms vendors. It's been an interesting experience so far, and it strikes me that telephony is running … Continue reading Phones in the Cloud
For some time now I've been toying with the idea of writing a recipe book. Not recipes for food, but instead for how to manage and lead in organisations in the early 21st; a time where technology is changing, to a lesser or greater extent, how we communicate, and how we operate. Mostly this is … Continue reading 21st Century Management recipe cards
Seems like a fairly innocuous question, doesn't it? Surely a piece of information that HR can just roll of the tips of their tongues? Well, in the shifting sands of today's virtual organisations, it's not as easy to answer "how many people work for us?" as it used to be. You have employees. You have … Continue reading How many people work for us?
A frequent refrain in UK election coverage at the moment is that this is the UK's first "Social Media" election. The truth is that five years is an awfully long time in media and technology these days, and the dynamics of communications for this year's ballot are vastly different to the last... The Social Media … Continue reading The (insert Tech buzzword) Election
My digital life has been increasingly moving to the cloud over the past six years. Since 2009 my use of online services to store data has steadily increased, and then my shift to using Chromebook for my main device in 2013 accelerated that shift. I've even got to the stage now where my "download" folder … Continue reading Clouds/Smoke
I've argued in the past that the holy office trinity of Word, Powerpoint and Excel have a questionable future not because of an better word processor, presentation tool or spreadsheet coming along, but because they are tools from another era that are increasingly no longer fit for purpose. The way in which smart phones in … Continue reading Incompatibilities
I sat through a software product demo this morning. The name of the product isn't relevant: I heard the words "one version of the truth" a few times, and also sat wondering if the self-same claims made today were being made about Lotus Notes back in the days when we called social "groupware". The words … Continue reading One version of the truth
Office meeting rooms are the confluence of at least five disciplines: Workspace design professionals lay them out; Facilities management people service them; Telephony people provide some of the tech; IT people provide the rest; and learning and development people train people (occasionally) in good meeting practice. The result? Mostly a mess. Especially because the actual … Continue reading Will everybody please mute…
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