Some thoughts on Tiny Data by me on Computer Weekly...
Some thoughts on Tiny Data by me on Computer Weekly...
Category: Technology
I'm not a great fan of the type of management consulting that is typified by organisations like McKinsey (too often it merely represents the wrong sort of management delegation from my lowly viewpoint), but there are many things of value that come from the work of such firms. A case in point is the 7-S … Continue reading Dodging silver bullets
Today marks the the centenary of my grandfather Bertie's birthday (that's him on the left above, along with my dad, Gran and uncle pictured in around 1948). Grandad was a physicist. After completing his education at Queen's University in Belfast, he headed over to the mainland to work for GEC. This was in an era … Continue reading Centenary
This morning, amongst the baby news, is coverage of David Cameron's latest big scheme - to make UK ISPs implement mandatory opt-out pornography filters on their services. Another great example of politicians not understanding the fallibility of technology. My mobile provider, Orange, currently provides such a service. It's one I've disabled, not because I'm a … Continue reading The Scunthorpe issue
In the first week of September, I'm going to be speaking at the wonderful Silicon Beach conference in (hopefully still) sunny Bournemouth. The following article isn't my talk, but sets up what I will be talking about - the importance of empathy in design (and ways to achieve it). If you are interested in coming … Continue reading Silicon Beach 2013 – The World Isn’t Flat
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
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
As we find technology becomes easier and easier for people to use, it does sometimes feel to me that we are on a precipice of terminally dumbing-down our species. Here lies the distinction between intuitive user interfaces and user experiences, and complex activities and specialist knowledge. The history of information technology has often been about … Continue reading Counter-intuitive
Last night was the first public outing for some of the material I've been working on with my "inevitable" side project, Stamp. I ran an hour long webinar for a few kind folk who volunteered to be Guinea pigs exploring some ideas about developing personal digital strategies. If you are interested, you can find the … Continue reading Stamp
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
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