thoughts, ideas, projects and musings
September 5, 2010 at 7:24 pm · Filed under digital life, news
Following weeks of speculation, last week’s Apple event saw the release of a swathe of new, predictable, iPods, an update to the iOSx software for iPhones, and a hardware update to the Apple TV. As an owner of both iPhone and Apple TV, I watched with interest.
Steve Jobs informed a worldwide audience that changes to hardware and software were all customer driven. “We’ve listened” he said and unveiled the new system.
But whoever they listened to were not the right people and they’ve created a device which is curiously impractical. Design lines aside, its rather un Apple.
My current Apple TV gets great use within a suite of home cinema gear. Whilst I have a CD player, I’ve not used it for years preferring the simplicity of playing music digitally through my ATV. All our digital photos are loaded there too playing on our TV as a screensaver. We love it – it means we enjoy our photos rather than have them sit on hard drives elsewhere in the house. We’re subscribers to LoveFilm and owners of some nice AV gear and so we prefer to rent Blu-Rays rather than download via the Apple TV.
But whoever it was that Apple listened to are not using their device like me. Those users seem to be movie consumers for whom music and photos are a peripheral use. The new hardware is perfect as a personal Blockbusters but ill-conceived as vehicle for personal media because Apple have not considered broadband and wifi in real people’s homes.
The new Apple TV will let me play my music and play my songs but without any local storage of these files, insists that do this via streaming. This means that my wifi network needs to be strong and robust throughout my house (it’s three storeys and made of stone and brick, wifi can be dodgy) and also requires me to keep the file source online at the same time. The new device is then worse at doing what I would primarily use it for and, sadly, would use more energy whilst doing it.
And what of the movie-watching crowd that Apple listened to – will they be happy? Cheaper film rental prices will be very welcome, but only those in cities will really be able to take advantage as bandwidth is swallowed when downloading. If you’re in the sticks, I suspect streaming is just impossible.
What I hoped for from the new Apple TV was more storage (maybe a terabyte). I hoped for a better UI, I hoped for connection to Lovefilm, I hoped for apps and I hoped that my iPad would be the new super remote.
So Mr Jobs, it’s a no. I won’t be upgrading to a retrograde piece of kit and I’m disappointed that those early forgiving customers that bought into your hobby are rewarded with functioning but now defunct gear. If you want to listen, I’m ready to talk.
June 9, 2010 at 2:41 pm · Filed under digital life, Intranet, linkedin
One line of conversation at the recent IBF24 event that really struck a chord was provoked by a simple one line tweet “The intranet is dead”. At a time when so many organisations, including my own, are investing in their intranets, it was a striking comment.
Alex Manchester believes that the name ‘intranet’ certainly carries too much baggage but that conceptually, it’s hard to say if intranets are dying a slow death to be replaced by the digital workplace.
Pragmatically, what’s in a name? It doesn’t really matter what you call it, what it does is what really matters. I think the intranet is not yet dead, but the current and previous expectations of what one must deliver certainly is.
I believe that a great intranet is a communication, collaboration and transactional/executional workspace, accessed through useable, accessible beautiful interface that both reflects and drives corporate culture. Intranets that are not this already in some way are already dead or dying and intranets that only do this in 5 years time will go the same way. Intranets are not destinations, they’re journeys – evolve or expire.
The story of consumer electronics in the last few years has been one of convergence. Consider your mobile phone — 10 years ago you could place voice calls and, possibly, text messages. Now, it’s your music repository, your camera, your internet access, your satellite navigation, your games console, your pocket library and if the iPhone 4 is your bag, a video conferencing device. The story of intranets is also one of convergence and will certainly be in the future.
I think the intranet in 5 years time will work in the same broad headlines (Communication, Collaboration and transactions) but boundaries between these, and the depth to which they go, will change. Convergence will bring office stalwarts like shared meetings and telephony to the intranet, data will be in the cloud accessible from whereever your office is. Work is not a place, it’s a verb and the intranet, accessible from anywhere, will be your gateway. Such convergence brings convenience (with possibly some compromise) and that will be all important in the future workplace.
The intranet is dead; long live the intranet.
June 7, 2010 at 4:01 pm · Filed under digital life, news
Just over a week ago, on UK launch day, I popped out to the shops on the pretence of looking at the iPad in the flesh, but truth told, unless it was really awful to use, I was going to buy no matter what. I’d done my research, felt I knew all there was to know. The only question a forum really couldn’t answer was “What’s it really like to use?”. 20 minutes in store later and I had an early answer – one week on, I can give a more qualified response.
First, be clear of the iPad’s limitations. These are outlined very well on countless websites but here are my …
5 reasons not to buy an iPad
- You like flash. If playing Facebook games is your thing, or you use interactive websites, the iPad is not for you.
- Peripherals. If you need to print, or just have to connect a keyboard, ignore the iPad. Whilst there are rumours of both these features coming soon, there are no timelines and no guarantees.
- You need Google docs. Just now, you can read but you can’t edit.
- You need specific software that’s not covered by the 200,000 strong app store. There’s plenty of stuff there but it might be that your “must-have” is not. If so, avoid.
- The iPad is a great addition to your house, but unless you’ve got iTunes loaded somewhere, or can hitchhike on someone elses, you won’t be able to update, activate or push new content. I don’t think it should be anyone’s primary device.
My 5 reasons to buy:
- The best surfing experience there is. It’s just so easy to use and the screen is fantastic; websites really do come to life. I’ve found that I consume sites, especially news, when I have previously browsed. Really, it’s fantastic
- Simple, powerful email client. Ok, Outlook it ain’t but what it does, it does really really well. Throw it horizontal and the neat part-screen scroll comes into it’s own to browse email and read in the instant preview side. Crystal clear, easy to use.
- Photos look great! The new photo stack feature is also very smart. I remember when we bought the Apple TV and suddenly we took time to look at our photos again. And now, with iPad, we’re doing it again. The photo frame feature is also excellent.
- Oh, the apps! They were great on the iPhone and they’re brilliant on the iPad, assuming the company have made the appropriate coding efforts. Tweetdeck is superb, we love Epicurious (iPad comes in the kitchen for that) and tvcatchup for iPad is everything the BBC iPlayer should be and isn’t.
- Videos and music. Apple have completely reworked itunes for iPad and it really shows. As with photos, it enhances serendipity; you’ll discover old favourites you’d forgotten. Video is outstanding.
What is our Apple iPad (notice I’ve said ‘our’? It’s now a firm family favourite shared by everyone). iPad is…
- An in-car entertainment system for my daughter. Hook it to the headrest and she can watch Nemo for hours.
- Sofa surfing. Perfect for it with the flash caveats noted above
- A digital photo frame. Ok, I’d've never bought one but now I’ve got one, I use it!
- On the go Internet and email. Better than iPhone, more portable and discreet than a laptop. We’re travelling to France on holiday next month and I can see iPad being indispensable.
- Children’s entertainment and education. My daughter is just over 2 and loves the iPad. If i’m honest, it might be just too easy for her to use – need to find a way to lock the settings app though!
I confess that I love Apple’s gear and we have a houseful of it, but the iPad is a very welcome addition. It has it’s own place, fits the gap neatly between phone and laptop. It has limitations but for my purposes, that’s not an issue.
My one gripe. I need a case (I have the Apple one) to make sure the iPad doesn’t get too beaten up, but it so destroys the aesthetic of this device. Its just so good looking without it!
June 7, 2010 at 9:30 am · Filed under life, restaurant review
Three Coqs Brasserie
Let me say from the start that we really wanted to like this place. The Three Coqs Brasserie has plenty of pedigree with chefs from Bell’s Diner in Montpelier, a great location and an unusual concept of brasserie style tapas dishes combined with natural and biodynamic wines. We arrived a little early and sat in the bar area with a glass of wine whilst our table was set, over by the window.
The decor is a marked change from the previous Asian restaurant, Budokan. Gone are the long canteen benches and in place are scandinavian style wooden tables and chairs, out with the solid wood floor, in with a carpet which makes it significantly quieter than its predecessor. But what they’d done to the air conditioning is anyone’s guess — when the staff complain to the customers, you know it’s hot!
I’ll consider the wine list, rightly claimed to be a Bristol first comprising as it does solely of natural and biodynamic wines. Like me, you’ll be reaching for wikipedia right now to try and understand what this actually means unless you’re already in the buying habit. Natural wines then are those that are made with “as little chemical and technological intervention as possible”. That, frankly, is the kind of weak pseudo-science that makes my skin creep as I’m quite sure that the very best of vineyards, from France to Australia also apply this thinking. However, the drinking is the real test and our Vouvray La Dilettante 2008 Breton Loire was lovely, if a little warm, but the staff were quick to offer up an ice bucket to remedy the situation.
It was in the pouring of the wine that our first odd moment of the evening occurred. Our waitress congratulated us on our choice of wine (thank you — too kind) and then stated that they had tried a few of the wines on the menu but they’d yet to try some of the more expensive ones such as this. In the pause between customer and staff was an unsaid desire to try the wine and a missing invitation to pull up a chair. With such a small wine list, it really wouldn’t cost much to invite all staff to taste every wine on the menu.
Sat at our window seat, ice bucket on an adjacent table, menus in hand, an excellent waitress arrived to help us through the menu. On her advice, we opted to choose 7 small dishes (3 each, with a side dauphinoise potato) rather than a traditional starter and main. This perfectly suited us; we were struggling to choose from the options and the suite of small plates gave us plenty of opportunity to taste the Three Coqs style.
We chose the following: Baked duck egg, blue cheese and walnuts; Black bream, sautéed potatoes, lemon & parsley; Rabbit leg, bacon, rosemary, sautéed potatoes & creamed spinach; Deep fried whitebait and tartar; Asparagus with hollandaise and finally a warm salad of slow roast pork shoulder, fennel, hot and sweet paprika, garlic & sherry.
A hearty raised glass to the successes! The black bream was superb. Beautifully crispy, salty skin with perfect white flesh and the potatoes were just excellent. So too the rabbit — a French one-pot style casserole with perfectly cooked rabbit and bacon lardons. We could easily have had more of both of these.
A disappointing ‘thumbs down’ to the other dishes but in the spirit of trying to be constructive, some pointers for the future maybe. The asparagus and hollandaise was perfect in every way but one! Well cooked asparagus and creamy sharp hollandaise but really, just four spears of asparagus for £4 is just not good enough. This is the height of asparagus season, customers will know they can buy a bundle for a few pounds and this just seemed a profiteering plate of food. And we weren’t the only ones to notice; the adjacent table were unlucky enough get a three-spear serving and were equally surprised. Our excellent waitress noted that ‘good asparagus was expensive’ when we commented on it. I won’t disagree, but ours and others perception was of a dish that should have had more.
In stark contrast was the whitebait. Again, this was a very well cooked dish — the fish was excellent as was the tartare sauce, but portion control was ridiculous. It was at least twice the size it needed to be. We were both soundly beaten some 150 heads into the dish!
The slow cooked pork salad was nice enough but a little disappointing. It seemed to lack the promised kick of paprika, whilst the sweet paprika and sherry just took over. Very far from unpleasant, but I felt it needed something sharp to cut the sweetness. Maybe pickle that fennel?
And the baked duck egg was a dish I wanted to love but couldn’t. It tasted exactly as presented. Runny duck egg with melted blue cheese and crunchy walnuts on top. I can’t offer a suggestion to improve it but having tasted, I’m in no rush to order another.
In wonderful contrast, desserts were excellent. We opted for the assorted cheeses followed by the lemon tart. Four cheeses were presented: A brie, a hard, a blue and a goat and our server volunteered that they should be eaten in that order. That’s somewhat peculiar given the flavour of most blues, but she was quite right and boy was the goat’s cheese good! Sadly, our server did not know the names of any of the cheeses and had to refer to the menu for us. It’s not hard to remember four cheese names and I think a walk and talk through the cheeses on offer is to be expected.
The lemon tart was just sublime. The pastry was the best I’ve tasted in a long time, the lemon filling reached that perfect point between sweet and sharp and was baked to give the thinnest brulee layer. If you go, order this. I’m fearful of ordering another in any other restaurant as I fear the disappointment of comparison with Saturday night’s offering.
Finally a thought about the serving staff. Something was not right here. During our meal, we were twice offered dishes intended for other tables and once invited to place a dessert order having done so not minutes before with another member of staff. The lack of knowledge about the cheeses, the uncomfortable wine incident all lead to a feeling that the staff were not fully up to speed. Teething trouble if I’m being generous but if they’re not addressed, they’ll become reasons not to visit.
We really wanted to love this place. We really wanted to have discovered another gem of a Bristol restaurant. In truth, we almost have save for a few tweaks front of house and in the kitchen. I will revisit one day but I fear it won’t be as soon as I’d originally hoped.
If you go, let me know — and let them know too at @3coqs
June 4, 2010 at 9:13 am · Filed under digital life, Intranet, news
Intranets are strange beasts. Hidden behind the corporate firewall, they’re very often the practical hub of an organisation serving employee needs. Equally, as we learnt during @thoughtfarmer ‘s presentation, an intranet can be an ignored sink hole of woe. Optimised for Netscape 4.0 indeed …!
I enjoy events such as IBF24 as much for the official comment as the peripheral insight afforded through Twitter. Viewing other company intranets is an opportunity that many corporate intranet folks do not often receive and, frankly, they should grab it with both hands. Grab too some excellent ideas: Who could fail to be impressed with the Ernst and Young people networking graphical tool, or the slightly more achievable British Airways Outlook email signature creator? I’ll be including both in future developments.
A healthy debate was had on the subject of ‘beautiful intranets’, with many intranet examples presented to fuel the conversation. Beauty is a somewhat subjective quality, but with intranets, there must be a practical aspect to the description. An intranet is a place of work; it’s a place of transaction, communication, collaboration and engagement in varying degrees – I think ‘beauty’ is excellence in execution and efficiency in these four platforms. Naturally, there is an aesthetic element to the question, but aesthetic beauty over practical execution does not make for a good intranet.
To paraphrase William Morris, the 19th century British designer and writer “Have nothing in your intranet that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be useful and beautiful”. (As if Morris knew what an intranet was – original quote from The Beauty of Life)
(The award for the most beautiful intranet went to Intermón Oxfam, managed by Julia Serramitjana. In announcing the award, note was made of the clarity of function of the site as well as the use of pastel shades. A little flippantly, I did ask how a company might apply that pastel thinking when their brand is so clearly bright red as mine is. Consensus has it that bright is fine when applied as an accent rather than across a page. We might apply that thinking on the next design change)
I think the joy of events like #ibf24 is that it gets intranet managers out from behind the firewall. It was great virtually meeting so many of you — stay in touch.
October 28, 2009 at 3:42 pm · Filed under digital life, Intranet, news
I was lucky enough to attend the SharePoint 2009 conference in Las Vegas last week. I met some great people and was thoroughly impressed with the innovation from Microsoft and from their clients alike.
On the plus side
- Great new functionality in SharePoint 2010 which I’m going to enjoy bringing to the company. Especially the social computing aspects
- Top innovation from companies, particular Electronic Arts (EA) and Accenture.
- Great people
- Organisation at the Mandalay. I think that team had it really organised. Whilst some would have seen the mealtimes as chaotic (and on day 1 it certainly was), I think they did a sterling job
- Kirk Patrick, Mandalay Bay staff. Despite Pepsi being everywhere, he was unphased by my request for a range of Coke products to be delivered within the hour to our conference room. There in 10. Brilliant.
Downsides
- Las Vegas. If you’re not a gambling person like me, it’s a thoroughly depressing town and if you are a gambler, there’s a chance you were more depressed about it than me. One colleague lost over $1000 – it’s hard to be happy for him
- Coffee. Some are addicted to caffeine. Some, like me, were 8 hours out of their timezone and needed the fix to get ‘em through. There were water stations galore, more food than needed so the lack of coffee stations seemed an oversight. (Edit – I think they noticed by Thursday judging by the coffee points near registration)
- SharePoint accessibility coding. I recognise the advances they’ve made but this is a very complex area. The recognition of standards is a genuinely positive step, but when each country appears to have their own, it seems unlikely that a single MS standard will work for all geographies. You know, great for the US, but probably not so good for the rest of the world.
I really hope that anyone who came to see me speak last Wednesday enjoyed the session and has been generous in their feedback. I’d be more than happy to answer any questions about our deployment if you have them.
I also hope that next year, SPC10 is not in Las Vegas. Seattle maybe, New York even. Either way, look forward to it.
April 28, 2009 at 10:09 am · Filed under digital life, Intranet, news
Yesterday was another auspicious day for our work intranet as at 06:00 EDT, we launched the new HR portal section bringing self-service tools to our employees.
Culturally, it’s a major change. We’ve shifted from a traditional HR model (providing local HR experts aligned to functional teams) to a centralised support model with aligned self-service intranet facilities.
The intranet aspect of this launch has been an major undertaking. It has seen us switch from a simple simple SharePoint iteration to a multi-variation model to manage the various language options across our geographies (US English, US Spanish, Canadian French, Canadian English, UK English, French, Belgian French, Belgian Dutch and Dutch).
A few facts to share:
- Switch from 1 to 9 SharePoint variations
- New menus to accommodate HR content
- 2000+ pages of multi-lingual content
- 12 Integrated SAP HR transactions
- New “MyLinks” section to enable web bookmarking
- Integrated employee benefits functions
- Integrated job search functions
- New “workbench” page
- Enhanced employee profile page
This new launch is a major piece of work and a huge step change for our intranet which, up until now, has largely been a communication and collaboration vehicle. As good as that content was, our employees had no “compulsion to visit”, meaning the site was mostly for browsing rather than for action.
Bringing transactions to the portal adds that employee “compulsion to visit” which will have knock on value for the news articles and executive communications. In the long run, I hope that our employees will that the ease of information access and flexibility of use will outweigh the negatives of not having an HR expert immediately to hand — but only time will tell.
Tomorrow I’ll share some of the initial feedback 
April 15, 2009 at 10:09 am · Filed under digital life
In the early 1980s, a Russian governmental delegation came to London to talk to their counterparts and understand more about the capitalist system. One asked “Which minister is in charge of making sure there’s enough bread for the people?” and was dumbfounded with the response that no-one was. The opportunity to make a little dough (pun intended) was the mechanism for ensuring there was sufficient bread with 1000s of unrelated but interconnected parts bringing fertiliser to field, wheat to mill, flour to baker, bread to shop. It’s remarkable that it all works really, given the lack of orchestration.
Step forward 30 years. Who is it that ensures that the right wiki pages exist, or that they are accurate? Who regulates the blogs to ensure fairness in all aspects or that each youTube video has a reply? I sincerely hope the answer is no one individual — the answer is the collective community of users.
The free market world of social computing has already created marvellous resources such as wikipedia, youTube, millions of blogs and billions of tweets – countless petabytes of information of various levels of worthiness. All this we can pass on to others. All this knowledge nucleating from the provision of social computing tools. Like the scientists at the coffee break, all that was needed was the forums and then the creativity flowed.
But what I’m really excited about is the power of social computing behind the firewall on the corporate intranet. Here, we have the same community already used to interacting digitally (after all, employees are real people too!) But added to the collaborative confusion on the internet, is a genuine common purpose and a little orchestration from management. This could give the fledging knowledge sources some direction and speed up creation and usage.
Does a little orchestration of social computing outputs kill or strengthen it’s power? Is the free and open approach to knowledge creation the best way or does it need some rules.
April 14, 2009 at 10:50 am · Filed under digital life
I’ve really got into Twitter of late and am gathering a select group of followers. I find it useful place to vent, a useful place to network, to laugh and to learn. As an aside, much of the research into a forthcoming keynote speech I’m giving was found on the internet via Twitter.
For all that eulogising, I think it’s the functionality of twitter that I like as the interface on their own website is far from fully formed. To that end, I’ve been using a bunch of applications which interface back, including Tweetdeck, Lounge, Twitterfon and others. Tweetdeck, especially with their latest 0.25 update, is the pick by some way.
But dear reader, all is not well. My Macbook is well armed with 2GB of RAM and has a spritely processor, but Tweetdeck hogs capacity. It mostly hovers around 8-10% of my CPU (still way over the odds if you ask me) but will often spike into the 90s and higher bringing everything else to its knees. Close it down, reload and all is well for a while again.
Anyone else having the same issues?
February 15, 2009 at 4:37 pm · Filed under news
Twitter, Twitterfeed, last.fm mash
I’ve been using Twitter for over a year, but only actively for the last month or so. One thing I did recently was to have iTunes twitter my listening habits to my account which appears to have piqued some collective interest judging by the number of messages I get about it. Let me show you how.
To do this you will need: iTunes, a last.fm account with scrobbling, a Twitter account (obviously!) and an OpenID account such as Google Mail.
- Go to last.fm and set up a new account if you don’t have one. This is all free and brilliant — frankly, you need one anyway! Download the last.fm software — this will ‘listen’ to whatever you play on iTunes and scrobble it to the last.fm website.
- Next up, log in to twitterfeed.com using your OpenID. It’s likely that you already have a suitable ID for this site (complete list here). Once logged in, choose Go to my feeds or create a new one. Choose to create a new feed.
- Final Step! On the form, choose ‘twitter’ from the first dropdown list and enter your twitter details — then ask it to authenticate it. In the RSS feed URL field, enter
feed://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/XXXX/recenttracks.rss
where XXXX is your last.fm username. You can change how often you want the feed to appear on twitter on this page too. Don’t do it too often or you’ll upset your followers — once every 2 hours or so seems ok. In the ‘prefix each tweet with’, you might like to enter ‘is listening to ‘ to give your new tweet some context. Then hit the create button.
That’s it, you’re done. Your iTunes listening habits will now appear on twitter and your followers can see what you’re listening too. Great way to get more followers too — it’s remarkable how often I get comments and new followers based on this feed.
Once you’re comfortable with this process, try adding a flickr feed or a feed from your blog.
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