DOC huts in London?
Great post from Dave5.
If Trade Could Provide Me with One Thing…Â
I’ll raise that at the next Beachheads meeting. Excellent!
Had a fun day at Otago University today with the International MBA program and Masters of Entrepreneurship classes. It’s the 2nd year I’ve been invited down and I enjoyed meeting the people down there.
I was relieved when I got back online to see that David Cunliffe was still looking after ICT. Phew! It would have been really frustrating for the industry to start building the sort of relationship we have with DC over again.
He also got Health. It would have been great if he got Education as shortage of talent is a big issue for ICT and those portfolio’s would have gone great together - but at least we didn’t loose him.
Nice one Vodafone, the data guys have been hard at work sourcing drivers for running your VMC/Vodem on Leopard.
It’s a large file so they’ve put it on a FTP server so you may need an FTP client to retrieve it.
They’ve posted it here to get it out quickly.
http://download.yousendit.com/FD0AC628260639C1
I’m really impressed with this. (Remember the months we had to wait to use the Vodem on a Mac when they were released?).
I’m on a Telecom T3G Minimax and that works fine on Leopard.
I’m really proud of Tim and the PlanHQ team.
Back in January I posted about getting to the big events. Tim committed to last months Demo conference and made a real splash. While he was there he was active in making things happen. One example of that is this interview which aired on Canadian TV a couple of nights ago.
PlanHQ is such a small investment. A few 100 grand that has funded a team of 7 people to build an awesome bit of software that is getting international attention. We could do hundreds of these from New Zealand. And with a bit more investment do even more significant applications.
I hope others see Tim as an inspiration. PlanHQ is a great example of the weightless economy. Tim has built a great team, is out there doing it and having a lot of fun.
24 hours in and I love Leopard. Lots of subtle improvements, especially around the Finder and Dock. It just works better. Quick Look is the killer feature. Extensively implemented, even across Office docs and in Mail. It saves time. I hope it works in Entourage 08.
I really like how the OS just gets out of the way and doesn’t feel big. It’s not a massive change - but a big number of small improvements that make you enjoy the experience.
It fascinates me how different the Dock is to the Windows Start Bar but it seems to just work. And I really like the new ’sitting on a shelf’ Dock.
DashCode is an easy install from the DVD. Now I’m not doing much dev, building a few widgets might just be a thing to get that coding fix.
Predictions of AAPL hitting 250. I’m still holding - another few % market share is a whole lot of volume.
Second Leopard install (skipping the DVD check) was a lot faster. You do a few things at the start and then just leave it for an hour and it’s done. Leopard is not like XP -> Vista. It’s an evolution. The UI has a few more bells and whistles. I was worried that Leopard might jump the shark and get intrusive. It still just ‘gets out of the away’ and you think more about the applications than the Operating System. With a 24″ Monitor I’m not busting to use Spaces yet.
Safari is faaaast. Xero flies with Safari 3. We’ve been testing it for our last few releases and should be fully supported in our next release. The fastest bank rec in town just got faster!
You’ll see this message when you log in …
So I’ve flipped back to Safari as my main browser.
Time Machine setup was easy. That’s chugging away now.
The new Finder looks nicer. Downloads in the Dock, using Stacks tidies things up.Quick Look rocks. Hit space when you are on a file. That is a time saver.
Still no full screen maximize button. I wish someone would develop that. Must be possible to add that to all Windows.
Verdict. A worthwhile, non scary, incremental upgrade. Great for power users. Like it.
The Apple engineers must have wet their pants with this one.
When you CoverFlow the network computers, here is how a Windows machine is displayed …
Love or hate MS, that is pretty funny.
Mac OSX Leopard is slowly installing on my MacBook as we speak.
You only get say 10 new OS days in you career, so it’s kinda exciting.
I made the mistake of not skipping the DVD check. That’s 40 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
It now says 4 hours to go.
Stay tuned.
It was exciting to see the news today on the 1.4b proposed investment in infrastructure.
Telecom: ‘Fast broadband for all in four years’
While investment is good what is also important is that we change the investment return profile to allow a bandwidth abundant mentally rather than a price maximization model when we are scared to use the infrastructure. For example: Mobile Data. Yes it’s there but we don’t use it, we don’t innovate on it and we don’t create significant export revenue from content we develop over it.
My fear is that we’re losing an opportunity to change the underlying economics. Telecom on their own cannot monetize all the public good that comes from having strong intra/inter city communications and inter country links.
I’m not hung up on the state owning the network. Telecom should/could separate the long term, public good impacting, infrastructure investment from retail communications services. They could even ask for KiwiSaver money to fund the 1.4-2bn required to do that if it return a solid 8%. That base infrastructure needs to be cost plus.
So we welcome the investment, but are we letting a chance go by?
I believe there is a strong public mandate for investment in some shape. I don’t think it’s time for backslapping yet.
What do you think?
Looks like it’s happening.
Microsoft acquires equity stake in Facebook
$240m at 15bn. Yikes!
I usually like to post positive stuff but occasionally I’ll rant as I did on Vodafone’s international text pricing.
I do appreciate though Vodafone Comms Manager Paul Brislen commenting directly. That’s pretty cool and a massive step forward for the carriers.
I’m sure there was a lot of angst on whether to engage. Hats off to Paul and Vodafone for doing so. I think it’s a very significant step for NZ corporate communications.
On the Telecom side of the fence it’s also great to see the new management style in action. Having a spare night this week in Auckland we thought it would be great to meet the new CEO. After a couple of calls he accepted our dinner invitation and we had a very stimulating evening. Paul is a good guy, he is listening, his experience with BT is very relevant and after 3 weeks in the job people can already tell that he will be great for Telecom and for the country.
It is a fact of life that there will be a natural tension between the traditional carrier models and new IP based models that I’m sure many of you that read my blog are passionate about. Still we are customers of the carriers and depend on them. As Ernie from TUANZ has said this year New Zealand does need strong carriers (and competition) to provide the platform for other industries.
A senior technology management guy I know based in Auckland is looking for his next thing.
Strong connections into North America. Would suit an export focussed technology company that needs a grown up!
If you would like an intro send me an email.
Interesting report from Microsoft and IDC.
11,000 more IT industry jobs by 2011
Just for fun, how many new jobs has your ICT company created in NZ in the last 12 months? Be interesting see what the total is.
I’ll go first.
Xero : 40
I wasn’t that excited about the iPhone SDK until I read this.
iPhone, you’ll be a computer, soon
This SDK will change the way people think about the iPhone. Research In Motion and Motorola will be able to port the BlackBerry and Good Mobile Messaging software to the iPhone, allowing secure access to corporate e-mail.
Hmmm, dare I dream?
This quote made me smile …
In many ways, that’s a shame. Someday we’ll look back on this era of carrier control as ridiculous: can you imagine if your cable or DSL provider currently dictated which PC you could buy, and if you then moved your PC to a part of the country or world where that service was unavailable, you couldn’t hook it up to the Internet? But it’s a classic dilemma between working for change within the system and revolution, and controlling entities with the power of wireless carriers tend to frown on revolutions.
Enjoyed talking to the SilverStripe guys last night on what it’s like for a Wellington tech person to head up to the Valley where, within a few words, people get exactly what you do, will give you a bunch of suggestions and debate on some abstract aspect on the core design of your thing.
And there are cafe’s and conferences full of people just like you. Passionate about creating a tech business. Absolutely normal.
I think that’s why this Blind Melon video from a few years ago is one of my favorites.
It’s been a busy week with awards. Almost as great as receiving is giving.
On Tuesday we had the cable car challenge. Fantastic event up and the cable car and some worthy winners. Judging was was a lot of fun.
Congratulations EyeMagnet.
Last night was the HiTech Awards finalists announcement. I got to speak for a few minutes on what last years award meant for me. Will be great night on November 3.
And later on last night was the Open Source Awards where I presented the Business category. Fantastic event run by Catalyst IT. Great community and some amazing projects going on the Open Source World.
Don had the best public speaking opening line ever with “It’s not like in front of the mirror is it”.
David Cunliffe was there again, and I again I got to follow him on stage. As I’ve said before he is one of the hardest working MP’s, turns up to all the events and actively builds relationships with the industry. It’s appreciated.
Thanks Lance,
You can pre-order Leopard so that it arrives on your doorstep on the 26th. You may be first in the world!
Family pack (5 copies) is $NZ299.
How many sleeps is that?
Vodafone just sent me a text to dial 495 to find out about new roaming charges.
Hmm, no web page updates, just a voice message. That was interesting.
In the message it said roaming txt (that is the no cost to the carrier channel) are going up from 20c to 80c.
Receiving a call is $1 per minute. Making a call in Oz at peak is $1.45 per minute.
There is a new opt in Traveller plan with 4 zones.
- Australia = NZ Standard Rate. Cool!
- UK = NZSR + $2 per minute
- North America and Asia = NZSR +$3 per minute
- ROW = NZSR + $5 per minute
I don’t get why the Telco’s treat customers like this. This pricing is ridiculous and just drives people more to Skype which is getting better and better.
Watch this one blow up in the next few days. Paul you’re in for a busy few days.
Another little thing we’ve been working on over the past couple of months is completing this Microsoft Case Study, with a Redmond based team.
Web-based Accounting Solution Increases Business Growth, Customer Flexibility
I do believe in the Software + Services model. Obviously there is benefit to Microsoft in involving client technology but there are important user benefits as well.
At a simple level, Office is a great example of introducing a rich client. We make sure we can get most data into Excel.
I think in the life cycle of SaaS we are in the early stages where we are pulling everything back to the server into the multi-tenanted SaaS model and implementing new applications over base SaaS frameworks.
Framework services include things like rendering, security, authentication, service points, reporting, provisioning, monitoring and a bunch more things. Communication with the core business logic is implemented in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) fashion so it becomes conceptually straight forward to access applications in other ways.
Next year we’ll see the introduction of off-line functionality inside the standard browsers, so new scenarios start to open up. Also I think we’ll see obvious scenarios where having the power of a client makes a lot of sense as well. Say for intensive computational work or for offline useage. These clients will access the server based logic we are all building now. In the browser cross platform client technologies like SilverLight and Flex make it even more compelling.
I think we’ll see more parts of applications delivered for the mobile web or even as mobile applications.
I’m certainly not precious on doing everything on the web but before we go to far in introducing rich clients we need get the applications written for the server first.
So I believe we’re still very much in the early phases of SaaS. The re-architecting and framework development that is going on now build the foundations for all sorts of delivery scenario’s over the next few years.
RichardH sent me this link to a nice model rolling out in Canada
Sticking it to l’homme: Canadian co-op forms own ISP
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