Courier was cancelled because the product didn’t clearly align with the company’s Windows and Office franchises

As a result, Microsoft is in third place in the Tablet space (behind Apple and Android).

Apple re-thought the “personal” computing experience and produced a product so revolutionary that it the implications are still rippling through the rest of the IT ecosystem – and has driven Apple to undreamed of success.

Microsoft did the same thing (ish) but couldn’t bear to release it – that’s the Innovator’s Dilemma in a nutshell. Which Apple appear to have solved, which is an incredible thing to have fixed, if they truly have done so in a systematic manner.

Here’s the original article on CNet.

Our demand for housing and transportation, two of the biggest commodity hogs, will be lower. McMansions will be totally passe. It should already be dawning on people that most all of our non-sleeping hours at home are spent in the kitchen and its adjacent family room. Living rooms and dining rooms are relics. When people internalize the fact that they spend most of their non-sleeping, non-bathroom, non-eating time in a ten by twelve foot space with their various experience machine prototypes, large homes will, by and large, go the way of cars with fins and chrome.

We obviously will not need to drive around as much, given that so much of what we want is delivered to us electromagnetically. And, getting back to real goods and technological advances, if we take the web-based distribution a few steps further, rather than having thousands of cars running from one store to the next, a couple of delivery trucks will ply the streets. So per-capita consumption of energy and resource-intensive infrastructure will decrease.

Given our evolved interests a few decades hence, most of us will be spending a fraction of our income on consumption. There just won’t be a lot that we will demand that requires nonrenewable resources. What we will demand will be in the way of electronic products, which will only consume a few ounces of such commodities. We will basically eat, sleep, work and then veg out. Give us food, plumbing, heat and our two-hundred dollar experience machine games, and we will be happy as a clam.

Whilst I’m no fan of the video games etc. there are some very important breakthroughs which are causing the “stuff” in our house to shrink and hence the overall living space to effectively grow. For example:

• We no longer have piles of DVDs lying around – an AppleTV for every TV, plus a home media server, means we just don’t need them (the CDs went years ago, in the same way). Plus we can get rid of the DVD player.
• TVs have got smaller – if you think how dominant a CRT TV was, compared to a new Flat Panel TV, you basically get a another few feet of the room back plus a lot of flexibility in room layout.
• Devices have collapsed into one – we no longer have separate TV, Audio system etc., it is all in the TV & AppleTV – although we still have separate speakers.
• My personal filing has disappeared – everything is now scanned into a computer, and in my case stored in PatentSafe where it is nicely searchable and categorised. Not only has this saved a lot of space, it also makes finding things *so* much easier. Plus I can back it up off site, and also access things from anywhere I have Internet.
• Books, Magazines etc. are all collapsing into the iPad and the Kindle. For a family of 4 heavy readers this is a major space saving, especially when you also get rid of technical books and recipe books.

I estimate I’ve taken 1 bedroom worth of “Stuff” out of our living areas in the past year. Sure I’ve had to invest a bit but if you look at how much it would have cost to move to a larger house, it is a real bargain.

The same thing is happening at work, too. We’re gradually working our way through all the paper and eliminating it which not only removes the paper it also removes all the stuff you have to look after paper – files, envelopes, printers, fax machines, etc. I don’t know what proportion of a typical office is dedicated to paper and everything that goes with it, but it is substantial. We realised the other day that we rarely use our printer these days, the fax machine is dusty, and we have to stop buying envelopes in office-sized quantities because the adhesive goes off before we use them.

Digitisation at work and home means it doesn’t really where I am anymore. In fact I do look at the overall costs of an office and wonder why we have one at all. I think there are a lot of businesses who have offices just because they have always had an office, but I suspect if they were aggressive about digitising, they would be able to remove a massive fixed cost with relatively small investment.

So, if you want a larger house go and get a new TV or two, some AppleTVs, a Kindle each, a few iPads, and a scanner (I am in love with the Fujitsu ScanSnap). For a few thousand pounds you can get yourself a larger, less cluttered living space – much cheaper than moving house! Plus, you get to reduce your environmental footprint…

Clearly a Washing Machine is kind of critical especially with two small boys, and my travel schedule. So thanks to The Internet, a new washing machine will arrive Tuesday – crisis over. And I think we will be able to keep the old one, which will provide a weekend’s worth of entertainment and education for the Boys as we talk it apart – and a very happy colleague who will get the bits for his Heath Robinson projects.

But this got me thinking – I want one with a network connection. Which I mentioned on Facebook and someone quite rightly asked “Why”.

This is what I expect my washing machine to provide:

• SNMP for
  • Status (stage of washing cycle etc.
  • Energy Use
  • Water use
  • Any other stats (I think they weigh the washing, and measure detergent – that would be interesting)
• Email alerts on events (e.g. finished, error reports)
• Web interface for administration, user’s manual etc.
• A way of pinging it to say “Start” – so I can coordinate with the rest of my household
• Service status, warnings of imminent servicing etc.

Then I can hook my washing machine up to Nagios, etc.

Oh and I want my Dishwasher and Dryer to do this too… and the heating system.

Given the ubiquity of WiFi chips and Microcontrollers – I can’t see this being too far away surely? And it would be exceptionally cool – let’s just hope they provide IPv6

Then via this post, I see there’s more fun to be had with the right tools…

This article titled “Geminid meteor shower set for clear skies” was written by Steven Morris, for The Guardian on Sunday 12th December 2010 14.35 UTC

Lovers of the night sky could be in for a treat tomorrow night as clear conditions are predicted for one of the best astronomical shows of the year.

Some experts believe the annual Geminid meteor shower is becoming more spectacular – though if it is, nobody is sure why – and with cloudless skies possible in many parts of the country, this year’s event could be a particularly memorable one.

At its peak and in a clear, dark sky, up to 100 meteors – or shooting stars – may be seen every hour. The best time to see it is expected to be late on Monday night and in the early hours of Tuesday after the moon has set.

In comparison with other showers, Geminid meteors travel fairly slowly, at about 22 miles per second. They are bright and have a yellowish hue, making them distinct and easy to spot.

Meteors are the result of small particles entering Earth’s atmosphere at high speed, burning up and super-heating the air around them, which shines as a characteristic short-lived streak of light. In the case of the Geminids, the debris is associated with the asteroidal object 3200 Phaethon, which many astronomers believe to be an extinct comet.

National Trust list of the best places to watch the shower

• Black Down in Sussex, the highest point in the South Downs.

• Teign Valley in Devon, within Dartmoor national park.

• Penbryn Beach, on the Ceredigion coast in west Wales.

• Stonehenge area in Wiltshire – chalk downland and crystal clear skies.

• Wicken Fen nature reserve in Cambridgeshire – dark skies and nocturnal wildlife.

• Mam Tor in Derbyshire, an escape from the bright lights of cities such as Sheffield.

• Friar’s Crag in Cumbria, jutting out into Derwentwater.

This article was amended on 13 December 2010. The original time-lapse image appeared to show the tracks of stars not meteors. It has been replaced.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

The Internet is making the world a very small place, both in terms of geography and time – both in the speed that things happen but also in how your past never quite leaves you. Interesting times ahead…

I’ve just bumped into My Net Diary which appears to be just want I need – central database, Web App, iPad app, iPhone app. So far it looks pretty impressive… and given Weight Watchers have just changed their points scheme, now is a good time to switch.

As a added bonus it is a lot cheaper than Weight Watchers…!

Perhaps the solution is to have a little ticker at the bottom of TV news screens that lists the total number of vehicle deaths each day. It is around 100. So after several years and many tens of thousands of deaths reported, the occasional 150 killed in a plane crash would get the lack of emphasis it rightfully deserves.

Personally I think people should get a really good grounding in statistics in school, and then every news programme should start with a reminder that things are news because it is unusual, e.g. outside the norm….

I also love how the guys flying the SR-71 get to have fun too.

Of course I want one… but I’d imagine anyone who wants to know where the Police are will too!

I am normal, case closed

Turns out he was at the opening of the Apple Store in Covent Garden as well!

Wow.

This machine has gone from being slow and clunky to being the fastest Mac I have ever used.

It used to take over a minute for my demo VMware image to restore suspend, and many more minutes for things to stop whirring and become responsive. Now it takes 12 seconds and the Windows side is immediately responsive.

Amazing.

Brief excerpt from the article The Story Behind “Free Public WiFi” – It’s Not:

“Everywhere you go, there it is…but it isn’t because the government finally started offering ubiquitous WiFi for public use without you knowing. Instead, it’s a bug in Windows XP that started years ago and has spread computer to computer, like a virus.”

So that explains it – still not going to use it though!

Most ISP technical support lines are sooo frustrating, I do so wish there was a way to say “Look, I understand all the moving parts here, and I can tell you we are going to waste the next 30 minutes. Can I talk to someone with knowledge rather than a script??”.

This is the main reason we use Andrews & Arnold as our ISP where possible. When you call, you speak to a qualified, helpful, geek. That kind of quality helpline is worth its weight in gold – we take the same approach at Amphora, where tech support is done by the developers.

(update: it appears A&A also noticed this cartoon and have adjusted their support policies!)

I’ve only just started to use the Kindle “Clippings” feature, but I am finding it unexpectedly useful for both work-related books and also (surprisingly) some fiction books. I knew I could get my Clippings file onto my Mac but what I didn’t realise (thanks to this post) is that there is a web site http://kindle.amazon.com where you can see the highlights you have made on your books. Which is pretty cool if you just want to go back and try to remember a particular passage.

They also have a nice feature that the front page ends up being a “Flashcard” where you can review passages you have highlighed. They seem to have thought about in detail too:

The periodic review of ideas makes it easier to remember them. This works better if you space the reviews over increasing time intervals, a “Spacing Effect” that was first identified by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. Using Default intervals, you will see a highlight or note again after 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and thereafter annually. Alternatively you can choose a fixed review interval.

As an aside, I’m loving the fact that GetAbstract will send summaries direct to my Kindle…