Ten Minutes, Or You’re Toast

By | November 22, 2011
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I’ve just launched a new website I hope will address what I think is a growing gap in our technological world: those who adopt early and those who don’t.

In my experience there are two different kinds of people: those who are quick to embrace change and those who aren’t. It’s not as if the latter group hates change; in fact, they are often the ones who more completely embrace that change into their life. It’s not, too, as if those who are quick to embrace change adopt that change into their lives. Indeed, most of those people who embrace the new tend, by definition, to as quickly discard it when something else comes along. Early adopts adopt and then drop. Late adopters adopt and stick.

Skype is my favorite example. Most people who use Skype are not early adopters, and many of them took a long time to get there. My BBC editor, for example, knows more about technology than I, but has only just gotten aboard Skype. It’s not as if he’s a Luddite; he just doesn’t embrace technological change as readily as others.

So, back to the ten minutes thing. Skype’s success was down to its ease of use. Sure, it had other things going for it, but it was by no means the first, nor necessarily the best service on offer. But it was easy. Easy to grasp, easy to install, easy to run (all that sneaky stuff to get around firewalls? Sneaky, but great!). Skype revealed itself in under 10 minutes and ushered in a revolution.

Other examples? SMS. Easy to figure out. T9 predictive text. Easy to figure out. Google. Easy to figure out. I’m sure there are more, but they’re not as many as you might think.

So, the rule of thumb for tenminut.es is a simple one: reveal your worth within ten minutes or I’m gone. I don’t mean let me figure you out in your entirety, all you potential and all your value, but at least give me an idea of whether you’re worth your time. Of course, if during those ten minutes I also discover your weaknesses, they’ll be in the review too.

First under the microscope have been networking site Zorpia, which earned a stinker of a review, calendar synchronizer Calgoo which fared slightly better, big file sender mailbigfile.com and online virus checker nanoscan. No one pays to get a review, and I’m just writing about what catches my attention, not in any particular order or preference. If you’d like the tenminut.es treatment, however, or you want right of reply on anything I’ve written, feel free to email me.

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Does It Matter Where News Comes From?

By | November 22, 2011
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Thoughtprovoking stuff from John Lloyd of Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford, who thinks news is a universal thing, like human rights. I know I do stuff for the BBC World Service but I’m with Daya Thussu on this: news reflects the values of the people who report it. They may be good values, and they may be my values, but you don’t need to live very long in other parts of the world to see that a London-centric view of the world (and reporting) is going to be different to that of someone living in a flood-prone slum. It’s not so much about values as perspective. 

I still think I’m right. I want news which tells me what’s going on, as truthfully as possible. I would, I think, share that view with many people of the south (I think Thussu would share that view, too). Another northerner, say an American republican, would want a news service from Fox which reflected more closely his views. I would have a different taste from my fellow northerner, but the same taste as many southerners. Thussu has a point if he means that people from, say, India want more news from India than they presently get on BBC, or CNN, or other “northern” channels: and they might like to see it presented by fellow Indians. But that’s a point about content and presentation, not about the way news is presented, or its purpose. The classic case for news is that it’s meant to inform, fully and fairly. Isn’t that a universal ideal, like human rights? What’s the difference, in this sense, between southern and northern news?

Has the Internet Made Us Soft?

By | November 22, 2011
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Owen Hargreaves, the Canadian-born England international who plays his soccer in Germany, describes what life was like at 16 alone in Munich. Unable to afford the phone calls, and in days before email, Owen just got on with it. Would someone do the same thing now?

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk

It was difficult because I was miles from home and out of my comfort zone but I was so stubborn I did not want to give up. I do not like to ask for help from anyone so just told myself I could do it.

I was presented with a great opportunity and had my foot in the door and I just had to take it.

Back then there was no internet and I could not afford to phone Canada much so I was forced to deal with things on my own.

Now with email and cheap calls if I had done the same I would have been on the phone saying it is too hard all the time.

I am glad I did it as it really made me a lot stronger. Things like that give you confidence.

Phones & Our Sense of Value

By | November 22, 2011
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Jan Chipchase, who has to have one of the coolest jobs on the planet, points out that as phones get cheaper — or at least appear to, as they are sold for very little as part of a service package — so does our perception of their value. Living in a country where you buy the phone yourself, I find attitudes to phones in places like the U.S. and UK startlingly cavalier, as if the device is unimportant and easily replaceable. Which I guess it is. For me, losing my Treo would be deeply, deeply painful.

But the gulf between sticker cost and actual cost hides something deeper than a lighter wallet. Like the humble biro it changes our perception of what it means to ‘own’ a product and may well have significant impact on the speed at which the product ends up reaching the end of its life as a functional object, of being discarded.

Movies vs Games. They’re Not the Same

By | November 22, 2011
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A remark by Will Wright picked up by Jason Kottke captures why movies and computer games are different, and why we should not think one is going to edge out the other. I would add something else: Computer games allow us to experience emotion, while movies allow us to feel those emotions vicariously. We have no control over those emotions on film, since they’re being manipulated by the director of the movie — sometimes crassly, sometimes brilliantly. But we are passengers. With computer games we are in the driving seat.

clipped from www.kottke.org

Notes from Will Wright’s keynote at SXSW 2007. “Movies have these wonderful things called actors, which are like emotional avatars, and you kinda feel what they’re feeling, it’s very effective. Films have a rich emotional palette because they have actors. Games often appeal to the reptilian brain – fear, action – but they have a different emotional palette. There are things you feel in games – like pride, accomplishment, guilt even! – that you’ll never feel in a movie.”