There are large IT project failures all over the planet - not just the US. The UK had several big implosions and here in Germany we had bad projects like the Maut (satellite truck tracking system). Job database for Bundesagentur für Arbeit (unenployment agency for the government) and a big database of criminals for the BKA (like the FBI).
Most of them go down big time, because companies take the government/taxpayer for a ride:
Take for example a simple job portal (like Monster.com or Stepstone.com) which costs about 163 million Euros! Actually most of the money was NOT spent on programming this joke of a system, but on consulting!
Even when your blog is boring and the content just recycled stuff - at least you can pollute google and many other services. Great!
The new tools from flickr, technocrate and delicious won't help sorting out the 'better' stuff. Still blogs about young fertile women and web design/blogging receive the most 'attention', links etc....
This page http://technorati.com/tag/ hardly contains any relevant information at all..
No matter how many links, words and tags you track - they all won't tell you if an entry is any good, if the content is well researched and well written. Measuring quantity is not always a good way to filter out quality.
Oke, all the big heads at SixApart and Danga confirm that LJ, MT and TypePad will stay independent entities/business divisions.
They also said LJ will stay opensource and there will be no crossover effect between services like TypePad and LJ in terms of functions and communities.
Questions? Sure!
1. Why buy a huge community that hardly makes any money? LJ is mostly for free and hardly makes big cash. Why buy the user base if you could build the technology yourself and try to get more paying customers. The only 'hard' answer can only be time. SixApart needs 'weight' and buying LJ will provide some impressive numbers in terms of users - but hardly in turnover.
2. Why buy incompatible systems? In the LJ FAQ about the whole affair you can read that both companies like/use PERL. Oh boy! Overall I am only impressed by LJs massive blog handling - but not by it's webware - nor am I impressed by the new releases of MT. I consider them neither very sophisticated nor state of the art.
3. Do you build communities or technoloy? LJ is about community building (with no sense of exploiting them). MT was about providing commercial blogging apps. A new company should merge a better business practices with a huge community and better tools. But I really wonder if this will work? SixApart has an unhappy history of customer relationships, they used to be advanced in terms of bloggings apps (which is not a huge achievement), while LJ only excels in pure numbers and handling massive requests. So where is the beef?
4. How you gonna stop the competition? Except Blogger/Google neither Microsoft nor Yahoo have seriously started to push the blogging market - just because they know that the market is still not mature enough to make serious money. But in terms of technology creating a blogging software and infrastructure is hardly a challenge for these companies. And they also have loads of eyeballs. Of course SixApart won't tell us what they have in mind - but today there is no safety in numbers.
5. What about the public response and it's handling? I suggest SixApart to get themselves some clever PR people. So far the LJ community more or less wet their pants. Most MT or TypePad users don't give a ****. SixApart once had a big cooleness factor on their side - sort of Apple of the blogging scene. They have lost that touch - and it's hard to regain. So far SixApart has failed to create a positive buzz about the whole affair and create some curious customers to maybe buy or subscribe to their much pricier services or products. So far I would consider this the biggest failure so far for the whole affair.
Thunderbird is still not as 'simple' as FireFox to use and setup.
Account Setup
The account options are filled with a gazillion options that are confusing for a normal user - and the whole idea of one default SMTP server is pretty stupid. I find Opera's M2, Outlook and Outlook Express easer to setup and support.
Address Book
Why can't I drag & drop a card on the desktop and vica versa?! Pretty stupid. Why doesn't Thunderbird use the standard windows adress book?! No export function to the standard address book either.
Exchange & PST-Folders
Many companies would die for a proper Outlook replacement. Thunderbird is still unable to talk to an exchange server. And it still can't open PST-Files - the standard format for many business mail users.
To call this design conservative would be a great insult. There is hardly anything new, nor interesting coming from Intel.
The boards are still too big. There are still way too many cables and different ports (internally and externally). The CPUs suck ever more power (don't get me started about graphic cards). And the coolers get bigger every year. The BIOS even more settings to ruin ones day.
And when will PCs stop wasting so much enery?! 450 Watts to play a music file and surf the internet...
Whatever happened to make things SIMPLER and more efficient?
Marvin looks like a small little stormtrooper drone. Yuck! And the Heart of Gold... like a flying airport. All drawings and photos so far look way to clean and 2001 like.
And I miss a bit more englishness so far...
Very different to the first pictures and stuff Peter Jackson released about Lord of the Rings (which had just the right 'feeling'about them).
Netscape was supposed to be a new platform... Java was supposed to be a new platform... Even Flash was supposed to be a new platform... Now Firefox is supposed to be a new platform...
Did they kill MS? Nope.
XUL is cool, but so far I haven't seen MANY great applications done with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Outlook is not the real key to beat Microsoft on the Office front - but Exchange.
As soon as you can free companies from the Exchange lock in and offer a better alternative then you have a chance.
Most people for example love OpenOffice, but won't switch, since they also need Outlook which is connected to the data on the Exchange server.
No Exchange server - no underlaying windows server. No Outlook - no Microsoft Office.
So what's needed is a strong Thunderbird for Office slaves and an Exchange replacement - plus total data import.
They should offer eMule and BT links for easier sharing ...
Do you want to break now?
[Yes][No][Cancel]
Doom3, the Sims etc. these are all virtual realities. People just got over the whole helmet thingy.
Maybe the american ones are too expensive?
Haqs anyone tried the P. Hilton Plug & Play interface?
Note to self: never mix nerds and cynical comments.
It was bad enough to read fanzines and fan stories in the 80's - now we have to endure bad storytelling and childish phantasies onscreen.
...
A typewriter doesn't make you an author, a videocam not a Steven Spielberg and a piece of CGI software
1. Never fuck anyone from the office.
2. Never blog about your work either.
Pah, I use Norton Anti Syphilis ...
I don't want to reboot by pants! And I don't want a virus in my jacket ...
If people know that you are an alpha geek / admin kind of guy they shamelessly call you even in the middle of the night when their machine fucks up.
... problems:
My method for people I don't like:
* "I dunno myself"
* "Call microsoft"
My method for people I like:
* "don't call microsoft"
* Trendmicro / Housecall to get rid of viruses
* AVG / Kerio firewalls for free
* Spybot search & destroy
* explain windows update
* explain firefox
* explain f****** backup
* install popup blocker
* setup schedules for backup, anti-virus and spyware checks
* leave knoppix cd for later emergencies
My method for hot chicks with big
* "I'll be there in a sec' darling
* format drive and clean install
* ghost image / disk partition for backup
* massage and chocolate chips icecream
And where stands our beloved community?! Must be a top five brand for geeks?
There are large IT project failures all over the planet - not just the US. The UK had several big implosions and here in Germany we had bad projects like the Maut (satellite truck tracking system). Job database for Bundesagentur für Arbeit (unenployment agency for the government) and a big database of criminals for the BKA (like the FBI).
a rb eit/?id=532483
Most of them go down big time, because companies take the government/taxpayer for a ride:
(sorry all links in german)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/45522
http://www.stern.de/wirtschaft/arbeit-karriere/
Take for example a simple job portal (like Monster.com or Stepstone.com) which costs about 163 million Euros! Actually most of the money was NOT spent on programming this joke of a system, but on consulting!
It's good to know that companies protect customers from playing their games so well ...
Lynx - the adventure browser ...
Meet the new Microsoft of Entertainment.
I am pretty sure such a huge monopoly won't do gamers and the products any good.
Even when your blog is boring and the content just recycled stuff - at least you can pollute google and many other services. Great!
...
The new tools from flickr, technocrate and delicious won't help sorting out the 'better' stuff. Still blogs about young fertile women and web design/blogging receive the most 'attention', links etc.
This page http://technorati.com/tag/ hardly contains any relevant information at all..
No matter how many links, words and tags you track - they all won't tell you if an entry is any good, if the content is well researched and well written. Measuring quantity is not always a good way to filter out quality.
Oke, all the big heads at SixApart and Danga confirm that LJ, MT and TypePad will stay independent entities/business divisions.
They also said LJ will stay opensource and there will be no crossover effect between services like TypePad and LJ in terms of functions and communities.
Questions? Sure!
1. Why buy a huge community that hardly makes any money? LJ is mostly for free and hardly makes big cash. Why buy the user base if you could build the technology yourself and try to get more paying customers. The only 'hard' answer can only be time. SixApart needs 'weight' and buying LJ will provide some impressive numbers in terms of users - but hardly in turnover.
2. Why buy incompatible systems? In the LJ FAQ about the whole affair you can read that both companies like/use PERL. Oh boy! Overall I am only impressed by LJs massive blog handling - but not by it's webware - nor am I impressed by the new releases of MT. I consider them neither very sophisticated nor state of the art.
3. Do you build communities or technoloy? LJ is about community building (with no sense of exploiting them). MT was about providing commercial blogging apps. A new company should merge a better business practices with a huge community and better tools. But I really wonder if this will work? SixApart has an unhappy history of customer relationships, they used to be advanced in terms of bloggings apps (which is not a huge achievement), while LJ only excels in pure numbers and handling massive requests. So where is the beef?
4. How you gonna stop the competition? Except Blogger/Google neither Microsoft nor Yahoo have seriously started to push the blogging market - just because they know that the market is still not mature enough to make serious money. But in terms of technology creating a blogging software and infrastructure is hardly a challenge for these companies. And they also have loads of eyeballs. Of course SixApart won't tell us what they have in mind - but today there is no safety in numbers.
5. What about the public response and it's handling? I suggest SixApart to get themselves some clever PR people. So far the LJ community more or less wet their pants. Most MT or TypePad users don't give a ****. SixApart once had a big cooleness factor on their side - sort of Apple of the blogging scene. They have lost that touch - and it's hard to regain. So far SixApart has failed to create a positive buzz about the whole affair and create some curious customers to maybe buy or subscribe to their much pricier services or products. So far I would consider this the biggest failure so far for the whole affair.
Why are some people so stupid and put everything they collected online - especially when it's pirated? It's like screaming 'get me! get me!'
Thunderbird is still not as 'simple' as FireFox to use and setup.
Account Setup
The account options are filled with a gazillion options that are confusing for a normal user - and the whole idea of one default SMTP server is pretty stupid. I find Opera's M2, Outlook and Outlook Express easer to setup and support.
Address Book
Why can't I drag & drop a card on the desktop and vica versa?! Pretty stupid. Why doesn't Thunderbird use the standard windows adress book?! No export function to the standard address book either.
Exchange & PST-Folders
Many companies would die for a proper Outlook replacement. Thunderbird is still unable to talk to an exchange server. And it still can't open PST-Files - the standard format for many business mail users.
To call this design conservative would be a great insult. There is hardly anything new, nor interesting coming from Intel.
...
The boards are still too big. There are still way too many cables and different ports (internally and externally). The CPUs suck ever more power (don't get me started about graphic cards). And the coolers get bigger every year. The BIOS even more settings to ruin ones day.
And when will PCs stop wasting so much enery?! 450 Watts to play a music file and surf the internet
Whatever happened to make things SIMPLER and more efficient?
Marvin looks like a small little stormtrooper drone. Yuck! And the Heart of Gold ... like a flying airport. All drawings and photos so far look way to clean and 2001 like.
...
...
And I miss a bit more englishness so far
Very different to the first pictures and stuff Peter Jackson released about Lord of the Rings (which had just the right 'feeling'about them).
I am afraid Hitchhikers will be a flop
Netscape was supposed to be a new platform ... ... ... ...
Java was supposed to be a new platform
Even Flash was supposed to be a new platform
Now Firefox is supposed to be a new platform
Did they kill MS? Nope.
XUL is cool, but so far I haven't seen MANY great applications done with it.
This election is more like the second civil war of the Un-United Staates.
Instead of guns and riffles - lawyers and courts will decide who will win this cultural war between progressive citizens and fundamentalists.
Let's see if America once again can reform and reinvent it's society to suit a new global reality (like when slavery was 'over').