Ian Leader writes an interesting blog post on ‘Open Source, Email threading and Gmail Labs’. As he notes, closed-source, ad-supported software may be regarded as a fair trade-off in comparison to open source:
“This is probably a reasonable trade off: after all, users don’t just get free software (zero marginal cost) but free hosting, bandwidth and [...]

“[Verizon CEO] Seidenberg’s main contention seems to be that the iPhone isn’t a success because it has such a small share of the overall mobile phone market, which is sort of like arguing that GM is more successful than Ferrari because they sell more cars.”
Love the comparison From News.com, here.

I meant to blog this last week but didn’t get round to it. ICANN, the body which oversees the addressing structure of the Internet, voted on Friday to open up Top Level Domains (TLDs) to allow companies or individuals to have any suffix they like. So, for example, News.com reports that instead of being limited [...]

As Brian Suda says, the fabric skin makes you rethink the fundamentals of design. However, while the video notes that the outer metal shell isn’t actually required for crash protection, I did find bastardbrother’s comment on YouTube, that “when you get into a head on collision.. the skin of the car wraps on you and [...]

“The conflict is obvious. A community of developers can enrich software with creativity, fun and all sorts of utility. But it is virtually impossible for a mob to keep it simple … Consider, for example, all the overlapping and not entirely integrated ways that Google users can take advantage of feeds and gadgets: iGoogle, Google [...]

“The upshot is that if Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, or so on received a wiretap order for text or voice flowing through their IM networks, they could (and would) be able to comply because the services are centralized … [Skype couldn't] Which means that it’s the most privacy-protective mainstream method of communicating through voice or instant [...]

Time’s “The Curious Capitalist” has an amusing anecdote about an interview with T. Boone Pickens, the American billionaire businessman who, despite owning millions of shares in Yahoo!, doesn’t know what the tech company actually does. But it seems an understanding of technology doesn’t mater when you’re a billionaire… In response to being read a breaking [...]

“The way broadband speeds are advertised is to be regulated under a voluntary code published by Ofcom. It wants companies to publish accurate estimates of the maximum connection speeds people can expect before they buy broadband packages.”
This is long overdue. The only thing missing is that it should be compulsory - ISPs shouldn’t have the [...]

“There are two obvious ways forward. Charge the users, or charge those who want to get at the users … The second option might look puzzling, but it has worked before, in the MP3 market … Twitter could do the same: charge for access to its API, or throttle requests over a certain limit from [...]

As I said in my recent post, I’m intending to get a proper review of the BarCampLondon4 sessions I attended written up tomorrow. In the meantime, if anyone’s interested I’ve uploaded my [slightly rough-around-the-edges] presentation on “The Geography of Technology” to Slideshare.

It’s not great as a standalone presentation - rather, it was more framed as [...]