Wednesday 26 November 2008

50 Great Redesigns

I have always loved design stuff, particularly since I am so bad at it myself! This article contains a list of 50 (mainly company icons) that have been redesigned. It is interesting to look at the before and after images - almost without exception it is possible to work out which is the "before" image and which is the "after" image. See what you think!

Sunday 16 November 2008

Seth Godin's new book - Tribes

If you want to change the world, or change your bit of it, this is the book for you!

Seth Godin focuses on the role that LEADERSHIP plays in change and makes some powerful observations about the difference between MANAGEMENT and LEADERSHIP. Management is about maintaining stability, about perpetuating the status quo, it is about ensuring that things are done the same way that they have always been done. It is about avoiding change. For managers, change equals risk. Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change that people can believe in. Leadership doesn't avoid change, it thrives on it. For leaders, change equals opportunity.

The book is incredibly well written. It feels as if every page has been handcrafted. Some many find the lack of chapters disconcerting. For me, it just helped the whole flow of the book. Ironically, it almost reads as a set of blog entries (no surprise for anyone that has read "Small is the new Big" or Seth's blog). I find it amusing that many said that the online world would kill off traditional publishing. Well, here is an example of the online world inspiring traditional publishing!

It is very easy to read. I read it in a couple of sittings and the only thing that slowed me down was the fact I made so many notes in it! I highly recommend it. If you are interested in leadership, then you MUST read this book. You will not be disappointed.

I wish I could think and write like Seth Godin. However, I suspect the only thing we have in common is our initials! Great book. Inspiring reading. Thank you, Seth.

Monday 10 November 2008

Spamalytics

Well, here is a piece of interesting research that actually made it to the BBC website today. You will find the original research paper here.

During 26 days, researchers at UCSD sent over 350M spam emails by hijacking a net of spammer's machines. The spam emails directed to customers to a fake pharmacy site that made a note of the sale (without taking any money, of course) and then displayed an error page. According to the researchers, the only way research spammers is to be a spammer.

And the result of their 350M junk mail message, just a meager 28 sales. This equates to a hit rate of 0.00001% - far below previous estimates. Although even at this hit rate, it is estimated that the spammers could make up to $2M per year. I wonder how much money the IT industry spends preventing the majority of this spam reaching it's intended destination? Probably a bit more than the $2M the spammers earn.

Wednesday 5 November 2008

WonderHowTo


I came across this site the other day and I couldn't help but browse. This site includes instructional videos on a whole range of topics - everything from knitting to weaponry. Pretty compelling stuff, however, like much of the material on the Internet you have to take care. I looked through a nuber of the videos on playing the drums and I do wonder how "expert" some of these teachers really are.

You can find the site here: http://www.wonderhowto.com/

Sunday 2 November 2008

Intel Atom Media Centre (again)

The Intel Atom Media Center seems to be working well with the Hauppauge Dual Tuner PCI card. It seems to have enough CPU to be able to record 2 channels while playing back a previously recorded programme. Indeed, looking at the performance of the machine shows that this is only using around 15% of the CPU. Overall, the unit is pretty quiet and uses only about 35-40W.

I am using a Linksys DMA-2200 Media Extender to stream TV (Freeview not HD) over WiFi to my TV. The Media Extender outputs 1080i format and is connected via HDMI to the TV. This essentially means that the extender is upscaling the image for display - the unit includes a DVD player as well as the Media Extender (this enables the playback of DVDs which cannot otherwise by played by the extender. The unit works reasonably well, but is a little short of horsepower - this shows up most of the animated Media Center user interface. You can customise the user interface not to use animation, if you want. This improves the responsiveness of the unit.

While this works technically, it isn't a great solution. It is far too expensive. The Linksys DMA-2200 retails for around £200 which makes it more expensive than an Xbox-360 which also plays DVDs and works as a Media Extender (it plays games too and is £40 cheaper!). The only advantage that the DMA-2200 over the Xbox-360 is that it is quiet. Then once you add in the cost of the Media Center, it all gets a bit ridiculous.

Since the Media Center is on all the time (to "hoover up" those TV programmes), I have decided to use it as a Print Server too. It would be really neat to see the Media Center capability built into Windows Home Server (you know the one that provides backup, file serving and remote access. This would mean taking all of the "Services" that should be running all of the time and combining them to run on a single (highly efficient) hardware platform.