rodcorp

links for 2007-04-28

• FT.com / World - Portsmouth FC signs up top architects
  Pompey's brave and steadfast men, utterly uncowed by the efforts of the Miller Partnership at the scummers' St Mary's a few years back, are plumping for Herzog & deM to do their new stadium. Rarr!
  (tags: football architecture)

links for 2007-04-26

• James Governor’s Monkchips » Businesses Don't Demand Industrial Strength Technology
  "Buyers aren’t looking for a stamp that says “industrial strength”, they are looking for a technology to get the job done, and immature technologies become mature techologies over time." - on 'consumer' solns going into cos
  (tags: enterprise dev)
• Reid denies department split will lead to liberal clash with hardliners | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics
  "Office for Security and Counter Terrorism (OSCT) will get £15m to recruit its 350 staff to provide a "strategic centre" in government to coordinate the counterterrorist "battle of values and ideas" across government"
  (tags: politics criminaljustice police)
• Reid: New department will boost fight against terrorism | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics
  The Ministry of Justice [...] will deal with criminal justice and boasts [eh? why not in the Min of Security?] a new Office for Security and Counter-terrorism [which will be] "faster, brighter and more agile" than the Home Office.
  (tags: politics police criminaljustice)
• Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Scotland is Brown's testing ground for his campaign against Cameron
  "The SNP has spent serious money on the Activate computer system, which enables it to have detailed information - down to shopping preferences gleaned from supermarket loyalty cards - on the Scottish electorate, street by street, house by house."
  (tags: politics technology)
• Breathe easy (re hayfever)
  I also hear that Seretide (prescription only?) is good.
  (tags: hayfever asthma health)
• Asthma UK - Homepage
  (tags: asthma health hayfever)
• Helmut Krone. The book.
  "he put in the period (before him headlines hadn't had them). His logo is on all the ads which followed him: the period at the end of their headlines."
  (tags: advertising art books design typography via:cityofsound)
• Brendan Gregg : Weblog - DTrace meets JavaScript
  Performance tracing for javascript.
  (tags: ajax javascript dev tools)
• BBC NEWS | Entertainment | GMTV quiz operator admits errors
  Regardless of what actually happened, I wonder if Opera's speedy confession has limited the damage better than Eckoh's denials. That said, the cases may be entirely dissimilar.
  (tags: premiumratetelephony tv eckoh)
• Specialbike
  Rebuilt bikes from discarded frames etc, all one off
  (tags: bike brighton via:russelldavies)
• Twitter / twitterfiction
  (tags: twitter writing story short)
• New crimefighting tool boosts witness memory - TimesOnline
  Questionnaire designed to prime memory and "'freezeframe' potentially crucial images and details in the witness's mind while they are still fresh.". Frankly it would be convenient to have this after every meeting too.
  (tags: police criminaljustice memory)
• Some monarchs do ’ave ’em -Arts & Entertainment-Visual Arts-TimesOnline
  Italian art, Queen's gallery. "Every now and again, gushing is in order. Today, for instance."
  (tags: art london)
• Jonathan Jones on the new Caravaggio exhibition from the Royal Collection | Art & Architecture | Guardian Unlimited Arts
  Jones imagines Caravaggio in London at the court of Charles I. Nice.
  (tags: art london caravaggio)
• Art History Newsletter
  (tags: art history)
• LIFT conference, Geneva - a photoset on Flickr
  Very nice sketches of people and their talks. (Must... raise... game...)
  (tags: drawing events conferences via:twhume)
• Brian Wood & Riccardo Burchielli: DMZ: Body of a Journalist (2007)
  Like the first volume, it's good but the characterisation doesn't seem to be deepening.
  (tags: booksreadin2007 comics newyork war catastrophe fall)
• Nicolas De Crecy: Glacial Period (2006)
  Fantastic! Dore's Zealander meets Will Self's runteeee as futurexplorers try to make sense of a rediscovered Louvre. Visual hints of Roberts (Egypt) and Macaulay (Motel of Mysteries). AND an art gazetteer at the back!
  (tags: booksreadin2007 comics catastrophe fall ruins decay)

Mobile posts on the Mobbu blog recently

BlackBerry outage and announcements
RIM's communication needs to improve if its to match the (usual) standard of its product line and service.

Mobile confessions: simplicity and nostalgia
Our fond remembrance of older, simpler mobile handsets is partly a recognition that simple-and-well-done is currently under-served, and partly rose-tinted nostalgia.

Enterprise mobile: on upgrading BlackBerry devices
Technology choice for a project is determined more by the customer’s/project’s context than it is by top-down technology philosophy.

And, erm, nothing to see there about books, art or architecture.

links for 2007-04-25

• Justice ministry won’t work, judges say - TimesOnline
  "With less than three weeks until the new ministry takes effect, judges fear that placing courts and prisons in the same department, under one budget, could put them under pressure not to imprison offenders."
  (tags: prison criminaljustice)
• BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | 'Kryptonite' discovered in mine
  (tags: comics science)
• Rising prices, failing farms. The strange story of milk | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited
  (tags: farm cows milk)
• Londonist: Why Not Walk It?
  (tags: tube underground walking transport london commuting)
• Telstar Logistics: How UPS Will Save the World: Fewer Left Turns
  "Take something as simple as reducing left-hand turns. For US drivers, this means less time idling in the middle of the road waiting for oncoming traffic to pass" - small changes result in big optimisations in gigantic systems
  (tags: transport servicemanagement ups business)
• FT.com / Companies / IT - The green way to keep on trucking
  (tags: transport servicemanagement ups business energy)
• The Rapture Index
  (tags: religion rapture fall catastrophe via:russcoff)
• texturbation » Blog Archive » My Country is Better Than Your Country
  "Even when we produce garbage like JK Rowling, it winds up converting a global generation of children to the wonder of books. Our literature has inspired billions, yours is no better than vomiting tiles onto a Scrabble board."
  (tags: funny)
• The fifty-nine stor(e)y crisis
  On ethics of confessing, fixing a building, managing the communication. Very good.
  (tags: architecture engineering newyorker newyork cities)

links for 2007-04-24

• Courts 'in crisis' over cases backlog after cuts | Uk News | News | Telegraph
  Courts boss "a backlog of cases is developing [after slashing staff numbers and funding] and Labour's 1997 manifesto commitment to bring young offenders to justice within a set period is being broken"
  (tags: criminaljustice politics publicsector)
• Mobile Enterprise Weblog: BlackBerry: The Cover-Up Is Worse Than The Outage
  Good rant on BB outage and subsequent information void from Daniel Taylor
  (tags: blackberry mobile servicemanagement)
• MEX - Stat Spot: Function trumps form
  "68% of users rate handset ease of use as ‘very important’ compared to 46 percent giving the same rating to appearance" - wonder how what users says tranlates to their actual behaviour.
  (tags: mobile usability users marketing)
• ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon » Case Study: Data Onramps
  on benefits of building more "data onramps" for consumer-facing apps.
  (tags: marketing community social web2.0)
• Mobile Opportunity: Carnival of the Mobilists #70: Is RIM stupid or lying?
  (tags: mobile blackberry mobbu)
• BBC NEWS | UK | Viewers 'lose millions' to GMTV
  More PRS irregularities, this time Opera Telecom.
  (tags: tv premiumratetelephony)
• Annals of Transport: There and Back Again: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
  Robert (Bowling Alone) Putnam: “There’s a simple rule of thumb: Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness.”
  (tags: travel transport community commuting culture trends toread)
• BBC NEWS | False fax allows US prison escape
  Socially engineered prison system.
  (tags: prison criminaljustice)
• A VC in Vacationland: Elevator Pitch: Why Do So Few Get it Right?
  The unstated answer is perhaps because it's quite hard and scary to distill the message, and it takes practice.
  (tags: vc marketing business)
• Snipperoo: Mobile widget platform announced
  "S60 announces widget for thier mobile platform, including the ability to create widgets using AJAX, HTML, CSS, Java Script to easily create small applications..."
  (tags: mobile widget nokia dev design)
• Tim Sneath : Introducing Microsoft Silverlight
  "Silverlight (previously codenamed "WPF/E") is a lightweight subset of XAML for building rich media experiences on the web" (much smaller potential user base than flash?)
  (tags: adobe apollo browser ria web2.0 windows dev design)
• RIM Announces New BlackBerry Application Suite for Windows Mobile-based Devices
  As GigaOm points out it's vapourous spin, but... Virtual BB invoked from an icon on the WinMob desktop. Will be interesting to see what the security is.
  (tags: blackberry mobile windowsmobile)

links for 2007-04-21

• BlackBerry outage: RIM a victim of its own success? | CNET News.com
  speculation of strain at NOCs due to big subscriber growth. RIM's centralised approach to email transport is both their weakness (single points of failure this week) and their strength (security, mgmt, simplicity).
  (tags: mobile blackberry servicemanagement)
• Nick Finck - Visio Stencils for IAs
  (tags: design visio website)

links for 2007-04-20

• Millions of addicts suffer BlackBerry withdrawal | Guardian Unlimited Technology
  The flipside of a end-to-end owned service: very occasional outages. Didn't notice it affect the European email network.
  (tags: blackberry mobile)
• Dein forced out as Arsenal board flexes its muscle | Guardian Unlimited Football
  Dein was up for the sale apparently.
  (tags: football)
• Google Operating System: Google Spreadsheets Adds Charts
  (tags: visualization infovis)
• Visual Business Intelligence - Periodic table of visualization methods exhibits poor visual design
  Via Ackermann
  (tags: visualization infovis design toread)
• Digital Dashboard, Executive Dashboard, Scorecard, KPI's, .NET, Reporting Services
  Via Ackermann
  (tags: visualization infovis design toread)
• An Executive Console - KPI Dashboard Screenshots showing Financials, Sales, Production, IT System « The Dashboard Spy
  Via Ackermann
  (tags: visualization infovis design toread)
• Airwave O2 Limited: Airwave sale to Macquarie
  As expected, Macquarie bank buys Airwave from Telefonica/O2, will roll into Guardian Digital Communications together with other recent telco purchases (Airwave is a customer of Mobbu's)
  (tags: mobile airwave police criminaljustice)
• Australian bank snaps up National Grid communications arm | | Guardian Unlimited Business
  UK infrastructural assets owned by Macquarie, to which we can now add (18 Apr) Airwave, formerly owned by O2.
  (tags: mobile airwave)
• Mobile Opportunity: Why Web 2.0 still doesn't cut it for mobile devices
  Because the pipe isn't consistently always-on. Though the web will be a perfectly good "medium" for mobiles apps where users don't mind if they lose service (I just can't think of any online-only services I use on mobile now though)
  (tags: mobile offline)
• InformationWeek Weblog: Google Lays Out Its Mobile User Experience Strategy
  (tags: mobile search google toread)
• » 12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them
  (tags: customerservice business pm)
• Pecha Kucha Night Auckland » Confirmed list of speakers // PKN_AKL_01 // 19th April 07
  Hamish gave a talk at Auckland's first pecha kucha night on his projects with UN Studio, and most of us missed it because we're in the wrong timezones.
  (tags: architecture)
• Dick Arnall | Obituaries | Guardian Unlimited
  "Always distinctive in his Marimekko shirts, Arnall never separated life and art, welcoming the free flow of conversation and the company of the table" - would love to have met Timo's pa.
  (tags: timoarnall animation)
• Mowser Weblog » Mowser Screencast Demo
  Rusell Beattie's Mowser service transcodes websites to a mobile-friendly version, lets publishers insert their own Admob id (to make advertising money), etc. Neato.
  (tags: mobile html browser)
• OUseful Info: Visualising Geo-temporal RSS Feeds
  (tags: geo visualization infovis design toread via:tomc)

links for 2007-04-18

• James Governor’s Monkchips » On Agile, IT-Business Alignment, Martin Fowler and The Yawning Crevasse of Doom
  On business and IT tribes misunderstanding each other, plus de hOra comment: "The biggest problems in IT delivery are contractual, not communicative. If you want agile development you need agile contracts". Yup.
  (tags: agile dev law martinfowler)
• DanNorth.net » What’s in a Story?
  Hardcore role of stories in behavioural-driven design: "This, then, is the role of a Story. It has to be a description of a requirement and its business benefit, and a set of criteria by which we all agree that it is “done”"
  (tags: agile dev)
• High-Tech Security System Turns U.S. Embassies Into Panopticons
  Command and Control + highly connected cctv + field ops.
  (tags: cctv security surveillance police)
• GigaOM » Sun sets on SavaJe
  Sun buys SavaJe (open Java mobile platform) assets in firesale.
  (tags: mobile j2me dev)
• Introducing FoundRead - Found+READ
  On company building.
  (tags: business howwework)
• Bieber Labs » Metrics As A Side Effect
  Metrics as a serendipitous +/or automated side effect is something I'm very keen about. "You can report on the data, but the data will only be accurate if you have an effortless way to update the items you are working on."
  (tags: metrics stats dev business servicemanagement via:bushwald)
• GigaOM » Free Our Mobile Email
  SetNet claims defensible prior-art on push mobile email. (If so, why didn't their investors insist on an exit via a sale/license to RIM for 100MMs during the NTP suit?)
  (tags: mobile email blackberry)
• Richardsona // Adam Richardson's Blog - Motorola Q: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
  "it seems like experience design is like a chain, it’s only as good as its weakest link. The weaknesses only highlight how close the strengths have come to achieving greatness"
  (tags: mobile design ux ui)

links for 2007-04-17

• Desktop vs. Browser - when to deploy applications for each
  (tags: business dev offline browser)
• Bribery and drugs exposed at private jail | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited
  Clearly improvements are necessary at Rye Hill prison, but not sure why bribery attempts are a problem of privatisation, which seems to be the implication (disclosure: GSL is a customer).
  (tags: prison criminaljustice)
• 'Tactics backfiring' as jails try to curb radical Islam
  Prisoners are recruited to radicalism by covert means rather than by imams and overt religious practice.
  (tags: prison criminaljustice religion)
• Streetcar - What Is Streetcar?
  Streetcar now in Tufnell Park and all over London. Every car shared results in 6 private cars coming off the road (car mfrs will like that). Curiously little about the green aspects/benefits of carsharing/clubbing.
  (tags: car travel carclub transport)
• MEX - Confessions from the mobile industry
  "They all want a phone from 7 years ago [...] The battery lasts for more than a week. Ergonomically, it is typically described as ‘just right’. The phone they all want is the Nokia 6210." (However, beware nostalgia)
  (tags: mobile ui ux users nokia)
• Click opera - Show me your workspace! (Unless you're a writer.)
  "All the other writers in the Writers' Rooms series have pretty geriatric spaces which just reconfirm my innate prejudice against Anglo literary culture." Hmm. If your favourite writer had a work space you didn't like the look of...
  (tags: howwework via:tomc writing books berlin)
• Rye Hill exposé puts spotlight on private jails | Guardian Unlimited Politics
  (tags: prison criminaljustice publicsector)

links for 2007-04-16

• Turkey City Lexicon
  Crappy writing tropes in sf
  (tags: books writing sf)
• Top Ten Brian De Palma Sequences - Staff Top 10 - Stylus Magazine
  (tags: film briandepalma)
• Category:Fictional towns and cities - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Imaginary cities (at the time of writing, no Gotham City, none if the invisible cities ...)
  (tags: cities writing books italocalvino invisiblecities)
• Walking City
  Design for a Kicking City
  (tags: cities architecture archigram)
• The big project | ManjitBedi.com | Manjit Bedi
  Manjit is making computer game/art with Paul Noble
  (tags: art games paulnoble)
• Writers' rooms | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Books
  (tags: books office howwework writing)
• very afraid « Uncle Zip's Window
  "Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain [...] Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism."
  (tags: writing books sf)
• how I write « Uncle Zip's Window
  (tags: writing howwework sf books)
• russcoff: Chapter One - part one
  to read.
  (tags: writing russcoffey story)
• project-timeline on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
  Annable's D&Gian drawing of projects, time, sace and humans
  (tags: architecture drawing via:eversion)
• Duralex glasses
  The original toughened glass tumblers. I seem to recall from school that they had numbers printed in the base, from 1 to 100 (?) - these were used to divine omens etc, some numbers being considered luckier than others.
  (tags: design kitchen via:genmon)
• Superman/Batman: Greatest Stories Ever Told
  (tags: comics booksreadin2007)
• Kit Whitfield: Bareback (2006)
  (tags: booksreadin2007)