baldysblog.co.uk

Posts Tagged ‘The Web’

As I saw the Facebook IPO come to market last week, like many I’m sure, my initial reaction was along the lines expressed in the sentence: “These people are totally bonkers and incapable of learning from the all too recent past !” As at the last minute the bankers raised the price to $38 which was an over valuation, it was of little surprise that the price fell to around $33 and really one suspects that $28 is what it should be at most.

However and whilst I took little interest in the original “dot.com” boom, the Facebook IPO did catch my eye and make me think back to the late 1960s and from there take a slightly different perspective on not just facebook but the whole way the market now seems to work so hopefully, an interesting tale to tell…

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Whichever political party is in power, they always accuse the BBC of reporting and briefing against them which looked at dispassionately, would seem to indicate that they (BBC) must be doing something right. Unfortunately, I don’t think that matters are quite as simple as that and whilst Leveson is about the past, it does give us an opportunity to examine how all media outlets function which includes the BBC.

The Music and Film industries have failed to establish a successful business model to deal with the digital age, Newspapers are no different and if Murdoch is right that that they will have disappeared completely within 20 years, we really should be projecting our thinking forward towards a totally digital age and asking questions about both news delivery and news management within the UK. In this context because the BBC is paid for from taxation, this is where we need to start, both the staff and management need to know that the party is over, change will have to come.

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I really don’t know whether it is a change in my own disposition brought on by increasing years but of late and most certainly over the past 12 months, I have become ever more irritated by the greater number of people who write in to the “comments” sections of the Media just to complain. You may think that my objection is all down to my not agreeing with their opinions but to me, that is not important whether I agree or not, it is that their complaints are most often about something they declare they don’t care about anyway.

My reaction to that is if this is true, why bother writing in the first place ? What idiocy makes people imagine that they should have an opinion on everything and then give voice to it, imposing their stupidity on the world at large ? Still, it fits in with a culture that includes Twitter and Facebook, both the refuge of the intellectually barren.

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I am a fan, generally speaking, of Microsoft and Windows is my preferred OS – Operating System. I have been a user of Windows since version 1, yes there was one and I have a set of original floppy disks to prove it. I have lived with every version both the good and the not so good over the decades and can look back on the highlights in the journey of Win 95, Win 2000 and Win 7 as well as the horrors of Win 98, NT 3.5 and Vista.

Given the opportunity to download a “Windows 8 Consumer Preview”, the other day, I did and when it finished installing on a spare PC I have, I started playing with it and after an hour came to the conclusion that Microsoft have created another “Horror” to match Widows Vista. Whereas Vista was a cods up caused by truncated technology, Windows 8 suffers from a serious case of “Design Delusion”, how on Earth have they managed to do this again in such a short space in time ?

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I knew that it had to happen, it was a racing certainty once they stopped distributing the local free weekly newspaper because it became uneconomic to keep publishing it. Inevitably the day would dawn when for the first time in almost 5 years, I would have to go out and buy a newspaper and on the basis of my ‘needs’, it was obvious that only The Sunday Times would do.

As is most often the case in these things, there were several factors at work which combined to force my hand. Of course losing the ‘freebie newspaper’ was crucial but, it was most certainly exasperated by the amount of print making and framing that I had been doing of late, without the latter, I could have put off the evil day for some months I suspect.

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Although I find the “reader’s comments” on the Telegraph these days, increasingly shrill and stupid, apart from the sheer ‘fun’ of BoJo’s Monday column, Benedict Brogan is also a wonderful “fresh breath” in the dens of the “Right Wing Nutters of the Telegraph”.

He wrote an interesting piece the other day in which he asked, “Where will the voters come from in order to get Cameron re-elected as PM ?” It is an excellent piece which you can read here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100140226/where-are-the-voters-who-will-turn-david-cameron-into-a-winner-in-2015/ But more than that, he raised a series of interesting questions too…

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I was amused by an article in The Economist about Internet Dating and worth a read: http://www.economist.com/node/21547217. Obviously with us about to hit St Valentine’s Day, the topic is “topical”.

I must own up and say that for me, Valentine’s Day is up there with New Year’s Eve as one of those occasions that is always destined to disappoint in the event despite or perhaps because of all the planning effort that goes in to setting the “special event” up in the first place. Oh yes, I do have tales to tell on such things but, I will not bore you…

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For me, 2011 has been an interesting year with most of the excitement crammed into June when as I was about to depart for a month long trip to the USA, my grandson Mika was born up in Scotland, the day before I left. So June 2011 was to be a very intense month indeed !

Inevitably when I sit and write anything on December 31^st, I think immediately of my Father who died in 2007, if he were still alive, he would have been 91 today, his birthday. But I will think no sad thoughts, nor sing sad songs for we all have our time on this Earth and all eventually will leave it, the measurement being what we did with our time here, not the length of our stay.

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I suppose with the passing of Steve Jobs plus the success of the iPhone and iPad, people will be looking forward to what is happening in the “IT & Gadget Space” going forwards and The Economist had a very amusing article which focused on employees using their personal gadgets whilst being connected to corporate networks likening it to “IT’s Arab spring” (http://www.economist.com/node/21531112 ). As with most things, it is not quite that simple I suspect.

As to the future of Apple without Jobs, it will go the way of all technology companies, prosper for a time because of current good products and the iTunes lock in plus it has always been a “cult brand ”. However without him and his instinctive feel for the right products, eventually it will start to fade away as the Circus leaves town and in the end, the brand and its history has more value than its actual inventory.

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It has become all too common regardless of which political party is “in power” to see the BBC as their “enemy” when it comes to reporting the ‘News’ But and to be fair, there may well be some justifications in such claims and a not too bad example is the following: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15199000

The “Story” comes from a supposed row over ‘Pussy Cats’ and illegal immigrants given ‘leave to stay’ under the ECHR. Ms May stated that the illegal was allowed to stay because of a ‘pussy cat’. The reality was likely that in considering whether the person could appeal further up the legal food chain, said pussy cat figured but thereafter got not a further mention in subsequent proceedings.

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