:-(

moleitauLeave a comment

“Dear Matt,

We truly appreciate your interest in Google Compute.

At this time, the Google Compute feature is only available to a small
number of randomly selected Google Toolbar users. We intend to roll out
this feature to all Google Toolbar users in the near future. If you’d like
to be notified when the feature becomes available, please consider
subscribing to our Google Friends Newsletter at
http://www.google.com/contact/newsletter.html
.

Besides, please note that Google Compute is not supported on Win NT
currently (although it will be supported soon).

Thank you,
The Google Team.”

Eastcoastin’

moleitauLeave a comment

Yup – leaving Airstrip One for a week or so, as I’ve been lucky enough to be able to attend a couple of conferences on the East Coast of the USA. I’ll be doing some of my old acoustic crowdpleasers, but also trying some of my newer experimental electric material.

If anyone wants to meet up, have a beer and reconfirm that I am indeed, full of shit, then I will be in:

So anyway – I’ll be in Dubyaland* for a week or so mail me if you’re around and thirsty.

*to be honest – last time I was in the US it was booming with Bill, and I’m a little nervous of going there now… should I be worried? Will I get lynched for being “a european peace-loving pansy?”??? Answers on a postcard.

Design that bytes the hand that feeds

moleitauLeave a comment

Groan. Sorry. Commercial GPRS and UMTS/3g will probably both have payment models that revolve around the consumer shelling out for the data they download and consume, rather than the time they spend ‘online’ – as you’re always on…

This post at Subterrane discusses the implications for designing user-experiences in such conditions, and how less will be more for most consumers once they realise how much they are paying for each extra branding element or design-doodat…

“When a wireless user requests data, just what are they getting in return? How much extra baggage is getting sent with NTT DoCoMo’s video conference feed? I’m willing to bet that these technologies are based on current systems that were designed to use wired networks. Over the years as bandwidth got cheaper, extra features were piled on until it no longer mattered how small a file was, it only mattered that it could be viewed correctly. When people start paying for every byte, this attitude is going to change.”

» Subterrane.com: 3/1/2002 : Do you know what your handheld is receiving?

You cannot not design

moleitauLeave a comment

…with apologies to Erik Spiekermann. Here’s the always-excellent Joel Spolsky on what “just enough design” really means:

“Incremental design and implementation is good. Frequent releases are fine (although for shrink-wrapped or mass market software, it drives customers crazy, never a good idea — instead do frequent internal milestones.) Too much formality in design is a waste of time — I’ve never seen a project benefit from mindless flowcharting or UMLing or CRCing or whatever the flavor-du-jour is. And those huge 10 million lines-of-code behemoth systems Linus is talking about should evolve, because humans don’t really know how to design software on that scale.

But when you sit down to write File Copy, or when you sit down to plan the features of the next release of your software, you gotta design. Don’t let the sirens persuade you otherwise.”

» Joel on Software: “Nothing is as simple as it seems”

Whoa.

moleitau

Whoa. Whoa. WHOA. Have they won yet?

“Google is pleased to introduce Google Compute, a new feature for the Google Toolbar. By turning on this feature, you allow your computer to work on complex scientific problems when it would otherwise be idle. The work it does is automatically sent via the Internet to researchers who combine it with information sent by thousands of other users.”

» Google Compute

You, too, can understand marketing!

moleitauLeave a comment

‘Nick ran his hand across his forehead. “I’m not quite following you.”

“Granularity,” Randy said suddenly breaking the thin column into even more columns with a red marker pen.

“Y’see, the problem with the Boho Melting Pot segment is it doesn’t have granularity. It’s too vague. But adding granularity means we can now add more texture by creating granules. In this case we can add, Boho Woho, which is your urban miserable cash-poor artistic sort so we can strike them immediately. Boho Wahay, your hedonistic but cash-poor artistic sort, who are just ripe for alcohol guerrilla. And Boho premium, which is a rock-star granule, because they are the cash-rich ones who like to think they are arty which gives us a huge opportunity to focus our luxury goods push.”‘

» Nick Best is unwell…