• The Myth of Japan’s Failure – “Japan has succeeded in delivering an increasingly affluent lifestyle to its people despite the financial crash. In the fullness of time, it is likely that this era will be viewed as an outstanding success story.”
• Man Embraces Useless Machines, and Absurdity Ensues – Technology: making life simpler.
• Merry – Sat here with my newborn son and wife, with all my family staying nearby, this post rang bells. It’s sometimes important to realise what you have.

• Broadcast television is 75 years old today – “On 2 November 1936, the BBC began filling the airwaves, broadcasting from its Alexandra Palace facility in North London.”
• Broadcast television is 75 years old today – “On 2 November 1936, the BBC began filling the airwaves, broadcasting from its Alexandra Palace facility in North London.”
• A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs – Worth reading even if you’ve read all the other Jobs obituaries.

• Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support – I think this is one of Androids biggest failings.
• John McCarthy — Father of AI and Lisp — Dies at 84 – Really not a good month for IT or Computer Science.
• The original iPod, 10 years later: a re-review – The original iPod is ten years old and, actually, stands up pretty well.

• Lytro — light field sensor photography – This “light field sensor” sounds amazing but I am a little skeptical. I’ll believe its potential more when I hear about it being used by “real” people rather than in controlled situations.
• QuickLook Plugin For Mobile Provisioning Files – If you understand the title and develop iOS apps you need this plugin!
• C and Unix pioneer Dennis Ritchie reported dead – It’s a sad week for the IT industry.

I’ve been playing around with Google+ more-or-less since it launched, but I’m not sold on it yet. After a bit of thought, I think it’s because there’s a fundamental disconnect between the kinds of behaviour that it encourages and the kinds of behaviour that it’s actually good at. Or maybe I’m just using it wrong. Either way, I’ll explain my reasoning here.

First, I should describe my frame of reference. I use both Twitter and Facebook, but I like the former much more.

• Don Norman: Google doesn’t get people, it sells them – “But in fact the advertisers are the users and you are the product.”
• The Problem With Online Ads – This is why I tend to buy apps I like, even those with free versions. I prefer being a customer to being a target for advertisers.

• Open Finder folder in Terminal – Ooh, neat. Almost worth upgrading to Lion for this alone. (Warning: not in the least bit true for most people.)
• Losing the HP Way – “In today’s world of MBA-managed companies, R&D is perceived as not being a good use of money.” And HP used to be a great engineering company. Sad.

This weeks PhotoFriday theme is “Enormous,” which is kind of a difficult word to get across. A lot of people have just gone for big things or small things at high magnifications. I thought I’d go for a 3.5″ floppy disk, as I remember 1.44Mb being enormous, way more than anyone could reasonably use — and far more than the 100K per side that my BBC Micro managed on its 5.25″ disks. Of course, a single raw image from my 50D would need fourteen of them…

Rumour has it that Yahoo! are looking for a new CEO. Some people have been putting their name forward for the role, or at least offering suggestions for Carol Bartz’s successor. This post is in response to Joe Stumps list of ideas.

To be clear, I know that list is not completely serious. I know that he’s not really angling for the CEO role and I understand that many of the options would not be achievable even if they were the best thing for Yahoo! That’s not the point I’m trying to make.

I want to like ebooks, I really do.

I like that the Kindle is smaller than a real paperback but can store dozens, hundreds even, of novels. I like that you can lose the hardware device and just download the books again. I like that I can read the same book on my iPhone as well as my iPad. It doesn’t even bother me that there’s no physical product. I’m not going to re-read most of my books yet they continue to take up the limited space in my London flat.