Tag: business

Bookmarks for December 18, 2009

Bookmarks for December 3, 2009

  • PhrankDaChicken launches XpGnome script to convert Ubuntu into Windows XP lookalike
    OK, this might actually give non-techy users a reasonable chance of using Ubuntu – they've made it behave more or less like the most popular version of Windows. I shall have to experiment, and see what's what.
    Tags: ubuntu, windows, themes
  • Too Much Joy» Blog Archive » My Hilarious Warner Bros. Royalty Statement
    Here's a nice dissection of how one of the major music players is handling digital stuff. The answer is "shamefully badly", and this article explains why. For what it's worth, this dovetails very directly with my experience of working at a record label – that they could do things well, and there are probably some people there who know how to, but that there is a such a culture against digital in the rest of the business that they are ignored, and the improvements they suggest actively held back by people who like the sloppy, incompetent status quo. (Also worth it for the explanation of advances toward the end, just in case you hadn't heard that little injustice before, either.)
    Tags: business, music

Bookmarks for December 1, 2009

  • Local Bookstores, Social Hubs, and Mutualization « Clay Shirky
    Clary Shirky on the future of the bookstore. I think that the local bookstore probably has a longer future that the local record store did – I think it'll take a generational shift or two, until we've got people who are more used to reading on the screen than they are on paper, but I think he's right that they're going to need to make massive practical changes in the way they do business – perhaps becoming hubs for local POD services…
    Tags: future, business, books, publishing

Bookmarks for September 23, 2009

  • Let Pandas Die out, Says Naturalist – ABC News
    I have been saying this for years. They're bad tempered (even by the standards of bears), given any sort of choice, they will choose eat food that is nassively bad for them, and they don't like shagging. And while I know I fit two of those three criteria myself, the difference between me and them is that I'm not draining the resources of charities that could be better used for other, more useful species.
    Tags: nature, environment, pandas_can_fuck_off, pandas_can_fuck_off
  • russell davies: ruricomp
    Some musing on the fate of those who may not get caught up in the u(r)bicomp culture shift of the coming decades.
    Tags: ubicomp, rural
  • LRB · Roy Mayall: Diary
    Fucked off by postal strikes? (I know I am – my twice-weekly delivery from Graze hasn't had any delicious fresh fruit in for weeks, and often turns up on completely the wrong day of late.) Go and read this, and learn a bit about what's actually going on with your post. Maybe you'll have a bit more sympathy for the poor bastards who have to deliver it. I know I do.
    Tags: business, uk, privatisation, post, mail
  • Red Dust – a gallery on Flickr
    Jesus cocking christ. A) I am glad I do not live anywhere near Sydney right now. B) These are some fucking stunning photos – it's like looking at life in some future martian city.
    Tags: photography, colour, dust

Bookmarks for September 21, 2009

Bookmarks for August 27, 2009

  • Five Geek Social Fallacies
    Let us play a fun game, in the name of encouraging clear thinking, and making us all better and more functional human beings. The above website is a list of five basic errors of thinking that geeks often make in regard of social situations. So: go, read, then cam back and tell me: which of these do *you* suffer from, and what can you do about it? I for example, suffer from a bit of #2, which tends to manifest itself as a bloody minded tendency to be a bit "this is who I am, and if you don't like me then kindly fuck off". And what I do about it is to periodically remind myself that I am not actually perfect, whatever I might think, and that it is possible to like flawed people.
    Tags: culture, geek
  • The secret names of London
    Or something like that, anyway. I've probably linked this before, but I don't care, it's worth linking again, if only for the Lovecraftian horror of "Aleph and Tentacles".
    Tags: london, tube, funny, map
  • Why corporate IT should unchain our office computers.
    I know I get more done if I am permitted to multi-task. Not all those tasks are work, but I do a lot of my best thinking as a background process. Plus it should be screamingly obvious that happier, more relaxed and most o fall better informed people are just plain more useful in a wider variety of contexts.
    Tags: business, productivity

Bookmarks for August 13, 2009

Bookmarks for July 30, 2009

Bookmarks for July 15, 2009

Bookmarks for June 23, 2009

  • » Saga of the Swamp Thing #20
    Steve Bissette offers a behind the scenes look at the creation of the first issue of Alan Moore's industry-changing run on Swamp Thing, only recently reprinted for the first time.
    Tags: alan_moore, alan_moore
  • The V: A summary
    I am very very occasionally asked why I'm not on The V (an old internet hangout) these days. I can't imagine my presence is terribly missed, but Dave has thrown up a summary of the board that he found somewhere (either on the board itself, or on some kind of nerd forum review site, I guess) that has rather set me to thinking about on-line communities, why I basically don't participate in them any more despite having spent a significant chunk of my 20s in one forum or another, and what I think they lack, and it's a topic I wouldn't mind writing something longer about in the near future, so I'm just bookmarking the summary as a useful starting point.
    Tags: friends, community, socialsoftware
  • Angels in the Abattoir
    Thea Gilmore's new idea for a music business model. I'll be interested to see if it takes off. And if I have the spare cash, I might well sign up.
    Tags: business, music