Monoman

Life on Mars

Phoenix lander uncovers evidence of semi-intelligent life on Mars:

Perfect Equilibrium

I have achieved perfect equilibirum - the same number of Facebook and LinkedIn contacts. Work and play, business and pleasure in absolute harmony. Okay, so it probably doesn't warrant a blog post, but what the hell - it's a free country (hang on... no it isn't - it's practically a police state. Bugger!)

Good, bad or indifferent?

The WSJ provides some pretty good coverage on why the Microhoo! offer is good / bad value: good because, at $31 a share, it represents a 62% premium from Yahoo�s close at $19.18 last Thursday; bad because Yahoo shares traded at $33.63 as recently as October 26th. And in addition, Yahoo holds cash and shares in publicly traded companies, with a total market value of more than $12 per Yahoo share.
PS good to see The Standard back (although the new incarnation seems to be as much a prediction market as a news source.) Coverage of Microhoo! here, here and here.

Cloverfield Spoiler

Been looking for imagery of the monster in JJ Abrams' Cloverfield movie since it opened in the US last Friday (and rocketed straight to the top of the box office chart.) This is the best I could find - video footage from the movie with sound:

www.extracine.com from Federico Aikawa on Vimeo.

Bloodsucking scum

Love it or hate it, Valleywag is always held to account by its commenters. There are some interesting dynamics at work - 'Wag staffers are troll-like in their casual disdain for the Valley's Holy Cows (esp Steve Jobs.) In reply, commenters leave a trail of opprobrium or, sometimes, world-weary admonishment (or even occasional support.) But mainly readers just put the boot in. This post has mint comments.

I want please

One of my favourite bands - The Sword (who, incidentally I'll be going to see in March if Mosh can get tickets) has released an ultra-limited edition 12" package in conjunction with retro outfit Witchcraft. The EP is strictly limited to a pressing of 2500 copies and is available in a variety of colors, including 1000 on (dark) purple, 1000 on (dark) green and 500 on (dark) black. Witchcraft cover Led Zep's 'Immigrant Song', and The Sword air a brand new track - the splendidly-titled 'Sea of Spears'. Tasty. Lovely artwork too. Apparently they've sold out already though. Boo.

Beacon bad

I would be extremely annoyed if this was imposed on my profile without prior knowledge.

"The Beacon system tells a user's friends about a user's actions on sites outside of Facebook. For example, if a user purchases a product on a Beacon-participating site such as Overstock.com, which Forrester Analyst Charlene Li did, it would broadcast that purchase (in Ms. Li's case, a coffee table), to Ms. Li's Facebook network."

"But to look at Beacon's purpose as solely to amplify user recommendations is only part of the story. The other part is, of course, to incorporate commercial conversation into the social network to which Facebook can sell and attach advertising. If a user purchases a pair of Nike running shoes and Beacon alerts his or her friends, Nike could buy an ad to run alongside that alert that would include a link to a website -- a "social ad," if you will. "

A step too soon, too far IMHO. Whatever RelevantM are doing, it can't happen too soon if social networks are going to start taking liberties with a user's social / attention data.

Flickr Places

My Flickr usage has tailed off recently for some reason, both in terms of uploading photos and checking friends' photos - probably as a result of FaceCrack's insidious influence. But the new Places feature on Flickr is awesome. A great example of extracting additional value from existing data (and a lot better than Platial's Today Nearby, which seems to be defunct now anyway.) I wonder if Marc Davies has influenced Flickr Places's development (it seems to dovetail nicely into some of Yahoo! Research Berkeley's projects, such as Zurfer.)

This is where I was born.
This is where I work.
This is where I live.
This is where I'm going.

Two features that I'd like to see: the ability to append locations to my profile; the ability to search on sub-locations (i.e. 'Finsbury Park' within 'London'.)

Why I paid �0.00 for Radiohead's In Rainbows

Because I could. It's not often you get a *legal* free lunch. Besides, the download 'n' donate model is basically a marketing tool for the upcoming pay-for physical product. So in this context a free 'try before you buy' download is very much in the spirit of the objectives of the promotion.
To send a message to the majors. Apart from a marketing stunt, this was an exercise in economics - to see what happens when you allow the market to set the price point (in this case ~�4.) Driving down the average price lets the majors know that their current wholesale pricing models are ridiculously over-inflated, and largely responsible for piratical can of worms they've been trying to litigate against over the last seven years or so.
Music is moving towards becoming free and fungible, so why resist the inevitable?
Radiohead don't need the money. They're millionaires many times over, so why swell their coffers even further? If they don't need the cash, why not simply give the album away for free? I'd rather support smaller up-and-coming acts with my hard-earned-groats (which I regularly do).
Radiohead are more evil than you think. Their manager Bryce Edge went on the record in a Music Week article claiming that the download 'n' donate model was a mechanism to drive CD sales, and implied that the audio files were encoded at a low rate to ensure that punters would not receive the full listening experience. He even went so far as to claim that CDs were underpriced and should retail at a premium price point.
I'm not a big enough Radiohead fan to pay for the album as a CD purchase (though I might rip it from a mate), so why pay anything for it now? That's double standards, surely...

My last six months: the digested read

I haven't had a chance to blog about work since I started at eircom. But now I've been in the role six months, it's a good opportunity to step back and reflect on what's happened to date. First off, it's been stupendously hectic; not because I've been bogged down in steering groups, bureaucracy and red tape a la Orange, but because I've actually been making decisions and achieving goals (sometimes finding myself in situations where decisons need to be made without all the facts - which can prove to be a real test of nerves.)
I think it's fair to say that I've achieved more in six months at eircom than I did in three years at Orange. There are reasons for this: eircom is a smaller telco with more compact reporting lines, making it easier to get sign-off; there's a huge appetite for change within the business, which means there are far fewer obstructions to achieving our business objectives; and my role is materially different within eircom compared to Orange; previously I was an advocate / advisor / evangelist; now I'm the decision-maker (which translates as: there's no-one else to blame if it all goes tits-up.)
The last half-year has been something of a baptism of fire: setting KPIs, forecasting, planning, financial modelling, establishing targets, managing multi-million Euro budgets - these are all things I generally get nervous about. But I've had to do them, along with writing a few hefty business cases, specifications, exec memos and god-knows-what-else. Strangely enough, I've really enjoyed it; it's like doing a paid MBA. And I've acquired a huge amount of knowledge as a result. Alongside that I've been really psyched by the freedom to apply a lot of the theoretical knowledge I amassed at Orange - in the shape of new business models, emerging consumer behaviour, innovation practice, development methodologies, and generally a lot of the 'deep thought' and intellectual rigour that we prided ourselves in at Orange TR.
Having said that, I'm not working with dummies; the team at eircom are surprisingly young, dynamic, confident, insightful, clued-up and commercially astute.
So in no particular order, some of the achievements and transformations I'm particularly happy about include:

eircom's sponsorship of last night's Dublin leg of the FOWA Road Trip. Ryan reckoned it was bigger and better than the London event, which is pretty amazing. Well done to Sean and the rest for organising a storming event (and for drinking all our money);
Getting to know (and collaborate with) some of the movers and shakers in the Dublin scene, such as Sean from Rococosoft / Mysay, Joe from PutPlace, Fergus Burns from Nooked, John Breslin from Boards.ie, along with the guys I met last night (who I hope will email me as I don't have their cards);
Contracting some of Dublin's design talent - such as Fountainhead and Spoiltchild - to work on eircom projects;
Building a business case for webmail and getting Zimbra selected as our preferred vendor (I introduced them to eircom and they were always my partner of choice - woot!)
Putting our entire online advertising business out to tender and getting Sales Online onboard as our new partner; I'm pretty excited about where this relationship could go;
Hiring DX3 as our digital media platform vendor; these guys almost went to the wire a year or so ago, but following a change of management they secured a round a funding from New Media SPARK and have transformed themselves into one of the most progressive content platform businesses in Europe;
Doing business with old friends such as Tony Jeje and Ken Parnham;
Putting together a E50k innovation bursary to help incubate new Irish business ideas, as part of the Golden Spider awards; I proposed pretty much exactly the same thing two years ago to Orange and it fell at the final hurdle due to a lack of will / support from the stakeholders, so I'm stoked that it looks like history is repeating itself, this time with a positive outcome;
eircom sponsorship of the Irish World Cyber Games team; again, I wanted to cultivate links with the games industry at Orange via sponsorship etc, but apart from working with GameRepublic on an innovation-in-gaming pilot scheme, it didn't came to much;
Helping to support and nurture new business ventures from the likes of Dylan Collins and Johnny Beirne;
Meeting Dr Stephen Brennan from the Digital Hub during my recent speaking gig, and discussing plans to formulate a broad framework for collaboration with eircom;
Building relationships with third-parties I've had my eye on but never been in a position to capitalise on, such as: Pixsy, Brightcove, NetVibes, Protopage, Blinkx and others;

Combine all that with the fact that I've got a 10 minute commute in the morning, a sea view from the apartment, a beach two minutes away and a very cool city down the road, and things could be a lot worse. Naturally, not everything is rosy (living away from home four days a week is far from ideal, the electricity in my apartment keeps getting disconnected for no good reason, and I've still got some major gripes about the way eircom functions), but on the whole coming out to Ireland has been a good decision. Don't know how long I'll stick it out for - if I carry on the way things are going I'll burn out in a couple of years (and my other projects such as Sleevenotez are getting neglected in the meantime.) Never thought I'd wish for more hours in the day...

Still, the pressure's off for a while. I'm heading to Brittany on vacation for two weeks this weekend. The timing couldn't be better.

How we LARPed

So. All this LARP business finally makes sense. After four events, two years (and I'm still a total newbie), $ spent on armour and foam latex weapons, and hours spent standing around in fields wondering "why the hell have I paid �80 to play an extra in a three-day amateur dramatics production of Lord of the Rings - with no audience?", I finally get it. Why? Well, mainly because the weekend was an unadulterated 24 carat fun-fest. And when you reach adulthood, it's not often you get the chance to spend four days of play-time, doing things that have no purpose in the wider world. Putting some distance between yourself and reality IMHO is a great cure for 21st-century angst (academic support: I read this book recently and the author basically says the same thing - stop being a consumerist twat by finding time to be playful.)
And that is basically what LARPing is all about. But I only gained that epiphany after stealing an enemy standard and legging it across a busy battlefield with two other lads, whilst being chased by a disgruntled gang from the enemy faction. You probably needed to be there, but it *was* a right laugh.
Something else worth mentioning is the sheer variety on offer: the hobby (for want of a better term) is a bizarre and addictive fusion of: fancy dress, extreme sports, re-enactment, drama, make-believe, camping, drinking, diplomacy, politics, shouting, and talent contest. If you want to sit in the beer tent getting drunk - that's cool; if you want to become embroiled in plot-based intrigue, inter-faction politicking, or random acts of in-game violence, that is cool also.
With so many disparate interests in one place, you can imagine the gargantuation challenge in keeping a rabble of 40+ LARPers occupied for 16 hours a day. So huge props must go to Charlie, Andy and others from our adoptive unit for conducting and maintaining the riotous assembly over four days. There were lots of other reasons for the increased enjoyment (rule enhancements, superb weather etc.), but on the whole, the people made it what it was. The only downside is work - which kicks in again tomorrow and will seem fairly sucky in comparison (note to self: find a way to make a living out of LARP.)

You're acquired!

Here. I just wanted to blog the headline before anyone else.

Once again the devil urinates in my teapot

"It is understood that Eircom has made approaches at different levels to other operators as well as large IT companies and telecoms businesses, including Orange, another major global telecoms player."

If I end up back in the employ of the company I've been trying to leave for the past few years, I'll eat my own legs.

Anglian Daze

Eastern Haze was a blast. I wanted to go to a festival this year; ideally one in Suffolk. Latitude wasn't an option because it panders to the belief, harboured by all middle-class Observer-reading London types, that the only place of note in Suffolk is Southwold. Eastern Haze takes place near Lowestoft - which as seaside resorts go has about as much in common with Southwold as Parma ham has with luncheon meat.

I'd say the festy was populated by 80% locals, most of them of an 'alternative' persuasion (these days it's probably hard to find a comparable concentration of travellers and their timber-framed psychedelic transport.) Should probably expect nothing less from a festy run by Roly Wynne - the bassist from Ozric Tentacles no less.

In summary: weather was great, countryside idyllic, punters very friendly. Music policy was diverse and interesting (Ozrics were a bit rubbish tho; the real revelation was The Bootleg Beatles. After years of resistance I finally caved in, sang along and jigged about, and it was bloody marvellous.)

Addendum: I wore a kilt and it seemed to confuse people, resulting in conversations along the lines of:

Are you from Scotland?
No.
Then why are you wearing a kilt?
To help the air circulate.
Oh.
I live in Ireland if that helps.
Do they all wear kilts there?
No.
Oh.

So long

Not 'so long' as in 'goodbye', but 'so long' as in 'it's been so long since I last blogged that I almost forgot my MT login.'
And all I've got to say after three months of inactivity is: why the hell doesn't Flickr monetise its camera data with e-commerce links?
Ah, that's better. I can feel the blood circulating through my fingertips again.