Alexander Chalkidis

Author: alexanderchalkidis

  • Why I care that you don’t choose Macs

    Much has been written about Apple’s amazing ability in marketing.   About Apple fan boys (and girls).   About Steve.   In terms of popular culture it is interesting and in terms of business it is amazing.   (Though not easy to emulate.)   But my question here is slightly different:   Do I have a right or an obligation even to fight Mac lovers anywhere I find them?

    Let’s not get caught up in any technical questions.   Obviously many people don’t care if it is stupid or not to insist on a mouse with just one button, or whether Safari crumbles instantly in any security competition.   And millions of people are happy, even ecstatic, about their shiny Macs and happilly play with them for years.  (Well, sort of; they are still not much good if you want to play games.)   They pay a hefty price premium for it but that is no problem in terms of the global economy.

    Current figures give the global Mac share at around 7% of annual PC sales worldwide.   It isn’t much and it hasn’t been growing much either.   For someone that has watched this debate for precisely 30 years now it seems almost stagnant.   Which would explain why we don’t do much about it.

    You see technology is not about lonely geeks behind their monitors.   Technology is about platforms.   If I really find Skype great, it will be rendered useless if all my friends or associates don’t also install it.   If I like to be able to swipe my smartphone from the top down to see settings on Android I will be put back if nobody else does and Android 6 doesn’t include such a feature.   And if I like the versatility of Windows I will be devastated if we fall into what I consider the dark ages of Apple straight jacket technology.   It is in my interest, in a very simple almost biological analogy, to persuade as many people as possible to use technology like I use it.    I liked netbooks and it is probably the iPad’s success that killed off that whole project.   If enough people sustain Apple’s premium price, fat margin, business model, I lose out.

    Conversely it is proof that Apple technology is in fact inferior that only 7% of customers choose it.   A technological product, throughout it’s lifetime is not just about looking cool or doing a few things well.   Customers figure it out and avoid Apple.   In Greece for example we have extremely bad Apple tech support simply because not enough people know the OS and have access to Apple peripherals.   They have a gut feeling that the machine will cost much more over time.

    I don’t like iTunes and what it does to my computer’s resources.   I love multitasking and all Apple devices don’t.   I really don’t understand why we should put up with Quicktime anymore.   Flash works fine for a lot of stuff and I am much happier with a mobile device that supports them.   I think machines should have plenty I/O devices and these should be as common as possible.   I don’t like manufacturers that solder things together for no sensible reason other than their warranty policy.   I’m just not built to be an Apple fan boy.

    And if Apple was ever to pass the 20% market share mark a lot of these things that I don’t like would become mainstream.   So I will fight you in Europe where you are weaker, I will fight you in the forums, I will fight you on Facebook, I will return your Tweets with links gallore.   I will never surrender.   I shall defend more open architectures whatever the cost may be.   I will fight with growing confidence and try to gather like minded warriors around me.    And if,  which I do not for a moment believe, the world or a large part of it were subjugated and Mac affected, then I will find a further land not yet Mac affected and guarded by the Open Source revolution , will carry on the struggle, until, in good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old…

     

    BTW Here is a link to the great Churchill speech I parody at the end of this post – http://audio.theguardian.tv/sys-audio/Guardian/audio/2007/04/20/Churchill.mp3

  • Greece vs Greek: a wor(l)d of difference

    Looking at the volume of web searches (Google data) for the two words, there a number of interesting things to note:

    Global volume of web searches by word

    The glaring conclusion is that “Hellas” (the proper name for the region) is hardly used.   Also “Greeks” are seldom requested as people.   There is a seasonality.   Searches drop off in July and August, possibly as many expatriot Greeks return to the homeland and stop searching for it online.  (A smaller, similar drop occurs in December.)   The most interesting thing to note about this (randomized) data from Google is that the two words do not actually always follow each other closely in their trends.   It starts making sense if we see

    Cephallonia

    what words are associated with each:

    1. ancient greece
    100
    2. greek
    95
    3. athens
    75
    4. athens greece
    75
    5. greece map
    65
    6. greece weather
    40
    7. holidays
    40
    8. greece holidays
    35
    9. map of greece
    30
    10. greece travel
    25
    Meteora

    Greece is about travel, Athens and holidays.   Whereas “Greek” is about yoghurt, salad and all things Greek like:

    1. the greek
    100
    2. greek movies
    40
    3. greek mythology
    35
    4. mythology
    35
    5. greek gods
    35
    6. greek subs
    30
    7. ancient greek
    30
    8. greek god
    30
    9. greece
    25
    10. greek alphabet
    20

    “Greek” is used as a common tag for online activities for Greeks all over the world.  This becomes more evident when we see the common searches around “Greek” and focus only on the region of Greece:

    “Greek-style” yogurts are similar to Greek strained yogurt, but may be thickened with thickening agents, or if made the traditional way, are based on domestic (rather than Greek) milk.

     

     

    1. greek subs
    100
    2. movies
    90
    3. greek movies
    85
    4. greek subtitles
    40
    5. subtitles
    40
    6. greek torrent
    15
    7. greek tv
    15
    8. youtube
    10
    9. greek movie
    10
    10. greek video
    10

     

    In fact there are great regional variations to the search.   In the US for example “Greek” is closely associated to Greek ancient history and Greek products.  (And thanks to New Yorkers especially – obviously more concerned with the quality of their food!)

    Web searches (US only)

    Notice the difference in seasonality as the blue line (searches for “Greece”) is relatively stable.   In the UK, the picture is almost the exact opposite!

     

     

  • Social media: outsourcing your company information. Yes, it’s stupid.

    Remember CRM?  The idea was you would try and get together everything you know about your customers so you could better guess their needs.   Yes, it was a lot of work.   Ah, let’s just rely on an external provider to do it for us.   In fact we won’t even have a contract with this company and we will let employees and customers do pretty well whatever they like on it.   It’s called LinkedIn, Facebook or whatever else comes along, gets bought out or changes its technology at a whim.

    Yep, that will work just fine.

    Not!   Social media platforms are just that.   Somebody else’s platform for your information.   How many kids you have and where you went on holiday used to be something that expert salespeople got out of you over fancy dinners.   Now you just give it away for nothing.   And, worse still, that supplier of yours who used to care, now has no access to the information.  He has to pay this social media platform for “intelligence”.   That is if the little startup in Callifornia has some way of getting to him.   For the most part, awesome masses of useful information is simply going wasted.   It is like trying to guess what “the market” is feeling based on the heavily censored information Google AdWords gives you about search queries.

    Remember how everyone was in a panic to have a “fully updated” company website?   They got excited about who would put up something new everyday, they rallied up support from various company departments.   Now they pay an advertising agency to write stupid one liners on the company facebook page…  The discussion went from what sort of database can best manage the company information to… “here is a funny video about a baby that hit his data with a frying pan – have a nice weekend!”

    The scary thing is that even well seasoned managers seem to have been thrown off balance by the sudden change.   At first they treated it as just the latest fad from the marketing department.   Then they started worrying they are missing the boat.  Then they got an iPhone and a Facebook account and got hooked.   Now they are blubbering idiots who think they will conquer the world based on a social media feature which might not even be around next week.

    I am beginning to feel like a family doctor.  Somewhere between their advertising agency, IT department, PR people, internal sales and marketing resources, someone has to remind companies of targets, ROI and mission.

     

     

  • On Germans and Other Greeks

    “There was a time when Richard Wagner wrote no music for almost six years. He was thirty-six, and had completed three of his ten major operas. The Flying Dutchman and Tannhiiuser had been launched, with varying degrees of success, in Dresden, but Lohengrin had not yet found its way to any stage. There was a price on Wagner’s head. He had been involved in the 1849 Dresden uprising – providing places for secret meetings, supplying grenades, reporting on troop movements from the tower of the Kreuzkirche, watching the opera house where he was employed go up in smoke. When the uprising failed, he was charged with treason and forced to flee from Germany. Some of his associates were caught and sentenced to death, though the sentences were eventually commuted to long prison terms. Wagner, with forged papers and an assumed name, took up temporary residence in Switzerland. There, beset as he was by political, personal, and financial difficulties, he found he had come to an artistic impasse.

    He could write no music. Instead, as the four operas of his Ring cycle gradually took shape in his head, he turned out volume upon volume of rabid, fevered, tortured prose. Much of it was political, and all of it touched on the nature of art. Partly to convince others but largely to convince himself, he fashioned an artistic creed so comprehensive and demanding that, when he turned to write music again, that music – the opening pages of the Ring – was like nothing he or anyone else had written before.”

    In “Athena Sings: Wagner and the Greeks“,  M.Owen Lee traces the influence of ancient Greek tragedy on the great musician.  As nationalistic fanaticism rages today around the Euro 2012 football match I though we should remind ourselves that these two countries have pretty deep ties.

    “By the time Nietzsche begins writing The Birth of Tragedy (it would be published in 1872), the question of tragedy had already been firmly established in Germany. In less than a century from the appearance of Schelling’s reference to Greek tragedy as the site of a solution to the enigmas of post-Kantian philosophizing, the topic of tragedy had taken root in German thought so deeply, so fundamentally, that the history of its presence in nineteenth-century German thought was almost as important as the original history of Greek tragedy that belongs to fifth century b.c.e. Athens (curiously, when Nietzsche first confronts it, the first life of this question—as it is found in ancient Athens and played out in the theater—is only as long as the second life of the question—-which is found in Germany—and is played out in academic publications). By the time Nietzsche broaches the question of tragedy and its relation to the modern world, the history of the second life of this question is, by and large, for better or worse, owned by Hegel. When the young Nietzsche begins to take a serious interest in Greek art, especially Greek tragedy, Hegel’s argument (or, better, the Hegelian argument as it was canonized by his epigones) that the structure of tragedy was ultimately a dialectical structure had become something of a commonplace.”   (On Germans and Other Greeks – Dennis J. Schmidt)

    But is is not just about ancient Greeks and romantic German intellectuals.

    “An important aspect of Greek identity involves the extent to which it can be considered an Eastern or a Western country. Today, when Greeks prepare to go abroad to Germany, England, or France, many say, “We are going to Europe.” This may seem odd, given that Greece is a full member of the European Union, and most people think of Greece as the cradle of Western civilization. It is ironic that while the West looks to Greece for the source of its own identity, for most of its history the sights of Greece have been turned toward the East. In ancient times, Alexander the Great turned his back on what he considered a barbarian West and spread Hellenism to the East as far as India. When Constantine established his religious headquarters, it was the growing town of Byzantium that he chose, not the small village of Athens, with its few houses spread beneath a forgotten Acropolis.   The Orthodox Church, which was the primary force behind Greek identity for nearly 1,500 years, has always maintained a strongly anti-Western stance.”

    Exploring the Greek Mosaic: A Guide to Intercultural Communication in Greece – Benjamin J. Broome

    As Greeks prepare for the match and even decide not to buy German beer today they forget just how much Germany has helped many Greeks that went there as guest workers.   Trying to rally up memories of the second world war and the atrocities is out of place.   Here are a few British reports:

    “122. The German occupation, whilst rigorous, has exasperated the Greeks less. The change when passing into the German from the Italian zone is very noticeable. The Germans forfeited their considerable popularity by their callous behavior during the famine and their wanton looting of public and private property. The removal of art treasures to Berlin and the flagrant commandeering of luxury goods and furniture, which could have no military justification, disillusioned the Greeks. Lastly, they showed that they were the Herrenvolk in many infuriating ways, by knocking Greeks off trams, by hitting them in the streets.

    123. But latterly the Germans have only behaved harshly when they had some pretext. German troops have been instructed to behave properly to the civilian population and they seem to have fraternised with the Greeks. It is possible for 20 Germans to visit a village in circumstances in which the Italians would only go 1,000 strong.”

    British Reports on Greece 1943-1944 -John Melior Stevens, Christopher Montague Woodhouse, David John Wallace, Lars Bærentzen

    So call me a traitor if you want.  I will be cheering for the Greek team tonight but fully expect the Germans to trounce us as they are systematically better at football of course.   And for all my German friends, all those great people I have met around the world who happen to come from that part of the world, there are many of us over here who love you, Merkel and all.   Maybe we should all be reading more from our great thinkers …

  • The Greek crisis produces media stars of disinformation

    For more than two years now international attention has been on and off.  George Papandreou milked it as much as he could.   Having the potential to blow up Europe or even the world economy according to others is a feat unmatched even by Bin Laden.   Unfortunately nothing constructive has been done with this spotlight.

    Yannis Varoufakis is a prime example.   Our rather dim witted prime minister had legions of advisers.   Varoufakis was one of them and realised the potential better than others.   The world economic crisis has changed the role of economists in general.   A lot of interesting debate has come of it.   Some rise to the challenge and put old theories into new shoes from a communications point of view.   And some, like Mr Varoufakis, decide it is easier to simply become militant.   The joy of economics is that you can always construct a counter argument which seems convincing.

    Try reading his “message to the BBC and other assorted international media“.   Chomsky can crossover from linguistics to economics and to media analysis and still be a reference point.   Varoufakis can’t.   Using vocabulary pretty similar to the SYRIZA party he supports.   We learn about the “Assault on Truth” and that international media are “violating every journalistic standard and principle known to man or woman”… (is that even logically possible?) …you get the point.

    Even better, he writes a whole blog post about how the BBC cut him off  before he was  ” given a chance to complete my point”.   The rather interesting video shows him on a uniquely boring monologue of more than two minutes during which he is only briefly interrupted with a question.  Not even heads of State, or major international personalities with few media appearances get such an easy time on the BBC.   He is right, there is bias.   I suspect the journalist doing the interview just didn’t know how to cut him off politely!   It was a hot day and he probably just thought “ah, let him rant and I will take another sip on my frape instead…”

    If the BBC faked a technical glitch to cut him off well, that’s a pretty good call from the viewers’ point of  view.   Anyone with experience in such interviews knows damn well that you are usually lucky to even get a soundbite through intact.   Varoufakis complains about them not letting him develop his argument as if he is structuring a lecture.  (Though the rest of his interview doesn’t bode well for his lecturing capabilities.)  And all this strong wording and rather unfair criticism from a man who the BBC has on various shows quite often!   (Listen for example to a more usual interview here – after 16′ 55″ where he speaks much less and the journalist interrupts him much more.)

    So why does this obviously clever man do all this?   Why does he bark “wolf!” regarding an – always – imminent Euro collapse even though he has been barking up the wrong tree for some time now?   Obviously it works!   According to another report by the same, highly biased, BBC, he got offered a job through the attention.   It doesn’t really matter if the Eurozone doesn’t crash.   People like Varoufakis will simply reinterpret the data into some other conspiracy theory.   Much like the US was going to “collapse” back in the 70s with the oil crisis.   He brags on his blog of  his “duel with the bank exec” as if it is a game on the one hand and/or that he is the only saviour of the Truth and all the planet’s underdogs on the other.

    Betting on the future has been big business for fortune tellers for thousands of years.   Shame that some people choose to ridicule their countries when they do it publically and internationally like Mr Varoufakis.

  • Steve Jobs was right to “go thermonuclear” against Android

    “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

    The point isn’t whether he said it or not.   Nor is it whether it is admissable in court (it is).

    “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong.”

    The real issue with Apple versus Android is a much more important point about their underlying business model.   Both rely on market dominance.   Some may call it an abuse of a dominant position.   I prefer to call it the “give away” model.

    Here is Google’s version:  “we spend millions developing a cutting edge telephone OS.   We give it away to any phone manufacturer that wants to use it.   Guess what?   Android phones are cheaper that way!   We spend billions buying companies and developing Google Maps.   We give it away for free and even include navigation in Android phones.   Who cares if we destroy an entire industry, it’s not our industry!   We spend billions buying, developing and running YouTube, Gmail and loads of other services.   You know what?  You can have them all for free!  And everyone along the chanel can do what they please and make money anyway they see fit.   All we ask of you is that you click on an advert now and then on Google search, YouTube, Gmail or wherever else we put one in front of you.”

    And Apple’s version: “We spend millions selectively buying cool companies or those that have developed some technology we need because we don’t really invent anything.   We package them as cool as we can and charge as much as we can.   We squeeze everyone in our supply and distribution channel dry.  We drop prices or add features only when the competition forces us or Steve Jobs isn’t around to persuade Apple fans that whatever we have done is cool.”

    Put that way, which phone OS do you think is heading for global dominance?   The philosophy of free with Android extends to apps of course.   Forget Apple style scaremongery about locked devices.   Rooting an Android phone is almost included in the package and applications that unlock any app you find are almost automatic.   Android 5.0 might include a “crack that app” in the OS…

    Steve Jobs was right to feel threatened about Android.   Not because they “stole” some iPhone features.   He, of all people, knew very well that the iPhone was never about features.   It is Google’s business model that is the real threat.   If Apple wants to beat Android it should be spending it’s money not on law suites, but on buying more companies with new features to give away.   They have done it before in other sectors when they felt desperate.   Apple’s involvement in the digital video is a good example.   Final Cut came out of nowhere to become the darling of a new movement (it’s always a “revolution” or a “movement” with Apple, isn’t it?) mainly through features they added by buying up companies.   Buy a company that makes a 4000 dollar color management software and throw it in the next version….

    The real problem with Google’s threat however for Apple, is that Google hasn’t got to worry about hardware.  Chinese workers killing themselves, the cost of components and copycats will find it hard to beat Google at its game.   Not even Microsoft has managed to mount a credible threat to its search monopoly.   Facebook’s floppy IPO shows just how little anyone really believes that sexy newcomers, no matter how big, can really effect Google.

  • Facebook screws up on the international business etiquette

    “Right now you may only reach 16% of your fans each week.  Reach Generator guarantees that you reach 75% of your fans…”   This is Facebook’s grand plan to show us they know how to make money?  Instead of “connecting people” or “helping us share with the people we love”…  Facebook is openly admitting to allowing advertisers the right to dominate our timelines!

    The idea is of course nothing new.   It’s just advertising.   Google has been taking money to tweak search results, make items disappear from autocompletion and promote certain results for years.   But they don’t tell everyone about it!   Not even pretty high ranking Google executives know the whole picture regarding what you can make disappear from Google if you have enough money.   Only people and companies with…well, enough money, know that sort of thing.

    It could be some twisted campaign to show that Facebook is opening up regarding privacy.   But no.   This is just inexperience of global corporate rules.     Worse still they are testing out a similar thing for consumers as the “highlight you want to be sure your friends see”.  If I am going to pay 2 New Zealand dollars for that luxury, I might as well make my own website Mark!   People already distrust Facebook big time (not so much Google).

    This is not the way to beat Google.  Take a page out of Apple’s book instead.   You don’t like Android?   Go out and buy 2-3 mapping companies and produce a spectacular rival to Google Maps for starters.   Buy a company and throw in a free Siri for people to start relying on that instead of Google search.   Give us freebies so that we use your service.

    But maintain appearances please!

  • Kakapo: Greek journalism goes to the dogs over a non existent fascist threat

    The kakapo is a bird that forgot how to fly.  It landed on an island with no predators.   Over many years its meals got bigger, its flights shorter.   Wings weaker.   Now when a cat chases a kakapo, the flightless  bird will climb up a tree and jump down to its death.  It still thinks it can fly…

    It is inevitable to an extent.   Old media is crumbling.   A lot of journalists for many years lived rather comfortably with little stress, excellent wages and a lot of freedom.   The media was sponsored by business people who used it to pressure the governement as and when necessary.    Like the Kakapo, they have simply forgotten what journalism is all about.

    Their current frenzy is over the so called “right wing extremists” of “Golden Dawn”, a party which got more than 6% of the vote in the recent elections, thus becoming entitled to 21 MPs in the Greek Parliament.  It is common in many European countries to worry about right wing extremism.   It is indeed in many cases a serious threat to civil liberties and even a terrorist problem.   Not so in Greece.

    There are two ways to try and approach this issue.   If you do it with objective analysis, you will come to the conclusion that journalists are over reacting and that there is no real evidence.   “Alleged” and “seems to show” are the kind of words you would expect to find in this sort of “journalism”.   More like low quality blogging I would say.   Here’s a great example, an article in the usually quite serious “Kathimerini” by Xenia Kounalaki.    She suggests that “Golden Dawn” is “shut out of the public sphere”.   Doesn’t sound very democratic does it?   She writes about the “criminal activity of its members” but doesn’t cite any examples.   This kakapo is as flightless as they come…  “Ι am all for censorship and very strict isolation of this group; when fascists speak, I don’t want to listen” notes a popular editor in chief.

    The second way to approach the matter is straightforward conspiracy theory.   Right after the people that are sure we are being sprayed with secret chemicals to make us submissive.   Or they confuse the issue with a theory that Greek police are somehow secretly linked to this organisation.   Vague videos on YouTube, blurry pictures and close ups that supposedly “prove” it.   Wait a minute!   Aren’t journalists the people that are meant to find evidence and proof?  If the police is somehow secretely involved, can’t journalists produce some definitive evidence?

    Worse still they recycle ridiculous half baked “proof” which would make any real journalist cringe.   For example today the “evidence” that at specific polling stations in the recent elections where police officers voted “Golden Dawn” had higher success.    If this was true it would be a terrible encroachment on the right to a free vote!   How would journalists like us to know what they voted?

    Extremism, and even more so right wing extremism has always been used in Greece as a bogey man.   Much like Mr Laliotis, allegedly the most corrupt Public Works minister in the entire EuroZone, when pressed on some question would always revert to his glorious past in helping overthrow the military regime in 1974…   “The people don’t forget what The Right means” is still chanted in protests implying rather vaguely to some time in the past when the military or the police cracked down violently.   Could be the civil war they are reffering to; they don’t really care.  It works!

    If some members of “Golden Dawn” are involved in gang type violence in the centre of Athens they should be arrested.   It has absolutely nothing to do with ideology or fascism.   If the police is covering for them, the police should be improved.   But anything more is right out there with alien abductions and secret sects ruling the world.  Yes, they have tried to associate “Golden Dawn” with them too!   If they bothered to look around Europe they would see that other countries have had far right groups in their Parliaments for many years.   LePen’s type of “civilized face” to the movement is a much greater threat than black shirt wearing thugs.

    The whole discussion is a horrible reminder of just how hypocritical certain self professed libertarians really are.   They say “fascists should be killed!” or “they shouldn’t be allowed to speak in public!”   Rather selective sense of democracy it seems to me…

    P.S. Just because I know some people jump to conclusions I  need to make clear that I do not condone racist violence and illegal acts in any way.   But you really need to differentiate between acts (punishable by law and so they should be) and free speech.  “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me”, eh?

     

     

  • Surprise developments in the 2012 Greek elections

    I love political communication.   It appeals to the idealist in me.   The social engineering part of me thrives on twisting messages to fit into mediums that will best influence people.   And right now, Greece is the place to be.   The old media is crumbling.  Based on funding from business people that used television and newspapers to influence public spending (ie get the tenders for big projects through blackmail!) the whole model crashed.   Social media rides in and …everyone is confused!   An ex US ambassador to Greece does a great summary of what led us here on his Facebook page.  (In English, the original is here.)

    So in order to get involved with a political party, first I had to pick one that is actually not corrupt.   Athena Drakou explains it all (in English) here from that perspective in this excellent introductory article of hers.   And then, a few weeks before the elections, we have to take a party that 99% of Greece hadn’t even heard about a month ago and get it into Parliament.   With zero budget!

    As we look at highly dubious poll results and await the exit polls, there is a major upturn in Greek politics.   A. Apostolakis – eshop.gr founder and entrepreneur does it here .  A.Doxiadis – famous author and mathematician does it here . G.Tziralis – the Greek start up man does it here. N.Moraitakis does it here. 53 other Greeks from abroad do it here.  What we have is a pandemic of famous and important Greeks who have never before stated their political affiliations publically doing it now.   Why?

    Sure it is an amazing bunch of people.  Within the party and around it, most major Greek intellectuals have gone public in support of “Drasi“ or Stefanos Manos personally.   It was part of our strategy (for lack of budget) but it has spiralled almost like a viral social media campaign.   Sure the party is on very solid ground through wise long term planning.   It is a loosely knit group of very clever people, each somehow pulling in the same direction without the need for a big central structure.

    In the last week before elections we have witnessed a unique development as one after another, major public figures from business and culture take a stance in support of “Drasi”, either through online articles (mainly online, as the party is shut out of most media).  Even vocal supporters from “the Left” and a communist party figurehead have decided that something important needs to change in Greece.  Until now everyone kept there political affiliations a secret for fear of losing a job, a deal or a position in the civil service.   Now they are publically supporting this party for fear of there being no jobs left to get!

    But ultimately, especially for a region like Greece which resembles a volcano ready to erupt, good communications will be the deciding factor.   Especially if (when) the May elections do not produce a useful government, there will be 11 million even more disappointed Greeks to kick into action.

    (Full disclosure: I am in charge of the social media campaigning of “Drassi”.  For more information visit www.drassi.gr or – in English the links provided above.  For the latest guesstimates on possible outcomes you will be really hard pressed to find any authoritative account – I have put a summary  of polls here.)

     

  • Mobile revolution in perspective

    Some people on the planet feel the need to bring some balance to this debate.   Not that there is much debate.   Everyone seems sure that mobile devices will conquer the planet.   Apps are growing like mushrooms.   Many with less meaningful content than an edible fungus.  This doesn’t stop marketing departments investing in mobile platforms for everything.   Everything.

    Don’t get me wrong.   I am happy that this is leading to some interoperability.   (Not so happy we are wasting a lot of global energy pandering to a very small minority of …well whatever Apple dreams up of, often on its own little island.  We should be talking about “tablet compatible” things, not “iPad” compatible.)   It is great that websites are getting better to navigate from different resolution screens.   I have been a road warrior and smart phone user since the days when this involved carrying a brick in my back pocket and being laughed at in meetings for using it.

    I have done work on a mobile phone.   Back in the days when you could find a phone with a decent keyboard I would even write thoughts like this on one.   But real individual information processing work gets done on a PC.   Unless you are in the business of only reading stuff or killing pigs by throwing birds at them from a slingshot.

    There are some rock solid obstructions to a mobile device being truly capable:  1. Screen resolution.   I struggle with netbooks because the 600 pixel limitation to the height makes getting anything done on the internet difficult.  Even 768 on many laptops is annoying.   2. Screen size.   Some of us are lucky enough to not mind ridiculously small fonts.   Not everyone.   The Galaxy Note is a step in the right direction. 3. Keyboard.  Again netbooks are a good example.  Read reviews and all the complaints people make about smaller keyboards.   For anyone that writes to make their living this is serious.   Virtual keyboards on touch screen never, ever, ever come even close and voice recognition remains a problem in the real world.  4. Multi tasking.   Even if Alt-tab isn’t your second nature, when you are working you are very often multitasking.   I’m not talking about an iPhone finally being able to run essential tasks simultaneously.   I am talking about 5 spreadsheets, 8 browser windows, a business app and a few other things running at the same time because I need to them to put something together.   Even a simple presentation will often demand 6 or 7 software applications running concurrently.  5. Speed.   When we are talking about serious work, the speed of the device is essentially stalling your thought process.   I am annoyed at upgrading to an 18 megapixel DSLR because it takes that much longer for my Core i7, SSD laptop to process the images.  Time is money and mobile devices are wasteful in this respect.  Unless they are a laptop.   Mobile enough!

    The list continues with other major or minor niggles.   “Niggles” being things that bother you.   Like the room being too cold.   Like your chair not being comfortable.   Like all those things you don’t want bothering you when you actually try to get some work done.   For anyone wanting to focus on a task involving the use of technology, a PC will continue to be the best place to get it done.

    Niggle free.