broadstuff

It would seem those nice people at Google were forgetting the "Do No Evil" motto when it came to sending out their StreetCars with the desire to sniff Wifi while snapping Pix - El Reg:

The software worked with Kismet - packet-sniffing software. gslite then parsed header information from any unsecured wireless network it passed. Kismet hopped channels five times per second in order to grab as many networks as possible.

The paper said that frames from encrypted networks were discarded by gslite. Unencrypted bodies were written straight to disc, but not parsed by the program.

Privacy International believe this represents criminal intent - data protection law does not normally allow the interception of communications in this way.

PI said: "This action by Google cannot be blamed on the alleged 'single engineer' who wrote the code. It goes to the heart of a systematic failure of management and of duty of care."

Gslite made no attempt to parse the body of any messages or file transfers, but it also collected numerical identifiers of kit attached to the network.

The program linked the information collected with GPS data from the car. The analysis notes that the GPS system provides geolocation data rather more slowly than network data so gslite corrects the difference between the two
before storing the file.

PI's blog post is here, and it also has a link to the pdf report.

The "rogue engineer" theory was further undermined by Google's legal eagles' earlier moves to patent the network sniffing technology.

Anyone remember the "Rogue Interns" that were wheeled out at various times by companies last year when they ushed the boat ou too far?

Anyway, we have - after painstaking analysis - realised we can discern the Google Algorithm used for making privacy decisions in this case (see above diagram). One wonders if it applies more generally.....

There is an article in the Daily Beast about John Sculley regretting firing Steve Jobs:

In the annals of blown calls, it ranks somewhere between the publishers who turned down the first Harry Potter book and baseball umpire Jim Joyce’s instantly infamous perfect-game flub last week. It was the spring of 1985, and the board of Apple Computer decided it no longer needed the services of one Steven P. Jobs.

Well, not necessarily - the reason is in another paragraph:

The key antagonist in the tech world’s biggest soap opera of a quarter-century ago: John Sculley, the Pepsi executive whom Apple’s board brought in as CEO to oversee Jobs and grow the company—similar to Eric Schmidt’s role with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin—in 1983. A marketing whiz who had invented the “Pepsi Challenge” campaign, Sculley wrestled with low Macintosh sales and a need to bring some order to the creative chaos Jobs had unleashed. Sculley found that he couldn’t rein in Jobs—and decided he had to go.

Lest we forget, in the mid 1980's Apple had spectacularly lost the PC battle against Microsoft, released the Macintosh to universal disinterest and was shortly to inflict the Lisa on the world, Organisationally the company was in chaos, and it needed firm management to put in basic disciplines and good management processes - all that boring stuff. Its fairly well known that there comes a time in any startup where it has to shift its management culture, and often the founders are not ready at that stage to step up to the plate. In Mr Jobs case, to his eternal credit he went on a hero's journey to return ready to run the company again.

Sculley thinks they could have sorted out their differences:

Sculley says he accepts responsibility for his role but also believes that Apple’s board should have understood that Jobs needed to be in charge. “My sense is that it probably would never have broken down between Steve and me if we had figured out different roles,” Sculley says. “Maybe he should have been the CEO and I should have been the president. It should have been worked out ahead of time, and that’s one of those things you look to a really good board to do.”

From my experience of turnarounds I'd argue that if Mr Jobs had stayed at the company then, no matter how it was organised, he would have been a very disruptive influence (as he was, lets not forget) and it would not have been able to get all the basic corporate infrastructure that it needed to install to grow to the stage where he could come back and run he machine. I also think he learned a lot in those intervening years that made him a different person when he returned.

As to the Board though, do read this:

Board member Arthur Rock, a venture capitalist who helped found Intel, among other outfits, dubbed Jobs and his co-founder Steve Wozniak as “very unappealing people” in the early days. “Jobs came into the office, as he does now, dressed in Levi’s, but at that time that wasn’t quite the thing to do,” Rock told a little-noticed University of California, Berkeley venture-capital oral-history project. “And I believe he had a goatee and a mustache and long hair—and he had just come back from six months in India with a guru, learning about life. I’m not sure, but it may have been a while since he had a bath.”

Tut - measuring people by what they look like....wouldn't happen today as much, now would it?

Well.....?

.

Now that the iPhone 4G is announced, as a way of reviewing it I thought I would look at the rather bad Torygraph Pre-Review piece and compare their views with the reality - as sort of post pre-review analysis of mainstream media journalism as wel as an iPhone review. There has also been a rather good analysis of the iPhone vs the other major competitors on TiPPB which is summarised in their chart above.

So, on to comparing reality vs the Torygraph analysis - here is the Torygrah (italics) vs reality

1) It’s expensive: Buy the top-of-the-range Blackberry or Android handset and you will still pay a lot less than the extortionate prices Apple charge

Well, its a bit more than the others but not stupidly overpriced - in fact by Apple standards its (shock) very reasonable

2) It’s anti-technology: When the iPhone launched it was cutting edge – now as other manufacturers announce, for instance, that you can use their phones as shareable wifi hot spots, Apple says no.

Well, its 4G, with a new OS, an on board gyroscope - and better incremental specs in most of its facets than the others so they will have to bring out new models

3) No Flash: The iPhone, the phone that promised to put the web into everybody’s pockets, can’t even show you most of it, because it can’t handle Flash graphics.

No flash.

4) No multitasking: Tried instant messaging on an iPhone? Oh yes, you have to open the app to see if you’ve got a message.

New iOS 4 allows multitasking.

5) Its battery life is terrible

They are claiming c 40% better life, which would put it on roughly a par

6) Developing apps for it is costing you money: The special version of the BBC iPlayer, of Natwest Phone Banking, of Eon’s meter reader – developing all of these came out of money that could have been channelled away from a self-important minority and towards more generally useful ideas.

At least the Apple store has a lot of Aps. Besides, most are developed speculatively so cost the user nothing in opportunity costs.

7) It comes with offensively bad headphones

They all do. But its the offensively bad music they play that really causes the problems. Next....

8 ) It’s not very well designed

Oh come on, Apple set the standard for design in this space and remains on form with this.

9) It charges for satnav: In an age when Nokia and Google Android provide completely free mapping and satnav facilities

It does indeed - but les autres are subsidising this in an attempt to lure people away from Apple.

10) Those iPod docks are holding back better technologies

Much like Betamax, Wankel engines and countless other marvellous technologies that were held back by the sheer popularity of existing stuff that basically did what its users wanted.

So - what would you give the Torygraph in accuracy? I think 2 out of 10 (Flash, Satnav) as those are factual. Nos 7, 8 and 10 are opinions and the kindest thing one can say about them is that they are irrelaevantly counter-intuitive. The rest are just wrong.

As to the iPhone 4G - well, in summary it is a small step ahead of the others rather than the gamechange that the original iPhone represented, but it probably does enough to keep the bulk of current iPhone users from migrating to mther devices, and will also competitively recruit some new users.

What's the best way to scoop the review of a much heralded new piece of geek bling? One option is to borrow it from a bloke in a bar, though that brings its own problems. Another is to review it before its even been released, and give it a foul review, as the Torygraph did last week for the Apple iPhone 4G, due to be outed today. Here are their 10 main points:

1) It’s expensive: Buy the top-of-the-range Blackberry or Android handset and you will still pay a lot less than the extortionate prices Apple charge. If the iPhone weren’t made by Apple, networks would have had to start giving it away on £30 a month tariffs years ago.

2) It’s anti-technology: When the iPhone launched it was cutting edge – now as other manufacturers announce, for instance, that you can use their phones as shareable wifi hot spots, Apple says no. Not because of some spurious “user experience” argument, but because of economics. When will they learn that it’s customers – supply and demand – that should dictate feature availability?

3) No Flash: The iPhone, the phone that promised to put the web into everybody’s pockets, can’t even show you most of it, because it can’t handle Flash graphics. Google Android can, in the latest version (OS 2.2), and it’s going to be available free on a lot of budget tariffs.

4) No multitasking: Tried instant messaging on an iPhone? Oh yes, you have to open the app to see if you’ve got a message. Genius. If Apple announces multitasking next it will be an improvement – but there’ll be no apology for the way it’s treated customers in the past, and no guarantee it won’t behave similarly shoddily in the future.

5) Its battery life is terrible: This isn’t a problem unique to Apple, but look at phones by companies such as HTC – multitasking, better cameras, better screens, all draining their batteries far more – and yet the iPhone, with its undemanding technology, still only offers equal performance.

6) Developing apps for it is costing you money: The special version of the BBC iPlayer, of Natwest Phone Banking, of Eon’s meter reader – developing all of these came out of money that could have been channelled away from a self-important minority and towards more generally useful ideas.

7) It comes with offensively bad headphones: Sit next to somebody using the original iPhone or iPod headphones and you can hear everything they can. It’s another example of Apple charging premium prices, but delivering a dressed up, budget product.

8 ) It’s not very well designed: Use the iPhone as a phone and it’s not got great reception, nor is it particularly comfortable to use for long periods. It’s a computer that happens to have a phone bolted on – jack of two trades, but master of neither.

9) It charges for satnav: In an age when Nokia and Google Android provide completely free mapping and satnav facilities, the cheapest way you can turn your overpriced iPhone into a satnav is with a £19.99 app. Bargain.

10) Those iPod docks are holding back better technologies: As every hotel increasingly thinks it should provide iPod docks, the momentum behind this technology is only growing. But if it wasn’t for the iPod and iPhone’s ubiquity, there’d be more wifi radios, more new technologies and a range of different options, competing and driving innovation.

They then committed the ultimate sin in blogging, by moderating the comments to remove all the fanbois arriving with their burning digital pitchforks, so that (allegedly anyway) only those who agree with them saw the the bloggy dawn light. There has been Lots of Harrumphing about this (probably because a lot of people wished they'd thought of it first, I'll warrant) and of cours e- from a fanboi point of view - its all wrong, wrong, wrong.

Or is it? Lets just go through those points:

1) It’s expensive: Buy the top-of-the-range Blackberry or Android handset and you will still pay a lot less than the extortionate prices Apple charge

Leaving aside that no-one knows the exact pricing, overcharging for stuff has always been Apple's schtick - they have charged more for the same (but beautifully branded) stuff for 40 years now, and about 15% of any market love them for it. Next...

2) It’s anti-technology: When the iPhone launched it was cutting edge – now as other manufacturers announce, for instance, that you can use their phones as shareable wifi hot spots, Apple says no.

Well, its 4G, with a new OS, so thats a bit disingenuous never mind disingenerous

3) No Flash: The iPhone, the phone that promised to put the web into everybody’s pockets, can’t even show you most of it, because it can’t handle Flash graphics.

Actually, very few mobiles (as a % of total usage) today can use Flash (but as Benjamin Ellis comments that quite a few of the non-Apple ones coming along will, however). Let's see what Apple does over the next 6 months.

4) No multitasking: Tried instant messaging on an iPhone? Oh yes, you have to open the app to see if you’ve got a message.

Well, in theory that is half the point - a new OS that is multitasking

5) Its battery life is terrible

It's a smartphone. Next..... (OK, OK its not the best battery, but all the powerful smartphones are pretty big battery chewers)

6) Developing apps for it is costing you money: The special version of the BBC iPlayer, of Natwest Phone Banking, of Eon’s meter reader – developing all of these came out of money that could have been channelled away from a self-important minority and towards more generally useful ideas.

Nah, those geeks in garrets and garages actually develop all this stuff in the belief they will be paid in user uptake and subscriptions. Virtually no one makes any money though - in fact its a marvellous system as its all the creators paying to create stuff we largely use for free. Fools.

7) It comes with offensively bad headphones

They all do. But its the offensively bad music they play that really causes the problems. Next....

8 ) It’s not very well designed

'Course not - its an Apple. They deliberately design ugly stuff so that they can sell it at a lower price than anyone else. Not.

9) It charges for satnav: In an age when Nokia and Google Android provide completely free mapping and satnav facilities

It does indeed - les autres are subsidising this in an attempt to lure people away from Apple.

10) Those iPod docks are holding back better technologies

Much like Betamax, Wankel engines and countless other marvellous technologies that were held back by the sheer popularity of existing stuff that basically did what its users wanted.

We are anything but Apple fanbois (just type in "Apple" in the blog search) and tend to cleave somewhat to the view in "Stuff White People Like" that Apple is largely bought by people who need to feel they are creative etc, but I must say if you were doing a Pre-Review based on zero knowledge of the pre-released product you could do a better extrapolation of what Apple is likely to do, and where the pros and cons are.

In short I'd say the Torygraph review scores about 2/10 tops in accuracy, but 8/10 in linkbaiting. Which was the point, after all, I suspect - they don't make their money from flogging 'phones.

Nor, as some wags would suggest, from accurate reporting

Techcrunch echoing a view we discussed several days ago, to wit that Facebook has privacy invasion in its DNA.

The more I look at Facebook, the more Ithink it's culture is possibly something that would emerge if Dr Sheldon Cooper was ever let loose on Social Net design.

Here he is explaining his Friendship Algorithm.... you can just imagine this sort of conversation going on at You Know Who HQ .

Do you remember Mobile TV? In about 2007 it was going to rule the world by 2010. It didn't, of course - the form factor of a screen the size of a matchbox did for that, never mind the in-fighting among Mobile TV standards. The iPhone, with its 2x3 screen and Applegarchy approach to the delivery stack renewed hope, but its still not really there. Cometh the iPad and all were agog - Is it a table? Is it a Netbook? An e-reader even? Is it just a Fisher-Price iPhone?

No, its a TV - LonelySandwich!

And then it hits. The iPad is for the nightstand. And for the sofa, and for the places between where you stand in line and where you sit at your desk. That’s why every iPad poster and billboard features it on a lap or a knee. They’ve stopped short of showing it on a chest in bed, but that’s where mine gets its most use.

A new thing

My chest is where I first noticed that the iPad would make the most impact on me as a Video device. You see, despite Apple clearly signalling, by orienting its logo in portrait mode, that the iPad is for holding like a book or a piece of paper, it’s meant the most to me turned to landscape mode, where its dimensions replicate the video screen I’ve known my whole life. Turned to landscape, the iPad offers me the most comfort, the most passive participation, the feeling of Home.

The following may be a bit hyperbolic, but follow me: The iPad is the world’s first truly convergent TV/computer. It’s the device that’s been promised us for years, and its time has come, in 2010, within reach of a couple generations raised on TV and one raised on the computer. Yet it is neither a TV that computes nor a computer that shows TV. It is a new thing. The new thing, in fact.

I just loved this bit of ergonomic analysis:

However, when the iPad came, I found myself watching TV shows more often on it than on my TV. My preferred experience is to obtain TV content on my Mac, use software like the brilliant Air Video to convert it on-the-fly and stream it to my iPad, and watch in bed with my headphones while my girlfriend sleeps or watches her stories. If this isn’t the most thoroughly engaging way to take in video, I don’t know what is. And funny enough, when it’s time for a communal viewing experience, we’ll put it on the good ol’ TV.

The book at bedtime (and the girlfriend) being replaced by your own personal TV experience.

So there you have it, Apple have discovered the new form factor for mobile TVs.

Some days ago Paul Clarke and I were talking about how we were sure that people who followed us on Twitter were being dropped, and he came up with the interesting observation that it may be deliberate - here is his blog post explaining this, summarised below:

Real relationships aren’t binary. They’re analogue. You can like someone not at all, a bit, or a lot. That can change from day to day – sometimes from hour to hour. Independently of how much you like them there are other factors involved like distance and frequency of contact. You might adore each other but only communicate once a year.

Social networks can (so far) only provide the palest echo of this rich texture. You’re either someone’s Facebook friend, or you’re not. Twitter’s a bit more subtle in its branding of the relationship, but we’re humans. We’re tempted to attach emotional significance to everything to some degree.

It all comes to a head with the Unfollow Problem

Unfollow me? You mustn’t like me any more. I’m sad. I don’t enjoy this experience much. Best keep away from it.

And to those who do the unfollowing and reap more than they bargained for, this brings its own problems. Retaliation. Icy silence. Worse. People will interpret the same fact in countless different ways. We don’t all operate according to the same textbook of emotional responses (mercifully).

So if you’re a savvy social designer, you want to design the sadness and badness out where you can. You want to keep your community happy. You want to keep your community there. So you need loopholes. Get-outs. And you quietly introduce a random unfollow ‘bug’. Just a small one. Perhaps 0.1% of relationships ‘accidentally’ broken in a month. Not enough to reduce confidence in the integrity of the system.

But enough to offer a face-saver to the unfollower. And a hope-giver to the unfollowed.

Now a few years back we (as well as many others, I'm sure) looked at how to design Nuance in a social network (I just hate the term "Social Graph", with all its geometric arcana so I'm not going to use it).

In essence, how do I design a choice architecture so that:

- I can differentiate between Mother, Lover, Work Colleague and Friend (say)
- The system is capable of following layers of simple rules to decide what content is desirable for which category
- The system is very easy, ie intuitive, to use

You don't go far before you realise these are opposites in design (like cost, quality and time) - too many categories and the rules get complex and the system is no longer intuitive. Too few and the rules can't be nuanced. Too "intuitive" (ie simple) and the nuance is gone.

What we also found was thet you needed Fuzziness - ie the acceptance that the edges are blurred. Paul has hit this with his observation about Unfollow as well.

The resultant thought is that these systems will have to be designed with Fuzzy Logic in their next generation

Nick Carr, in pimping his new book (which I clearly should not link to ), argues that Links are Bad Things:

Links are wonderful conveniences, as we all know (from clicking on them compulsively day in and day out). But they're also distractions. Sometimes, they're big distractions - we click on a link, then another, then another, and pretty soon we've forgotten what we'd started out to do or to read. Other times, they're tiny distractions, little textual gnats buzzing around your head. Even if you don't click on a link, your eyes notice it, and your frontal cortex has to fire up a bunch of neurons to decide whether to click or not. You may not notice the little extra cognitive load placed on your brain, but it's there and it matters. People who read hypertext comprehend and learn less, studies show, than those who read the same material in printed form. The more links in a piece of writing, the bigger the hit on comprehension.

Nick argues that he doesn't want to over-egg the cognitive load of linking, and then goes on to do just that....

The link is, in a way, a technologically advanced form of a footnote. It's also, distraction-wise, a more violent form of a footnote. Where a footnote gives your brain a gentle nudge, the link gives it a yank. What's good about a link - its propulsive force - is also what's bad about it.

So is this the death of the Web 2.0 stalwart, the Link Economy? No, that was dead already along with all the other FreeConomic cr*p that was in the same memeset and died when capital funding dried up (unless you link to an in-text Ad of course....). As I point out in the graphic above, your view on linking is a function on how badly you think you need them. To me this is just a maturity/familiarity thing - I don't charge all over the web when I read a piece, just as I don't keep on going to the back of a book to read the footnotes. One suggested approach is actually to group all links and stick them at the end of one's post, simulating the notes at the back of a book:

Collecting all the URLs into a single block of text at the end of the article works very well. It illustrates Carr's point, and it improves the experience of reading the article. It also shows more respect for the reader - it assumes that we've actually thought about what we've read. (Which is not to say that all readers merit that level of respect.)

The big question of course, is do I link to Nick's post - of course, but maybe I should do it a the end of my piece as suggested, so here it is. Here too is Stowe Boyd's argument that its just a case of learning to read online media to maximise flow