Monthly Archives: March 2006

How’s this for minimalism?

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The website of a company set up by three ex-Apple grandees which went public this week and attracted $150 million in funding despite making clear in the prospectus that the founders have no idea what the company will do. It’s a “special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC”. So now you know.

Update (18 March)… From Good Morning, Silicon Valley:

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and one of Acquicor’s principals has apparently put the brakes on Wheels of Zeus (WoZ), the wireless technology venture he launched in 2002. Now normally that wouldn’t be such a big deal. Companies are shutting down all the time. Problem is, WoZ’s impending demise wasn’t disclosed in Acquicor’s prospectus. And it really should have been. After all Acquicor is a special purpose acquisition company — a company formed to acquire other companies — and much of its credibility rests with the reputations of its founders. I imagine Acquicor investors would have liked to have been told that one of its principals was pulling the plug on an enterprise that might have have been one reason they invested in the first place.

Joined-up photography

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One of the photographic forms I really admire is David Hockney’s ‘Joiners’ . Like all great artists, he makes it look easy. But actually it’s fiendishly difficult to do well. This is an attempt I made to convey the feeling of the Connemara graveyard in which my grandparents (and five of their children) lie buried. It’s a beautiful, peaceful, windswept place, from which you can see Galway Bay and the Aran Islands, and somehow cried out for something better than a static picture. But this doesn’t work because, for example, I missed out the heads of two of the Celtic crosses. You can’t read the headstone at this resolution, but it reveals that, in 1922, two of their children died within a week of one another (both from infectious diseases now routinely vaccinated against). And they lost another child just a year later. The horror is unimaginable. But that’s what life was like in rural Ireland in those days.

Microsoft has sense of humour: official

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Apropos that spoof video I mentioned a while back, it’s now emerged that it was actually made by Microsoft! “It was an internal-only video clip commissioned by our packaging [team] to humorously highlight the challenges we have faced RE: packaging and to educate marketers here about the pitfalls of packaging/branding,” Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla told The iPod Observer by email.

[Pedantic note: we will overlook the split infinitive in that sentence.]

The video, which can now be found on Google Video, pokes fun at Microsoft’s tendency toward cluttered packaging by imagining how the company would have designed the box for the original iPod. Where Apple’s design is sparse, Microsoft’s final creation is full of so many stickers and other information that the photo of the MP3 player can be barely seen.

“While MS did not release the video”, said Mr Pilla, “it’s natural to share funny things with friends. So while we didn’t publicly share the video, it was shared with appropriate teams internally. We’re happy to see others enjoy the laugh as well.”

I think I shall have to go and lie down. In a darkened room.

Thanks nevertheless to Bill Thompson for shattering my illusions about the Evil Empire!

Wallace worth more than Grommit!

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Honestly! According to BBC Online,

Oscar-winning Aardman Animations has been given £4,000 to replace the Wallace prop lost in a warehouse fire.

The company has also been given around £2,000 for a canine Gromit prop as part of an undisclosed insurance payout for the damage to the Bristol premises.

It got £100,000 for the Chicken Run pie machine lost in the fire last October, which was caused by faulty wiring.

Insurer Norwich Union says it based the sums on the cost of “reinstating” the props and not their market value.

Cheapskates!

Technolust

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The Editor of a leading Indian newspaper came to visit us today. Like me, he’s a full-blown gadget freak. Unlike me, he travels a lot — and therefore spends a lot of time in duty-free shops. (He also has more money.) He was quietly flaunting this exquisite device — the iMate Jasjar. (Who invents these names?). It’s beautifully made, has a good QWERTY keyboard and gives excellent Web access. The only problem is that it runs Windows. And costs £649.49 on Amazon.co.uk. Sigh.

London panorama

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While waiting to give a lecture in a room on the 10th floor of a central London building, I amused myself taking photographs through the windows. This was stitched together from two shots. The poor quality is partly attributable to reflections from the glass.

Who said this?

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From Guardian Unlimited

“Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry – the editors, the chief executives and, let’s face it, the proprietors,” said Mr X, having flown into London from New York after celebrating his 75th birthday on Saturday.

Far from mourning its passing, he evangelised about a digital future that would put that power in the hands of those already launching a blog every second, sharing photos and music online and downloading television programmes on demand. “A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it,” he said. Indicating he had little desire to slow down despite his advancing years, he told the 603-year-old guild [the Stationers’ Company] that he was looking forward, not back.”It is difficult, indeed dangerous, to underestimate the huge changes this revolution will bring or the power of developing technologies to build and destroy – not just companies but whole countries.”

He added: “Never has the flow of information and ideas, of hard news and reasoned comment, been more important. The force of our democratic beliefs is a key weapon in the war against religious fanaticism and the terrorism it breeds.”

Strong stuff, eh? Oh, and the identity of Mr. X? None other that the Digger himself, Rupert Murdoch, now the proud owner of MySpace.com.

Fukuyama vs. Levi

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The French chic-intellectual Bernard-Henri Levi has written a book about contemporary America entitled American Vertigo in which he says rude things about Las Vegas. Francis Fukuyama was cross about this. Here’s the entertaining exchange between the two savants.