Buried treasures

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Quentin has been clearing out his files and he came on this — a little essay I wrote for the Observer about his role in the invention of the webcam. It was one of the most rewarding pieces I’ve ever written because it was what caused me to meet him, thereby launching a great friendship, an unending series of gadget wars (in which each tries to bankrupt the other by buying gizmos) and a fascinating sequence of not-for-profit joint enterprises (not all of which were intentionally charitable!) Sometimes journalism is its own reward.

PDF of the article here.

The Kony video: an ethical virus?

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My take on the Kony video.

According to YouTube, 60 hours of video material are uploaded to it every minute – an hour a second. In the midst of such abundance, how can anything get noticed? Attention is now the scarcest commodity in cyberspace – which explains why virality is so craved by those with things to sell or messages to transmit. In that sense, the most significant thing about the Kony video is that it represents the most successful exploitation of virality to date. But when you delve deeper, it turns out that its success owes something to network theory as well as to storytelling craft.

Many years ago, the Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter published a seminal article in the American Journal of Sociology on the special role of “weak ties” in networks – links among people who are not closely bonded – as being critical for spreading ideas and for helping people join together for action.

An examination of the spread of the Kony video suggests that one weak tie in particular may have been critical in launching it to its present eminence. Her name is Oprah Winfrey and she tweeted: “Have watched the film. Had them on show last year” on 6 March, after which the graph of YouTube views of the video switches to the trajectory of a bat out of hell. Winfrey, it turns out, has 9.7 million followers on Twitter.

The venerable PC: not dead yet

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This morning’s Observer column.

Unless you have been holidaying on Mars, you will have gathered that Apple launched a new version of its iPad last Wednesday. They’re refusing to call it the iPad3 but everyone else is. I’d be more inclined to call it the iPad2S, following the nomenclature the company has adopted for its mobile phones. That’s because, no matter how the Apple Reality Distortion Field spins it, the latest iPad is really just an evolutionary advance on its predecessors.

Granted, it has a significantly better display, a more powerful processor (therefore better graphics performance), a better camera, which will record HD video, and a wider range of mobile connectivity options. But otherwise, it’s the mixture as before – though that didn’t stop the Apple website being swamped on Wednesday evening, presumably by folks anxious to pre-order the newest new thing. (Memo to Apple: why not set up a system whereby customers’ salaries are paid directly to the company and they are then issued with food stamps and other necessities as the need arises?)

Quote of the Day

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 “If you can imagine something, then you can build it.”

— Ray Ozzie, formerly Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect.

This  is the most succinct articulation I know of the essence of software. 

Our once and future King

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Verily, you couldn’t make this up. Passing a sweetshop in Cambridge I came upon a tasteful window display showing the two principals in the Windsor-Middleton merger rendered in jellybeans. Not having a wide-angle lens, I had to be content with Himself — and the reflection of the Belisha Beacon in the shop window.

Swamped by iPad3?

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Interesting: it’s now 21.38 on March 7, just over three and a half hours since Apple announced the iPad3 and their website is clearly being swamped — to the point where they have had to put up a static page.

(Image from GDGT’s excellent live blog of the presentation.)

In the presentation, CEO Tim Cook claimed that Apple had sold 15.4 million iPads in the last quarter. That’s more than the number of PCs sold by any of the big computer manufacturers.

Other interesting factoids from the presentation: iPad, iPhone, and iPod sales accounted for 76% of Apple’s revenue during that quarter, and the company sold more than 172 million of these devices in total last year. In comparison, all PC makers combined shipped about 350 million PCs last year.