Frozen Business Models (A Parable)
An ice cream shop made the best pistachio ice cream around. It was the only flavour of ice cream it made. For years it sold well but one day sales started to decline. Some of the customers told the shop owner they should think of serving different flavours. But pistachio had sold well for years so the ice cream shop continued to make only pistachio. The ice cream shop told its customers that if they didn’t buy more pistachio ice cream, the shop would go out of business and they’d never again taste their pistachio ice cream. Some of…
BBC R&D Videos Unfirewalled
I previously wrote about the BBC Video Firewall which seemed a bit strong for R&D videos. Well, the lads at BBC R&D have put some of their videos up on their new web site. On their web site the videos are viewable outside of the UK. The same videos on their blog are not viewable outside the UK. Ah, platforms. The interesting ones are about the move to London from Kingswood - embedded below.
A Look At China’s Gadget Markets
Dan Chung (The Guardian and DSLR News Shooter) has shot a video of the Zhongguancun gadget city in Beijing. He shot the video to test his new Canon 550D cameras. But it is of interest to a geek audience because it shows what China’s gadget/electronic markets are like. They’re huge multi-floored malls in which you can get everything you need to satisfy your inner geek.
Shanghai’s Odd Weather Continues
Shanghai’s bizarre weather continues Shanghai Daily is predicting this winter will be the longest this century. I can believe it. It is currently cold, raining and thundering outside.
2.1B SMSs Per Day
According to the China Daily an average of 2.1 billion SMS messages are sent per day in China. Imagine the infrastructure required to support such volume. The monitoring systems must be huge! Gotta go and delete some junk Chinese SMSs from my phone…
Weight: The Other Way To Sell Books
The Sound Of Sites
There’s A Standard For That
Nice cup of tea and a biscuit? There’s a standard for that. British Standard 6008 available from the BSI for a mere GBP 32 or for free on Scribd and from this Hacker News thread. But wait, British standards are not enough. It is also an International Standard - ISO 3103. It turns out ISO have a whole range of tea related standards. Good to see our taxes being put to good use.