Unintended consequences: why Windows’ new browser choice screen will only help Chrome

Me at Techradar:

What we’ve got, then, isn’t a case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted: it’s a case of locking the stable door after the horse has evolved opposable thumbs, learnt to drive cars and driven through the stable in a Challenger tank. It’s far too late for Netscape and Microsoft’s browser share will never recapture its near-total control of the internet.

It’s not going to make much difference to the minority browsers, either.

Could Spotify work for ebooks?

As long term readers will know, I’m amazed by the way in which the music business spent more than ten years missing every business opportunity the Internet brought them, effectively handing their entire business over to the pirates. Services such as Spotify should have turned up a long time ago.

Could the same kind of thing work for ebooks? Is there enough ad money to go round? Do book readers want to social network?

we have real-world equivalents for both its free and subscriber services. Libraries give books away for nothing – or seem to; in reality authors get a little bit of money in the form of Public Lending Right (PLR) royalties, a gap that online ad revenues could easily plug – while book clubs have offered heavily discounted prices to subscribers for decades.

Could similar ideas work online?

Facebook is the budget airline of tech

A year ago today, I said that Facebook had jumped the shark. Now, I’m eating humble pie. Sort of.

So, Facebook is brilliant, I’m a great big numpty and everything in social networking land is groovy.

Not so fast.

Facebook isn’t popular because it’s good. It’s popular because it’s popular.

Facebook is the budget airline of tech.

Other people’s privacy

I meant to blog this earlier and completely forgot: it’s a typically incisive piece by Nicholas Carr on Google, Facebook and privacy.

Reading through these wealthy, powerful people’s glib statements on privacy, one begins to suspect that what they’re really talking about is other people’s privacy, not their own. If you exist within a personal Green Zone of private jets, fenced off hideaways, and firewalls maintained by the country’s best law firms and PR agencies, it’s hardly a surprise that you’d eventually come to see privacy more as a privilege than a right. And if your company happens to make its money by mining personal data, well, that’s all the more reason to convince yourself that other people’s privacy may not be so important.

CES 2010: technology and a horrible bum disease

I’ve been following the more interesting developments at this week’s CES gadget frenzy, and naturally I’ve been writing about them too. First up, comparing Steve Ballmer to anal unpleasantness.

Every day, Apple shareholders wake up and thank their lucky stars that their chosen firm’s CEO isn’t Steve Ballmer. The Gordon Brown of tech could make even the Apple Tablet as desirable as some horrible bum disease.

Also, how tech can make teenagers’ lives miserable.

Parental controls are in everything. They’re in your Sky box, in your games console. They’re in Windows 7 and Snow Leopard. If they want to, your folks can even prevent you from doing anything vaguely interesting or useful on your iPhone in case you might see a word such as “tits”. And now they’re in your car.

Isn’t that awful?

Not to mention, Why Apple and Google should show at CES.

What we’d like to see is for Google and Apple to embrace CES, to join in the fun, to remember that consumer electronics are first and foremost about entertainment.

It’d be brilliant – the tech Glastonbury, and we don’t mean one of the rubbish years where everyone pretends to like Tom Jones.

They could heckle Steve Ballmer, deliver jaw-dropping keynotes and wake up in strange rooms with Steve Jobs missing, a baby in the cupboard and Mike Tyson’s tiger in the bathroom.

Last but not least: why comparing Android versus iPhone to PC versus Mac is, well, a great big load of shite.

“Technology tastemakers are thrilled with the platform’s open-ness”, Blodget asserts, waggling an accusing finger at Big Bad Apple and its treatment of developers. That’s irrelevant. Ogg Vorbis is open and thoroughly approved by technology tastemakers. When was the last time anybody without a beard ripped their CDs into that format?

And while risible, Apple’s treatment of the odd developer is only of interest to a few developers.

Is Android pretty nifty? Will it gain market share? Will a few iPhone refuseniks buy Nexus Ones? Yes, definitely and undoubtedly. Is the iPhone about to tank? Don’t be silly.

Google, Apple and Microsoft. It’s war!

A fun wee piece I wrote for PC Plus has ventured online:

Back in the good old days, Microsoft did desktops, Google stuck to search and Apple made toys for people in polo necks. No more.

The superpowers of the technology world are at war, and like real wars, the battle is happening on several fronts. They’re fighting on the desktop, they’re fighting on mobile phones, they’re fighting in the browser and they’re fighting in your front room.

Who will prevail, and who will end up in a bunker?

Facebook and privacy: who has time for this shit?

Nice piece by Danny Sullivan on Facebook’s new privacy settings:

I don’t have time for this. I don’t have time to try and figure out the myriad of ways that Facebook may or may not want to use my information. That’s why I almost shut down my entire account this week. It would be a hell of a lot easier than this mess.

Facebook and Google simply don’t get privacy

Me, Techradar:

What they don’t seem to understand is that online privacy is like curtains: you don’t block the windows because you’re running a meth lab or a brothel in your house; you block them because you don’t want weirdoes peering through the window when you’re watching TV Burp.

Unemployment? There’s an app for that

Smartphone apps are great – unless they’re putting you out of business. Today’s Techradar op/ed:

If you can scan the barcode on a flat-screen TV, a fridge, a Fimbles DVD or anything else you’re thinking of buying, you can instantly discover where there’s a better deal. It could be the shop next door, or a website. That’s seriously bad news for high street shops, because the internet will undercut them almost every time.

Digital Britain isn’t accessible enough

A new post on Techradar, based on one blogger’s unhappy experiences of accessibility – both online and in the real world:

“What will it take take for Deaf and Disabled people to be a real part of so called Digital Britain?” Smith says. “Why do we have to fight for our access needs so much? Where are there no live subtitles streaming online at conferences? Where’s the audio description? Why aren’t websites compatible with screen readers? Why can’t conferences get the access right?”

They’re good questions. Does anybody have the answers?