Tag Archives: Companies
ebay.com.au removing reserve function for auctions
Posted on 05. Jul, 2004
Interesting, good move I reckon:
Google sued over Orkut bug replication feature
Posted on 05. Jul, 2004
http://www.theregister.co.uk/...
Dixons closes doors of 106 UK stores
Posted on 03. May, 2004
Since moving to the UK, I've found Dixons stores handy for going in and looking at a range of products available in certain electronic categories. However when it comes to the price, they've consistently been the highest priced electronics retailers around, even after attempting to negotiate with their often rude and arrogant sales staff. For example, PDA's we priced a couple of months back were as much as an amazing GBP120 more expensive at Dixons versus buying online at a reputable online site such as expansys.com. It's no surprise Dixons are in trouble, their pricing is set to extract the maximum amount of money from unsuspecting consumers blinded by advertising, who don't realise there are much better deals available elsewhere. I guess this shows that UK consumers are not so stupid after all, avoiding Dixons high pricing, and opting for discount retailers with less glitzy stores.
http://www.vnunet.com/...
1 000 000 000 * log(10) * e = 2.71828183
Posted on 30. Apr, 2004
Google IPO calculator ;)
http://www.google.com/...
Google’s IPO seeks natural logarithm
Posted on 30. Apr, 2004
WIRED: Kiss Your Cubicle Goodbye
Posted on 25. Feb, 2004
There's an interesting feature in the February pulp WIRED covering a few different perspectives on the whole Indian IT outsourcing debate, along with some sobbering statistics of predicted outsourcing by 2007. I haven't got time to write a summary or review of the several page article now, go read it yourself. The bottom line was that we should all adapt and look for new opportunities. February WIRED won't be on the shelves for too much longer, so you better be quick.
IBM’s record patent run now into its second decade
Posted on 04. Feb, 2004
Interesting:
Baring Brothers & Co. Technical Note on Rogue Trader Nicholas Leeson
Posted on 30. Dec, 2003
As the building I'm currently sitting in in London's financial district is the former Baring's Bank building, I thought I'd Google up a bit of history on what happened. This article from Thunderbird, a publication of The American Graduate School of International Management, provides a nice summary of how Leeson accumulated loses of US$1.39 billion. The postscript is interesting as well as I hadn't realised ING bought Baring's for only one pound sterling, and also payed off US$1 billion in debts.
http://www.t-bird.edu/...
Royal Mail strikes cripple London
Posted on 31. Oct, 2003
Royal Mail continues to be held ransom by the unions and their rat bag workers. We haven't had any mail deliveries since last Friday and now they've actually started sealing post boxes up in London to stop the backlog. This is their second October strike, and extremely frustrating as I'm waiting on the return of my final marked essays to review before my uni exams next week. We're also waiting on some bills that should have arrived this week so we can finish off opening bank accounts etc. I tended to agree with the first strike regarding a London living allowance, but this unofficial action triggered by some obscure dispute is just pathetic. If they don't return to work by Monday they should fire all the strikers and give their jobs to people who want to work.
http://www.royalmailgroup.com/...
Paul Vixen on SiteFinder
Posted on 24. Sep, 2003
Paul Vixie, 20 year veteran of the Internet, co-author of BIND discusses Verisign's domain wild-carding for SiteFinder:
As the pressure and law suits mount on Verisign, I hope they back down. Verisign, wow.. I used to think so highly of that company, now.. gee. [via slashdot]
http://www.onlamp.com/...
Verisign’s SiteFinder (UPDATED)
Posted on 23. Sep, 2003
I totally disagree with Verisign's SiteFinder service, it makes me angry just thinking about the massive abuse of power demonstrated by Verisign in redirecting all failed web site lookups in the .com and .net tlds to Verisign's SiteFinder web site. This is probably the most exploitative abuse of power ever seen by a core provider on the internet. Verisign have taken a massive massive dive in my opinion. Monopoly power is a dangerous thing. Verisign should be stopped at all costs.
UPDATE: It's even worse than I had originally thought, they are actually selling sponsored listings on SiteFinder, showing that SiteFinder is nothing more than a money spinner:
This is absolutely disgusting, essentially Verisign have decided they can make advertising dollars off every unallocated domain name in .com and .net namespace.
Also, I wonder if SiteFinder is appropriately multilingual? Returning a US English only error message rather than an error popup generated by the user's browser in the user's operating system locale would be extraordinarily arrogant. I'm betting Verisign are only returning SiteFinder results in English.. nice one Verisign.
As anger develops over the implications of SiteFinder the Verisign brand will lose much respect, I'm amazed they could be so bold and stupid to do such a thing. I expected much more from Verisign, but they've shown they're nothing more than an exploitative cheesy web advertising company. Go ICANN, kick their ass!
Verisign have made a fundamental change to the way the web works and have abused the trust of the internet community by attempting to generate revenue in this way. Verisign will certainly never ever get my business or personal custom again, I wonder if I can get a refund from Verisign Australia on the S/MIME certificate I renewed last week? I no longer wish to be in anyway associated with the Verisign brand.
There are a lot of angry slashdotters discussing Verisign and their "sleazy" monopolistic practices too.
http://www.verisignsuckass.com/...
Hutchinson dials 3 for disaster
Posted on 30. Jun, 2003
There's an interesting piece over at Crikey on my new favourite laughing piece, the absolute disaster that is "3". While I agree their $99.95 all-you-can-eat voice plan is a great idea, and will hopefully send a stern message to the likes of Telstra and Optus who are milking the mobile market for every last cent, the data pricing and other promised benefits of 3G that would make me switch are still ridiculously overpriced. The article also skirts around the problems with Orange 2G, and while it doesn't quite hit on the reasons Orange never took off, I think it's due in part to creating strategic handset supply alliances with second rate mobile handset manufacturers such as Motorola, NEC and Samsung. Potential customers used to market leading Nokia and Ericsson range of mobiles would choose a network that offered these handsets, rather than the second tier Orange branded products. Hutchinson doesn't seem to realise this was one of the reasons they had so few subscribers, and have gone and made exactly the same mistake with 3G by offering only Motorola and NEC handsets. It amazes me how little Orange and now "3" understand the Australian market after all this time operating within it.
http://www.crikey.com.au/...
Intel’s clever Centrino campaign
Posted on 09. Apr, 2003
Full-marks to Intel for the Centrino promotional campaign running on Australian TV at the moment. This is a big lesson for other wireless players in building product and brand awareness. For a vast majority of consumers who are not tech savvy in all things wireless, the Centrino campaign makes it sound like Intel just invented wireless. This struck me at some drinks a few weeks ago that was made up mostly of Psychologists when one of them commented on wanting to find a wireless ISP, and another said, "oh wireless, you mean that new Centrino no wires stuff that lets you connect and use your laptop anywhere". The implications of this are significant as consumers will not look for Wi-Fi or 802.11b, they'll look for Centrino and pay a premium. Associating a specific brand name with a technology in the minds of the consumer takes lots of marketing $$ and repeated exposure that few companies can afford. It also becomes a very hard association for competitors to break. Very clever Intel.
http://www.intel.com/...
The Civil War Inside Sony
Posted on 29. Jan, 2003
Good read, although written in typical WIRED style (ie. focus on the geek visionary trying to make a difference): "Sony Music wants to entertain you. Sony Electronics wants to equip you. The problem is that when it comes to digital media, their interests are diametrically opposed." [via The Fix]
http://www.wired.com/...
WebFlicks
Posted on 30. Dec, 2002
The NetFlix business model has been in Australia as WebFlicks since July 2002, and before that as DVD Rent started in September 1998, poor marketing as I'd never heard about it before today. Hire three DVDs for $8.95 week, post them back whenever you want to get the next three sent out. The model works well in my opinion as once the initial honeymoon period is over, people will get pretty slack in returning them, ending up holding onto them for weeks while still paying the $8.95 per week on them. Although I guess whether they hold the DVDs for a long period of time or get new ones isn't really an issue, other than reducing postage costs as they're still making the $8.95 per month. Interesting anyway, one to watch. [via CM]
http://webflicks.com.au/...
IBM to buy Rational
Posted on 09. Dec, 2002
Interesting. The SBS documentary on the founding of IBM in 1924 was also quite interesting, particularly on how IBM's German office operating during WWII, and seeing the leadership style and culture created in the organisation by the founder Thomas Watson Sr.
Do you have a bearing on that?
Posted on 09. Oct, 2002
KPMG Consulting becomes BearingPoint, adding to Braxton formerly Deloitte Consulting, Monday formerly PwC Consulting now IBM Global Services, and Accenture formerly Anderson Consulting. Looks to me like they're all following Accenture. So who is left? Ernst & Young/Cap Gemini.. it'll be interesting to see if they buckle under the pressure and rename their consulting division (sorry do they have one? - no time to research :). [via Hear Ye!]
http://www.bearingpoint.com/...
Motion Posters
Posted on 08. Oct, 2002
I'd totally forgotten about the Motion Posters I'd seen in Italy. We were on the metro in Milan when I happened to glance out the window and see what I thought was a moving projection of a man running next to the train, which ended with some advertising showing a box of vitamins. I'd spent ages pondering how they did this, a projector on the train wouldn't have been feasible and a series of projectors down the tunnel also wouldn't work. The actual approach was incredibly simple and so effective that I didn't even realise that's how it was done, it's just a series of stop motion posters, that when viewed from the window of a speeding train looks like a single fluid animation. Great idea, unfortunately they wouldn't work in Sydney tunnels with the brightly lit Tangara carriages and reflective tinted windows. [via clippings]
http://www.motionposter.com/...
Proximity wins a Technical Emmy
Posted on 04. Oct, 2002
Which ADSL provider?
Posted on 02. Oct, 2002
I'm finding it very difficult to dig up useful company background and financials on Datafast, Internode and Netspace. Anyone help me out?
