pencil note

Alex Salmond's Divorce Negotiations

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Imagine that you are the husband in a long term marriage. You have been married as long as you can remember and it’s been a successful partnership that’s created enormous strength, power and influence, some would say the forth best in the entire world. One or two would even say - the best.

Your wife though starts to want more independence from you, she knows life will be tougher on her own but somehow believes that the benefit of being in sole control of her destiny makes up for the loss of power, influence and the hardship of going it alone.

She tells you that she is trying to decide whether to go it alone and that she’ll make her mind up in the autumn of 2014. You ask her if you have a say in the decision but she says, no - it’s a matter for her alone.

Then she says she thinks she wants to leave you but she expects to keep your money, use you for security and be able to come and go whenever she pleases. She is not saying that she has fully decided yet but this is what she is minded to do and you’ll just have to lump it.

Of course there comes a point in this sort of dialogue when the Husband says, enough - actually I’m deciding that I don’t want to be treated like this so you can bugger off and by the way I’m keeping my own money and you can work out your own security.

The Scottish people need to be very careful right now as this is the way the SNP’s dialogue is starting to feel to the rest of the UK. Citizens outside of Scotland have so far been very patient in allowing the people of Scotland to have a rather selfish rumination as to whether they wish to divorce the UK for two real reasons; 1) Because most feel it’s unlikely that the majority of Scottish people would want to do such a foolish thing and 2) Not may folks outside of Scotland really care.

But things are changing as the debate evolves. The rest of the UK is getting a growing sense of unease at being excluded from the decision about the future of their nation. More importantly, the arrogance of thinking that anyone (or nation) in a long term partnership can chose to keep the best bits of the relationship, reject the rest and have it their own way is starting raise anger outside of Scotland and there is a real danger here.

I hear increasingly voices along the lines of:

I don’t really care whether Scotland is independent or not. I’d rather things stayed as they are but I’m not that fussed. However if they do want to be independent then they can sort out their own currency, not piggy back on Sterling (good luck with Euro by the way), they can re-apply for EU membership but if that involves having to join the Schengen agreement then it means a physical boarder to the rest of the UK. They can sort out their own security and we’ll relocate Trident back to Devonport but don’t expect UK or NATO support if you are not prepared to take your fair share of Army and Nuclear responsibilities and finally, the clue to who is accountable for the 50 Billion in remaining liabilities of Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank of Scotland is in their names, so don’t expect any of the UK’s financial might to help you with that.

In short if you want to go, then Bugger off but don’t expect any love, help or support - that’s what happens when relationships end in the real world.

There is just a danger that as the sensible majority of Scotland vote to remain in the UK - the rest of UK (and remember that outside of Scotland - that has been a Tory majority UK for more than 20 years) will decide that they are fed up with such selfish behaviour and ease them toward the door anyway.

I love Scotland, I love the UK. I’m proud to be Scottish and more proud to British, so let’s hope not.

With the latest polls showing more than 70% of us want to stay in the UK, it might be wise for the sensible majority of Scots to have a louder voice in helping the our fellow UK citizens understand that Mr Salmond’s selfish demands are not representative of the nation as a whole.

Taxing questions

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:12:00 +0000

In the UK the debate around what to do with large multinational corporations that make plenty of money but don’t pay any corporation tax in the UK rumbles on. Apple, Amazon, Google and Starbucks have been in the firing line with politicians lining up to criticise the practice of domiciling a European operation in the lowest tax location and then using inter-company charging to ensure that profit is only materialised in the lowest tax domain (normally Ireland or Luxembourg)

The Daily Mail reports today:

Ex-UK [Starbucks] boss Cliff Burrows who now oversees the firm’s Americas operation and has shares worth £7.2million, earned £6.5million. UK director John Culver was paid £3.8million over two years and owns £4.7million in shares.

Last week Starbucks, Amazon and Google were slammed over measures they have taken, within the law, to reduce their tax liabilities. Bosses of the three giants were grilled by MPs over how they managed to pay little or no corporation tax on their UK operations. All three denied they were engaged in aggressive tax avoidance.

Business secretary Vince Cable yesterday indicated that action can be expected from Chancellor George Osborne, who delivers his Autumn statement on December 5.

Speaking on BBC1, Mr Cable told The Andrew Marr Show: ‘Our own tax authorities have got to be very tough on things like royalty payments, which is where a lot of the subterfuge takes place.’ He said it was ‘completely unacceptable where there is systematic abuse taking place’.

It would be great if one politician had the courage to come forward with the truth. We live in a globalised economy. If you want the tax income, you have to reduce your tax rates to beat the competing countries - otherwise moan all you want but the world’s biggest and best will just locate (and pay their taxes) elsewhere.

MacBook Pro 13 Inch Retina First Impressions

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 09:53:35 +0000

I guess it’s fair to say that I love tech. A quick rummage through my cupboards would betray my enthusiasm (some might say obsession) with boxes full of old Psions, Palms, Newtons and laptops - even a couple of Sony micro PC’s. But whilst its is true to say I love tech, there are actually only very few individual products that I love. There are many that I enjoy using, admire, respect but to love a device, for me, it has to have 2 unique attributes; firstly it has to constantly exceed my expectations in it’s daily use and secondly, it has to have a design that stirs certain feelings when you cast your eyes on it or when it sits in your hand.

That perfect combination of function and form.

For this reason, even though I think they are brilliant devices, I don’t love my iPhone or iPad. They pretty much nail the form part of the equation but don’t exceed my expectations every day because of the compromises they make. Just today, for example, my iPad let me down when someone sent me a zip file I couldn’t open and even after all this time I’m still mad with it for not having a file system and for changing every lower case i to an upper case I without asking me! And the phone, well the audio quality always disappoints me when I listen to it - which I do every day. I’m prepared to live with the compromises - I just don’t love them.

If I had to name three devices that I love. My top three would be: The Linn Sondek LP12 turntable, my Sony Walkman pro cassette player and my Apple 11” MacBook Air. I don’t even use those first two items every day (in the Sony’s case - ever) but like old girlfriends, they will always have a special place in my heart.

I bought my 11” MacBook Air in Vegas whilst attending CES 2010. It was replacing one of the first generation Airs, which whilst a masterpiece of thin design was pretty much unusable for anything other than a bit of email. Even a few minutes of flash video from the web made the original Air hotter than a fox in a forest fire so I didn’t have high expectations for the 11” but I was prepared to try the compromise as it was a brilliant design and unbelievably light.

From the moment I turned it on, it exceeded my expectations. This was my first SSD experience and despite it’s modest processor and RAM specs, it was the fastest computer I had ever used including the big clunking Mac pro computer on the desk in my office, which at that time was still using spinning drives. The way I’d define fast is a little different from the benchmark specs about how fast a computer can render in photoshop, It’s about the every day speed of the little things - changing a wifi network, launching iPhoto, how many tabs can load sensibly in Safari and in this respect the modest 11” Air rocked. It’s display was a higher res than anything I’d had before and I was thrilled with how usable the small screen was.

A couple on months in, I found myself on a plane between the UK and the USA doing radical last minute changes to a presentation I was due to give when I got off. I was simultaneously rendering new titles & overlaying new audio into video in iMovie, embedding the the results into Powerpoint along with images from a USB stick and the humble Air just did it. No failing batteries, no spinning beach balls, no overheating, no hysteria. This became a device I loved. I take it everywhere when I travel and when I’m not at my desk at home, more often than not I’m carrying around with me like small magazine. I prefer it to the iPad for everything except reading newspapers and books.

The machine I had was the absolutely lowest spec, memory & storage and for about a year I have been looking to upgrade it. (Every time I download a movie - I get the dreaded your startup disk is almost full message) Minded to the Mac release cycle, I decided to wait until the summer of this year when I planned to buy a maxed out 11” and that’s when the 15” Retina spoiled my plans. I spent serious time in the Apple store with a 15” Retina in one hand and the an 11” Air in the other and came to the tough decision that neither would now do. The 15” was just two big to travel 2/3 days a week and I knew that having a non-retina display was too much to give up so I made the very grown up decision to wait for a 13” Retina to come along. 4 months latter it did. I got mine today - the mid point 256GB i5 - and here are a few first impressions.

The punchline - It’s not a 13” Retina MacBook Pro it’s a 13” Retina MacBook Air.

I don’t mean this in a pejorative way. I don’t need my mobile machine to be a pro machine so I’m cool with it. I just think it’s a function of Apple’s naming conventions that they’ve ended up in a funny place here. If you look at the specs and say to yourself what would I change if I was making a 13” retina machine that had decent battery life, that was the thinnest we could make it and had the minimum specs to still work - you would end up with this machine. It’s not an Air because of the physics of the battery requirements but to all intents and purposes - it is. Conversely, Apple could have made this machine a lot more “Pro” - Quad core processors, discrete GPU, 16/32 GB of Ram could all have been included, but haven’t been. These things are in the 15” model with better value for money than the 13”.

For power/business users - If you want one machine that can replace a desk top and be used in different locations around the home and occasionally travel then the 15” is the no-brainer option but if you want a machine that can be genuinely mobile and perhaps be used in combination with a big machine at home then I think there is a real choice between which compromise suits you best:

An 11” Air which gives you super light weight at the cost of display.

A 13” Retina which gives you super display at the cost of weight and bulk.

After 1 day I can report that the display is bloody brilliant. It works fine at the top scaled spec of 1680 by 1050 and for the first time I can use two major apps side by side without tabbing which is much more productive for me. There is an ominous warning - “Using scaled resolution may affect performance” on the settings screen which pertains to that written above about how far away this really is from a Pro machine.

It’s also a lot heavier to my hands than the 11” Air. It feels like a computer again. The best way I can describe it - I wouldn’t think twice, if I was standing a metre away from the sofa about tossing my Air onto it like a magazine, it feels light enough that it will never come to any harm but I’d never toss this machine, it feels heavy enough to bounce off and make a hole in floor.

How these two compromises will trade off over time - I have no idea. It will take a month or two to know and least one go of that long run between terminals at O’Hare with my case hanging off my shoulder.

In terms of speed and heat, so far so good. I have had chance to run some HD video with no noticeable warming. Battery life is loads better than my 11” Air. Speed is a bit more difficult to judge as I have been doing all those set up jobs you do on a new laptop and that’s a reminder of one of Apple’s two present deadly sins - more stuff being modal in it’s operation. (The other being skeuomorphism of course)

As I set up 10 or 15 email accounts in preferences, I just want to bang in the SMTP and IMAP server settings and move on. I don’t want to have to wait whilst each one is tested over a slow internet connection watching a spinning beach ball. This OSX not iOS - use a background process not a modal process. It used to be that the only app that gave me the beach ball of death was MS Office suite but actually the latest version is almost faultless. Now it’s only Apple settings apps (which all seem to keep you on hold whilst the app communicates with the server), Safari and iTunes giving me the dreaded ball - in iTunes’ case for about half of my total use time. Hopefully this is about to be fixed but I digress.

It generally feels pretty snappy, faster than my Air and about the same as my New/old Mac Pro which runs a 500GB SSD. The first time I opened iPhoto it took 25 seconds to launch but subsequent times it’s about 1.5 seconds.

One other thought - When switching from reading this draft which I typed on the Retina to my desk top to post it. Suddenly the 27” cinema display looks really rough. I’d never noticed this before but today I can see all the flaws in the text.

Much more to report after a few weeks use rather than a few hours but to the question of will I ever love this device? We’ll see, I doubt it - I can already foresee a 10/11” retina device, weighing less than a kilo and sexier than Keira Knightley landing somewhere in 2014 and I think that will probably be the next love.

JSW

Charmer - Aimee Mann - A Review

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 12:10:04 +0100

In the sprit of all proficient reviewers - I first should declare an interest. Aimee Mann has been an important part of my life for the best part of twenty years or more accurately, her music has.

Like many, I discovered Aimee Mann through her, ‘4th of July’ single and the accompanying album, ‘Whatever’. The music from this and the follow up album, ‘I’m with Stupid’ was essentially a key part of the sound track to my twenties. I have lost count of the number of people I introduced to these two works, explaining that they were quite simply the work of the best female singer song writer around.

Most folk agreed. Occasionally, someone didn’t, which meant they didn’t have enough taste to remain a good friend.

Mann’s early work had a quality that’s almost impossible to describe, a balance of melody and energy combined with a poignancy of lyrics, delivered with a lightness of touch that allows instant accessibility but with an impact that gets deeper, more fascinating and more captivating the more you listen. Others achieve this, Bernard Butler, Van Morrison, Mike Scott and of course, Lennon & McCartney but 99 % of artists don’t. Or at least don’t consistently.

The albums that followed, Bachelor No2 & Lost in space continued this brilliant evolution, delivering songs that stand the test of time and still make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, even after the 1000th listen. If you want to fill yourself with energy listen to ‘Longshot’, if you want to make yourself smile listen to ‘Ghost World’ or ‘Stupid Thing’ and if you want to take a moment to dwell on the raw reality of human relationships listen to ‘Par for the course’ or ‘Wise up’

‘I’ve Had It’ is my permanent sound track for New York. I have never travelled in from JFK without this piping from my phone to my headphones or back in the day, ….my Walkman.

Lately though, Aimee and I have grown apart a little. Her two most recent works prior to ‘Charmer’, ‘Smilers’ and ‘The forgotten Arm’ just did not have the same impact. They are both proficient works and ones you should have in your collection but there were two things that kept them off my frequent play list; The style of the melody moved a little from California pop to a more country feel and the songs themselves became a little too heavy or bleak in their lyrical content. I can admire a story about a drug addict loser, with dissipating health and a tendency to beat his wife but I don’t enjoy listening to it every day in my daily commute.

So, it was with more than a little apprehension that I pressed play on ‘Charmer’, Mann’s latest release. I’d seen the fantastic video release of ‘Labrador’ and dared to hope that this album could be a return to her brilliant best. It’s better than that. It filled my heart with joy at the thought of the pleasure most of the simple tracks of ‘Charmer’ will bring in years to come.

There are some instant dazzlers in addition to ‘Labrador’. ‘Disappeared’ has a chorus that falls right in with Mann’s best work and a retro synth line that’s mesmerizing and ‘Crazy Town’ is another of her super pop works that would crack a smile on the face of the coolest hipster. It’s worth getting the iTunes version for the bonus track, ‘Brothers’ Keeper’ which is delivered in the vaudeville style of the best of the 90’s work.

The standard of musicianship on all of Mann’s work has always been incredibly high and ‘Charmer’ is no exception. What makes it so enchanting is that it’s delivered with a tone of understatement - you just never feel anyone has to try - and it’s all the better for it.

It isn’t perfect, ‘Slip and Roll’ recalls some of the issues I described about ‘Forgotten Arm’ and ‘Gumby’ is a little one paced but this is all relative. ‘Charmer’ will easily be one of the best albums you could buy this year.

If you are familiar with Mann’s work and maybe have just drifted away from it. Buy Charmer, it will remind you why she is one of the most important song writers around.

If you are not familiar with Mann’s work then I envy you. You must buy “Whatever’, ‘I’m with Stupid’ and ‘Charmer’ at once. Today. You’ll open a window into music that will change the quality of your life. Trust me, it will.

Unless, of course, you don’t have any taste.

PM says no to straight name calling

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 23:53:00 +0100

As reported by the Daily Telegraph

Nick Clegg’s office attempts to withdraw ‘bigot’ comment about opponents of gay marriage

Mr Clegg’s comments about “bigots” were issued at 3pm yesterday and, within a few minutes, they were being widely reported on the internet. At 4.30pm, Mr Clegg’s office issued an email asking to “recall” the original statement, then sent a new version of the speech. The amended text removed the word “bigots” and replaced it with “some people”.

Colin Hart, of the Coalition for Marriage, accused Mr Clegg of “intolerance” and said he was a “coward” for withdrawing the comments. He said: “If he believes that 70 per cent of the population who oppose his plans are bigots, he should say it, rather than trying to withdraw this disgraceful comments after press-releasing them.”

Anyone who has seen an episode of ‘The thick of it’ will be able to picture the phone call in the Whitehall office.

“The PM has just seen our plans for the Gay marriage speech and he says absolutely no ‘Bigots’”

“OK. Can someone phone Vince Cable then and tell him he can’t go to tonight’s speech?”

“No, he didn’t mean that, he meant take the word out!”

It’s funny when the political correctness turns to farce in this way but imagine if politicians were actually allowed to say what they think. How much more quickly would we be able to cut to the chase? Now I know that Nick Clegg believes 70% of his electorate and paymasters are bigots, I feel a little better about thinking, as I have for some time, that he is a vacuous fool not worthy of serious attention.

VA.

Revisiting Cook's choice on Browett

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:15:00 +0100

Many web commentators have posted about the poor judgement shown by John Browett in his first major call since his £36m appointment as head of Apple retail - as initially reported by ifoapplestore. In a nutshell, he dramatically cut staff costs at a time when everybody in the business could see growth was more important than efficiency at this point in Apple’s growth curve.

John Gruber:

“Even if the customer experience is compromised” are Allen’s words, summarising what he heard from his sources, not Browett’s. But if they’re accurate, it’s hard to conclude anything other than that Apple made a terrible decision hiring him.

Jim Dalrymple:

This has the stench of a man looking to make a name for himself, not someone that’s doing what’s best for Apple or more importantly, its customers. To take one of the most heralded retail experiences in the world and gut it, stripping it of everything that makes an Apple store what it is, just doesn’t make sense.

Back in February, pencil note posted this piece with the proposition that history will show that the appointment of Browett would be Cook’s first big mistake. At the time we said:

Worryingly, Browett’s skills honed at Wharton and Boston Consulting Group, lie in those same operational areas as Cook. At Tesco, it was said, that Browett could tell you the cost per unit of any piece of the supply chain but couldn’t instinctively prioritise the right things for customers.

The next telling thing, will be the way Cook responds to his bad call. A poor leader will hang in there hoping for a different outcome, a good one will act decisively and learn from the mistake.

The certainty of misery

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:25:23 +0100

On joining the board of a FTSE 50 company a decade ago, I recall a wizened old director had a favourite phrase, ‘People prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.’

He would wheel this phrase out whenever we had to make difficult decisions particularly in relation to job losses and restructuring. At the time, I thought it a little trite and convenient but actually, over the years, I have come to agree with it’s underlying meaning.

It’s undoubtedly true in relation to capital markets and it’s a truth that governments should minded to when considering the next steps in the Greek and wider Euro crisis.

I predicted in this blog a couple of months ago, that the lack of political support for austerity measures would probably spell the end of the latest rescue plan and ultimately Greece’s exit from the Euro. Whilst it gives no pleasure to see that materialising as Greeks decide to return to the polls today, thoughts do turn to what should happen next.

Most of the public political comment centres around the difficulties that will be encountered by the contraction of the European market and whilst it is true that this will be a big issue, it pails into insignificance compared to the issue that politicians don’t want to talk about - which is the contagion risk of defaulting debt in the range of 500 billion to 1 trillion Euros that will be suffered by other European (and worldwide) banks, businesses and ultimately European governments.

It’s time those governments grasped the nettle, remembered that, ‘People prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty’ and took some action that reflects the truth of this very difficult situation. They should agree that each of the 17 Euro countries move to their own shadow Euro (Greek Euro, Italian Euro, French Euro etc.). On a quarterly (or monthly) basis, each of these shadow Euro’s should have it’s exchange rate to the German Euro, decided and guaranteed by the ECB, with an explicit guarantee that the resources of all sovereign nations will be used to maintain this pegged value. The starting point would have the Greek Euro at say, 60% value, the Italian Euro at 95% value, the Spanish Euro at 90% value and pretty much all others at or close to 100% value. Each time the ECB had to make it’s calls on the exchange peg, it could make a judgement on whether the fiscal and monetary measures of each nation were working sufficiently to edge it closer to 100% parity or further away from the German Euro.

Over time, each individual currency can be managed to its correct position and a natural selection will take place as to which currencies remain, in what will look more like a Florin for those nations with the will for political as well as financial integration. Those that diverge, rather than converge, could then hive off into their own currency at the right rate, in a managed way, at the right time.

This would give two things, one the capital markets the way to price the risks and over what time periods, two, the surety that the eventual break up will be managed in an orderly, non-cataclysmic way.

Of course, as all banks are forced to re-value the assets and mark to market bond and CDS exposures, it will create an immense amount of misery but as we know, people prefer…..

Charing Cross Road

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:17:00 +0100

In the late eighties, I was in my early twenties and living in London for the first time in my life. I arrived in London aged 23, having grown up in a large city in Northern England and having spent my early working life in provincial towns. My employer transferred me to London from Scunthorpe. I was working in Hampstead and quickly bought a place by the river in Wapping.

I’d travelled quite extensively in the UK but living in London was different. Being in London was quite simply, a fucking revelation.

I’d always been a reader, a bit of a book worm. Before London, it felt like I had two different forms of consciousness; one where I escaped to my literature, the worlds of Le-Carre or Amis or Waugh and one where I plodded into work, dealt with small people, doing inconsequential things, in incidental towns. These people were nice, safe - they were people like me, I guess, but they were 1 million miles away from the exciting folks that inhabited the world of the books that I read, the music I heard and the films I watched.

On arrival in London these two worlds were smashed together with colossal force - they became one. It felt like I had stepped from the audience onto the stage. Real life was happening all around me and I could take part, participate and shape it. It became instantly obvious to me that London was where I was always meant to be. It was destiny, home, where the grown ups were, the real people. It made me giddy, cynical, experimental, more than occasionally unbearable but most of all, it inspired and excited me. It gave me a sense of potential and ambition. It made me realise that I could shape, even perhaps define events, rather than just read about them.

My days off work during those early years in London were marvellous. My girlfriend and I would wake early to the sounds of the river, stagger out to buy our first coffee to wash away the excess of the previous night and then (and this was the most delightful thing) we would wander. Wander without destination or without a plan. We’d set off on the south bank of the river, walking and talking and we would see where the city took us. Maybe to the Jazz of the Barbican, maybe to the second hand books of the South Bank centre, to the dodgy pubs of Soho, the landscapes of Turner at the Tate or to an impromptu music gig at the Worlds end in Finsbury Park.

The absolute luxury of this, it’s intoxication, was the abandon and intrigue of following your nose, letting one thing lead to another, watching the crowd, following the crowd and discovering, time after time, new experiences - art, sounds, tastes - Life. Not always good of course, some times a little scary or unpleasant but always exciting and often thrilling.

I’m older now. Living in the sticks with a couple of kids and big house in country. I still get a tiny whiff of the euphoric feeling when I pitch up in London for work but I get it more now in another place and that’s when I’m wandering through the almost infinite halls, corridors and possibilities of the web. I love having the time to lazily click from place to place, looking for the new, the innovative, the cool, the challenging, the inspiration.

It’s not quite Charring Cross road of 1989, you have make do without the smells and tastes. It’s not in 3D but occasionally - in fact, actually, most days, you come across something that’s really quite cool, that maybe changes just slightly, the way you think about stuff or the way you look at the world.

Occasionally, you come across something really cool. Like this - Theresa Couchman

The day interest rates started to rise

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 15:42:00 +0000

Lloyds group today confirmed that their base mortgage rate at their Halifax brand in the UK is to rise and this follows on from a similar announcement from RBS.

The BBC reports:

On Friday, RBS raised the rate on two of its mortgages from 3.75% to 4%.

The Halifax said the rise - from 3.5% to 3.99% - was due to the higher cost of raising funds for mortgages from both savers and the financial markets.

The changes come just a few days before the third anniversary of the Bank of England cutting its bank rate to a historic low of just 0.5%.

Simultaneously reports emerged of record petrol prices:

The weak pound has also been making oil, which is bought in US dollars, more expensive for British buyers.

The price of Brent crude oil hit a 43-month high on Thursday, peaking at $128.40 a barrel in New York.

Let this commentator go on the record and state that this is the inflection point. Today is the day that interest rates in the UK started to rise.

What Twitter should have done

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 11:36:00 +0000

The news this week that Twitter will be inserting Ad tweets into the time line that you view on your iPhone will not come as a surprise to most people. The punch line is called well in this Gigaom article by Mathew Ingram:

For Twitter, it’s about justifying the $8-billion market value it currently has as a result of raising funds from a host of venture investors such as Russia’s Yuri Milner.

It suddenly feels like the exciting adolescent companies Google, Facebook and Twitter, those bohemian prospects that had so much potential - companies that were helping break the mould of IBM and Microsoft, rejecting corporate drudgery and it’s inevitable side effects. These companies have grown up and started paying their mortgage like the rest of us.

At SxSW four years ago, using Twitter to communicate with fellow travellers felt cool, edgy and distinctly alternative. Now that same service will be serving up McDonald’s Ad tweets each day to the phones of 300 million users.

Of course this was inevitable, as the behaviours of ‘do the cool thing today, build the user base & pay tomorrow’ move to ‘Time to pay’. It is an analogue of the life stages of all of us.

It’s likely that the VC invested in Twitter will want to materialise a return through an IPO in 2013. It will probably IPO at a $10bn valuation and that in turn will require a bottom line of $1 bn with a 10%+ annual growth trajectory. This is all do-able but over time Twitter will feel more like watching prime-time commercial television and less like a personal, cutting edge communication tool.

The need to deliver this relentless growth to markets is probably the single greatest threat to the longevity of the popularity of Google, Facebook and Twitter as customers always ultimately dislike the things you have to do to keep growing the money machine.

But imagine if about 36 months ago, before Twitter’s valuation broke the $1 bn level, Dorsey had gone a different way and structured Twitter into a not for profit partnership or co-operative. Once you have your own $100m and your initial backers have been repaid 20 times money, legacy becomes more important to most people than the next $1,000m.

It could have been different.

I’d contend that the very best way to have secured Twitter’s enduring legacy would have been to free it from the shackles of those market economics. Once Twitter had critical mass, if all it had to do was pay for it’s operating costs and NPD, It could have grown the short messaging service, free from Ads (enough income could have generated by selling the data hose to corporates), and grown into the adjacent areas of being an invincible provider of social, email and search. Invincible because compared to Google, Facebook and others, it could have been the only one owned by it’s users, not needing to pollute it’s operations with Ads or privacy concerns, able to shape itself only worried about the needs of customers not by ‘where is the next $500m going to come from?’

It could have become the very internet itself.

It’s too late for Twitter but maybe food for though for next ‘Facebook’ where ever that might be in it’s evolution right now.

What Google should have done

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 10:26:00 +0000

Over the last week a small storm has broken out over the fact that Google has admitted to circumventing the security settings when Apple computer and iPhone users browsed the internet using Apple’s web browser, Safari.

The original story broke here in the Wall Street Journal. John Gruber, who authors one of the web’s most admired blogs, summarises the issue in this blog post before going on to explore how wrong Google’s actions were and whether any of the blame should actually lay with Apple - which is the defence being mounted by some Google supporters.

Mr Gruber writes:

What the WSJ discovered is that Google (and a few other ad networks) found a way to store third-party cookies in Safari and Mobile Safari even when the option was set only to accept cookies from visited websites, as it is by default.

No one is criticizing Google for using third-party tracking cookies in general. No one. What’s being criticized is Google devising and implementing a method to store third-party cookies in web browsers which are set not to accept third-party cookies. It didn’t happen by accident. Google wrote code specifically to circumvent this setting in Safari.

There is no doubt that what Google did was wrong. How wrong? Imagine this:

Your local supermarket, Tesco or Walmart or whomever, runs a long term promotion where customers that sign up to their loyalty card get a 5% discount. In exchange for giving them your details and allowing them to track your shopping behaviour, they lower the price and they fund this discount through selling your data to advertisers and suppliers. Now imagine, that without telling anyone, they started giving the same discount to those that had opted to keep their data private and not to join the loyalty card. For these customers they then follow them home, secretly collect their details, capture their habits and sell this data to suppliers. Imagine that they did this in a routine and systematic way, for every customer that said they would rather not be in the loyalty scheme, every time they shopped.

If this hypothetical scenario happened at any major retailer, there would be an enormous outcry followed by prosecutions and recriminations. People would be fired and people would probably go to jail.

What Google did was the e-commerce equivalent and there are two reasons why the outcry has been so much more muted. Firstly and mainly, because the majority of people don’t yet conceptualise the issues as clearly as they can for traditional physical retailers. Secondly, our sense of the rights, wrongs and value of privacy in the web space is much more under developed than it is for the physical world.

There is no doubt that what Google did was wrong but an equally interesting question is what should Google have done?

When they discovered that Apple’s default security settings prevented them from tracking customer behaviour in a way that allowed them to sell that data most efficiently, they shouldn’t have secretly written code to get around it. They should have done this.

The first time a person tried to conduct a Google search on an Apple computer, a dialogue box should appear that says:

Your web searches are free because we sell your data to advertisers to subsidise the cost of this service. Your computer presently has settings that prevent us from doing this most effectively. Do you wish to:

(A) Turn off these privacy settings, allow us to track your behaviour and give you free web searches.

(B) Keep your privacy settings on and subscribe at $10 a month to use our search service.

Google (and others) sense of overwhelming entailment to user data is driven by what they give in return. We have quickly lost sight of just how valuable it is to have an index of the entire worlds knowledge at our finger tips. 30 years ago, the same access to that data, at the same speed and accuracy, would have cost each user millions of dollars each time. Now we expect it for free but in reality it costs and it costs a lot.

It will remain free at the point of access but it’s time for the Google’s of this world to have a more upfront and honest conversation about what the real cost is to each of us.

Origins of pencil note

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:02:12 +0000

It’s about a month now since we fired up pencil note. The site has received a few ‘Where did you spring from?’ emails, so I thought it appropriate to give a bit of background.

Over the 2012 New Year, a few like minded friends kicked around the idea of jointly contributing to some sort of web space. We are loosely based in the UK but travel internationally through work. A couple of us have tried before, unsuccessfully, to maintain a blog individually, and a couple of us occasionally contribute to other blogs and publications through our professional commitments but we wanted more freedom to express our personal views.

We had a joint desire to share our thoughts and opinions somehow but always found constraints of time and managing professional conflicts prevented getting the necessary traction & momentum. (A few of us work at, what I guess many people would call, senior levels within our industries)

Our principles are to remain clear and simple with posts addressing the things we naturally debate and discuss when we are together at the dinner table. We don’t intend to be prolific, hopefully, just occasionally relevant.

Our ground rules are; don’t be mean about people, be honest, don’t nick stuff off others without proper attribution & only contribute when you have something interesting or insightful to say.

We agreed pencil note as a bit of a new years resolution, it fell to me to set it up and administer it, which I did by the end of January. I looked at Blogger and Word Press but went with Tumblr to get us going, as it seems the easiest to use and the more visually elegant & simple.

Since then we have put a few thoughts down as a bit of a warm up.

It is surprising that these have already attracted a bit of feedback. Thanks for this, it’s welcome including the criticism. Write(at)pencilnote.com is the address, if you have something important to get off your chest.

We have deliberately avoided publicity or using the usual web tricks to get noticed. If you think pencil note is interesting tell others, if not, well there are many other blogs out there.

Contribution to pencil note is by invitation only.

We have no interest in trying to monetise pencil note. It’s a hobby.

We hope you find it an interesting, provoking & stimulating hobby.

Editor.

RBS and the scale of the debt

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:29:10 +0000

A must hear interview with Stephen Hester on Radio 4 this morning. He put in a great performance describing today’s results announcement. It looks like RBS’ new favourite phrase is:

[The balance sheet..] is the largest time bomb ever assembled in history.

but the best factoid mustered by the PR team, that will have woken everyone from their breakfast slumber this morning was:

We have reduced the liabilities on the balance sheet by £700 bn. That’s twice the entire debt of Greece.

One company, of humble Scottish roots.

Teacher's pet

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:54:00 +0000

On the face of it, Michael Gove’s initiative to ban term time absence seems reasonable enough, even when reported through the Daily Telegraph’s increasingly sensationalist, Daily Mail style lens.

Parents are to be banned by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, from taking their children out of school to save money on holidays.

The devil with this stuff though, is always in the detail and this insightful post from Rob Anthony a deputy head teacher in Norfolk illuminates how over active politicians can reek havoc in the professions from their well meaning but ill thought through interventions.

At the moment I have discretion and will grant John an Authorised Absence but what should I tell him and his family (or others in a similar position) when I no longer have this discretion?

Mr Gove might just best serve schools by changing nothing at all for a while.

JA.

Brave or Foolish Sun Day

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:47:00 +0000

The numbers make interesting reading.

Out of a total ad spend in the UK of £11bn, newspapers take 13% or roughly £1.5bn.
Internet advertising takes just less than half at about £5bn
News ad revenue has been falling since 2001. It’s roughly half what it was then. Some forecasters say that the graph, that has been dropping like a stone since 2001, will now start to stabilise at it’s present level. Others, extrapolate the present trend and say UK news ad spend will be £500m by 2017.
Internet advertising spend looks likely to grow at just over 10% for the next five years with mobile advertising growing at double that.

It’s against this back drop that Rupert Murdoch has decided to launch, this week, a new print paper, the Sun on Sunday. It defies the basic logic of doing everything you can to cut your print cost base whilst developing your web properties as fast as you can.

Regardless of circulation figures, if print ad revenue continues to fall as it has, the Sun on Sunday will be value destroying, however, if print ad revenue stabilises or starts to grow, it’s a brilliant move, timed to perfection.

The graphs and probabilities are against Mr Murdoch, but they have been before, and he has succeeded. Time will tell as to whether this is an act of sentimentality or an inspired judgement.

VA.

Greek Tragedy (delayed)

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:52:00 +0000

It’s a surprise to this reader and I would imagine many others, that in all of the reports today of the new European ‘deal’ on alleviating Greece’s massive debt, the underlying motive of Germany and the other Euro countries isn’t being called out more clearly.

Peter Spiegel and Alex Barker report in the FT the framework of the bail-out.

Official lenders also agreed to increase their burden to get Greek debt levels to 120.5 per cent of economic output by 2020, officials said. They agreed to cut the interest rates on bail-out loans to Greece by 0.5 percentage points over the next five years and 1.5 percentage points thereafter. Officials estimated this would cut €1.4bn from the bail-out package and lower debt levels by 2.2 percentage points in 2020.

There are some big ‘ifs’ here about turning the plan into reality.

If the Greek populous will wear 7 years of austerity without political revolt.

If the private sector lenders accede to the 70% haircuts.

If the deepening Greek recession doesn’t derail the country’s ability to maintain the new proposed repayments.

If all of the barriers are overcome then, by 2020, Greece still has an unsustainable debt.

The big call out here is pretty obvious. This bail-out isn’t about helping Greece solve it’s issues in the long run. This is about buying more time before an inevitable Greek default. In another two years, the Germans believe that the Italians and Spanish will be far enough out of intensive care that the markets will be able to bear a Greek default and Euro exit without the subsequent contagion that would blow up the currency across the continent.

The key question is: For how much longer will the Greek leadership believe that this delaying game is as much in their interest as it is in the interest of Germany?

JR.

London Pride

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:37:00 +0000

Having been away from London for a couple of weeks, returning today and dashing from the City to the West End and back again puts a spring in one’s step.

Criss-crossing the icy river on foot and on bicycle is a reminder of what a privilege it is to able to work in one of the world’s finest cities. I don’t know how many people I saw at close range today. Easily more than 10,000, probably closer to 100,000. Every race, creed and age getting on with their daily business. So many capable, brilliant people.

When you add it all up, the power of such a rich diverse mix, it feels like the city has such range, scope and potential.

The you read Ken Livingstone’s latest comments on gay people as reported here by the BBC.

You just knew the Tory party was riddled with it like everywhere else is. As soon as [former Prime Minister Tony] Blair got in, if you came out as lesbian or gay you immediately got a job. It was wonderful.

Aghast at such self satisfied complacency I turned to Boris Johnson’s retorts as reported in the New Statesman, displaying about as little statesman like behaviour as might be humanly possible.

we have got a problem in society generally with alcohol and … compared to my sodding, fucking private life, it is far more important!

You have to wonder. Out of all of those millions of Londoners. Surely, there must be better candidates for Mayor than Livingstone or Johnson.

JR.

Mummy, what were the 80’s like? They were like this,...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:28:00 +0000

Mummy, what were the 80’s like?

They were like this, Son.

VA.

Stephen Hough rips it up at the Royal Festival Hall...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:48:09 +0000

Stephen Hough rips it up at the Royal Festival Hall tonight

Forget austerity. Forget the Euro crisis. Forget Capello.

If you were lucky enough to be at the Southbank centre tonight, you would have seen a genius lift the soul. After a workman like performance of Bohuslav Martinu’s Symphony #6 conducted by Marin Alsop, the audience were stirred from their seats by the vigour, vision and timing of Stephen Hough’s performance.

It was like watching a perfect thunder storm form above Liszt’s piano concertos, breaking suddenly, raining pure energy in a blur of emotion and melody.

Brilliant and inspiring. It gave me substance to face the world.

VA.

Tim Cook's Mis-Steps

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:55:00 +0000

In a post Steve Jobs world, trying to spot errors of judgement that wouldn’t have happened under the old regime is no doubt, going to become a well worn pastime. Whilst it isn’t inevitable that Tim Cook will not be able to show the same almost genius levels of judgement, strategy and tactics that Steve Jobs brought to the fore, history tells us, it’s more than probable he won’t be able to replicate Job’s success.

It’s undoubtably proven that Cook has tremendous operational skills demonstrated in supply chain management and being able to extricate the dollars out of Apple’s value chain. The key test, will be how he exercises his judgement on the big calls that Apple has to make. Despite all PR and propaganda to the contrary, no matter how strong and diverse an executive team is, when it’s collective muscle memory is that of having a leader like Jobs, that team will need Cook to make decisive interventions on those ‘big calls’ because that’s what Steve did, for many, many years.

It’s very early but there are three area’s where it already seems that Apple might have missed it’s previous leader’s imperious judgement:

Siri

The blogosphere is full of sentiment as displayed in Dave Caolo’s piece; ‘On not using Siri.’

“After I bought an iPhone in December I started playing with Siri right away. A month later, I barely use it. Not because I dislike it, but because it’s often easier not to.”

The consensus is that in it’s present form, it’s more of a party trick than a useful feature. Once the novelty has worn off, most find it easier not to use and yes, of course, it is Beta but one can’t help but think that Jobs would have said, “No, stuff the consequences of the deadline for the new 4s phone launch - we are not putting it out there until it’s ready.”

The iBook Author launch

Apple has declared that it is to revolutionise text books in schools by providing a free authoring tool and collaborating with established authors/publishers to create interactive books that will engage children in a way that plain text can’t. But, it has made two calls that significantly limit the potential of this. It’s not using the industry standard EPUB format (It’s books will only work on iPad’s not Kindles, Android tablets etc.) and it’s demanding a 30% cut of any sales made using it’s ‘revolutionary’ authoring tool. Many have compared this to Microsoft Word asking for a 30% cut of any document written on it.

Experts believe that these two issues will ultimately limit this project to hobby status, rather than giving it the potential to be the next “iTunes”.

John Browett

Ron Johnson was a hard act to follow and Apple took it’s time only naming a replacement after Johnson had already taken the helm at J C Penney. Deciding who was going to run Apple’s stores worldwide is one of the biggest judgments Cook has made in his tenure as CEO.

When the announcement was made this week comment pages were full of incredulity that the leader of a retailer renowned for one of the worst customer experiences on the British high street could possibly have snagged this role. Industry insiders are quietly in consensus that Browett, whilst a capable individual, isn’t and never will be in the top team of world class retailers capable of changing the retail landscape. Those same insiders are quite content about this appointment with a general view that Apple need’s to be brought down a peg or too and this might help. Worryingly, Browett’s skills honed at Wharton and Boston Consulting Group, lie in those same operational areas as Cook. At Tesco, it was said, that Browett could tell you the cost per unit of any piece of the supply chain but couldn’t instictively prioritise the right things for customers.

If all three of these issues prove to be mis-judgements by Cook, they won’t bring the world’s second largest company crashing the ground but, if calling Apple’s mis-steps is to turn into a well worn pastime, then getting in early never hurts.

SD.

postscript - Tim Cook took to defending the appointment of John Browett by email to a number of Apple fans as illustrated here on Tony Hart’s Blog.

Not a good sign.