The Web fought Nature and ...Nature won

Most people find it scary but I find it oddly comforting: Nature ran into the Web twice in two days and won convincingly each time. 


First there was this devastating weather in the US. They didn't call them wild storms for nothing: they left sweltering heat and massive power outages in their wake. Not only were millions of people affected, one of the casualties has been the Internet. Power interruptions at the big data center operated by Amazon.com in Virginia crashed other popular websites that rent out Amazon's computers. No Instagram, no Pinterest, no ..
how many lawyers would be pouring over SLA's and contracts right now? The Cloud being blown away by clouds: there is justice in that.


And then Nature pulled another one.

On July 1st a leap second was added to adjust global world time as close as possible to the solar time or the Coordinated Universal Time. Sensitive computer systems that run on milliseconds don't like leap seconds at all. Google was prepared but others weren't: they're not as technology geek as Google I suppose. LinkedIn, Foursquare, Stumble Upon, Gawker, ... they all went down. Mozilla 'choked on the leap second': not tech-savvy enough? 


Or, to paraphrase Forbes Business: locusts are next :-)

Sue me, I said 'app store'

The New York Times had an interesting piece on the legal squabbles of tech companies when involved in the use of daily language and everyday words. Microsoft sues Apple and Apple sues Amazon for the use of the words "app store".

Suing over app store is not only an Apple privilege. Facebook has tried to trademark words like 'like' or 'poke' and also 'wall' and 'face' and 'book' ... And Windows is no stranger to trying to play at the same game, trademarking words like 'windows', 'office' or 'word'.

The New York Times cites a Web branding expert, Christopher Johnson, saying there is 'a land grab going on'. Apparently the US Patent and Trademark Office lags about 5 years behind in allowing companies to claim generic words. An basically, the giants can fool around all they want, it's the small companies that get hurt (like Placebook that changed it's name when lawyers came calling).

As always, it's the lawyers who benefit from these very expensive and lenghty trademark proceedings ...

When I try to explain what a personalised citizens' portal, containing government services, could be like, I use the term 'app store' instead of portal. Because portal is the wrong word whichever way you turn it. And because everybody understands "app store" Am I going to be sued now too?

kindly kindle

't was al een tijd aangekondigd maar blijkbaar nu dan toch gelanceerd: de Kindle, de door amazon gebouwde e-book reader die zelfs een toni morrison doet verzuchten dat het 'huge' is, aldus onze vrienden van paidcontent.org. Of die uitspraak van Morrison nu zo relevant is ... als schrijfster gaat ze zeker niet meer die generatie zijn die er zal van wakker liggen. Wie weet gaan wel meer mensen weer lezen, mochten dit soort tools niet beperkt blijven tot de happy few ... Vandaag stond in de krant een verrassend stuk over een studie die aantoont dat het begrijpend (en grààg) lezen van kinderen niet afhangt van de kwaliteit van de school maar van de thuisomgeving. Alle scholen bieden min of meer dezelfde kwaliteit. Maar of een kind ook gaat lezen heeft te maken met het feit of er thuis boeken zijn. Kids die zelf meer dan 10 boeken hebben behoren allen tot dezelfde, bevoorrechte groep (10 of 100: dat maakt niet uit). Zij die echter nauwelijks of geen boeken hebben lopen meteen een grote achterstand op.