Jason Ball's TechBytes

Critical Mass London- Get out your Bike [Updated]

<update>

After further thought, I won't be attending. Possibly the most dangerous vehicle on the roads is the Irresponsible Cyclist. 

While I agree that more cycle awareness and support for cyclists is needed, I don't think breaking the law, clogging traffic and generally causing mayhem is the best way to advance cycling in metropolitan areas. 

One of the key criticisms I always hear about cyclists in London is that they "always break the law"- which is something I make a point of not doing. Responsible cycling is really the best way forward... with awareness and respect from motor vehicles- I can't see that Critical Mass promotes that type of protest, so won't be joining. Ping me or leave a comment if you know of any "positive protests" in the City...

</update>

Conditions for cyclists in London can range from pretty poor to extremely dangerous... I literally have *very* close calls on a daily basis. Luckily I haven't eaten any pavement yet, but I'm sure it won't be long, despite being pretty defensive out there.

If you'd like to join an awareness event for cycling, the next Critical Mass London is next Friday at 6pm on the South Bank under Waterloo Bridge, by the National Film Theatre. 

What's Critical Mass? Here's a recent video from the WSJ on its origins:

The rain in Spain...

It's that time of year again and I'm off for a few days of r&r in the sunny iberian peninsula. Blogging will resume the first week of September.

Up, Up and Up

It's earnings season on Wall Street and the news is very good:

Amazon- Q1 profit up 29%
Apple- Q1 profit up 36%
Google- Q1 profit up 30%
Broadcom - Q1 profit up 22%

Most of the results are due to non-US strength, but they are very stong results across the board...

Should I stay, or should I go?

This is the eternal question every Londoner (or any urbanite) faces:

You've missed the bus- do you walk to the next stop to try to catch it, or do you stay put and wait for the next one to come along?

There is a precise mathematical equation that can be used anytime you're faced with this dilemma:

The long and short of it is, if you walk to the next bus stop- chances are the bus will pass you by, and you'll end up waiting even longer...so stay put.

You can read the full proof here, Walk versus Wait: The Lazy Mathematician Wins, if that's your thing.

Quote of the Day- Gordon Brown

Responding to criticism that the UK property market is crashing, Gordon Brown stated:

"We've seen house prices rise by about 180% over the last 10 years and they have risen by about 18% over the last three years, so a 2.5% fall is something that is containable," Brown said.

A quick check shows that Bear Sterns was up 150% over the last 10 years as at Dec 2007 ($90/share)...

Then, the bottom fell out and the stock is trading down (87%) YTD ($10/share). What destroyed their share value? The credit crunch.

Guess what's about to crack the UK housing market?

Blogging => Twittering

This cartoon from the Gaping Void pretty much sums up the evolution of my blog as well (minus the art, poetry and architecture):

Microsoft invests in Facebook at $15 billion

The Wall Street Journal has a good overview and recap of the negotiation process.

Facebook is reported to have circa $150 million in revenue currently (and are launching their own advertising platform shortly). As a point of reference, Facebook's revenue is worth 7.1x more on a price/sales basis than Google.

Looking back at the last round of venture funding, Accel participated in the $25 million round at a whopping $500 million pre-money. This was before the site was adding 200,000 users per day. Not a bad paper return given the price they bought in at... Now, how long until Facebook a) implodes or b) goes public?

How to make your customers very unhappy

Radiohead have taken their fate into their own hands- they've refused to sell their new album through iTunes (and apparently other online stores as well). I don't think you can buy physical CDs either.

Normally, I would cheer them on, but...

The problem is, YOU CAN'T DOWNLOAD THE MUSIC. I put their release date in my calendar (I'm a pretty big radiohead fan). Went to the site on the 10th of October. The site was crashed. Went back this weekend. Site not working. (I did manage to read something about the new album, but almost went BLIND trying to read their website.)

Do I go back and try to download the album again? Or should I now boycott Radiohead until they release their music on iTunes where it's convenient for me?

Steve Jobs had a good point- most people would prefer to pay $9.99 for an album rather than "work for minimum wage" to download an album for free (or even £1). I happily bought Thom Yorke's Eraser on iTunes. One click an it was on my iPod.

I've actually spent more time trying to get the new Radiohead album than its taken to write this rant (which is far, far to long). Maybe someone will be kind enough to download the music, burn it on a CD and give it to me for my birthday.

Migrate from .Mac to Gmail in three steps

Introduction

It's almost that time of year again- the annual "Do I keep .mac, or do I leave it" decision. I've had a mac email address since the iTools days when it was all free. After years of paying my mac tax, I've decided to leave .mac and migrate to my own domain (hosted within my gmail account).

Migration

Google lets you manage your own domain effortlessly. I've set up a Google Apps account for jasonball.com which lets me manage about 100 emails on the jasonball.com domain.

The key here is I'm reading and managing everything from within one unified inbox at my gmail account (could have been from within the jasonball.com/gmail account, but I already use most Google products through my existing gmail account).

Google have made it dead easy to migrate from any service. For .mac there are three steps:

Step One- Move *all* your messages into your Inbox. This includes your sent messages. Although Google won't register sent messages in your gmail inbox, nor in your gmail "sent" folder, it does add them to your archive- with the right date AND threading. This makes it easy to import all your inbox and sent messages- making them easily searchable.

Step Two- Go to the Settings>Accounts>Get mail from other accounts. Add .mac (even though it refers to POP accounts). You'll need to input your username, password and these pop server details: mail.mac.com, port 995, select "use secure connection", select "archive incoming messages" and you're off to the races.

I chose to leave the messages on .mac just in case I change my mind over the next five months. Google only loads 200 messages at a time, so it will take a while for all your emails to automagically appear in gmail (but they will and the time stamps will all be correct also.)

Step Three- There is no step three! (well, maybe some cleaning up, select as read/filing/tagging you might want to do, but not required. You might also want to uncheck that "auto renew" button for your .mac account).

Final Thoughts

Why leave .mac? Well, aside from calling it .crap for years...

I don't use the blogging tools (I use TypePad).
I don't use the photo albums (I use Flickr Pro).
I don't use iDisk other than for backup- and a total of 2GB doesn't get you very far (I now use Mozy, which offers 2GB for free, but pay the $50 per year to back up my entire HD).
I don't use the iSync bookmarks feature I use Google Browser Sync and Delicious.

.Mac costs me about $150 per year (I have my wife, mom and dad on the service so it costs more than the standard $99). My current set up costs me about $75 net per year (Typepad gets offset with Adsense)- and I get much, much more for my money.

Other small details: .mac's spam filter is pitiful. I had to buy Spamsieve a while back (excellent software) which meant that I had to read emails in my Mail.app. Google has caught every spam message that .mac missed. Also, the tight integration with calendar is great as well (i.e. there's an event mentioned in an email and a "add to calendar" appears to the right of the message.

Any questions or problems doing the same, drop me a line: blog at jasonball dot com.

TechBytes en Español

Ok, I lived in Spain for 6 years. Someone was looking at the site in Spanish via Google's translation service, so I decided to take a look at my site in Spanish:

My posts are unbelievably unintelligible when translated by machine. The last post on "the Funded" turns into mush- the name "London Seed Capital" gets translated, the website "The Funded" gets translated, "Index Ventures" gets translated- all translated into a big pile of gobbled gook.

Taking the Spanish and feeding it back in to get English again gives you an idea:

Capital of seed of London - The ball of Jason has blog interesting that is much on technology and very little - this one is interesting considering its list is so separated towards it go so it lacks to equipment with solid masters of the industry.

Company of the atlas - some very good people with this company/signature, although the nature of euro of the company/signature has with her some partners extremely snobby. they leave you single, way too much. no aid beyond the cash infusion.

Companies of the index - One lies down to these individuals and obtained “to hey this” really fresh regeneration but then never followed. I do not concern the being said of not or a certain eufemismo for no, but it does not reflect well in a bottom when “they send it in”.

Too funny.

Si no sabes leer ingles y quieres leer algún articulo mío en español (y no te aclaras con la traducción de Google) envíame un email a techbytes arroba mac punto com y te lo traduciré.