Disqus - Latest Comments for igor

Re: Thought Shrapnel: Is Mozilla putting ads in Firefox?

Igor Schwarzmann — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 09:59:38 -0000

> Anyway, if you don’t want any of this, just replace your tiles with animated gifs via whimsy. You know it makes sense. :-)

I don't, actually.

Also, you're addressing a significant amount of people here. It might seem, from an individual point of view, as an easy to fix thing. And it is, if you actually mustered up the time and the understanding as to what Mozilla has changed about the browser that one is using. Looking at it from a collective point of you, this is a tremendously significant thing to say to just replace your titles. Because millions of people would need to do it.

Furthermore, and by far more significantly, the question here is not whether or not this is actually easy to fix, it is more about what a function like this signifies. I assume there was a deliberation about this thing and as a whole Mozilla decided to proceed with this. You can downplay this all you want, it does matter.

Re: Brett's new adventures and how you can help - BrettTerpstra.com

Igor Schwarzmann — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 03:23:10 -0000

Congratulations on a new endeavor and good luck! I'd like to be a supporter. Is there an option to make a one-time contribution?

Re: Amazon's profits — Benedict Evans

Igor Schwarzmann — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 07:00:22 -0000

What would, theoretically, happen, if the goal is never to make big profit, but continue reinvesting profits into new startups (as you cold the different divisions) that operate inside the Amazon platform?

As I see it, Amazon can potentially continue to grow – revenue wise – for the foreseeable future. If all of commerce is your playground and they keep their hit & miss ratio, it can maintain its pace.

From an investor point of view: if the same growth expectancy can be maintained, they can both continue satisfying investors and employees.

Re: Philipp - startups' little helper

Igor Schwarzmann — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 06:01:33 -0000

Skype groups are the new IRC channels taken into mainstream? Interesting.

Re: The smartphone doesn't feel right anymore

Igor Schwarzmann — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 11:13:58 -0000

Marko Ahtisaari of Nokia (ex-Dopplr) has been doing a lot of thinking about this. He is not along, though. Many people have been thinking about the fact that we became enslaved by a small, glowing screen (!= technology).

There are some patterns in this. Technological possibilities and social interaction are making things very complicated some times. The adoption rate of the mobile phone and his successor the smart phone made it almost impossible to ask ourselves about the implications of how we actually ending up to use them. The friction is always visible at the places when things are only being used by a fraction of the possible user base. Unfortunately, that often creates the assumption with young startup founders and investors that this can be possible a market. Which is not always a right assumption.

To provide a simplistic analogy. For the longest time, the process of checking in at a venue created almost excruciating social weirdness if one would do it in company of people who either never heard of it or didn't participate. The problem was not the checkin itself – which most people think –, but the fact that it manifested in the form of one person looking at a screen after walking into a venue or sitting at the table. The internet trickled into the real word and made thing awkward. Nobody would have minded people checking in into venues, if the process of doing so would have been seamless to not make one stand out by doing so.

The more people become exhausted by the fact that we always stare at those small screens in front of us, the more it becomes plausible for someone to approach the problem of establishing a human-computer connection more efficiently.

I'd like to think that Google Glasses is the solution, but I'm doubtful. It seems too much as a retro-futuristic design solution. Heavily influenced by the fact that the founders of this multi-billion dollar candy store of theirs is able to produce a future like they wanted to have when they read scifi books as teenagers. Alright, I'm exaggerating a bit there, but you get the drift.
That said, Google is actually doing really interesting stuff on Android to make the time we spent with the screen more efficient. Google Now is already extremely interesting and it will only get better from here on. Windows Phone is surfacing many of the things that one has to look up on iOS by opening up an app on the dashboard which also reduces the time one spends with the screen.

Anyway, I will stop rambling now.

Re: Give Them An Inch, And They Will Take It A Mile

Igor Schwarzmann — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 06:08:44 -0000

There is little that a large corporation can learn from a startup. Size matters, because it changes the abilities of a company. The ability of a company to innovate derives not from imitating the behavior of a small company, but by making it apparent what they are actually good at. While startups usually serve a small niche, large corporations release products that serve a much larger audience. Yes, there outliers like Facebook, but they are certainly not the norm.

I agree that companies should empower their employees with agency and the ability to act. Unfortunately, the way our financial systems is build has a larger impact on the ability to innovate. In this context, it is extremely hard for senior management to create an environment of innovation without taking up too much risk. Interestingly enough, a financial desperate moment for a large corporation can also be a very effective way to kick start an innovation process. When the risk of not changing anything is higher than the risk of making something new arises the opportunity for the people involved to venture out and allow things to change.

Re: Staff to be banned from sending emails - Telegraph

Igor Schwarzmann — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:47:47 -0000

Yes, but "something similar to IM" is somewhat vague. And same goes for every public announcement of somebody who proclaims the death or ban of email in any kind of environment. It's easy to say what you don't want, but it seems superbly hard for people to give a comprehensive explanation of how they will work without email.

And on that note: the discussion is to binary. It's is not the one or the other. Personal communication obviously moved significantly towards social networks and away from email. Although that doesn't mean that email is dead in that context. Far from it.

But all those kids that are growing up with fb messages and IM are easily adopting to an environment with mail as soon as their enter the professional life. Mostly, because it is nearly impossible to kill email in this context and because there aren't any solutions out there that come even close to provide a higher efficiency for business use cases.

Re: Staff to be banned from sending emails - Telegraph

Igor Schwarzmann — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:41:28 -0000

Let me get this straight: you said six years ago that email will die in 5 - 10 years (and it didn't) and you proof your theory by pointing towards a pure PR driven release of somebody who wants to get rid of email in 18 month, but doesn't seem to know how to do it. Yeah, I don't buy that.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind receiving less emails and I for one hoped that something out of Google Wave will eventually lead the way how we can make the jump from email to whatever comes next, but alas ... it didn't seem to do the trick.

Now, predicting something might die is the easy part. The hard part is to show what will come after that. And no, IM isn't it.

Re: Signals, Knowledge, ‘Ambient’ Learning

Igor Schwarzmann — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 04:48:34 -0000

Big up, Thomas. This is very, very good.

Re: Signals, Knowledge, ‘Ambient’ Learning

Igor Schwarzmann — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 04:48:15 -0000

Big up, Thomas. This is very, very good.

Re: Warum ich mir Apple Keynotes ansehe

Igor Schwarzmann — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 08:12:18 -0000

Würde es in dem Zusammenhang nicht ausreichen die Release-Notes zu lesen anstatt sich eine Inszenierung der Features anzugucken?

Re: http://uvmann.com/post/6519399076

Igor Schwarzmann — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 09:13:37 -0000

Somebody was watching Miami Vice.

Re: Cognitive Cities. Now they go local.

Igor Schwarzmann — Thu, 19 May 2011 04:39:19 -0000

Our event is much, much smaller. :)

Re: http://jkleske.tumblr.com/post/1609525619

Igor Schwarzmann — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 09:31:05 -0000

Großartige Mundöffnung, Herr Schwarzmann, großartig.

Re: Russ Chimes - Midnight Club EP Videos

Igor Schwarzmann — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:22:18 -0000

Weak story, but awesome production value.

I kinda enjoyed the request to insert the next "part" of the series. A nice attempt to create a physical world illusion in a digital world product.

Re: 5 Android-Apps, die Sie haben müssen – ein Gastbeitrag von Igor Schwarzmann

Igor Schwarzmann — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 03:07:19 -0000

Er will leider nicht oefter. Woher kommt mir das bekannt vor? ;)

Re: Bring the Noise. Why google Buzz will Fail.

Igor Schwarzmann — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:26:34 -0000

I have to agree with Johannes: Condemning a service - especially by Google - to failure after one day is a bit premature. That said, I do agree that Google Buzz isn't reducing noise, but actually increased that in a very unproductive way. But that's something that can be solved either by UI changes or by different clients.

As for challenging Facebook: Google and Facebook aren't alike. Google is all about decentralization, while Facebook is trying to be the centralized platform. It almost seems like they want to be the a Internet in the Internet.

They - Facebook - are sure as hell successful with that, but a decentralized system seems to be the more sustainable approach. At least on the Internet. Facebook is aware of that and that's one of the reason why they have opened up user profiles for syndication by search engines.

Re: How To Hack Your Brain, Part 1: Sleep | Dustin Curtis

Igor Schwarzmann — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:11:11 -0000

Although I think your findings are quite fascinating, there is something you didn't take into account: I'm guessing, that the regular readers of your blog are influenced by your invitation to follow you on twitter over time. That said, I don't think that's the only reason you have experienced an increase of the clickthrough rate, but it might be a partial aspect of your numbers.

Re: Just start.

Igor Schwarzmann — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 11:20:52 -0000

Thanks David.

Re: Hello Sarah! Palim Palin Folge 1 – 1.460 Tage bis Election 2012

Igor Schwarzmann — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 05:04:24 -0000

Interessantes Ergebnis: 64% der Republikaner wollen, dass Palin 2012 als Kandidatin antritt: http://thinkprogress.org/20...

Re: Taking a Breather From Social Media? Maybe We’re Doing It Wrong

Igor Schwarzmann — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:45:08 -0000

I hate to break it to you, Sarah, but having a blackberry and a twitter client on it, isn't not "average". ,) Even if you're not constantly checking twitter, it's still is the early adopter in you.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with that. "We" have another sense of not being constantly connected.

Re: Taking a Breather From Social Media? Maybe We’re Doing It Wrong

Igor Schwarzmann — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 04:20:15 -0000

Sarah, well, you might not be Lois Gray, but in terms of a social media superstar ... well, let's say it like this: from a perspective out of Germany, you're pretty much it. Maybe not the AAA one, but enough to mentioned on the news. ,)

Anyway, what I actually wanted to say was this: I think, it's part of our job to scan twhirl more often then anybody would do it, if it was just for fun. In the end of the day, if you find a nice hint on twitter, it could be a blog post you'll end up writing for RWW. The problem of the social media early adopters is, that we have to many options, tools and information to work through. In some way it was a lot easier to be a journalist in the 80s, because you had a phone in your office and a fax machine. That's it. No cell phone, no SMS, not eMail, no twitter, no friendfeed and definitely no RSS (and no bloggers who can critisize their work).

I'm not complaining, because it's a fascinating time right now. But it is more work, because we have a lot more to process. Which brings us back to filter technology and semantic web.

Re: Stellen sie sich vor, …

Igor Schwarzmann — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:18:47 -0000

Das ist ein Test-Comment für Disqus