Disqus - Latest Comments for sgd

Re: HP TouchPad gets UK price and release date

Sam Davyson — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 04:19:52 -0000

It is not mid-July for the UK - it is a 'few days' after 1 July. It is coming to Canada in mod-July. The press release is here: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/ne...

Re: Apple unveils iMessage, its BBM competitor, at WWDC

Sam Davyson — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:10:08 -0000

Does this integrate with the SMS app or is it separate?

Re: Gogobot: Travel Discovery Goes Social And Visual; SEO-Gaming Link Farms Weep

Sam Davyson — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 08:08:19 -0000

Search for Hong Kong on Gogobot. There are two entries for the city?!

Re: Dear Nokia fans: you’re nuts!

Sam Davyson — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:32:03 -0000

I really think that a blanket statement that apps are the most important thing in this market is misguided. Overall I think apps are really all just a bit gimmicky. Useful occasionally and fun to show off to friends.

iPhone which has the biggest app marketplace has the very limited app functionality that I have seen - by which I mean the things that apps can do on the iPhone is limited very much to the app model. There is no way for instance on an iPhone to change the keyboard, etc. The apps are all very segregated without any real multitasking capabilities.

Most people want a phone that works more than one that will do things they don't need / want. I think HP's range looks good for this.

Re: Google Posts Android 3.0 Promotional Video; Confirms Tablet Exclusivity

Sam Davyson — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 15:56:49 -0000

Yeah maybe. I wouldn't be too sure though... you think Google will be forking Android at this point? There could easily be a Honeycomb version for phones.

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Re: Google Posts Android 3.0 Promotional Video; Confirms Tablet Exclusivity

Sam Davyson — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 07:12:21 -0000

They didn't confirm tablet exclusivity anywhere that I have seen.

Re: Google Posts Android 3.0 Promotional Video; Confirms Tablet Exclusivity

Sam Davyson — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 07:12:06 -0000

They didn't confirm tablet exclusivity anywhere.

Re: Facebook Alternative Diaspora Launches Their Private Alpha With Some Bet Hedging

Sam Davyson — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:34:29 -0000

If you want to try it now you can sign up here: http://pod.geraspora.de/

Add me I am 'sam' on that site.

Re: Ye olde Android vs. iPhone debate (my experiences without an iPhone for six days so far)

Sam Davyson — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:23:18 -0000

Using the Advanced Task Killer as you suggest is not required on Android. Android is smart (like iPhone OS4) and only keeps what should be running running. People think that programs like ATK worsen battery life.

Re: More news from South America

Sam Davyson — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:43:13 -0000

It all seems to be going superbly! How much of the trip have you planned or are you distributing your nights in places as you go along?

Re: The Planets

Sam Davyson — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:38:08 -0000

Hopefully they're fixed now.

Re: HTC Desire early pricing: probably too high

Sam Davyson — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:05:57 -0000

With regard to the contract you're right. There are some cheaper
contracts. When I was looking I could only find cashback ones through
third parties (not directly with the networks). I know some people
who've had bad experiences with these and have lost out as their
payments were slightly late or whatever. If T mobile are offering a
cheaper contract themselves then please give me a link.

In terms of buying outright I used Amazon's pricing (also the same as
Expansys). Both of these are reputable. Where do you find the £399?

Re: A new semester and a new year

Sam Davyson — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:36:11 -0000

I remember Nick saying something similar about the snow out there. They deal with it very well. When I went at Easter there were still bits of piles of snow left on some streets.

Big congrats on your acting going down well with the Americans. I loved this line:

"I can only assume that my accent carries some sort of intellectual and dramatic cache".

Re: Greetings from South America!

Sam Davyson — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:32:26 -0000

I was so glad I bumped into you in the bar and we discussed these posts... So much stuff you've been up to! And in just two weeks. Sounds awesome. I'd never heard of that waterfall but I just Wikipedia'd it and it looks absolutely stunning.

From cold and rather grey Cambridge I feel rather jealous.

Re: Coming soon: the disruptive molecular age of information

Sam Davyson — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:55:21 -0000

"Sort of like with nuclear energy, isn’t it?"

Not really nuclear energy no. Chemistry is what you are talking about.

Re: The social failings of Google

Sam Davyson — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:01:33 -0000

Orkut was created in house by Google too. Mainly by one guy though.

Re: Start of Lent Term 2010

Sam Davyson — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:15:14 -0000

Hmmm. I have been offered some summer work at Threadneedle, an assest management firm, but only just got written confirmation through about it this afternoon - so didn't make the post.

Re: The Mad Lady of Bramfield Road…

Sam Davyson — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:51:32 -0000

Oh my! What a story. I hope that you are now settled into your lovely new place. Sounds painful but good to have moved on now.

Re: Google’s infinite strip: the brilliance in Google Wave

Sam Davyson — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 09:32:11 -0000

I have had similar thoughts to your main point Robert. I prefer to think of Google Wave as a whiteboard or a noticeboard that you and your collaborators are standing around. You can all draw on it, write on it, rub things off, put pictures on it etc. This is *VERY* different to the email model (which is the same as the physical postal service model).

I think explaining it like this will make it much more useful. Having a friend acceptance thing before collaboration makes some sense I think. It would have to be made part of the protocol.

Seeing the acquisition yesterday of AppJet/Etherpad by Google for Wave is extremely interesting. Etherpad worked as an extremely frictionless way to get collaborating on text-only in real time. Share a URL and you're done. Wave is obviously more complex in terms of what it offers but I think it could learn a lot from the model. If we could have less interface at the wave website and it be more like just sharing a link to a live wiki the barrier to entry would plummet and people would start using it much more.

Hopefully they're working on something like this.

Re: Ngmoco scores with games that charge per time played

Sam Davyson — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:25:35 -0000

You've missed the mark a bit here. You can play the game for free as much as you like. No purchase necessary. You are allowed to play without having any energy.

The key thing is that only when you have energy do you earn points / achievements.

Re: Dropbox – “There’s an app for that”

Sam Davyson — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:46:59 -0000

Haven't played it since being in Cambridge. I'll maybe try a few
levels tomorrow.

Re: Google Wave’s unproductive email metaphors

Sam Davyson — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:21:41 -0000

Just going through the things that Wave adds that email doesn't have and that have (in your opinion) a negative impact in their implementations:

1. Live Chat - distraction as you can see typing.
You can't turn this off at the moment but I think that is coming. It is certainly coming to stop other people seeing your typing. This would be a minor change in the scheme of things to have a button to enable the typing to show up before the done button was pressed. Seems like a weak start to the list. Also I disagree that it lowers productivity. Have you used Wave yet with anyone who is offline? Then it reverts to feeling much more like email. People trying out Wave are desperate to see the new "cool stuff" and are going for both online realtime chatting. That is just one thing that Wave can do.

2. Social Networking features - No bio. No real names. No real way to manage them and put them into groups.
These seem incredibly minor to me. All of these can be added without too much trouble. I don't personally think that Wave is aiming to be like the other social networks. The sort of idea is much more like... email wasn't good enough for sharing things between people... so people moved to social networks which are much more immersive and interactive and you can share things better than email... but social networks are closed off and don't talk to each other... it would actually better if email was just better so we didn't need all of the different social networks... Wave is this upgrade.

3. Can't delete stuff yet.
Again - fair enough it is a bug. I'm sure they'll fix this. This is not a deal breaker is it.

4. No BCC Support.
I'm not sure what the equivalent is here. Maybe they will have people you can add who have read only rights or something. But I think for the moment it's best just to add the person to the Wave. It should be obvious from the content they are just observing. With better contact management / groups there might be a way to say - "make public to group" so all of them can see it (but are not necessarily part of it). Like the public waves now but more specific (i.e. not everyone, say just your company).

5. No docs / spreadsheet integration.
I'm sure integration will come through gadgets / robots. The APIs are there.

6. It's slow.
First good criticism in my eyes. It is slow. Not really too valid to say imagine how slow it will be when there are loads more people on it as Google clearly knows more than anyone about scaling. Also not relevant as it is the protocol that you perhaps need to worry about rather than the specific service. Soon people on Google Wave could be talking to Zoho Wave, Yahoo Wave etc.

7. There isn't a store for robots / gadgets.
There actually is a directory of the best gadgets on Google's website. A selection of stuff built during the developer preview.

8. I don't really understand this point. It's like saying email doesn't work because people can email you without getting permission first. If they know your address they can get in touch with you - same as with email. You are famous so your experience might be somewhat different.

9. Waves only open to wave users.
Waves can be published - so can be open to everyone. This bit of what you said totally misses the mark:

"Wave seems like it wants lockin. IE, to really get a lot out of Wave you have to also use Wave all day long. Email isn’t like that. You can use any email client and you have lots of choices. Don’t like Gmail? Use Hotmail. Don’t like Hotmail? Use Yahoo mail. Don’t like those? Get your own pop server and do it yourself. Etc etc. Now try to do that with Wave. Go ahead, I’ll wait."

You will be able to do this with Wave. You can't right now - the federation isn't turned on yet and there are no competing products. The tech is all open though and Google are encouraging this openness. Wave doesn't have the ecosystem around it yet because it is early days. It is all being worked on - you'll have to be patient but yes you can set up your own wave server. Happy?

Also please note that email has the same lock in situation. You notice you can only send emails to email users? Yes that just happens to be pretty much everyone with an internet connection but this wasn't always the case. You are not giving Wave a chance. They plan to make it work with email too.

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To summarise - you really need to hold back with all the arguments that Wave isn't up to anything. We don't know yet if it will catch on. No one can say. We can say though that this is the first attempt to reinvent email in an open way (that I'm aware of) and I hope that it does catch on. If the speed can be worked on I think everything else will follow. I think you might find that you can be more productive on Wave than you ever have on email/service X/Y/Z that are all better than Wave. Think about the friction that you remove by consolidation to one service rather than across numerous. Different accounts for you to maintain and for your client to have. You have to say - What's your Skype name? etc.

Wave is new and it's different. We're all learning as we go. We're not going to be experts immediately. I know you are bleeding edge stuff Robert but it is going to take time before we understand how to use this thing or if it's useful. We can't make this on a snap basis. And it's not going to be because of one minor UI defect.

Re: Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype

Sam Davyson — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:08:09 -0000

Valid response - I meant just in terms of the UI but in reality if you want to find people with big opinions about the wave UX and the functionality it can/can't offer - then everyone who's experienced it is in there.

Re: Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype

Sam Davyson — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:51:31 -0000

Having spent a fair bit of time today on Wave I have to say I think this discussion would work better on wave.

Re: Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype

Sam Davyson — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:48:52 -0000