Startupping on Outsourcing Success March 28, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Pajamanation, Microjobs , add a commentI’ve been thinking about how I can help people to find value in posting microjobs onto the pajamanation microjobs exchange. The Startupping blog, forum or whatever it is would seem to provide useful advice on the subject.
In Part 2 of a series, Mark Fletcher asks “What projects make good candidates for outsourcing?”
Keys to Outsourcing Success (Part 2) - Startupping Forums
Small projects work better than large projects. It’s easier to see if things are going wrong, and with the shorter time frames of a smaller project, you can come to that realization quicker. If you have a large project, see if it can be broken up into multiple smaller projects. Smaller projects cost less, so your risk is smaller as well. In some cases it even makes sense to pick more than one winning bidder, and then use the best results of the competing service providers.
and “will my ideas be stolen?”
Also, I believe that, in general, most technology behind an Internet service can be copied. It’s the execution of a business that matters, how fast you get out there, how quickly you iterate, how well you build and communicate with your users, etc. That stuff can’t be copied.
Computer Literacy is dead March 25, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Pajamanation, edublog , 1 comment so farBill Kerr provides a link to a video, some transcripts and discussion. The topic is the One Laptop Per Child project and the pedagogy behind it.
Bill Kerr: “we are impatient, we don’t want to lose another generation of kids”
The most subversive thing on the software front is the ebook reader as a wiki - you get the world’s literature - some of it’s great and some of it’s not - then two things happen:
* every page in every book has a discussion thread
* every page in every book can be augmented, changed and illustrated
Apart from all the ideas about learning, I noticed that one of the technical properties of the OLPC hardware is a screen that stays bright and readable even in bright sunshine. Now that’s something which would be appreciated if incorporated into the laptops used by anybody who likes to work from their own back garden sometimes.
ukcider bargain - Thatchers £1 a bottle March 24, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : cider , add a commentukcider has a new blog where I’ve just published details of a fantastic deal to get one third off a bottle of Thatchers renowned single varietal ciders.
You can order Coxs, Katy or Spartan or a mixture. It’s up to you and if you live within striking distance of Gloucestershire then you could save the delivery charge too. Considering that these 500ml bottles normally go for £1.59 or even £1.79 in the supermarkets I reckon that’s a pretty neat bargain at just ONE POUND only. You might want to tell your cider drinking friends about this one. Here’s the link to the cider blog again.
Free Beer March 21, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Long Tail , 1 comment so farRemember “Open Cola“? Well here’s Free Beer.
“And there’ll be free beer for all the workers,
free beer for all the workers.
Free beer for all the workers when the red revolution comes. ”
Free as in speech, not free as in beer.
Via The Future of Communities article about the Kettle crisps community.
Introducing the 3D printer March 21, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Pajamanation , add a commentFirst, try to get your imagination around this device:
Pajamanation: PajamaManufacturing
The idea is that a PC could “drive a printer that deposits material in layers to form three-dimensional objects.”
Then think of the endless possibilities for powder wrecks, glue jams, misalignment, postcript interpretation errors, scatched toner drums, misfeeds, overbleed, dropped bits, lossy compression etc etc .
How much do you think the replacement “stuff” cartridges will be?
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THE TEN LONDON TRANSPORT COMMANDMENTS March 20, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : London , add a commentTHE TEN LONDON TRANSPORT COMMANDMENTS
1) Thou shalt walk whenever possible, but always from Charing Cross to
Embankment.
2) Thou shalt have thine Oyster Card in thine hand when thou reachest the
ticket barriers, and not stand there, rummaging through thine bag for five
minutes, like a tool.
3) Thou shalt not consume fragrant foodstuffs or alcohol, unless thou art a
vagrant.
4) Thou shalt attend to personal hygiene. In particular, if thou hast been
wassailing heartily the night before, thou shalt take special care to brush
thine teeth in the morning.
5) Thou shalt talk quietly, or not at all, on thine mobile phone when on the
bus – nobody else wants to hear who Emma did last night or how much Liam
spent on his sodding shoes. Furthermore, thou shalt endeavour to stop those
who wish to share their choice of music on loudspeaker, even though thou
risketh being stabbed till thou art dead.
6) Thou shalt not whistle.
7) Thou shalt not press the “open” button on tube doors as this is the mark
of the tourist.
Thou shalt not duck, dive or bomb. And though shalt most certainly not
heavy pet.
9) If thou art not sure how to get off an escalator, or where to stand, thou
shalt not get on it.
10) Thou shalt not wear darke glasses underground. Ye nobs.
From Friday Cities . If you’re a Londoner, why not join me there?
PS I regularly break number 6.
How to fill and edit awkward documents and forms attachments March 20, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Mac, Pajamanation , add a commentIt’s always so much easier when you know how.
Do you ever get stressed out by being sent a form to fill in which is in some version of microsoft word you can’t open or else as a read-only pdf?
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the only solution is to try and translate the document into something which is editable right?
Wrong.
I asked on the pajamanation Flickr group then another solution came up afterwards from WHV who explains a solution using Omnigraffle, but the central idea is so simple it’s stupid.
All you have to do is think in terms of layers. Having grasped this concept there is clearly no such thing as a non-editable pdf. Open any vector graphics drawing package, import an image of the pdf and then write on top of it in a new layer. When finished, save, flatten and export or print to pdf again.
You could use Photoshop, Appleworks Draw, Macromedia Fireworks, The Gimp or soon probably one of the online image editors that are starting to appear.
Fame, narcissism and MySpace March 20, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : General , add a commentAn insightful article by Danah Boyd about Fame, narcissism, MySpace, union busting, self-esteem based education and reality TV.
fame, narcissism and MySpace. Many-to-Many:
One minor comment - most of the ideas which Danah relates are generaliseable, so why does she need to use the adjective “American” so many times?
Owned Ideas are Different Ideas March 19, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : General , add a commentHere’s an interesting idea, which belongs to Geof Glass:
Owned Ideas are Different Ideas
When ideas are property, the ideas we have are different than when they are not.
A flock of geese March 17, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Bird Flu, Long Tail, online facilitation, blogs and community, politics , 6comments
Stephen Downes argues that the following statement is invalid:
“The flock of geese decided to land”
What in fact happened is that each individual goose decided to land. We observed this and interpreted it as the flock deciding to land.
photo under CC licence by glennharvey06
What a wonderfully clear example the flock of geese idea gives us to try and think about this clash of perspectives which has been rumbling along about individuals and groups, blog networks compared to listserves, the illusion of flat hierarchies, left right, north south, hive mind or cooercion and so on. It might just be me, but the geese question seems to point at something which may turn out to be a central and fundamental issue, like the difference between the naturalistic worldview and idealism.
So I will argue that the flock of geese did decide to land. {{ducks}}
Maybe one goose made the first move towards landing, or maybe the trajectory emerged from out of whatever was going on between the flock beforehand, but what happened next is a process which I would call ‘arriving at a group decision’. One or more individual geese began to move towards landing in such a way that the intention to land began to be communicated through the flock. Each individual goose then took a decision to follow the leaders, or ignore them. I’ve observed occasions when this results in a cleaving of the flock, with one part landing and another group splitting away to circle around and land in the next field, for example. Now, some individuals may be motivated by the desire to land, and others by a preference to stay with the group who are landing, that doesn’t matter. Nobody said it has to be one goose one vote in a secret ballot. The decision can be swayed by acts of leadership, by an averaging of cumulative actions, or by random events but a decision is what is arrived at by the flock in just the same way as the various parts of my own brain somehow come to a conclusion as to which shirt I will put on in the morning.
The reason why all of this is important, is because sometimes groups can do things which sums of individuals cannot, like negotiating decent pay and conditions through collective bargaining for example. In that case, the individuals within the syndicate need to be willing to subject themselves to a group discipline in order to take effect action without splitting. There has to be a mechanism to take a group decision which is binding on individuals in order for the individuals involved to benefit from collective action.
That’s why the emphasis on individual networks rather than groups disturbs me, it’s all too reminiscent of Mrs Thatchers’ “There is no such thing as society, there are individuals and there are families”. Networks seem to have the effect of exaggerating inequality as already stronger nodes attract new connections faster than weaker ones. Is that the effect we wish to take an active decision to cultivate or should we make positive choices to nurture alternative patterns with greater long term sustainability?
Well Stephen is a skillful and knowledgable philosopher so I expect he will tear my proposition apart if he ever reads it, but if anything remains it can only help to clarify somebody’s thinking, somewhere - like mine perhaps.
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
