Africa may become the first post-PC continent

IDC estimates that in South Africa, 800,000 PCs were shipped in 2010 and the number is expected to decline by about four percent annually to reach 650,000 by 2015. Meanwhile, 1.3 million handsets were shipped in 2010 and that rate is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nine percent to reach 2 million annually by 2015.

Seems like a no-brainer in terms of where the focus should be.

The Guardian with some harsh words about blogging and selling our souls.

From Blogging: The fine art of the confessional:

Many people today enter the vast online marketplace for attention with goals similar to Magnanti's: they want to support their "real work", whatever it is. We say: I will start blogging or tweeting or Facebooking to help publicise my business, or jumpstart my writing career, or supplement my income with some advertising money. Once we begin, we discover that this new work we've taken on – the "not-real" labour of online self-promotion – has its own relentless dynamic. We gauge our progress by page views and follower counts, Google rank and incoming links. If we're not careful, we start to peg our sense of self-worth to these numbers.

Some of us enjoy the independence and opportunities this kind of social entrepreneurialism affords; others resent it as a crass slog. Either way, we ought to be as clear-eyed as Belle de Jour about what we are doing. Like her, we are taking social interactions that we normally pursue out of courtesy or affection or enjoyment and treating them as transactions. I'm not going to argue that this is always harmful or wrong. But whenever we do it, we ought to be honest about it with ourselves.

Too often, today, we meet people online who are frantically promoting themselves and their businesses – all the time pretending that what they are doing is not advertising or marketing but rather "being sociable". Long before the internet's advent, the academic world concocted a phrase that describes what's happening when we do this: we are commodifying our own authenticity. In plainer language, we are selling our souls.

Commodifying our own authenticity. Those are some harsh words. But I'm guessing that doesn't necessarily make it untrue.

Twitter using "consistent user experience" as an excuse to crack down on developers.

From a Twitter employee's post on new developer guidelines:

Still, our user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions. For example, people get confused by websites or clients that display tweets in a way that doesn't follow our design guidelines, or when services put their own verbs on tweets instead of the ones used on Twitter.

*A Consistent User Experience*
Twitter is a network, and its network effects are driven by users seeing and contributing to the network's conversations. We need to ensure users can interact with Twitter the same way everywhere.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. I think Twitter is making a move to control their entire ecosystem, which is fine, except they're doing this in the name of "a consistent user experience." Do it in the name of privacy or a valid business model, but don't blame UX for this.

I'm a huge proponent of good user experience, as most of you know. But it's worth pointing out that a consistent user experience is extremely important within an application. It is less important (still important, but less so) between applications.

Twitter apps, like all apps that use an API, should be a democracy. I applaud Twitter for doing user research on this stuff. But if users are confused, or if an app is crap, users can decide not to use it any more. Twitter shouldn't make that decision for their users.

Making developers use the same nomenclature (like Retweet and Mention) is fine. But enforcing the design and display of tweets to look a certain way will stifle innovation in Twitter apps, and pretty soon everything will look the same -- and be boring.

Also note that their API terms state that you may not "replicate, frame, or mirror the Twitter website or its design."

So which is it? Does it all have to look the same, or are developers not allowed to make tweets look like they do on the Twitter website?

 

On the Macbook Pro as an office. I can definitely relate to this.

Yes, I'm in love with the look and feel of my Apple MacBook Pro (it's a piece of design beauty), but more than that, I often look at the closed computer and think to myself that if I were a painter, this computer would be like having a small portable studio with every type of canvas, paint, brush and color available at the touch of a finger. That's a powerful thought... and it's true. We used to find a physical space to get our work done, but even that is changing.

That's the thing about the Macbook Pro design. Even when it's closed, that sleep light makes it feel like a living, breathing organism that's just waiting patiently for you to come back and create something. It reminds me of this _why quote:

When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. So create.

The Macbook Pro is a piece of hardware created for creating.

Producer Brian Eno on working with U2 and Coldplay at the same time.

It was fine. A few jokes. I felt like a ­philanderer who was with another woman and might make a slip and call her by the wrong name in bed. I had one computer that had all of the Coldplay stuff and all the U2 stuff. I had to very carefully label each folder because I was paranoid that I might end up with the same basic track for each group and I wouldn't notice until it was too late. There was a chance the same track might have appeared on both albums.

So it's not your imagination - they sound alike for a reason.