From the category archives:

opinions

Don’t blame technology for your lack of self-control

by Shane Perris on November 30, 2008

in opinions

News sites. RSS feeds. Email. Microblogging. Social networks. BitTorrent. iView (or Hulu or BBC iPlayer). Time sinks, each and every one of them, providing as much or as little value to your daily existence as you are prepared to let them.
“Information overload” is a fantasy, an illusion, and deep down inside you know it, too.
Crying [...]

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Common platforms are a good thing. Right?

by Shane Perris on September 18, 2008

in opinions

Adobe AIR for Linux beta released (labs.adobe.com)
I can see the attraction of developing from a known baseline that is guaranteed to work, look and feel exactly the same across different platforms. One set of bugs to fix, one set of UI changes to make, only one lot of updates to push live. Less development time [...]

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Why digital TV adoption rates are low in Australia

by Shane Perris on August 24, 2008

in opinions

(Update at the bottom of the post)
The analogue TV signal in Australia will be switched off by 2013. This means that everyone without a digital tuner will suddenly find themselves free of broadcast television.  The date for the switch over has been shifted several times as politicians remained convinced that the digital TV (DTV) adoption [...]

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Do I really want my attention managed?

by Shane Perris on August 5, 2008

in opinions

With information overload comes a desire to manage time and increasingly managing attention as well.
Untethered technology gives us the freedom to do nearly anything, anytime, anywhere. It can also enslave us - we feel compelled to use it where ever it is. Technology is neutral. How, when and where we use it is up to [...]

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On information overload

by Shane Perris on July 26, 2008

in opinions

Over the last few months I have witnessed a steadily growing stream of writers declaring news feed, blogging and/or social media bankruptcy, citing such things as information overload, hobbies becoming ‘work’ or even the fact that so many people on the internet can be jerks about such small things.  Maybe you’re like Sarah Perez [...]

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Since its debut in 2004, del.icio.us has been the market standard for social bookmarks.  Its reputation was further enhanced in late 2005 when it was acquired by Yahoo!.  Social bookmarking was going places.  It wasn’t that long ago that every second blog (particularly in the tech niches) had some type of del.icio.us widget in [...]

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I understand that content owners have licensing agreements around the world and feel that they can’t open up television programs globally to protect the financial investment of various regional licensees.
However, content owners, you need to understand that if you deny people a way to legally access your product simply on the basis of geographic location, [...]

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Trent Reznor does it again

by Shane Perris on May 6, 2008

in administrivia, opinions

I’ve got a guest post up at sarahintampa.com (the blog of Grand Effect and ReadWriteWeb writer Sarah Perez) on the new Nine Inch Nails release The Slip and how Trent Reznor continues to lead the way in ‘music 2.0′.
Over the last few months, Sarah has quickly become one of my favourite tech blogger so of [...]

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Data Portability: do normal people even care?

by Shane Perris on April 25, 2008

in opinions

Data portability is the idea that individuals have control over their data online and can determine how they and others can use that data (if at all). Some examples of what data portability could be include:

your profile ‘auto-filling’ when you join a new site
exporting details of your social network contacts to an [...]

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Has Radiohead missed the point?

by Shane Perris on April 10, 2008

in opinions

Radiohead has once again hit the headlines with an ‘innovative’ new media way of promoting the band and the music. They have broken down their latest single ‘Nude’ into 5 stems (vocal, guitar, bass, drums, the rest) and made each available to buy exclusively at the iTunes music store for fans to download, remix [...]

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