Ian Waring

Last year I bought a one year subscription to Wired for my iPad. Yesterday, without any pre-warning, they elected to help themselves to another £13.90 off my credit card. I have no recollection of ever agreeing to continuous billing, and even if it was there somewhere hidden in the terms and conditions, I’d expect an advanced warning before they went ahead. Normal buying protocol and common courtesy.

Leo Laporte interviewed “Throwboy” on Triangulation (one of my favourite podcasts) this week. I’ve never heard of throw pillows, and he has some neat ones with speech bubbles on board (like Fail, LoL, Like, etc). His web site was the one selling iCEO dolls, like the one pictured outside the mother ship in Cupertino.

I’m used to running successful, £100m+ Software Businesses that continue to prosper long after I move on.  I help develop the best fast track talent. I think i’ve got a reasonable handle on high technology business trends and how to exploit them. I’ve somehow managed to get myself in a position where my value has morphed into drawing graphs, without the responsibility to use the insights to fix or improve what they expose.

A couple of days ago, Sanjay in the office fired up tethering on his “3” network 3G connected iPhone 4, which I then connected to over WiFi from my iPhone 5. It appeared to be really snappy, so I tried the iOS speed test. Sanjay was seeing over 4Mb/s, and me 2.5Mb/s; that’s over twice as fast as the broadband I get through my BT exchange at home.

Another battle with SSRS today. The way outlined to stick a ranking position on a league table running down a page was to insert something like:

Eventful Day.

I’d like to stick that sign on Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services. 

Headlines and Copy vs Facts

The headline appeared after someone got beheaded in a bar of ill repute, and became one of the most remembered tabloid headlines in history. At the moment, the press is having quite a feeding frenzy on Apple being awarded over one billion dollars in damages against Samsung in their recent (and probably first of several) patent spats in California. Peel the story back a bit, and things don’t look so clear cut.

On the subject of Trade dress, I think anyone would have a difficult job defending Samsung. Much in the same way any car manufacturer would run into trouble if their designs flew too close to looking like a Ferrari. Not in basic shape, or having four wheels on a rectangular floor pan, or the layout of pedals; however, distinctive shape or slavish copying of unique detail causing consumers to be confused are big no-no’s. Conceptually, passing off. Copying so closely that you are living on the values of a competitors unique brand image, or serving to dilute theirs. As long as Apple steer clear of questionable basics (rectangles with rounded corners being cited as one), then they deserve the legal protection.

The three gotchas in this case were procedural. The Judge denied Samsung providing examples of prior art into the case that would easily have proved invalidity of patents on which the jury assigned both guilt and damages. Secondly, the judge demonstrably didn’t hold Apple to the same standards of email evidence retention that she’d applied to Samsung. Finally, having returned a significant workload of questions within 3 days and just before the weekend, the jury foreman has gone public with statements suggesting that agonising over prior art was not a priority in the juries deliberations. It sounded like presumed guilt and an unseemly rush to get paperwork done by the weekend, an impression compounded by several products found to be non infringing and yet assigned damages awards to Apple.

Whatever the merits, this will be a slam dunk appeal for Samsung. They need to pay for trade dress issues, but the current set of patents will be subject to more equitable review next time around. The long term story will unfold after that, when more compelling Apple patents may be brought to bear. A fine PR line for Apple to navigate, to try to look reasonable with their claims and not to be perceived by the public in patenting the obvious (I also wonder how close to various working Google prototypes out in the wild are to claims that Apple are filing in writing only with the US Patent Office recently). And for Samsung to be more grown up in the way their PR bleats insults at iPhone users, who in the final analysis are prospects for them in the future.

Apple appear to be worried about the attractiveness of some Samsung phones and tablets, or are at least conveying that impression to consumers by seeking trade bans. The Law of unintended consequences in play.

In the long term, Apple have a difficult job to keep innovating as a single entity where they are competing against multi vendor ecosystems doing likewise. In the meantime, I hope they continue producing products we love, can be seen to behaving in the market fairly, and at the same time avoid becoming a patent troll from hell.

Bizarro!

I’m using Microsoft SQLserver Reporting Services to plot some Sales by Month graphs, with one line for 2010, one for 2011, a 2012 target and a 2012 year to date. Sample spoof graph above.

Gotcha is that this year goes up to August, then the running sum flat lines the YTD total for Sep, Oct, Nov and Dec. I just want to stop the YTD line at the point of the last data point.

In Tableau, that’s the default behaviour. In SSRS, I’m three hours into the docs and Google searches trying to find out if it’s even possible, let alone fixing it. Wondering if its just me… but the search continues.