Britain’s internet entrepreneurs are no longer languishing in the dot com doldrums, but have emerged revitalised and ready for another round. Bobbie Johnson surveys the scene and lists the top 10 British dotcoms to keep track of.—Top 10 dotcoms to watch
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Most of what I want is choice. When carriers try to maximize their profits with new product offerings that constrain my choice, I get upset. I don’t want to pay them for their Mobile TV. I want a decent price on a connection where I can choose the content — the Internet. I don’t want their phones. I want the choice to use any phone that I desire. And most of all I want all of this on terms and at prices that carriers in the rest of the industrialized world seem to have figured out how to deliver profitably.—Disagreeing with Mark
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Business Week are presenting the 2007 International Design Excellence Awards, lots of nice designs in there, although contrary to previous years there’s nothing I’m fawning over.
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For example, consumers in Lithuania can purchase an unlimited data plan for less than $3.00 per month, while similar plans can be had in the Netherlands and France for under $15.00 per month. In fact, Canada not only trails the U.S. and Western Europe, but Eastern European countries such as Poland and Romania, Asian countries such as Malaysia, and African countries such as Rwanda all offer unlimited monthly data plans for less than $50. Even in those countries without unlimited data plans, the pricing is often far better than what is found in Canada. Italians can purchase 1 GB – double the largest Rogers plan – for $29 per month, while a 500 MB monthly plan is $45 in South Africa, $79 in Mozambique, and $103 in Tanzania.—Uncompetitive Canadian Pricing Threatens Mobile Internet
Mambo Cake
Interesting move by the Mambo team, they are moving the CMS to CakePHP, an up and coming PHP framework (scaffolding as Boris would say). Most programmers will think, “why build a CMS with Cake, you can just build it yourself” but for people, like me, who work “closer to the surface” it’s actually a great idea, I’ll get a package that works right away but based on something that can go much further. If it’s well built it could have a lot of potential to get projects off the ground quickly without closing off options for the future.
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I find this development simply stunning. Following the recommendation of the Telecom Review Panel to create a new complaints agency, Industry Minister Maxime Bernier announced in April that he was calling on the telecom industry to work with the CRTC to establish an independent telcommunications consumer agency. This is not working with the CRTC, however. This is creating a new corporation, handpicking an interim Commissioner, placing the incorporating lawyer along with lawyers from Telus and Bell on the board, and presenting the Commission as a done deal to the public.—The Canadian Telecom Complaints Commission
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Incredible. 1500 inmates dancing Thriller in a Cebu (Philippines) prison. I wonder how that got started? The warden a fan of Michael Jackson or the “guy who kicks everyone’s ass”? ;) (via Jon)
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Sales of Mac notebooks grew 42% year-over-year ... Music Business represents ~40% of Quarterly revenue … NPD reported iTunes became 3rd largest iTunes retailer in the U.S … Apple says it sold 270,000 iPhones in the 1st 30 hours of sales … Expect to sell 1 million iPhones by Sept 29th … 10 Million iPhones goal in Calendar 2008—Apple Posts $818 Million Profit for 3rd Quarter 2007
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So I think we need more. More granular control. More pivot points for discovery and to flag things we want to watch continually. Simple on/off flow controls. Design that recognizes the ambient nature of these services and doesn’t pretend that we’re going steady.—The solution to too much information is more information
Screw Multifeed
Well, a couple of months after relaunching the blog with new split feeds being offered for people who don’t want to read everything, the experience is terminated. No one subscribed to them, everyone stayed on the main one so I’m canceling the partial feed and sections, that will mean a simpler url structure, hopefully the htaccess stuff I added will make sure everything keeps working fine for old links to my stuff.
