Month: December 2003

Friend Blogs

Hannes Gassert, popooner and php hacker, Stef Leone, former partner in crime at KPMG consulting, Henning von Vogelsang, (re)found 95-era acquaintance. Oh and henning, get a feed or a real blog software 🙂

Red night

not content with what zurich had to offer, we decided to drive to basle. fabian picked me up at midnight and by 1:00 we were shaking to russian beats. an odd yet excellent experience.

when free beats for pay

dave is ranting about how free software cannot be user-oriented. i bought a license of manila, and tried radio for a while. verdict: Movable Type has a better user interface than both userland products, and costs.. $0

where are they now?

it is that time of the year again.. time to reconnect with old friends and acquaintances. google to the rescue? not really:

Getting it done

i have observed different projects and their inability to get a release out. the strive for perfection is one easy culprit. ever a man of advice, doug has this to say:

apakuni: too bad they do not think like mothers
apakuni: after 9 months of gestation, they want their babies out
gregorrothfuss: LOL
gregorrothfuss: good point
apakuni: we need to engineer a DNA modification that equates to labor in software devs
gregorrothfuss: lol
apakuni: a) water breaks (release .9.9.8)
gregorrothfuss: LOL you are too funny tonight
gregorrothfuss: are you inebriated?
apakuni: b) labor (release .9.9.9)
apakuni: c) birth (release 1.0.0)
apakuni: nope .. i am at work

Telco Mass extinction

i went shopping for a mobile contract on saturday. with the new alliance between swisscom and vodafone, i was vainly hoping that they would offer an intelligent plan for people who travel a lot and do not want to pay ridiculous roaming charges. i was especially interested in a plan that would let me have 2 numbers, 1 for switzerland and 1 for the us, while also offering me GPRS. of course, no such thing exists. which means i will be looking into VOIP solutions next. meanwhile, the telcos will have a problem on their hands too:

I was just doing some computations today on my fingers and toes on the scale of the problem of replacing voice revenue at a hypothetical telco totally unrelated to my employer:

Voice Revenue of hypothetical telco: $25B

Proportion of voice revenue that is service rather than access: 50%

Gartner prediction for last circuit-switched PSTN call: 2020

Assume you retain 100% of access fees, lose 100% of service fees. Assume wireless and wireline go 100% IP-based.

Some numeric prestidigitation means that on average you need to find $600m of new business EVERY YEAR for the next 17 years. This needs to be conjured up from completely new intermediary roles and new services: access revenue is already factored in. And this is just to stand still. Oh, and it’s front-loaded since most of the people who are motivated to leave because they’re paying a lot will leave in the early years. The last person with a pure circuit PSTN line will be a sad case indeed. So you’re probably looking at having to invent a new $1B business every year. Without fail.

also, dear telcos, what is your strategy for ambient virtual co-presence?

20min blogs with KAYWA

In cooperation with 20 Minuten, Switzerland’s free newspaper (daily readership is over 700k; the web community is around 110k), KAYWA launches the image-driven “MMS Fotoalbum”.