I have so many tabs open at the moment that they are dissappearing off the edge – Firefox only appears to deal with 40 or so at a time and does not scroll the tabs.
Carphone Warehouse enter the brandband market. Taking advantage of the Local Loop unbundling, Carphone Warehouse is going to be offering up to 8MB broadband at a new cheap price. BSkyB are also planning on entering this market. This would be why BT quietly upgraded my acocunt to 8MB over the last couple of months.
Questing appears to be a interesting game. Send a question to the text number and get an answer back. Play with a group of friends and see where it takes you. It’s still in test phase, and the founders appear to be running a few small evetns to iron out the rules. An example:
Quest: Challenge the nearest person to a game of thumb wars. If they refuse to play, attempt to battle yourself. Outcome: Alex challenged the cashier in Boots to a game. She refused but the person behind Alex accepted and won the battle on Cheltenham High Street. Alex now walks her dog.
An essay on software patents from Paul Graham.
I’m not saying secrecy would be worse than patents, just that we couldn’t discard patents for free. Businesses would become more secretive to compensate, and in some fields this might get ugly. Nor am I defending the current patent system. There is clearly a lot that’s broken about it. But the breakage seems to affect software less than most other fields.
In the software business I know from experience whether patents encourage or discourage innovation, and the answer is the type that people who like to argue about public policy least like to hear: they don’t affect innovation much, one way or the other. Most innovation in the software business happens in startups, and startups should simply ignore other companies’ patents. At least, that’s what we advise, and we bet money on that advice.
Marketing Sherpa have a whole load of case studies of great viral marketing campaigns.
And finally…tomorrow could be on of the more religious days of the year. From Londonist, a list of faith-based ‘events’.
Thursday 13th April Maundy Thursday – the Christian dayof remembering Christ’s Last Supper
Hanuman Jayanti – the Hindu festival marking the the birth of Hanuman, the Monkey God
Memorial of Christ’s Death – this is the only religious festival marked by Jehovah’s Witnesses
Therevada New Year – a three day festival for Theravada Buddhists, starting on the first full moon day in April
Passover – the first day of the season of Passover when Jews commemorate the liberation of the Children of Israel who were led out of Egypt by Moses.
Vaisakhi or Baisakhi – the Sikh New Year Festival
