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Bleak House Redux: Sanford gets his apology from Massa

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

Well well well – in a turnup for the books that Pyrrhus himself would have found difficult to swallow, Sanford has extracted an apology from non-Congressman Massa following the slanderous claims he made about Sanford’s character and conduct.

The original case is linked in Sanford’s publication of their joint statment of toadying reconciliation, but – like cheap air freshener – this release simply disguises the one rank smell with the whiff of accommodation.

I initially commented on this case – which is pretty off-topic for me – because I know Sanford and respect his energy, enthusiasm and 110%+ commitment to all the causes into which he throws himself. I’m no softy when it comes to political machinations and manipulations, but I was stunned and disappointed that someone who was standing for a position of trust and authority would use defamation, slur and the conduct of his son in to wheedle out of his agreement. The whole thing reminded me of Jonathan Aitken’s brazen challenging of the media with his sword of barefacedness and the trusty shield of a false familial alibi.

The intervening year or so has simply shown the potentially ruinous costs of defending one’s good name (the maxim seems to be that if you can’t afford redress then you’re not deserving of it), the toll on one’s well-being and two new pressures of our age: an active, vitriolic and partisan blogging community that uses news snippets as excuses for point-making; and the ‘eternal memory’ of Google – a libel, once in the gCache, is there for ever.

My over-riding thought was one of relief for Sanford that the whole process was over, with all of the claims against his character unreservedly withdrawn. It’s a pity that there’s such a frothy love-fest of mutual adoration to pad out the thing: I’d have preferred a more simple “I told porkies thinking I could bully, bluster and slander my way out of trouble but now I’ve been called and I’d rather apologise than lose comprehensively in court”. Or even “Sorry”. Still, maybe his wishing “Sanford Dickert well in his continuing capable national service to Democratic candidates and campaigns” will do.

No, it won’t.

Ribbit – Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.


Ribbit – Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company

When I said that 2008 would be the year in which the promises of ‘mobile’ and telephony started to be delivered I didn’t envisage so much excitement so soon.

Hot on the heels of Rebtel we have Ribbit.

Ribbit is Rebtel meets Skype meets Adobe Air/Flex, meeting Visual Voicemail meets Unified Messaging meets iPhone meets CTI meets social networking meets Salesforce.

This gives me a tingle!

TechCrunch UK: Get Forkd – a social network for recipes

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

Forkd logo

Mike Butcher’s recently covered the “Feta” (cheesey ‘beta’ pun – excellent) release of Forkd – a fun community/mashup offering for online foodies.

The pun extends beyond the ‘drop all vowels’ approach of flickr, mosaiqr etc and builds on the interesting notion that an individual recipe may ‘fork’ (as in ‘branch’) as well as be approriated (the very visual ‘forking’ of something from another’s plate).

I particularly like the idea that instead of just ‘rating’ or ‘collecting’ recipies the idea is that you amend, develop, improve and share again.

This is a typically rounded, interesting and polished offering from the good folk at Isotoma (sorry, I mean by “Internet veterans Doug Winter and Andy Theyers”). Heh.

TechCrunch UK: Get Forkd – a social network for recipes

Rebtel: sub-Skype prices for international calls – on mobiles!!

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.


Cheap international mobile calls at Rebtel

I was facing an hour-long conference call yesterday, dialling in to a US access point. I didn’t feel like stiffing my client with a humungous phone bill and as usual I’d left the various headset/handset options for Skype somewhere in a dusty cupboard. Ordinarily, I just shout at the laptop from the privacy of my home office, but this wasn’t an option in an open plan office…

Enter Michael Ross and a text message to check out Rebtel. Wonderful!

I signed up for a $10 credit, getting another $10 free on top and then the magic kicks in.

Via the website one can “convert” an international number to a UK geographic number (ie “free” in effect since my airtime bundle on the iPhone is massive). This must then trunk the call to the US over VOIP network bandwidth to a US POP near the destination phone number. The call from the virtual POP to the ‘real’ number is then a (free) local call. So – a bit like Skype except:

  • it works on my mobile.

There are some cunning touches: enter a phone number via the website and it’ll send the access number by SMS. Neat. One click to call.

Clearly, there’s an overhead in terms of storing a “Rebtel equivalent number” for each international contact, but this is a small price to pay for the absolute joy of chatting virtually free. The other downside is that the service is less attractive while roaming (since the value of ‘local’ number reduces significantly when it’s not part of one’s free airtime). Furthermore there’s not a ‘static’ incoming number (cf the SkypeIn number), but I’m not being fair here since Rebtel is a service for mobiles, and as such it’s wonderful.

Oh, did I mention it was cheap? Yesterday’s call was 25 minutes and the cost was 16cents . Yes indeed – 8p.

Hong Kong for the British Council

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

I’m slowly catching up with posts after my MT install imploded – welcome WordPress and at last a chance to post about a great experience: visiting Hong Kong to run a masterclass on ‘publishing 2.0’ for the British Council in January. I’ve been fortunate to work with the BC on a number of occasions but this was the first opportunity to see the work of the BC outside of the administrative offices in the UK. It was extraordinary to see the throngs of schoolchildren rushing through the offices in HK for their English lessons, as well as the numbers of people using the research/resource centre. Seeing too the ‘on the ground’ advertising of the BC’s services is a reminder of the impact that the Council has in promoting English learning and culture.

I had a great welcome from the BC team and the day’s session on their Online Transformation Programme was challenging and forward-looking.

Outside of the Masterclass it was great to catch up with Antony, who can now add “Tourist Guide” to his extensive list of achievements! A trip to the Chinese Opera over in the New Territories (a unique mix of music-hall, stylised morality tale, costume drama and comedy, all to a distinctive musical style) was the first treat. The surprise was how the audience behaved: chatting, walking in and out, generally not bothering to clap – indeed, running for the doors while the final chords still reverberated… Antony and I were the sole, but stoic, applauders at the end of the 3 hour marathon!

The highlights for the rest of the stay included:

The Graham Street ‘wet market’ (ie alive, wriggling about to be introduced to a cleaver):

Graham Street wet market

The view from the Peak – in the mist and rain:

The Peak in the mist

And of course the wanderings through the streets of Central and Midlevel, temples and street furniture:

Bollards in HK.

For those interested the rest of the photos (a restrained and highly-edited 46) can be seen in the Hong Kong 2008 photoset on Flickr.

New York – Publishing 2.0 for Euromoney.

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

It was a real privilege to be able to run three days of workshops and presentations for Euromoney/Institutional Investor in New York, with Craig Hanna of e-consultancy. Following a presentation to the Board in London, Craig and I spent 3 days with teams in publishing, newsletters and conferences, looking at a number of aspects of B2B publishing in the era of ‘the working web’ (as I’m referring to the post-Web2.0 hype).

Around the training I managed to catch up with some people I’d not seen in too long a while: Rebecca and Sanford in particular.

The rest of the evenings and a brief weekend were spent pounding the streets in the – ahem – rather chilly, sub-zero February air. The photoset is on Flickr if you’re interested.

Highlights of the trip were:

Sakagura – a discovery thanks to Sanford: 250 rare Saki varieties and a peculiar fusion of basement car-park blockwork, er, chic; wonderful food, great service and a surprisingly small tab (gawd bless the £:$ exchange rate!) made this utterly memorable.

The new (to me) Staten Island Ferry terminal; the Kerouac exhibition at the New York Public Library, including one of his long typescript scrolls; Top of the Rock – what a view! Barney Greengrass – how is it I’ve only just found it?

The streets were as interesting as ever, and this visit my eye seemed to be attuned to medium-telephoto details.

Tattoo sign over roadworksView through a cut-out in a hoarding, Battery Park.

Plus of course the abiding obsession with pavements and street-furniture…

I took the XPan along for the trip and have 6 films that now need scanning and editing, but I’ll post those as soon as I get round to it.

A view of the future – from 1968.

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

I’ve also recently seen a list of predictions for the year 2000 – made in 1900 in the Ladies Home Journal. Some of them are stunningly prescient, others are directionally correct (ie if you take them as analogies) while others are clearly increments of the current/emerging technology.

It’s interesting to reflect upon how our future visions are constrained by the technologies that seem to have a following wind at the time, and therefore the difficulty of envisioning radical, non-incremental developments.

Perhaps this is why science fiction has been such a rich source of inspiration: by thinking consciously far in advance of “now” and “next” the authors can concentrate upon human needs and opportunities, free from the constraints of “how to” (just imagine that transparent aluminium has already been invented, for example!).

While innovation can certainly come from pondering needs and current capabilities, it’s worth also trying to project beyond the current planning cycles and incrementalism to a ‘future’ just to see what might emerge.

Interestingly too this is part of the agenda that my friend and collaborator Nico Macdonald is pursuing via his Innovation Agenda.

Speaking at Manchester Digital

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

I spoke in Manchester last night at the Digital Shorts event, organised by Manchester Digital and e-consultancy. I spoke at this event last January and this gave me the opportunity to review the predictions I’d made, compare this last Christmas with that of 2006 and consider the key areas of interest for 2008 (and how these have developed from those of 2007).

There was a great Manchester welcome, a good opportunity to catch up with people from the Littlewoods diaspora, as well as the growing number of agencies and digital entrepreneurs in the North West. Thanks to some deft use of the corporate card the conversation (and drink) flowed in the bar afterwards and we didn’t seem to lose _too_ many people rushing over to the MEN to hear the Spice Girls’ triumphant return tour – the other Big Event in Manchester last night 😉

Cat under the umbrella

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.




DSC00338

Originally uploaded by ikj

This cat knows which side its bread is buttered!

The cat’s a regular at Jones Dairy is Ezra Street, part of the Columbia Road Flower Market extravaganza each Sunday. It’s a pretty haughty and selfish cat – only interested in cadging salmon and cream cheese.

That he was sitting so calmly with these two people sheltering from the drizzle caught my eye. When I asked if it was OK to grab a shot I commented that they must have a gift with cats since he wasn’t normally this friendly. They were laughing as they admitted to having given him the whole contents of their salmon and cream cheese bagel.

I want to be a cat in my next life 🙂