18 May 2002

Telepessimism: telematics whacked hard by analysts Critical C|Net article in brief: punters don't know what "telematics" is, product cycles don't favour car manufacturers (18 months typically) compared with wireless (6 months), car mfrs and sellers don't understand the technology. For these reasons, we'll see telematics being driven (ho. ho.) not by GM but by wireless/operator/high tech companies. The intelligence will stay in the personal sevice or in the network, not in the car. You'll talk to your phone whilst you're in your car, not to the phone embedded in your car. And this is the strategy DaimlerChrysler is following, acknowledging that they sell cars not services. NB: also that car mfrs sell a car once, whilst wireless operators have a month-by-month relationship with their customers, *and* the network to roll out new services quickly. 4:02:18 PM     comments

UK's new air-traffic control system goes down, so planes don't go up Software update crashes system, no-one finds out till new shift starts. Affects management of planes, not safety: Richard Everitt, CEO of NATS says "Our systems are designed with safety right at the heart of them, including our fall-back position" but no news online, although the factfile says 650,000 hours testing went into it. What went wrong? went bespoke instead of off the shelf? over-engineered, over-ambitious? 12:23:35 PM     comments

Udell on Ruby: how long does it take for everyone to catch up?! Sam Ruby reflects on longish-standing stuff like RSS, referrers and whatnot *finally* reaching their tipping-point. You boys have big brains - the rest of us is still trying to work it out! InstantOutliners? SOAP? Huh? OPML? VoiceXML? XML-RPC? What? Eh? Help! Still, from here every direction is up. 11:55:25 AM     comments