10 December 2002

My colleague Malky has put up a picture of his beautiful new son.  It's an absolute scandal that the first time I have seen Sean is on a web site!   I must get a life sometime soon.  :-( http://www.mysterian.com/images/wee%20sean%20sleeping.jpg [Malky B Logs] 4:45:32 PM

from Jeroen: disconnected. Grrrr, still no broadband in the new house so i guess weblog updates wil be a bit irregular the coming period. [Jeroen Bekkers' Groove Weblog] Hang on in there Jeroen!!  4:37:05 PM

Good piece from Neil about what Mysterian is up to... What we've done - we've built (IMHO) a really nice Groove tool called Radiology Manager. It allows a hospital at site A to use radiological expertise at site B. Its simple but effective. Here's what the key form looks like: [Neil Finlayson's Radio Weblog] 3:04:54 PM

The BBC ran a story recently about a particle that was so dense that it passed right through the earth in 1993.  This reminded of the story on John Walker's website about the Oh-my-God particle. Incidentally, for anyone in the software business, John's history of AutoCad makes great reading.  I guess that in some ways, John was one of the world's first bloggers 1:30:27 PM

Hurrah.  Our new look web site has gone up.  You can find it at Mysterian Why is it that we can build websites if asked for others, yet when it comes to our own it seems to take forever?  Am I alone in this thought?  Cobbler's children I suppose. 1:21:30 PM

I have an admission to make.  Much as I think Groove is one of the best new applications out there, I do not like their '10 x better than e-mail' advertising tag.  Why don't I like it?  Because it is made up. Who did the tests to say 10x?  Why not 100x, 1000x 2x?   For me, it can be all of these - depending on what I am trying to do.  To say 10x better than e-mail puts Groove squarely up against e-mail.  Whilst it certainly has a function against e-mail, I think that this misses a big part of their story. Here's what I think.  I think that Groove is doomed to success. I think it is doomed to success because it represents a step forward in communication and anything that represents a step forward in communications is doomed to success.  History tells us this.  There are plenty of examples of new technologies that  have had this status.  Printing press, radio, books, telephone, fax, e-mail.  Even telex is still used in certain circumstances.  None of them completely replace what has gone before them and yet all represented a new way for humans to communicate easily and inexpensively.  Because of this 'easily and less expensively' factor, they were all doomed to success. To test this, we can even hold up new communications technologies that haven't taken off as some predicted.  Video conferencing.  Not easy, not inexpensive.  Until these issues taken care of, video conferencing will continue to struggle for the mainstream. So, should we all buy shares in Groove (if we could)?  Well, I would personally, because I think that they are a well run company with an early lead.  But, whilst I firmly believe that what Groove represents is doomed to success, history also tells us that it is noit always the inventor that reaps the rewards.  So, Groove still have challenges ahead to win, but we can be sure that what they represent will succeed.      1:19:49 PM

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