A Pony For President

I honestly can’t believe it. the investors were complaining for months, even years to get rid of the under-performing Co-CEOs of RIM Jim Balsillie and Mike Laziridis, and as an act of mollification the two have simply replaced themselves with one whom for the most part appears no different than the previous.

RIM is a company that has problems, problems that are exaggerated by the sensationalist media, but problems. Problems that they need to fix darn quickly, and a management team that needs to be changed darn quickly. I wouldn’t consider Thorsten Heins a change, he’s basically continuing with the failed and unpromising trajectory that Jim and Mike started with.

Until any leader at RIM can stand up and acknowledge RIM’s troubles, there’s no chance of fixing them. While Thorsten Heins clearly has a vision for RIM, it’s not a particularly great and innovative one, in fact, it’s the same vision of the previous CEOs. Thorsten Heins wasn’t brought in to create new ideas, he was brought in to try and execute properly the old ones. But is there really a proper way to execute something that lacks promise to begin with?

Clearly Thorsten doesn’t see RIM as in trouble, which isn’t entirely ridiculous since RIM is still making money, they still make a profit. But for RIM, it’s not about the money anymore, it’s about the influence and the impact, and on those two aspects RIM is dying fast. With words like: ‘At the very core of RIM is the innovation. We always think ahead. We always think forward. We sometimes think the unthinkable. And that is fantastic’, Thorsten is clearly blind to RIM’s public perception. People see RIM as the company that delivered the same phone in the same form factor for five years, whilst Androids literally jumped leaps in months. That’s not innovation. 

And spinning off bullshit like ‘sometimes we innovate too much’ makes you think that maybe Thorsten is even more clueless than Jim and Mike are.

But he’s right about one thing, RIM needs to ship BB10 on time. And if under Thorsten’s leadership RIM can do that, then I’m glad he’s there. With Playbook OS delays driving me absolutely nuts for the past 6 months, I’m glad punctuality is right at the top of Thorsten’s mind. 

At the end of the day though, Thorsten will probably not be the salvation RIM needs. He’ll be there to slow down a slowly sinking ship, but it’ll take someone more to get it sailing. I’m not saying RIM needs a Steve Jobs, but I’m saying RIM simply needs someone to say ‘We fucked up’. Acknowledgement is the first step to healing.

Beneath the Excitement of iBooks 2 on Geeky Pony

“There’s a reason why cellphones are generally not permitted for use in class despite their potential utility as a learning tool, it’s because electronics are distracting; pair that with the fact that learning subjects that a student dislikes is boring and you have a fairly tasty recipe for procrastination, in class texting, and Facebook-ing. Interactive books will never make a student interested in a subject that inherently bores them in the same way that playing Halo won’t make me a fan of guns.

Apple’s interactive textbook is a double edged sword, empowering engaged students to learn in new and better ways, but for the kids who aren’t really engaged in the first place, it’s just a brand new way to get away from class. By trying to emulate the quick access and fast paced immediacy of current technology in the new interactive textbooks, we’re also emulating the negatives – the constant contingency to lose focus.

If we want to fix education, we can’t simply implement books that move and talk, we need to change the curriculum so that students don’t have to do science or math if they simply don’t give a sh*t.”

Read more

Wikipedia blacked out 4 or so hours ago and since then I’ve attempted to access Wikipedia at least 20 times. It’s really insane how much I use Wikipedia, even during my summer break.

They say that you only really see the value in things when it’s gone and this applies spectacularly well here.

Where else am I going to find that Matt and Kim are a dance/punk duo from Brooklyn, NYC without having to jump through hoops and ravage through links on other sites. Where else would I be able to see in one click the population of Sydney, a detailed explanation of the city along with images of its CBD skyline? Everywhere. And that’s exactly what makes Wikipedia so darn crucial to me, the fact that it’s not everywhere but all congregated in the one place.

I wouldn’t have half the knowledge or half the time without Wikipedia.

The extraordinary thing is that I don’t even realise when I’m going on Wikipedia, it’s just engrained somewhere into my nature now. Being confronted with the blackout screen from the SOPA protest is like a slap to the face - ‘shit, I’m on Wikipedia’. 

But yeah, I oppose SOPA too and support the protest. But for the next 20 hours, I’ll just Wiki on mobile.