Comments for The Smell of Good Business

Comment on How the Apple Macintosh was named… by Paul Fabretti

Paul Fabretti — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:33:02 +0000

Fantastic story Justin AND watertight! Lets see anyone disprove this one.

Comment on How the Apple Macintosh was named… by Miles Burke

Miles Burke — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:49:44 +0000

So it’s not just me that liked Get Smart? That’s a great story, Justin.

Comment on Mofuse traffic greater than direct to a blog? by Todd Davies

Todd Davies — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:13:23 +0000

Hi Justin. Thanks for your posts on this subject - thought provoking as always, in fact I got inspired and redirected one of my site’s RSS feeds through feedburner.

An interesting thing happened - within 24 hours of implementing this our Feedburner stats jumped and our Google analytics stats plummeted (both for visits and page views). I’m not sure how to interpret this, but perhaps the stats in Google Analytics were counting the RSS in their stats. This is a bit alarming, and I wonder whether subscribers to the RSS feed via Feedburner will be disrupted if I go back to what we had previously.

Fortunately for the particular site it’s focused on getting the information out rather than generating page views for ads, so I guess I’m less converned, but it does give me less visibility on what content people are looking at, and could also affect our google ranking.

I’d be curious if anyone has experienced similar issues, and if so what the leading thinking is on this.

Comment on Non executive directors liability issues by Todd Davies

Todd Davies — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:35:25 +0000

For an alternative view on this, Stephen Mayne’s vodcasts are always worth a look. He’s a man who’s never afraid to call a spade a ** shovel who deserves to be SACKED for gross negligence. Great viewing.

http://video.maynereport.com/Video.aspx

Comment on Is the iphone driving mobile content? by Todd Davies

Todd Davies — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:31:43 +0000

Interesting…

http://resilientfutures.mofuse.mobi/iphone/preview/

Comment on Is the iphone driving mobile content? by Justin Davies

Justin Davies — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:10:47 +0000

Thanks for your comment Eric. Would be interested in your feedback on XCode - I have had a play with this environment, but would be interested in a developer’s feedback. Keep in touch!

Comment on Is the iphone driving mobile content? by Eric

Eric — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:05:24 +0000

The iPod Touch and iPhone are truly incredible technologies which definitely do blur the difference between desktops and mobile devices (i.e. they both run OS X). Worthy of noting is the explosion of applications for these devices on the iTunes app-store. Only last night I managed to download a fully featured VNC viewer to access my Mac remotely.

Having recently started learning XCode and the iPhone SDK I must admit the power of these devices is incredible alongside the development platform. I predict with the recent ActiveSync Exchange support and the ability to develop powerful mobile applications that you are correct - the iPhone / iPod Touch will drive mobile content alongside the Google Android platform (as has been highlighted by some of the innovative app’s demoed during the recent Google Android platform development competition).

Comment on Why you need your RSS feeds fed through Feedburner by The Smell of Good Business » Blog Archive » Is the iphone driving mobile content?

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 11:21:12 +0000

[...] lots of growth in iphone related traffic. For more on the topics of tracking users, please see my Feedburner [...]

Comment on People, process, technology - still the 3 keys to successful application development projects by Sid

Sid — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:32:42 +0000

We are realizing the importance of the aforesaid!

Comment on Non executive directors liability issues by Todd Davies

Todd Davies — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 05:33:46 +0000

There’s a lot of good points in this. AICD will be pushing this agenda hard to reduce the burden on Directors. There can be benefits in this, particulary with companies which don’t pay appropriate director remuneration.

Having said that, it’s interesting to see some of the effects that Director liability are having. OH&S and Environmental legislation are possibly the most onerous on Directors (Graham Samuel is pushing for equally onerous penalties for cartel behaviour). The result of this onus on Directors is that OH&S and Environmental polution are now taken very seriously by boards, which is having great impacts particularly in the area of employee safety.

I’ve never heard of a public company director going to jail for being negligent in their OH&S resposibilities, but I am seeing a great improvement in OH&S practices, particularly in pro-active risk assessment. Less injuries on work sites, less deaths on work sites, CEO and management held to account and grilled monthly about this area - this is a very good thing.

If liability brings key areas into sharp focus, then it’s okay if those accountable squirm a bit. It means they’re focused, and doing the job.

As it is, Directors seem to be a pretty unaccountable lot. The key thing that seems to drive resposibility is not legislation but reputation. If you look at any of the corporate disasters in the past 10 years (and there’s been plenty of them), the Directors usually got off the hook, with the CEO being the scapegoat, and maybe the loss of the Chairman. (Maybe).

Directors have been moaning about compliance fatigue and liability for some time, and warning of people no longer wanting to be professional Directors. As a result of this lobbying there has been a doubling in Directors fees for large companies, while earnings stagnate and employees get their 3% increase. I don’t see a lot of them withdrawing, in fact I see the contrary.

I agree, it’ll be interesting to see how the government responds on this one. It’s not a clear cut solution.