Jason Preston's posterous

I am a writer, a speaker, and an event organizer. Find me on Twitter: @jasonp, or by email: j at jason-preston.com.

Daring Fireball: Microsoft's Long, Slow Decline

There’s no question that retailers sell tens of millions of cheap Windows laptops every year. But no one with a pair of eyes thinks such machines are of comparable quality to Apple MacBooks. Even without turning the machines on, anyone can see the difference in design and build quality. In fact, you don’t even need eyes — just pick them up and see which one squeaks. Apple is selling more MacBooks every quarter. Microsoft thinks it is sitting pretty because Best Buy has a 17-inch Dell for $650.

What Gruber highlights here ( http://daringfireball.net/2009/07/microsofts_long_slow_decline ), which is of course something that Microsoft knows but won't say publicly, is that the majority of the people buying PCs right now are the people who can't afford to buy Macs.

I also get a chuckle out of hearing the "but the screen is bigger" thing from the bargain hunter PC ads. I just moved from a 15" MacBook Pro to the 13-ish-inch MacBook Air. Love it. A 17" screen on a 15lb laptop is a curse, not a blessing.

What's your thing?

I've noticed that most of the people who have large followings on the internet (OK, I mean Twitter, because it's really easy to count), have a thing. Sure, many people are popular because they're famous (Ashton, LeVar, Oprah, etc), but all the others have grown a large following by picking something and owning it. 

In other words, niche is the new big. 

It's too bad for me because I don't have a well defined thing. I work in marketing, conferences, social media, consulting, and of course, I write, but none of that is really my thing.

What about you? What's your thing? Has it built you an audience?

I blame global warming

All I really know is that the little "102" on the left means it is way WAY too hot for me to not have air conditioning. 

Seattle_temperature

Google’s Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It

But let’s not stop with Thomson. Let’s go on up to Rupert Murdoch, who says Google’s stealing his copyright in a recent Forbes article:

“Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?” asked the News Corp. chief at a cable industry confab in Washington, D.C., Thursday. The answer, said Murdoch, should be, ” ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ “

Let me help you with that, Rupert. I’m going to save you all those potential legal fees plus needing to even speak further about the evil of the Big G with two simple lines. Get your tech person to change your robots.txt file to say this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Old but good - call the bluff, Danny Sullivan, call the bluff ;)

Hey, who's that? In the back?

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Notice anything funny about that guy in the back? "Shhhh...nobody pay any attention to the sneaky plainclothes in the back..."

Pearls Before Swine trashes Mary Worth

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...and it's hilarious. This is from three days ago.

Science Fiction planets

Over the past several months I've been reading (actually - listening to) the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons on my work commute. The last time I read these books was at least ten years ago, and I had forgotten how good they are. 

If you haven't read them, and you're into so-called "soft" science fiction, definitely pick them up and give them a read. 

One of the things I've noticed as I've been listening to this book, and I think it's true of other sci fi work as well: we humans tend to give entire planets the characteristics of one of our climates: "this is a desert world," "this is an ocean world."

Weird, right? Like other planets can't have multiple climates.

TK421 just figured it out

This seemed like an appropriate way to kick off my posterous.

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