Category Archives: Humour

An alternate hype cycle

Posted on August 6, 2010 at 5:56 pm UK

For the past few years, I’ve posted about Gartner’s hype cycles when the new series is published by the research firm, usually in mid July or thereabouts. The ones that typically interest me are emerging technologies and social software.

What are hype cycles? Wikipedia has a good explanation of the concept. Here’s how to understand the hype cycle charts, the element that most people pay most attention to:

hypecycleexplained 1. Technology Trigger – The first phase of a hype cycle is the “technology trigger” or breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest.

2. Peak of Inflated Expectations - In the next phase, a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures.

3. Trough of Disillusionment – Technologies enter the “trough of disillusionment” because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic and the technology.

4. Slope of Enlightenment - Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the “slope of enlightenment” and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.

5. Plateau of Productivity – A technology reaches the “plateau of productivity” as the benefits of it become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations. The final height of the plateau varies according to whether the technology is broadly applicable or benefits only a niche market.

We’re well past July this year and no hype cycles have appeared yet. I guess they must be imminent.

In the meantime, you might get a kick and a smile out of this alternate hype cycle, as I did, created by CIO.com senior editor Thomas Wailgum:

wailgumtechhypecycle2010

Don’t worry about the trough of disillusionment, says Thomas, for he will enlighten you on what technologies are hot or not for 2010.

Can’t see Thomas’ tongues-in-cheeks matching much of Gartner’s predictions when those eventually appear (heh! “BP Engineering”), but some of the ideas are pretty cool. “Twitter Uptime” and “Don’t Be Evil” for starters.

Enjoy!

Related posts:

EAVB_WYEORXKZVV

    Would you buy a used car from these guys?

    Posted on October 4, 2009 at 11:25 am UK

    I was going through some of my photos this Sunday morning as part of some digital housekeeping when I came across this one, of my podcasting partner Shel Holtz and I taken by Shel’s wife Michele in Concord, California, last June:

    neville-shel-090607

    We were thinking of updating the pic on our For Immediate Release website as the one there was taken in March 2006.

    We’ve changed a bit appearance-wise in three years.

    Great pic though it is (nice job, Michele!), we haven’t used the new one. No particular reason, just didn’t get around to it. Looking at it today, though, maybe a subconscious reason in my mind is that maybe we look kind of Blues Brothers-ish but not so stylish. Funeral directors or mafia hit men perhaps. Or just a bit like dodgy used-car salesmen.

    So what do you think? Would you?

    [Update Oct 5] Brendan Cooper, clearly a wizard with PhotoShop, has a little bit of fun with the pic:

    shel-neville4

    Shades of David Bailey’s Ronnie and Reggie rather than Neil and Chris. Obviously.

    Pushing the buzzword comfort zone

    Posted on August 2, 2009 at 10:58 am UK

    TechCrunch writer Robin Wauters wrote a terrific post yesterday on the ten words he would love to see banned from press releases.

    Big topic, Robin! You’re talking about changing a total mindset, a way of thinking, that’s prevalent in many organizations where jargon and buzzwords define a powerful comfort zone.

    PRs, try something like this in your next press release planning meeting.

    See if you can facilitate some change. Or come to the moment when you realize this isn’t the place for you any more.

    From little acorns, etc.

    What is a browser?

    Posted on June 22, 2009 at 12:43 pm UK

    Scott from Google went out on the streets of New York and asked people if they know what a browser is.

    The results may or may not surprise you. What they’ll indicate is how those of us embedded with tech, as it were, use common terms like ‘browser’ which many people still simply don’t understand.

    Maybe that’s the surprise. Try it on your mother, though, and see what answer you get.

    Take a look:

    Here’s the start of Wikipedia’s definition:

    A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web.

    So it’s not search itself (as many in Google’s video believe) but a software application.

    Glad that’s sorted out. Now, what’s a ‘software application’? You can read the Wikipedia definition if you like.

    Personally, I often start to describe things like browsers and apps as “a tool that lets you get things done” and develop a conversation from there depending on what and how much a person wants to know.

    Often, less is all you really need.

    Wonder if the results would have been any different if Scott had been in London, Paris, Madrid, Singapore, etc.

    (Via Ghacks)

    The ridicule of Parliament

    Posted on June 20, 2009 at 2:23 pm UK

    expensesduck This morning, I picked up a copy of today’s Daily Telegraph, the edition of the paper that includes “The Complete Expenses Files,” a 68-page report detailing the revelations about MPs’ expenses that the paper has been publishing every day for the past month or so.

    The first thing that struck me about this large-sized document was the front cover, which contains the image of a duck you see here – a handsome Mallard, by the look of it – and which probably sums up everything that’s ridiculous about this whole MPs’ expenses affair.

    The duck relates to an expenses claim by Conservative MP Sir Peter Viggers for a floating house for ducks on a pond. It’s a fitting symbol – a logo, even – for the ridicule members such as he have brought down upon the institution of Parliament.

    schweppes-expenses paddypower-expenses

    specsavers-expenses

    That’s not all, though, as the inside front and back covers of the Telegraph’s report contain the ads you see here by soft drinks maker Schweppes and online bookmaker Paddypower.com.

    Then there’s the ad from SpecSavers the opticians that appears within the Telegraph itself.

    Click on these small images if you’d like to see them in larger sizes.

    Each of these ads are amusing, depending on your sense of humour of course.

    In the case of Schweppes, the ad continues a campaign the brand has been running  for some while in print media. Specsavers’ ad, too, fits with a humorous campaign I’ve seen in recent 30-second TV spots.

    Collectively, though, it adds up to ridicule, humour at the expense (no pun intended) of a system that ought to guarantee respect. Shouldn’t it?

    Yet after the Telegraph’s revelations, does Parliament and those within it warrant any respect? While there surely are individual MPs and others at Westminster who do have honour and have not abused the system, isn’t everyone tarred with the same brush in the court of public opinion?

    Meanwhile, we can look forward to more revelations from the Telegraph – they’re not done yet, not by any means – as well as the full expenses file being published online at 8am UK time on June 23 as a searchable database of “the chapter and verse of all expenditure by each MP since 2001-02.”

    Also on that day, the Telegraph says it will publish the documentary evidence behind the expenses claim of every MP.

    Who’d want to be be a politician, is what I wonder.