Tom Nixon

Google China: bad news and good news

Made me sad reading about Google’s complete sell-out of its ethics by launching a censored search engine in China.

But great to hear that someone has found a hack already so the Chinese can get uncensored results. Seemed inevitable that it’d happen.

Wonder what the average Google employee makes of it all.

Technology pessimism

I think I’m a bit of an oddity amongst people working in the web in that I’m not a gadget freak. I tend to see new technology for its limitations and problems as well as its potential for goodness.

Take my new iPod Shuffle for example. Based on Apple’s reputation for top notch product design I thought it would be a great bit of kit. So small and skip free – ideal for the gym.

So I load on a dance music mix CD only to discover that the iPod inserts a jerky little pause between each track that you can’t switch off. Apple have produced a pretty lame workaround for this which allows you to combine all of the tracks as one to avoid the between-track pausing. But sometimes you want to go to a particular track within a CD and not have to listen to the whole thing from the beginning.

Anyway, it’s that kind of thing that annoys me about gadgets. Rant over.

Flipping the funnel

The new ebook Flipping the Funnel by Seth Godin is the best thing I’ve read so far about Web 2.0 for two reasons:

1. Because it doesn’t actually contain the phrase ‘Web 2.0’ which is a refreshing change from all of the hype out there and boring discussion about definitions. Instead it focusses on the application of the philosophy and most importantly – well, to me and my clients anyway – its potential for marketing a business.
2. The ebook is actually a living case study in itself as Seth’s using it to promote his own new service, Squidoo. Not just practicising what he’s preaching, but practising while he’s preaching, if you see what I mean.

Dress code

Just had lunch with a friend of mine who works at a company I admire and have a lot of respect for. But there’s always room for a bit of madness.

They’ve just been through a process of deciding what their office dress code should be, and apparently The Code has gone through a couple of revisions now. The latest is that jeans are back in, but only if they’re smart. Anything faded or ripped in any way is out. But who makes the judgment call? And, more importantly, who even wants to be put in charge of dress code descretion? Hasn’t everyone got more important things to do? Like working?

I just don’t get why a company made up of knowledge workers needs a dress code at all. You trust your staff to make important decisions every day, but you can’t trust them to make a sensible decision about what clothes to pull out of the wardrobe in the morning?