Monthly Archives: December 2008

Perfect timing

“The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies … when Microsoft and Apple were founded.”

– Paul Graham

“We haven’t got much money, so we have to think”

– Ernest Rutherford

Trade Me was launched in 1999, just as the first tech bubble burst spectacularly.

I wonder which companies will look back on the current financial crisis and think that it was possibly the perfect time to launch?

Feel free to nominate some possible candidates…

UPDATE: I didn’t realise when I posted these quotes this morning, but today is actually the 100th anniversary of Ernest Rutherford’s award of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.  :-)

Rugby World Cup 2011

I’m surprised there hasn’t been more said about the draw for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, which was held last week.

Some people might try to tell you that there is still a lot to happen between now and 2011, with qualifying tournaments to be held etc, and lots of time for the form of the contenders to come and go.

But I think we pretty much have the information we need now to guess the likely quarter- and, dear I say it, semi-finalists.

There are basically nine teams who are likely quarter finalists in 2011:

  • The tri-nations : New Zealand, Australia and South Africa;
  • The home nations: England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales;
  • France; and
  • Argentina.

There are only three countries outside of that group who have ever made the quarter-finals at a World Cup:

  • Fiji in 1987 (on points difference over Argentina & Italy) and again in 2007 (thanks to an upset victory over Wales)
  • Canada in 1991 (coming through a very weak pool containing France, Fiji and Romania)
  • Samoa in 1995 (again at the expense of Wales)

Considering possible upsets this time, it would seem Pool D is the place to look.  Wales will again need to beat both Fiji and another qualifier from Oceania (I presume Samoa, given Fiji and Tonga are already qualified?)  As we’ve seen, they have been known to lose these sort of games in the past.

But assuming that doesn’t happen, we’re left with nine teams vying for eight spots, so only one of those will miss out.

It looks like Scotland is the most likely candidate, as they have ended up in Pool B, with Argentina and England.

So, the quarter final match ups are:

  1. England v Wales
  2. France v Australia
  3. NZ v Ireland
  4. South Africa v Argentina

Australia has the most difficult assignment here – they have a pretty weak pool, with just Ireland and Italy to beat, and then go straight into a tough semi-final against France.  We all know what happened to NZ under pretty similar circumstances in the last world cup.

On recent form, it’s hard to pick a winner from England and Wales.  They have three wins each from their last six matches, with all games won by the home team. See: http://www.pickandgo.info/

Either way, it’s hard to imagine either of those teams beating the winner of Australia v France in the first semi-final.

In the bottom half of the draw you’d have to back NZ and South Africa to win and face each other in the semi-finals, with the winner then odds on in my book to win the following week in the final too.

So, there you go … to make the final the All Blacks will need to beat France in the pool match and then get up over South Africa in the semi-final.

It’s not at all out of the question that the final could be a repeat of 1987, with the All Blacks coming up against France at Eden Park.

What do you think?

David Kirk

I was sorry to hear that David Kirk has stood down as CEO of Fairfax in Australia.

It would seem he jumped before he was pushed, but who knows.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to correct people about how Fairfax, and David specifically, handled the acquisition of Trade Me.  The starting assumption seems to be that shortly following the purchase we would have been inundated by suits.  But, at least in the 18 months that I worked there following the sale, that didn’t happen. 

They took an active interest, for sure, but seemed happy to let us get on with the job.  I think he deserves a lot of the credit for that.

No doubt there will be some exciting opportunities ahead for him.

Likewise, it will be interesting to watch and see how Fairfax and Trade Me fare as a result of this change.

31-December

I notice the Sunday Start Times today picked up my story about Malcolm Gladwell’s theory (from Outliers) about the birth dates of top sports people and specifically how it relates to the All Blacks:

Early arrivals get jump start

The theory is that when age-group teams are selected those that are born just after the cut-off date have an advantage as they will be slightly older, and that advantage will then be compounded by the additional coaching and playing opportunities they have over the years, until they actually are better than others born later in the year.

And the data appears to back this up.

Here is a graph of the birth months of the 45 All Blacks from this year:

2008-all-blacks-birth-months

In this squad 55% of the players are born in the first four months of the year, where you would only expect this to be 33% if the dates were evenly distributed.

So, those of you who were born in the second half of the year now have a good explaination for why you never made it, while those of us born in the first half need to find another reason (my excuse: I was over the weight limit for my own age group when I was a kid, so I was playing against older kids anyway).

Looking at this, I was especially interested to see that there are five of the current squad born in December.

allblacks.com

As if to prove that there is always an exception to every rule, there is even one player in the current squad born on the 31st of December.

If the theory is to be believed this is the single worst possible day for an aspiring rugby player to be born, as they will be the youngest candidate for every age-group team, constantly having to compete with kids who are older and therefor bigger and more co-ordinated etc.

So, for somebody born at the end of December to make it they must be an exceptional player.

That player: Richie McCaw.

Now that’s an outlier!

Image: allblacks.com

Where do I find Google?

Google has published their list of the top search terms for the year:

Top 10 searches on google.co.nz in 2008

  1. games
  2. bebo
  3. youtube
  4. trade me
  5. lyrics
  6. google
  7. map
  8. hotmail
  9. tv
  10. weather

Half of these are site specific brand names (in bold) – meaning that rather than using Google the person doing the search could have simple added .com or .co.nz to the term and entered the URL directly into their browser and found the site they were looking for directly.

(the same trick would actually also work with most of the other terms too, but it’s not so obvious that people searching for these things were after the corresponding .com)

The one that will really surprise many web developers, I suspect, is “Google” itself – the sixth most popular search this year.  

How do you explain that?  What’s the mental model those users have of the web and of search engines specifically?

Most technology people will, I suspect, find it difficult to understand the sort of person who does this sort of search, but that’s exactly what we need to do if we’re going to build products these people will like to use and will tell their friends about.

Now Hiring: Web Designer

Interested? Check out the job description.

Too clever

Jason from 37signals last week posted one of my favourite quotes about complexity, and specifically complex systems:

“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.”

John Gall, from his book Systematics

Here is another along the same lines:

“There are two ways of constructing software; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.”

C. A. R. Hoare, the inventor of the Quicksort algorithm

And, why do we think complexity is desirable in the first place?

“People often misinterpret complexity as sophistication”

Niklaus Wirth, the father of Pascal

Are you trying to be too clever?

Outliers

I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, called Outliers.

I recommend it.

Just like his previous two books (The Tipping Point & Blink) it’s full of great stories that will make you think a lot.  

For example:

  • Why are so many great sports people born in the first half of the year (more than half of the 45 All Blacks this year were born in January, February, March or April)?
  • Why are Asians generally better at maths?
  • Why is a pilot with a greater respect of authority more likely to have an accident?
  • What do The Beatles and Bill Gates have in common?

There is also a great section about the importance of meaningful work.  

He defines this as having:

  • Autonomy – i.e. you are your own boss
  • Complexity – i.e. you find the work engaging
  • A connection between effort and reward

Which of those criteria are you getting from your current job?

You can get a taste of all of this from his presentation from the Pop!Tech conference held earlier this year.

If you’re struggling to find a good gift this Christmas, you could do a lot worse than one of his books.

The Story of SuccessThe Power of Thinking Without ThinkingHow Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

And, for those of you who have already read the book, a question to think about – what have you spent 10,000 hours working at?

PS Garr Reynolds beat me to this post by about 12 hours and has lots of links to other Malcolm Gladwell presentations if you’re interested.

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