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The Open equipment stats
Statistics from The Open Championship provided by TaylorMade (# of players);
Drivers
TaylorMade - 54
Titleist - 31
Callaway - 17
3-9 Irons
Titleist - 37
TaylorMade - 28
Callaway - 19
Footwear
FootJoy - 86
adidas - 29
Nike - 12
Balls
Titleist - 90
TaylorMade - 20
Callaway - 16
This post has 448 characters, and was posted by @stevefarnworth
Golfing
Played golf this morning, shot well into the 100's but was sort of expecting that as I've somehow managed to not get a round in yet this season.
Smattering of pars around the place, but with a few too many sliced drives. My driver is perhaps too long for me with a slightly too flexible shaft, lots of head torque pulling it across the ball, but decent distance.
Still 3 putting, but getting much closer than when I was playing with a mallet styled club, switching to a regular has improved the pace of shots but not my ability to read the greens!
Short game a little inconsistent with my 52 degree, but the long game felt really nice, playing the long blades off the deck kept the ball straight if not always giving the distance.
Going to get a lot more games in over the next few months, so hopefully the consistency will return. Plus, if I leave the big dog in the bag and work on the putting it could be quite good!
This post has 979 characters, and was posted by @stevefarnworth
World Cup failing to impress
Let's leave the ridiculous vuvuzelas out of this (tradition? Who cares, it's the *World* Cup, not the *South Africa* Cup. It has to be enjoyable on a global scale - and the majority of comments I've seen indicate the rest of the world hate them as much as I do), and focus on more footballing matters.
Fouls. Is it just me, or are there a higher frequency of dangerous ankle-high slides in the opening matches? The majority of which are worse than the studs-down slide by Tim Cahill (for which he was red-carded), highlighting inequalities in the refereeing of matches, but showing that the other refs are letting dangerous fouls go unpunished.
The matches are dull. Blame the ball, blame the weather, blame whatever you like, but let's hope it's just opening day nerves because these matches are crap.
Apart from the Germans stuffing 4 past the Aussies last night, there's hardly been anything of interest in 4 days of constant competition.
Following on from this, all the pundits don't seem to want to be commentating. They're all laying into the quality, making quips about the excitement levels and generally looking annoyed they're being paid to watch these rather poor displays.
Let's hope the Spanish, Portuguese and Brazilians can bring something to this, as it's hardly a spectacle as it is.
This post has 1367 characters, and was posted by @stevefarnworth
Free mini-sessions at Develop Conference
Develop will be offering a series of 30-minute free "mini-sessions" at their Develop Conference in Brighton next month (14th and 15th July) to help prospective and upcoming game developers get a leg-up in the industry.
Simply register for a free Expo pass and get access to these great sounding sessions;
Starting Up a Games Studio With No Industry Experience
Adam Green, Assyria Game Studio
Building Games for Netbooks
Doug Binks, Intel Semiconductors AG
SCM and Outsourcing “Commodity Creative Development”
Sven Erik Knop, Perforce Software
How to Write Great Drama for a Video Game
Hope Caton
Technology in Transition: Migrating MMO Technology to Browser and Console
Rocco Loscalzo, Monumental Games
The White Bunny Goes Digital: Designing a Cross-Platform Miffy
Antonio Saraiva, Biodroid Productions
Developing Hit Games with Xbox LIVE Arcade First Party Publishing
Ted Woolsey, Microsoft
Development And Debugging Tools For Windows Phone 7 Series
Allan Murphy, Microsoft
Really hope I can make it down there, these seem really interesting!
[Registration]
This post has 1436 characters, and was posted by @stevefarnworth
Alternative BA Strike PR idea
Right, I've made my feelings clear on the BA strike; I don't like it, so I thought I'd offer a half-baked solution to the problem.
I dub it; "Should be Striking" (no idea if it's been done before though).
Essentially the crew/union sets up a grassroots campaign which informs the public why they would be striking, but then actually turn up and get on with work as their argument isn't with them.
Register http://shouldbestriking.com/, ask union members to contribute to an advertising fund (hey, they wouldn't be paid for striking for those 15 days right? Put some of the extra wages to good use), and run a simple ad campaign in key national press. Then the news coverage will come as they're doing something unusual in ensuring that the customer isn't being harmed with their internal dispute.
Get Facebook/Twitter/YouTube involved and share your side of the story, get the news featured in traditional press, new media as well as crossovers (get a story on Mashable talking about the soc-media angle), all the while keeping the general public travelling and generating goodwill with people who'll then be more likely to sign a petition or whatever you put in front of them.
Done. :)
As I said, I don't know if it's been done before, but if it hasn't...well, PR companies can offer me a job :P
This post has 1386 characters, and was posted by @stevefarnworth
Well Hung Parliament
Offering my 0.02 here;
We're in a bit of a muddle for the next few days as politicians get together and flesh out some backroom deals in order to try and bring some form of government into power to run the country.
Nick Clegg has to gamble political fortune now, with setting themselves up for a shot at the next election, and has already come out and said the Tories should try and form a government as they had the most votes.
I somewhat agree. Let the Tories form a government, on the proviso they come in with the first step of political reform; giving the Lib Dems official opposition powers.
The UK is run on a two-party system. Legally we have a government and an official opposition who are obliged to hold the ruling party to account. If you have two official oppositions, that would provide some welcome, multi-dimensional scrutiny to proceedings. This was why the other, localised parties (SNP and Plaid Cymru) tried to get themselves on the election debate bill; technically, the Lib Dems don't have any more right than them to be highlighted.
If the Lib Dems aligned themselves with either of the two parties now, their name might be tarnished when it comes to the next election which may be fought under Proportional Representation rules (STV, AV, whatever), which could give them a shot at forming a government under their own steam/as the majority party in a coalition.
I can't remember who said it, but last night in the coverage they said we've not voted a government in, but we have voted a government out.
This post has 1614 characters, and was posted by @stevefarnworth
My views on Steve Job's views on Flash
Steve Jobs has just released an open letter explaining his motivations behind leaving Flash support out of the iPhone OS, and you know what, I have to agree with him.
Let's start by abstracting the App Store from the web, shall we? Comparisons cannot be drawn between the two, they're completely separate and any comparisons drawn should not be used in the web argument about openness. They're both internet-focused (for the most part), but are two entirely separate entities and should be evaluated as such.
Jobs' argument is that Adobe commands their 98% penetration rate on user's computers using proprietary software and technology that you can only buy from them (save for some not-very-good cheaper programmes from other people), with a stiff mark-up and a closed engine.
The iPhone's browser, in the meantime, supports technologies widely regarded as "open", and it does them pretty damn well. Flash is known to be buggy on a number of platforms and may also have an affect on a devices power consumption. We've not seen a full release of the technology on any mobile phone platform yet, which begs the question; should Apple have to wait for Adobe to get its stuff together?
I'm not an Apple fanboy, in fact, if you look back over some of my past writings I've been positively anti-Apple, but this "openness" argument is positive, grade-A, bullsh*t.
Safari vs Flash, in a battle of the open-formats? Who do you think would win.
The App Store is another kettle of fish, but that's their own ecosystem so can do whatever the hell they want. On the web front though, they're actually doing it pretty well.
This post has 1768 characters, and was posted by @stevefarnworth
iPhone and the closed ecosystem
Right, another day and another rant:
Can people stop complaining about the iPhone's closed ecosystem? All the developers are boo-hooing because Apple is controlling over the experience; "oh, we want an open App Store, access to APIs from webpages and unicorns". F**k. Off.
This is the way the iPhone is, and will always be. If you're not happy about that, buy another f**king phone and stop bitching. Apple doesn't give two shits what anyone on the outside thinks, and I'm so tired of stupid developers complaining about "closed-gardens" and all that bollocks. You knew what you were getting yourselves into when you bought the phone and started developing for it - so shut the f**k up.
If you want access to the smartphone with the greatest mindshare and an App Store which is widely used due to its connectedness with a users credit card, suck it up.
HTML5 webapps? Jog on, users want a more ingrained experience from their apps, the kind of which that Apple will only allow native applications to be like, not everyone with an iPhone is a developer or a "social media guru". The native experience is more compelling that a simple f**king webpage, get over it and learn Objective C if you want the users (also webapps will have the payment hurdle to get over).
The closed ecosystem is (in my mind) what makes the iPhone/iPod Touch such a good platform, everything is controlled making it the best user experience for the end user, as in the majority of people who aren't bothered about web-markup, standards, Flash or all that other nonsense. Just two-click install of native applications that run well and deliver an optimum experience.
*Breath*
This post has 1750 characters, and was posted by @stevefarnworth
Social Media Conference Checklist
Here are the things that are said at every social media conference, use it as a sort of bingo card;
+ Having a Twitter account and Facebook Page aren't enough, you've got to engage with your customers.
+ It's about the conversation.
+ Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are all only small parts of a wider social media strategy.
+ Use a social CRM tool like TweetDeck or CoTweet to measure ROI.
+ Everyone likes ponies.
+ Social Media wont work for every business.
+ Tools like Twitter and Facebook allow companies to be transparent and accountable to their customers.
+ Don't just link to your site/content, surface relevant content from other sources to gain a customers' trust.
This post has 812 characters, and was posted by @stevefarnworth
Google Buzz
So the web is currently going into meltdown over Google's social layer on top of Gmail.
Rumours of the death of Twitter and Facebook are flying around all over the place...especially on Twitter and Facebook.
I think that's the problem. I like Twitter and Facebook. I don't like Buzz.
It's too centered around the content rather than the message, and I've never looked at my email account and said; "I know what I want to do, send out a public email and have people comment on it."
Plus, we've seen Twitter stutter in the face of growing apathy from those that either don't get it, or don't find it useful. All of us on the microblogging site know why it's useful to us, but the vast majority of people don't like it/know what it is.
Why would they choose to use a service in an email inbox, with people they don't know watching what they're saying when they could be using the more insular (and altogether more socially rewarding) Facebook platform?
Buzz wont destroy Facebook, in the same way that FriendFeed didn't either; it's a nifty feature if that's what you're into, but it doesn't bring anything particularly new to the party for the users that actually matter.
I'll probably be dis-proven on this, Buzz will take over all of social media and I'll be left with proverbial egg on my face...
This post has 1400 characters, and was posted by @stevefarnworth
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