Rich Sharples' Blog

Continuing a tradition I started on my Sun blog (2005, 2006, I have no idea what happened to 2007) here’s my best and worst list for 2008.

Best Moment

If you have young kids you know that every moment is golden; that explains why I have over 20 GBs of digital photos. That aside – seeing the Democrat’s victory unfold was pretty uplifting.  It’s just a shame that Obama’s victory was more about the Bush administration’s utter incompetence. I have high hopes for Obama – but I think there’s little he can realistically achieve in a single term given the poor state that this country is in.

Biggest Dissapointment

That we still haven’t seen anyone adequately punished or held accountable for the securitized grey-goo. Hopefully we’re pasT the worst of the financial meltdown but we’re certainly not passed the last and many people will still be feeling the pain of the greed and mismanagement of a few for decades to come.

Best Blog

Most / all the blogs I read are work related and predictably I’m interested in the business of Open Source. There are typically two blogs I read every day; when combined pretty much guarantee coverage of everything that’s going on in Open Source – OStatic and Matt Asay’s C-NET blog. I have no idea how Matt writes so frequently without sacrificing quality. Also, according to Google Reader – I read pretty much everything Paul Kedrosky writes on his blog – Infectious Greed.

Best Technology

In the grand scheme of things, considering the world’s problems and how technology could be used to overcome them; Twitter is utterly, utterly pointless; but that’s also true for so much consumer tech. As far as I can tell – Twitter’s exit strategy is to get acquired (I’m guessing by Google) – and I think that’s great – I cannot imagine any long-term, sustainable business model. Twitter may be an IM or micro-blogging service but for me it’s a human powered content filter. I follow 200 or so people who I believe can do a good job of filtering out what’s happening. My tweeting is hopefully contributing in some small way to someone else’s news filtering. In that respect – it could be the underlying technology for the next generation of Google Reader and Google Alerts – so the Google exit makes sense.

The other tech. that continues to impress me is Word Press. The recent UI refactoring in 2.7 cleared up many of the navigation issues for me and there’s very little I can complain about. What really makes it is the ecosystem built around WP – the themes and plugins make it very attractive.

Worst Technology

YANSN (Yet Another Social Network) – it’s crap, it’s too late and no-one cares. We need a couple of rounds of consolidation and some unifying technologies / APIs to create one social-network or a connected web of social networks. We need more than one social network just like we need more than one web.

Mortgage Backed Securities. Some smart-arse PhD created an edifice of infinite growth but built it with wet sand instead of cement. Then they sold the method to a largely unregulated industry who just wanted taller edifices.

Best Book

This year I’ve managed to read (listen) to most of Neil Gaiman’s novels and short stories – it’s all good if you like some escapist fantasy. Talking of which – I also thoroughly enjoyed Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. But according to my Audible library – Thomas L. Friedman’s – The World is Flat was the only book a gave 5 stars – so it wins.

Best Film

I really haven’t watched too many films this year in fact only one stands out as being  memorable – Iron Man which was a lot of fun. I wish I’d managed to see W – next year maybe.

I was glad to see Star Wars make a come-back for yet another generation via the Clone Wars animated film and series – my 4 year-old son absolutely loves it; so does his Dad.

Anyway, happy new year to you all and thanks for reading.

Tags: 2008, best, worst