2011 July 12 archive at Robert Pogson

Archive for July 12th, 2011

Google+’s Explosion and FaceBook’s Decay

Published by Robert Pogson July 12th, 2011 in technology. 16 Comments

SJVN writes about it and quotes some amazing statistics. Google+ is growing exponentially at a rate something like 1-2% per hour.

At one point Google tried to block new memberships but folks still found a way around.

I’ve seen what FaceBook does to people… Google+ could be just as addictive and people really like the security model. It’s in rings and it is simple to understand compared to FB’s constantly moving target.

I like maths, when it works. Just for fun let’s calculate how long it will take Google+ to steal 500million users from FB…
10million * (1.01)ⁿ=500million

n = log(50)/log(1.01) = 393h = 16days

Well, that was fun. Perhaps Google+ doesn’t have enough servers to create that many accounts so soon but it looks like Google has a winner. I might even give it a try. FB horrifies me. It could be that FB’s lock-in will retain the majority of their accounts but there still are hundreds of millions of users of the web who might be interested.

- Robert Pogson

Competing with Self

Published by Robert Pogson July 12th, 2011 in technology. 24 Comments

M$’s biggest competitor is its large installed base of PCs. Most of them still run XP which will be supported until 2014. M$ has been pushing people to switch to “7″. A comment on an article about that:
Boris the Cockroach wrote“Dear microsoft #
Posted Tuesday 12th July 2011 11:04 GMT

Can I have some money to buy a PC capable of running windows 7 ?
Oh well , guess I’m stuck running Linux then”

There’s the rub. Even for $300 for a new PC case with “7″, it is much cheaper to keep a perfectly satisfactory/working PC than to migrate to “7″. People mostly don’t install an OS so migrating to “7″ means scrapping a PC and buying a new one. The OS is not “free”, you see. It costs what a PC costs and then one has to fiddle to get the old peripherals working etc. If one is forced to replace the OS, the lowest-cost option is to use GNU/Linux. Perhaps some child over 12 years of age will help just as they used to help set the clocks on the VCRs. I expect a good slice of those XP machines will migrate to GNU/Linux rather than the scrap dealer or they will wait to the last minute to see whether “7″ or “8″ is the current fad. Of course, by then, they may see piles of Android/Linux smart thingies on retail shelves… I like it.

- Robert Pogson

We Are Moving to the Cloud

Published by Robert Pogson July 12th, 2011 in technology. 1 Comment

This site will soon move to a server in the cloud at RackSpace. We expect RackSpace will give great service at a good price. They are in NetCraft’s top 50 hosting companies. Hopefully, the transition should be smooth. There might be the odd comment lost in the shuffle. That’s the worst case… The best case is that we will have room to grow smoothly and with fewer glitches.

RackSpace is an interesting outfit. They give back to the community in the form of OpenStack.

Read more about OpenStack at OpenStack.org.

- Robert Pogson