Copacetic

So Flash isn’t good enough for the iPhone.  Not having a rich client on the iPhone is nonsensical so Steve must have a flash-like play up his sleeve. Perhaps Microsoft and Apple are cooking up a little SilverLight pie?

Microsoft need a serious partner to put SilverLight on the “its not a Windows only play” route. Steve hates giving license fees to Adobe and would prefer to have his own solution. So barring that the best spoiling play is to get into bed with Microsoft. Who knows what deal he could get from Microsoft on the back of that bet, better support for Microsoft Office on the Mac, or even access to the Bejing Olympics for Apple technology…

Justin has produced IrishPulse, a nice little Perl hack to track all us Irish Twitterers.

Justin rules.

I  was thinking about Pat Phelan’s Paddy Tax press release today and the general unofficial cartel situation that infects Banking, Telcos, Network operators and Supermarkets in Ireland.

None of these guys really compete and maybe its us, not them. Not that we don’t want them to compete, but there just isn’t enough of us to make it worthwhile. Nature teaches us that in situations where many competitors strive after scare resources the result is that they typically partition the resources so that direct competition is eliminated.

So what we get in Ireland is the appearance of competition with no real attempt at radical differentiation or elimination of the competitors. Our own inability to complain directly  combined with our gift for complaining publically then creates the illusion of a disgruntled population when in fact it would take dynamite for most o2 users to move to vodafone and vice-versa.

So here is what I suggest. If you are really (and I mean really, as opposed to something to pass the time over a cup of coffee)  disillusioned with your network operator service contract, your bank or your supermarket, then switch. Then switch back. Then switch back again. For banks and network operators the cost of churn is enormous, for supermarkets the fluctuations in cashflow can cause chaos.

Somebody in Digital once said to me, to create the conditions for organisational change you have to inflict pain. Well creating churn is a great way to inflict a little organisational pain on our buddies in Irelands Cartel Economy.