All entries for Thursday 05 May 2005

Spot the link

Writing about Another gravestone for UK high tech? from George Riches: Complaints from a middle aged layabout

To expand on a comment I made in George Riches blog.

There are a number of links between Rover and Marconi – two manufacturers in serious trouble of late.

1. The Lord Simpson of Dunkeld – "After first working in the Scottish gas industry, Simpson joined the then-nationalised British Leyland in 1969, rising to a Director by 1976. He became Managing Director of the Leyland Trucks business in 1983, returning to head the Leyland car business, Rover Group, in 1989, which was now owned by British Aerospace. He revived this company and was able to sell it to the German car-maker BMW." – I might query the use of the word 'Revive' with hindsight!

Lord Simpson went on to be… CEO of Marconi – and lead them into corporate hell and nearly terminal decline. So, Rover and Marconi, both victims of the Simpson way!

2. China. Rover went into a trading deal with Shanghai Automotive shortly before the big bang – and Marconi have also recently reached an partnership agreement with Huwawei – another major Chinese manufacturer – who are now favourites to asset strip, sorry, buy out, the company. Hmmm – I wonder what IP the Chinese have already taken from the ailing telecoms company.

I knew a lot of good people at Marconi – I worry for them. I also knew a lot of arrogant pricks – I feel less sorry for these.

Tom Abbott : 05 May 2005 15:25 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Backpackit

Writing about web page http://www.backpackit.com/

Interesting new application from 37Signals.

Backpackit allows you to keep an online record of things to do, set reminders, notes and store images and files. This can be shared or made public. It's a minime version of their Project management system Basecamp (which John Dale might know more about).

This could be a useful collaborative working tool – especially for situations where people are in different locations. As a private tool it may have no more use than a good notebook. The interface is pretty straightforward, though you have to pay for some of the more advanced features – such as image storage and files etc. This might keep ads away from the system, but may restrict uptake as the free capacity is pretty limited. The system also seems to pretty self contained. For example – the links utility only seems to allow links to other backpack pages – not links to external websites. this may be an 'advanced' feature but we will see.

Not sure if there is enough of a USP to make it a must use application though. Examples page has some interesting ideas on it, but these are all predicated on having the paid for version.

Something to play with further anyhoo. Might be a nice app to supplement WarwickBlogs – WarwickToDo.

Tom Abbott : 05 May 2005 10:28 |  Tags: Web Stuff |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem