KERUFF

Google now officially owns Motorola Mobility

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:04:51 +0100

Google now officially owns Motorola Mobility:

Larry Page, Google CEO:

I’m excited to announce today that our Motorola Mobility deal has closed. Motorola is a great American tech company that has driven the mobile revolution, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation, including the creation of the first cell phone. We all remember Motorola’s StarTAC, which at the time seemed tiny and showed the real potential of these devices. And as a company who made a big, early bet on Android, Motorola has become an incredibly valuable partner to Google.

Introducing Readlists: Your Reading, Unbound and Remixed

Tue, 22 May 2012 13:06:34 +0100

Introducing Readlists: Your Reading, Unbound and Remixed:

Jeffrey MacIntyre on the Arc90 blog:

We are pleased to release a new experiment today: Readlists, a free and incredibly convenient app for collecting, sharing, and enjoying bundles of articles, poems, recipes—you name it. It’s as simple as cutting and pasting links to ordinary web pages, that are then transformed into a clean reading view, but with the power to send them as specially tailored collections: to email, to Kindles, even as ePub-standard iBooks on your iPhone and iPad devices.

This is pretty nifty. Could be great for when you’re going away for a weekend or on holiday. It gives you an easy way to gather together a series of articles and have them automatically bundled together as an eBook on your iPad or Kindle. Works really well.

Waterstones deal with Amazon puts Kindle and ebooks instore

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:40:00 +0100

Waterstones deal with Amazon puts Kindle and ebooks instore:

Zoe Wood, The Guardian:

Waterstones said it was planning a digital revolution in its stores, with Kindle ereaders on sale for the first time and free wifi, so customers can choose between buying a physical book or downloading it then and there.

This deal is being met with increduility by many in the media, but I think this is a pretty sensible move by Waterstones. I know that I enjoy wandering around Waterstones and browsing through the physical books. I find books that way that I don’t find any other way. But more often than not, having found a book that I want, I then look it up on my iPhone/iPad and download it as an eBook.

If I’m reading this correctly, this deal would seem to imply that when that happens, Waterstones will get a percentage of the sale. So whereas before they got nothing when people like me bought eBooks whilst browsing their physical shelves, now when that happens they will get paid.

They might not get paid a lot, but the last time I checked not a lot is still more than nothing.

The lost art of storing up treasure in heaven

Sun, 20 May 2012 08:35:00 +0100

Last week we talked about the lost art of seeing heaven. Looking at Matthew 6:1 we focussed on why we find it easier to practice our righteousness ‘in front of others to be seen by them’, than it is to look for ‘reward from [our] father in heaven’.

This week we’re going to take a look at another passage in this same chapter of Matthew and talk further about heaven—but also about money.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. (6:19-24)

We need to start by re-emphasizing a point that we made last week: heaven is not where we go when we die; heaven is God’s dimension of the world that we live in. We must avoid the temptation of thinking of earth as here and heaven as there in any kind of physical sense. If we don’t grasp this, we will fail to fully appreciate so much of what the New Testament teaches—not least this passage we’re looking at today.

Tom Wright, the New Testament scholar, offers a helpful explanation in his For Everyone commentary series on the book of Matthew:

As with other references to heaven and earth, we shouldn’t imagine [Jesus] means ‘don’t worry about this life - get ready for the next one’. ‘Heaven’ here is where God is right now, and where, if you learn to love and serve God right now, you will have treasure in the present, not just in the future. Of course Jesus (like almost all Jews of his day) believed that after death God would have a wonderful future in store for his faithful people; but they didn’t normally refer to that future as ‘heaven’. He wanted his followers to establish heavenly treasure right now, treasure which they could enjoy in the present as well as the future, treasure that wasn’t subject to the problems that face all earthly hoards. How can one do this? Learn to live in the presence of the loving father. Learn to do everything for him and him alone. Get your priorities right.

The next section in the passage we’re focussing on today helps to shed some light on what it means to get our priorities right. This is one of the trickier sections of Jesus’ teaching to understand. What on earth does Jesus mean by healthy and unhealthy eyes? The key to figuring out what Jesus meant is to actually do a bit of research into how the Jews in Jesus’ day would have heard this saying. And the Jews would have heard loud and clear what Jesus meant.

Let’s start by including the the translation David Stern offers in his ‘Complete Jewish Bible’:

So if you have a ‘good eye’ your whole body will be full of light; but if you have an ‘evil eye’ your whole body will be full of darkness.

Instead of healthy and unhealthy eyes as translated in the NIV, Sterne refers to a good and evil eye. And that matters. The phases ‘good eye’ and ‘evil eye’ had very clear and specific meanings to the Jews in Jesus’ day. To have a good eye meant that you were generous; to have an evil eye meant that you were stingy.

So, let’s re-read the whole section, but update the NIV version to include the meaning:

The eye is the lamp of the body. If you are generous, your whole body will be full of light. But if you are stingy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

Having a good, healthy eye is about seeing the needs of those around and being generous in our giving towards meeting those needs. Having an evil, unhealthy eye means that we are blind to the needs around us and are greedy and self-centred.

Lois Tverberg expands on this in her book ‘Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus’:

Why is a person’s “eye” toward others so critical to Jesus? Because our relationship with money reveals our relationship with God. To have a “bad eye” is to cling to the little that you have, resenting those with more and refusing to help those with less. Your attitude shows how convinced you are that God is stingy, that he is either unwilling or unable to care for you. And it reveals how disconnected you are from the struggles of others. No wonder Jesus says that life becomes dark indeed when you’ve cut yourself off from both God and those around you.

On the other hand, if you’re radically convinced of God’s caring presence in your life, you’re also confident that God will provide for your needs — not just materially, but emotionally and spiritually as well. You may not be wealthy by the world’s standard, but you have a rock-solid understanding that what you have is enough, that ultimately your own situation is secure. The fruit is a generous attitude, a “good eye” toward others. How can your life not brighten when you think this way?

Shedding this light on having a good and evil eye immediately makes this section fit perfectly with the prior and subsequent sections where Jesus talks about treasure in heaven, and then not being able to serve God and money. All three sections in this short passage are about our attitudes towards money, material possessions, God, and others.

In essence, Jesus is challenging all of us who would listen to live lives that are God and other-focussed, lives that look for the reward - the treasure - from heaven rather than than from earth. He is calling us to be generous and other-centred rather than stingy and self-centred. And he warns us that the choice we face is either/or, not both/and. We can’t be generous and stingy, we can’t be other-centred and self-centred, and we can’t serve God and money. We must choose.

Let’s choose to rediscover the art of storing up treasure in heaven.

Don't ask God to do what he told YOU to do

Sat, 19 May 2012 07:18:00 +0100

Don't ask God to do what he told YOU to do:

Andrew Jones:

Jesus did not say to his disciples, “If you want to remove the mountain, host a city-wide worship evening and when people have reached a heightened sense of spiritual well-being, have them pray that God will do something and then return home feeling like they have done well.”

No! ”YOU say to the mountain ‘Be removed!’, said Jesus.

The orders have been given. We are called. We are sent. We look up at huge mountains and we feel intimidated because of their size, and we feel scared because shifting centers of corrupted power and leveling mountains of injustice do not make us friends with those caught up in the institutionalized powers of Babylon. But we act anyway, in faith, because this is what Jesus had in mind for us to do. It’s all part of training for eternity and its something that God helps us with but choses not to take on by himself.

Stirring stuff. And spot on. Highlights much that is wrong in all too many contemporary worship songs used in churches.

U2's Bono to become the world's richest musician…thanks to Facebook

Fri, 18 May 2012 16:23:16 +0100

U2's Bono to become the world's richest musician…thanks to Facebook:

NME:

Given the social media company is currently valued at over $100billion (£63 billion), this makes Bono’s share worth over $1.5 billion (£940 million) and puts him well above Paul McCartney, who is currently the world’s richest rock star with a fortune of £665 million.

Bono owns 2.3 per cent of the shares in Facebook through his private equity firm, Elevation Partners—hence why he’ll be a whole lot richer at the end of today!

John Sentamu: A response on marriage and civil partnerships

Fri, 18 May 2012 15:19:33 +0100

John Sentamu: A response on marriage and civil partnerships:

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu:

Whilst I am a strong supporter of justice and equality of opportunity for all people, I want to insist that with those rights go our responsibilities one to another. These are enshrined, I believe, in our legal definition of marriage. Would we be a better society if we made marriage simply a private contract between two individuals with no wider implications of kinship and family? I do not believe that we would. The issue is not the implication for any existing marriage but the implication for people in future when the social meaning of marriage has been changed and, in my view, diminished.

This is a very lengthy and thorough response to a series of questions and comments the Archbishop received following and interview he gave to The Telegraph earlier this year. For those of you who are following the issue of marriage being re-defined to include gay partnerships, it’s an interesting read—even if only to understand the different perspectives on this topic.

I know that some people would like to pretend that this is a truly simple issue, but it really is quite complex. It’s easy to fire arrows at those we disagree with for not seeing the world the way we do, but people on all sides of this debate quite sincerely and rationally hold different positions. Don’t let the extremists on both sides of this issue detract from a healthy discussion of this subject.

Facebook is the new email: everyone uses it; no one really wants to

Fri, 18 May 2012 14:45:00 +0100

Facebook has been in the news a lot lately ahead of it - today - becoming a publicly traded company on the stock market. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought in light of both that, and also a new statistic just out suggesting that as many people use Facebook today as used the Internet in 2004. Crazy.

Despite the growth of both Twitter and Google+, neither of these have come close to the level of ubiquitous use that there is of Facebook.

Everyone (more or less) uses Facebook; niche groups use Twitter and Google+. And in that sense, Facebook has become almost like email. It is now - socially at least - the default means of communicating and staying in touch with people.

But rather like email in the workplace, Facebook has gone from being a new, exciting means of communication to something you feel you have to use. Just like email, the joy has gone. We’d like a better alternative (lots of us tried Google+), but we don’t see one. We’d like to drop Facebook in the same way we wish we could scrap email—but we can’t. We don’t really have a choice.

The challenge for Facebook is to discover if they can keep making money when - for so many of us - using Facebook is a function rather than a joy.

Want to start a successful business? Don't start with a plan

Fri, 18 May 2012 12:05:10 +0100

Want to start a successful business? Don't start with a plan:

Anthony Tjan, HBR:

One of our most striking findings was that of the entrepreneurs we surveyed who had a successful exit (that is, an IPO or sale to another firm), about 70% did NOT start with a business plan.

Instead, their business journeys originated in a different place, a place we call the Heart. They were conceived not with a document but with a feeling and doing for an authentic vision. Clarity of purpose and passion ruled the day with less time spent writing about an idea and more time spent just doing it.

It doesn’t take much though to see why this makes so much sense.

"When a poor man asks you for aid, do not use his faults as an excuse for not helping him. For then..."

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:39:17 +0100

“When a poor man asks you for aid, do not use his faults as an excuse for not helping him. For then God will look at your offences, and he is sure to find many.”

- Rabbi Shmelke of Nicholsberg

Why the leadership movement is leaving your church leaderless

Tue, 15 May 2012 20:36:08 +0100

Why the leadership movement is leaving your church leaderless:

Mike Breen:

At the end of the day, what most pastors want (and have been trained to want!) is minions to execute the most important vision of all. Their own. In doing this, they effectively kill people’s ability to get a vision of their own.

This is the first in a five part series by Mike and brings some really astute analysis of the state of raising leaders within churches—and what we should be doing.

FREE 8 Week Improv Comedy Foundation Course

Tue, 15 May 2012 20:14:00 +0100

My good friends Isaac Randall and Ryan Offutt run an improv comedy group called Monkey Butler (MB Improv). This is part of Vox Sheffield, the not-for-profit organisation I oversee.

And I’m very excited about the latest venture which is to offer a free foundation course for anyone in the South Yorkshire region. Here’s the details from Isaac:

Hi all, some very very very exciting news from MB Improv - we are running an 8 week Improv Foundation Course which starts with 2 taster sessions so that YOU can try it out first!!!!! The even better new is that it is FREE. All the key info is below:

MB Improv Foundation Course - give Improv a Try! FREE!

MB Improv is running an improv comedy foundation course for anyone with absolutely any level of improvising or performing experience (down to zero).

The course includes the following:

Two taster sessions:

Tuesday 15th May, 7:00pm - 8:15pm

Tuesday, 22nd May, 7:00pm - 8:15pm

Followed by an 8-week foundation course (FREE, with £20 deposit)

Tuesday, 29th May - Tuesday, 24th July, 7:00pm - 8:15pm

All Sessions held at Showroom Cinema, Cinema 5 (15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S1 2BX))

You will learn the foundations of great improvisational comedy.

Activities include:

Spontaneity through improvisation – being ‘in the moment’

Thinking and acting without knowing what comes next

Exercises that boost listening and unlock creativity

Collaboration games

Building teamwork and trust (‘yes and…’)

Making others look amazing

We believe that anxiety can block creativity and improvisation - that’s why we create a fun, relaxed environment where you can really go for it and enjoy all of the activities and games.

Through the MB Improv Foundation Course you will:

Develop a solid improv foundation

Learn the skills to build an amazing improv comedy scene

Boost your creativity and spontaneity

Improve your listening and public speaking skills

Build your self-confidence

Scratch your comedy itch

Most importantly, have a great time with a bunch of fantastic people!

You can register for the course - or request any further information - by emailing Isaac.

"Though it may defy logic, the easiest way to screw up a project is to give it too much time for..."

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:29:53 +0100

“Though it may defy logic, the easiest way to screw up a project is to give it too much time for people to rethink, revise, have second thoughts, invite others into the project, get more opinions, conduct tests.”

- Ken Segall, Insanely Simple

2 Billion Jobs to Disappear by 2030

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:33:00 +0100

2 Billion Jobs to Disappear by 2030:

Thomas Frey, innovation editor for THE FUTURIST magazine:

Most of the jobs getting displaced are the low-level, low-skilled labor positions. Our challenge will be to upgrade our workforce to match the labor demand of the coming era. Although it won’t be an easy road ahead it will be one filled with amazing technology and huge potentials as the industries shift.

This is a really fascinating look ahead by the futurist Thomas Frey. We may disagree over whether the changes he see’s happening as a result of technological advances are a good thing, but there’s no doubt this is the direction we’re heading in. And that has huge implication for how we educate our kids to be equipped for the new world.

10 million active Twitter users in the UK

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:03:00 +0100

10 million active Twitter users in the UK:

A year ago Twitter set up an office in the UK. One year on they’ve announced some pretty impressive figures. There are now 10 million active users here in the UK. One in six people. That’s good going. And it fits with my anecdotal observations that I’ve been seeing a growing number of friends dip their feet into Twitter’s waters.

I should add that Twitter is undoubtedly my favourite social network. It’s where I find my most interesting articles and stumble into great conversations.

You can't compartmentalise discipleship

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:47:00 +0100

You can't compartmentalise discipleship:

Jo Saxton:

I’ve realized over the years that discipling requires more than involvement; we’ve got to be all in. There have been times when I’ve hoped and assumed that discipleship was purely a class or a program. Good input and teaching would suffice; or maybe a meal here and there. Whilst structured teaching and informal meals are valuable aspects of the organized and organic rhythms of discipling, my approach needed an overhaul. If I wanted to see the life of Christ that I’d discovered reproduced in another life I’d need to be all in. It would change my expectations and plans, my schedule, my capacity. It would redefine my values and my definition of success. I couldn’t compartmentalize discipleship to an evening of my week. I couldn’t do it a bit, I’d have to be all in.

I know Jo from back in the late nineties when we were both part of St Thomas’ church here in Sheffield. It’s been great to see what she’s accomplished over the years and I continue to learn from her even though she’s now the other side of the pond. This whole article on discipleship is a really great read and highly recommended.

You can keep up-to-date with Jo via Twitter.

"If we can’t change the Beeb, we can’t change the country"

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:19:08 +0100

"If we can’t change the Beeb, we can’t change the country":

Fascinating rant by Boris Johnson in The Telegraph, arguing that the BBC needs a new Tory director-general if we are going to see our economic situation turn around:

We now have the twin problems of dealing with the debt, and recovering competitiveness – and neither of those is easy when the BBC is the chief mirror in which we view ourselves. If you are funded by the taxpayer, you are more likely to see the taxpayer as the solution to every economic ill.

If you are funded by the taxpayer, you are less likely to understand and sympathise with the difficulties of business; you are less likely to celebrate enterprise. I have sometimes wondered why BBC London never carries stories about dynamic start-ups or amazing London exports – and then concluded gloomily that it just not in the nature of that show. It’s not in their DNA. Fully 75 per cent of the London economy is private sector – and yet it is almost completely ignored by our state broadcaster.

The lost art of seeing heaven

Sun, 13 May 2012 10:57:00 +0100

I was reading through a few sections of Matthew’s Gospel this morning when this statement from Jesus jumped out to me:

Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. (6:1)

It stood out to me because not many people—myself included—obey this! The truth is nearly all of us want to receive immediate and tangible recognition for when we do good things.

This is natural. Anyone with kids knows that your child isn’t very old before they’re constantly saying, ‘look at me’, for every new thing they start to do.

We crave appreciation. We long to be seen and to be noticed. The thought of doing something amazing and it not being noticed affects us to the point that we might never even attempt some feats if it were not going to be seen.

But Jesus isn’t saying that it’s wrong to crave this attention per se; he’s saying that we need to change the audience we look for that recognition from. Instead of seeking the attention and applause of those around us, we are to seek the eyes and ears of our ’father in heaven’.

The problem we have with this is that most of us can’t see the father. Neither can we see heaven. If our friend says, ‘well done’, it’s something we can feel immediately. Getting that reward from the father instead doesn’t seem real.

This betrays a major problem all too many of us struggle with: we have lost the ability—if we ever had it—to see the other, heavenly dimension—God’s dimension —to the world we live in. We see only what we can see with our physical eyes; we hear only what we can hear with our physical ears.

It is because we have lost the ability to see heaven that we seek the applause of those around us.

Heaven you see is not somewhere we go when we die; heaven is another dimension to this world that we live in. There are so many distractions in our physical, material world that we all too many of us have become blinded to this other dimension.

Heaven is real. It’s just as real as the physical realm we so easily sense. But our seeking of applause and recognition from those around us highlights the fact that we don’t ’see’ heaven. We might believe in it intellectually, but we don’t experience it in any true sense. Our behaviour betrays us.

The challenge for us all is to regain this lost art of seeing heaven; of seeing the other dimension that’s right there, just hiding behind a thin veil waiting to be discovered. We need eyes to see and ear to hear.

All too many of us have an intellectual faith in God rather than an experiential one. We believe the doctrines of the Christian faith, but we don’t know God. We believe we’ll go to heaven when we die, but we can’t see heaven’s dimension hear and now.

How do we change this? How can we learn to see both the physical and heavenly realities that both surround us? How can we develop a connection with the father so deep that it feels more natural to seek his applause than that of those around us?

When we look at the life of Jesus—the one guy who better than anyone brought heaven and earth together in his everyday life—we see someone who was a real man of prayer. He didn’t just say prayers or prayerful sounding words. He talked with the father. Early in the morning, during the day, late at night. His whole life emerged out of a life of prayer.

For Jesus, prayer wasn’t about endlessly making requests for his needs to be met; it was about hearing from the father. We too need to seek a life of prayer that is communion with God rather than reading out a list of things we want God to do for us.

Prayer should be about connecting to God, getting his perspective, hearing what he’s saying, seeing what he sees. It’s about slowing down and seeing God’s dimension to the world around us. It’s about seeing heaven. And it’s about asking that what we see in heaven would come to pass in or physical world.

So why don’t we take this opportunity today to seek the father afresh in prayer? Why don’t we ask that he would give us eyes to see and ears to hear the realities of heaven that are currently hidden from us?

As Jesus himself said just a short while after the statement quoted earlier:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. (7:7)

Apple's move away from Google Maps is high risk

Fri, 11 May 2012 21:32:00 +0100

Apple's move away from Google Maps is high risk:

John Gruber, Daring Fireball:

This is a high-pressure switch for Apple. Regressions will not be acceptable. The purported whiz-bang 3D view stuff might be great, but users are going to have pitchforks and torches in hand if practical stuff like driving and walking directions are less accurate than they were with Google’s data. Keep in mind too, that Android phones ship with turn-by-turn navigation.

Astute observation from Gruber about the implications for Apple of their moving away from Google to their own mapping service. At the very least they have to match what Google already offers which is no easy task. And, ideally, they need to push ahead in such a way that leaves Google behind. Big, bold move by Apple.

How to make money online

Fri, 11 May 2012 21:16:34 +0100

How to make money online:

Some really great advice from Seth Godin.