Paul Russell

If there was one thing that united the very — ahem — fractious employee population at Microsoft it was their hatred of the stack ranking system by which employees were judged as worthy either of a promotion or the axe.

Now, that system, under which business unit leads had to grade subordinates as top performers, average performers or poor performers, is being dismantled, according to this Verge report, citing an internal memo from Microsoft HR poobah Lisa Brummell.

Inevitably, this came via John Gruber. From Business Week:

From John Koetsier @ VentureBeat:

Lead Generation cards are pretty much what they sound like. Tweets with lead generation enabled include a simple way for interested consumers to give their e-mail address to the advertiser, right on Twitter, without leaving the web page or app. Then the advertiser can follow up and, perhaps, close the sale, or at least nurture a customer.

Finally I'm starting to understand why Twitter wants the world to move away from third party clients. Controlling the client gives them a much tighter loop for innovating on features like this than would likely have been possible with third party clients.

Conversion rates are apparently around 4%, which is pretty awesome.

Gruber:

Here is what I’d like to see Nintendo do.

Make two great games for iOS (iPhone-only if necessary, but universal iPhone/iPad if it works with the concept). Not ports of existing 3DS or Wii games, but two brand new games designed from the ground up with iOS’s touchscreen, accelerometer, (cameras?), and lack of D-pad/action buttons in mind. (“Mario Kart Touch” would be my suggestion; I’d buy that sight unseen.) Put the same amount of effort into these games that Nintendo does for their Wii and 3DS games. When they’re ready, promote the hell out of them. Steal Steve Jobs’s angle and position them not as in any way giving up on their own platforms but as some much-needed ice water for people in hell. Sell them for $14.99 or maybe even $19.99.

The engine is a mid-mounted and turbocharged 1.5-liter three-cylinder [...] putting out 231 horsepower and 236 pound-feet of torque.putting out 231 horsepower and 236 pound-feet of torque. Plenty of get-up in its own right, but BMW wanted more.

5 Steps To Avoid IT Project Failures, Informationweek

From John August via John Gruber:

Most people don’t realize there’s a whole parallel industry devoted to the App Store charts. Apple could get rid of it by removing one button.

What would go in place of that “Top Charts” button? Maybe “Favorites,” with a custom-generated list of popular and well-liked apps tailored to the user. Maybe promote the “Staff Picks” section to its own spot. Hell, let’s dump “Genius” and put in both.

Maybe Apple could make that Favourites button work using actual on-device behaviour.

Apple could use something like amount of time each app is running, but I think that might favour particular classes of app. Just because you don't use an app for very long doesn't mean it isn't a great app. Case in point for me would be something like forecast.io (or Dark Sky if you want an actual app). I don't use forecast.io for very long, but I do use it often.

Apple could use number of launches, but I think that just has the opposite bias.

Instead, my preferred metric would be the number of days the app was launched since installation. If you're launching the same app every day, it doesn't matter how long or how often you launch it, you clearly find it useful.

I really hope Ben Thompson is right on this:

I think at WWDC Apple will announce an SDK for the current Apple TV

The control method will be an iOS device

In the fall, Apple will launch an upgraded model that supports an optional wireless controller The entertainment options will be unchanged: no channel guide, no pass through, no DVR functionality. Apple will instead focus on stealing more and more attention away from pay-TV until the content owners are as desperate as the music companies were a decade ago.

Ben's suggested price: $99 or $129.

Arstechnica:

Transformer Book Trio is a tablet running Android (an unspecified version of Jelly Bean, to be a bit more precise); when docked, it becomes a Haswell-equipped Windows 8 Ultrabook.

I really hope they nail the interop on this baby…

This device can measure your pulse, blood pressure, body temperature, blood oxygen and more in ten seconds, simply by placing it on your forehead.

The beeb on Glass:

To quote Nicholas Negroponte in Being Digital, these technologies will evolve into “a digital butler… [it] recognises callers, disturbs you when appropriate, and may even tell a white lie on your behalf. The same agent is well trained in timing, versed in finding the opportune moments, and respectful of idiosyncrasies.”

The thing is that for this to be true, the butler has to be yours, not Google’s.

Today I'm at the Amazon Web Services Summit at The Business Design Centre in Islington, London.

Pretty busy, good vibe. My primary goal today is to talk to customers, understand their needs, and work out details of how Smart421 can take advantage of some of the new offerings like OpsWorks in our new Service Factory proposition.