Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011

Steve Jobs had been ailing for a long time. Seemed fitting that Apple would get out its iPhone upgrade announcement before he left. The famously hands-on and assertive Jobs would not have had it any other way.

People who knew him are going to have a lot to say. My two cents are my one and only sighting of him, at the launch of the original iPhone at the Yerba Buena convention centre in San Francisco in 2007, which I covered for a number of BBC radio outlets.

I don't think anyone did Powerpoint-like (Apple's is Keynote) presentations better. Milling round the stage afterwards surrounded by Apple press and handlers, it was impossible to get close to him.

How a humble blogger biffed mighty Google

Michael DeGusta, writer of a virtually unknown blog and having a twitter army of only 300, observed in a well-written post that senior executives at Google hardly or never used Google+. In Silicon Valley it's called dogfooding--- eating your own produce--- the surest signal that you back its quality.

The story exploded like Afghan ordnance online. CNET took it up. Mashable did the same. Influential nethead Jack Schofield tweeted about it. Those who had signed up, the charge went, did so apparently only for show. They hardly used it. Chief exec Eric Schmidt was not signed up at all. I know that to be true because I searched him on G+ after his McTaggart lecture, with a view to following him. He's not there.

Baseball and cricket

Great quote from conservative political commentator and baseball nut George Will. “Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.”

He'd be saying the exactly the same about cricket if he'd been born into it. This is not a cricket v baseball comparison--- it's just the way people who are passionate about those sports view it.

Have you ever tried explaining cricket to an American, Iranian or Brazilian?

Test Match very Special

Enjoyed that. My first turn on Test Match Special.

TMS is an institution, a special part of radio with its own style, quirks and personalities--- Aggers, Blowers, CMJ, and other fine broadcasters no longer on the programme such as the late Brian Johnston, and scorer Bill Frindall, the bearded wonder, who died two years ago. It's got a global following that includes even people who don't normally follow or understand cricket.

Any broadcaster who does sport would seize the opportunity to call the play on TMS, but I probably shouldn't big it up too much. It was T20, not test cricket. And Russell Fuller, Ali Bruce-Ball and I all recognise that we were the reserves. Aggers and the other frontline TMS broadcasters would do the bigger, longer matches.

How was it?

The newer new Facebook

CNET has a good walk through of the changes just announced by Zuckerberg at f8 in San Fran here.

Timeline is timely. Not only does FB look stale next to G+-- they seem to be thrashing about in trying to come up with a response. From the CNET review, timeline looks a handsome upgrade. Is it as fiddly and too-busy as some recent GB tweaks? We'll know when it's rolled out in a couple of weeks.

Much had been made of the subscriptions feature that takes a leaf out of the books of both Twitter and Google+ followings, which unlike friending doesn't have to be reciprocal. But CNET makes what's for me a for me is a significant point about the timeline-led changes today-- they place a big emphasis on photos.

The seamless integration of G+ with Picasa Web Albums (which reports say is to be replaced with Google Photo as they unify all their brands) makes photos pop and burst with colour and definition, makes profile and activity pages look classy and lovely, and is a much more pleasant presentation experience.

Here's a screenshot from my Google+ page.

And one from Google founder Sergey Brin. 

The Nawab, 1941-2011

One of the most iconic photographs in the history of cricket. The Nawab of Pataudi jumping down the wicket. Cricketing royalty, real royalty, cricket pioneer, strokeplayer, demi-god long before Sachin and Mahendra Singh, Oxonian.

R.I.P.

The Maroons are back

Desmond Haynes, opening batsman par excellence, is singing How Much Is That Doggie in the Window? Word perfectly. I know, because I’ve known the song, Patti Page, word perfectly since I was 10.

Headhunting Flower

If I ran Cricket Australia I'd headhunt the most successful coach in international cricket, Andy Flower, and offer him Wall Street executive pay to switch jobs from England.

Australia are looking for a new coach, under a review and rebuild process that The Guardian's Mike Selvey describes here.

Gibson's greens

My thoughts are turning this week to my debut on Test Match Special this Friday. Along with Russell Fuller and Alistair Bruce Ball, I'll be doing commentary on the two T20 matches. Can't wait. Got a taste of the action in the last round of England county championship matches, reporting from the Oval as Surrey pushed successfully for promotion from the second division.

Inexperienced West Indies side. No Gayle, Chanderpaul, Sarwan, Bravo, Bravo*, Pollard or Rampaul. All except Chanderpaul (being saved for test cricket) are involved in the T20 Champions League. Gayle, playing for Shilpa Shetty's Royal Challengers, would not have been picked anyway because of an unresolved dispute with the West Indies Cricket Board.

Social missteps

On Facebook's new subscribers feature, Rory Cellan-Jones nails it for me. With FB, twitter and now G+ we have to manage multiple connections, feeds, high volume of info, friending, accepting, adding to circles, notified about those who added you, following, being followed and acknowledging, vetting the spammers, dealing with multiple tweaks from FB-- we are now being invited to spend time managing subscribers. Whether they know us or not. 

Ashton Kutcher clearly does't know all 7.6 million of his followers, but Facebook isn't twitter. A good thing too-- they're completely different social platforms. Twitter is more like broadcasting. Masscasting, to coin a word. Facebook is more about your circles.

From Zuckerber's viewpoint, it makes sense to look closely at twitter's successes and G+'s innovation, and to see what good ideas Facebook can adopt. The reciprocal arrangement of friending limits broad outreach, and I can see the logic of subscriptions. The twitter-like follow feature of Google+ shifts the paradigm, and Zuckerberg is right to respond. But we can't handle all of it. Someone's going to fail.

Rihanna and TT carnival spirit

Juliana, friend, Brazilian and Carioca, knows her music and rhythm. She wrote this on her Facebook page yesterday.

They'll have to crack my skull open to take out Rihana's rrrrom-ppo-ppo-ppom-rrrom-po-po-pom Man Down

I understand where Juju’s coming from with Rihanna. Benjai's Trini lived in my head for three months after rocking the Trinidad carnival. When I was there Raymond Edwards, a radio broadcaster who used to play in a band, 3Canal, explained the song's in-your-head appeal-- it’s got two maddeningly addictive chords

Ting ih ling ih ling

Ting ting

And the refrain

And we make good company, yeah

I’m actively planning my return, and Benjai’s responsible. I might even wear a costume if Operation Six Pack goes well.

Bas, Mas and Brian Lara

Chatting to a relaxed Badseo Panday at Brian Lara’s annual Carnival party, I decided to tease him a little. He was telling me how much he was enjoying retirement, learning an instrument.

“I have to ask the question--- are you any good?”

Quick as a flash and with the Panday sharp wit he regularly deployed in my interviews with him, the former prime minister deadpanned.

“No.”