Most legal systems take precedent very seriously, and rightly so. This needs to be fixed on the legislative side; if a law is overly ambiguous or if case law shows that it is interpreted counter to its original intent, then it falls to the lawmakers to come up with a better law.

Of course, in a country governed by lawyers, this will never happen.

I have a last name that is very uncommon in the Netherlands, even more so because it is capitalized differently than usual, and it is "misspelled" to boot. Even so, there's a guy (not family) who shares my first and last name, went to the same university, same department, and graduated on a topic similar to mine. We've published on overlapping topics. So yes, confusion does happen, and I've often been contacted by someone looking for the other guy. Sounds nice since I have just four publications to my name whereas he went into research and has many more, but of course I can't take credit...

I think you are right, though the key differentiator is not chatty vs. discrete messages. Chat done right can solve a number of problems that email has:

- Email sucks as an archive. It's fine to store personal emails just for yourself, but when you dig deep and assess how much critical corporate knowledge is locked away in this multitude of personal archives of all employees, you'll be in for a shock. A Twitter-like chat system for corporations (like Yammer) will retain that knowledge for the right group, including its future members. I find that only a small part of my conversation is actually really private between me and someone else. Most of it will be relevant for my team, for another team, for a special interest group within the company, or for the company as a whole. In a corporate Twitter, asking for knowledge is automatically the same as sharing it, as soon as an answer is given. In email, any answer is lost for everyone but yourself.

- Email is fine for communicating 1 to 1 or 1 to many, but it is a poor vehicle for many-to-many conversations. Chat systems (again citing Yammer as an example... by the way I have nothing to do with Yammer except that my current client uses it) can solve this by having private, ad-hoc chat groups in which participants can be invited or drop out as needed. New joiners will see a clear, linear history of what has already been discussed, instead of a steaming pile of replies-to-replies-to-replies in multiple sub-threads, all intertwined in a single email exchange.

In our team, we've tried sticking to the rule that forbids the use of email for anything that will still be relevant one week from the day of sending. The idea is that any such messages belong to the corporate memory, which means email is out as a vehicle for storing it. Instead, people use Yammer or email links to documents stored in a central repository. It worked out quite well, both improving recall from our corporate memory, keeping everyone on the same page and aware of each others' work, and improving the quality of discussions by electronic means.
But we too found that it is extremely hard to break the email habit. One thing that email still has going for it in the corporation is that everyone has it, and everyone is expected to read it several times a day. You might get told of for missing an important email, but being told off for missing an important discussion on some social media thingy? We're not quite there yet.

The point that the article makes is that Facebook cannot adapt in the face of rising use of mobile internet. They may be able to offer users a good mobile experience, but they will not be able to monetize that experience. Personally, I think that's a bit of a stretch. Even if Google and FB can't come up with an effective way to serve ads on mobiles without pissing us off too much, they can still mine and sell our data. Even better: mobile data often comes with location info.

On a side note, I find it a bit sad that the business models of two of the most succesful recent tech startups revolves around finding new ways of serving us more goddamn ads, and selling our data to marketeers who will use it to "improve" their understanding of the market, whatever that means.

That reminded me of the 2nd episode of Charlie Brooker's "Black mirror" miniseries (recommended viewing, by the way). A future where skipping ads costs money, and looking away during an ad will only result in the ad following your gaze along the walls so that you're always looking directly at it. Closing your eyes only pauses the ad and causes a voice to remind you to "resume viewing" over and over again until you open your eyes again. A broadcaster's wet dream...

Few of my friends and family members, young or old, use Facebook as their primary means of communication. Many have accounts there but most still prefer email, their Facebook use is limited to having an online presence and posting pics of their kids to friends. Come to think of it, I don't know anyone who doesn't have or use email. Maybe there's a few kids who only use Facebook... but they will be quickly disabused of the notion that email is dead as soon as they enter the workforce.

If you think email is on the way out, you may be right... but Facebook isn't the replacement. Facebook seems to try very hard to be what AOL was way back when.

What content providers can learn from Steam and Spotify, is that there are plenty of people willing to pay for content even if they can get it for free from some pirate site. And the lesson from iTunes is: reducing the amount of DRM on your content will increase your revenue from legal downloads, not reduce it. Your content will be pirated no matter what measures you take, and the more DRM you add on, the more you will piss off your actual paying customers, and the illegal (and DRM-free) versions of your content will become all the more appealing to them.

I would gladly pay for video content if it comes in convenient formats with the option of format-shifting as well; who in their right mind wants to hunt around on pirate sites with annoying pop up ads, wait for some poorly seeded torrent to finally download, and then finding that what you've downloaded only has the German dubbed audio track? Instead, if I could pay to download from Warner's or HBO's full library of content, I'd be all over it.

Surprisingly ugly, in fact. Same for the Sony watch... It looks great at a glance but from most angles you will notice that godawful cheap-looking white wart on the back of the stylish steel and glass body. Steve Jobs used to kill designers for atrocities like these (rumor has it they're buried behind the Infinity Loop sign).

Speaking of which, the iPod nano would make a nice smart watch; it looks decent with the right strap. Shame we can't put apps on it (plus it lacks Wifi).

"Why is it called an eyePhone?"
- "Ehm, I'll explain after I install it."

I think the whole point is that it doesn't have to be particularly focused. The 20% might be spent on something innovative, on personal study of no direct benefit to the company, or it might be spent on catching up on some background tasks, beneficial to the company even though it doesn't contribute directly to the bottom line or move the little bars in some Gantt chart along. The time should be spent on something more or less related to the business, but the employee gets to decide how that time is spent, without supervision. Even if nothing of value gets produced by that employee in that one day a week, it can still make him a better motivated, smarter, more effective and less burnt-out employee.

It wouldn't work for everyone but I have seen it work for a lot more people than you'd think. At the end of the day you might find the benefits to the employees for whom it does work far outweigh the loss in productivity for those few who will really do nothing of any value whatsoever. If you find yourself at that stage, for gods sake do not try and optimize the scheme by introducing some supervision, detailed reporting, or a list of "acceptable" was to spend that time. Instead of killing the whole scheme that way, accept the loss in view of the larger gains.