In Memory ...

of Marlon's mother and Joyce's grandmother, Lissy Horvath, 1958 - 2019, Elvis fan.

Who passed away very sudenly and unexpectedly at home on 14th May, a sad reminder that all things must pass....

Ireland catching up

In 1979 Irish income per head was $12,342, compared with $22,053 in Germany, $22,713 in France, $20,500 in the UK and $22,530 in Italy. Anyone who travelled back then will remember feeling poor when abroad. Today Irish income per head is on a par with Germany (2018: €41,753) and above the rest. No other country has caught up so quickly.

If you want to look at it another way, let’s review living standards. Forty years ago the average Irish person had a budget of €7.29 per day. This compared with the average German’s budget of €14.51 or Dutch person of €13.30. So Irish living standards were about half those prevailing in western Europe. Today the average Irish person is spending €53.49 a day. This compares with €57.30 for the average German and €51.49 for the average Dutch person. Again, this is an extraordinary rate of economic catch-up with our richer neighbours.

Interestingly, we see the fruits of this economic expansion, and the expansion of the middle class, very conspicuously in education. In the late 1960s only 36 per cent of Irish children finished school. Today 97 per cent do the Leaving Cert. As late as 1989, only 15 per cent of Irish people had a university degree; today that figure is 43 per cent, ranking us among the best educated-people in the world. 

Not bad indeed!

HR Cloud Systems Germany 2020

Source -Roland Berger, Umsätze in Milliarden.

Vertical software solutions that focus on one area in the HR value chain are on the rise. These can be connected without too much difficulty to other applications via APIs.

Their considerable advantages compared to HR suites:

• a user-friendly interface and a user experience that animates employees to also make use of the system in their everyday work life
• they are more easily adapted to meet the needs of the company
• they can penetrate more deeply and substantially into the functional areas and respond to new demands
• in addition, they guarantee user-friendly access due to one-time-only single-sign-on log-in features.

The Tortoise and the Rabbit

This has been my favorite internet discovery of the last few months. I’ve watched it many times and thought about it.
See, the rabbit doesn’t lose because he gets tired. He loses because he gets confused about which direction to go. Did you notice how he stops in the middle and stares blankly as everyone around yells loudly about things he doesn’t understand ? 




As someone who has decades of experience on the web, I hate to compare myself to the tortoise, but hey, if it fits, it fits!

Let’s be more like that tortoise: diligent, direct, and purposeful. The web needs pockets of slowness and thoughtfulness as it's reach and power continues to increase. What we depend upon must be properly built and intelligently formed. (Always put the user first.)

Signs of getting old

Good not so "old" Billy Connolly!

Marianne remembers the sixties

Die Filmsequenzen, die hier zusammengestellt wurden, zeigen Anita Pallenberg, die 2017 verstorbene deutsch-italienische Künstlerin, mit der Marianne Faithfull nach eigenen Angaben eine 54 Jahre lange Freundschaft verband.

"Born to live and Born to die / aren't they essentially the same", sprechsingt Marianne Faithfull mit tiefer Stimme über ein melancholisches Klavierthema. Im Song verarbeitet sie den Verlust der Freundin, die sie so richtig kennenlernte, als diese mit Keith Richards zusammen war und Faithfull mit Mick Jagger.

"Ich glaube nicht, dass wir ohne sie Freundinnen geworden wären", schrieb Faithfull in einem Nachruf für den "Guardian": "Die Jungs waren so eng miteinander und verbrachten so viel Zeit im Studio, das warf Anita und mich zusammen. Außerdem nahmen wir viele Drogen."

Ein Teil der Aufnahmen zum Video stammt von einer Südamerikareise, die Pallenberg und Faithfull unternahmen. Aber auch Pallenbergs Sohn Marlon Richards gab Material aus den Archiven seiner Mutter dafür frei - zum Teil ist er auch als Kind darauf zu sehen. Das Video von "Born to Live" ist ein ungewöhnlicher Clip.

The Steve Jobs way

One thing people don't understand about Steve Jobs is that he never sold a product he didn't have. At rollout, the iPhone couldn't run apps. So at rollout it he didn't talk about them.

Another thing most people don't get. Developing platforms even before you roll them out, takes a lot of time. People think about platforms as if you could imagine a movie like Titanic one day, and have it in the theaters in a month or two. Platforms take time.
-Dave Winer.