I’m an avid enthusiast of Twitter. I frequently tweet a few updates throughout the day, and often will reply to people’s tweets a few times each day too. Nothing extravagant. I’m not tweeting a hundred times a day, or anything ridiculous like that (at least not yet!). Without a bit of Twittering, I would feel a whole lot more disconnected, and really wouldn’t know what’s happening in the world around me, especially with my Twitterverse of Tweeple (Translations: Twitterverse=Twitter + Universe= All people I know on Twitter and Tweeple=Twitter + People= People who use Twitter!)

Now since using Twitter, and seeing how much time I spend on it, I’ve started spending less and less time on Facebook. So not wanting to be completely ignored by all my Facebook friends, I decided to link my Twitter Updates, to my Facebook Status Updates. At least that way people can see what I’m upto, and occasionally comment on thing I’m doing, or get a flavour of my life. The only problem is, most people on Facebook don’t really use the “Status Update” feature. Which means that my status updates, could potentially end up flooding other peoples Facebook Updates Stream.. Terrible I know! After all, who wants to know everything about you, all the time, on Facebook?? Yeah, not quite the same as Twitter..

So, if you, as a Facebook user, choose not to use Twitter as much, and really don’t want to see all your Twitter friends in Facebook pollute your news and updates stream, then here’s a solution for you.

Log into Facebook, and go to your feed preferences page : http://www.facebook.com/feed_prefs.php

Below the Volume Mixer type controls you’ll see the “Less About These Friends” box. Start putting your friends who use twitter too much, into this box.. That way, you’ll only see updates from your twitter friends, if nothing else is available.

Of course, if none of your other friends are doing anything, then it may still fill up with just twitter updates from your twitter friends, but hopefully that’s not the case :) Alternatively, just “de-friend” that person on Facebook, and join up twitter, to stay in touch with them :)

Hope this suggestion gets to the heart of your Twitter woes, you Facebook only users :) and if not, feel free to comment your feedback below this article, and I’ll see if I can find a better solution for you all!

Ok, back to Twittering I go!!

P.S. = Twitter hating Facebook users – feel free to share this article judiciously amongst all your fan clubs on facebook, it may help calm some of the Twitter Haters!

twitter, facebook, integration, status updates, facebook user twitter hater

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This morning, I’ve finally figured out why I so rarely get any real work done.. Because I’m always so busy trying to “fix things”!!

I guess it’s just part of the growing pains of technology, and getting your systems up and running.  Normally, whenever I start with a new computer, there’s some basics that I have to do to any machine, before I can be comfortable using it.  That includes installing some decent open source tools to be able to get my work done.  One of the reasons I prefer to use Open Source software as much as possible, is simply because I can then use it on any platform, and I don’t have to start learning a whole new interface… And with a zero cost to acquisition, the learning I put into installing and configuring the software repays itself, pretty quickly, once you’ve had to install and use the same piece of software on two or three computers… (if you’re reading this, and thinking two or three computers?? Just remember, being a techy, I’ve been using computers for ages, and as I’ve upgraded from an x386 to a 486, to Intel Pentium, to Macs, and Linux, and now am on pretty much everything (except Mac – gotta get myself a Mac again soon!!))

So anyways, Open Source software tends to be able to do the same job as closed source, but has the same interface on pretty much all the platforms, and usually, being open source, if a platform isn’t available, you can usually get the code, and make it work on your platform, if you want to.. I like having that freedom, and knowledge.. Not that I would necessarily do it, just yet – but one of these days, I’m going to get stuck in under the cover, and when I do, I want to make sure that I can contribute and give back to those who gave me so much benefit, and value early on when I started off using the tools to try to stay productive, and useful, with my work, using those tools..

So, for email, I’ve long been a firm advocate of Thunderbird.  Even on a Mac, back when I had the luxury of having one at my disposal, I used the default Mail App, and just had to get out of there, and get my dear lovely Thunderbird working on my desktop as quickly as humanly possible!!!! It’s just painful, when I think of the pain points, but not wanting to bash any software, and not remembering what the points of pain were, suffice it to say, it was something simple and easy enough for me to think, this really should be able to do this, and it couldn’t so I left behind the default Mail client.. (I’m sure Mac’s Mail app is constantly being updated and improved, but you just can’t beat open source for speed of deployment, and just getting the functionality faster, and sooner!!)

Anyways, I’ve used Thunderbird, for as long as I can remember – and the few times that I’ve “had” to use Outlook, or some MS equivalent, I just cringe, and long for the sanity that comes with the open source alternative..

Well, going back a few years, one feature that I thought would be really useful, would be to have a calendar, so enthusiastically I started using Google Calendar, excited that I could export my calendar, and publish it places – (I’m a techie who wants to know I can take my data with me and share it everywhere :)

So I figured, if I can export, and I can publish, I should be able to use it with a desktop client “somehow” – and the bane of being an early adopter is that you really don’t get to choose your apps, with just a point and click style approach – there’s usually some “coding” or integration that needs to happen, to make things work.  No problem – I’m a techie, I don’t have a problem with getting under the hood and making things work, after all that’s what I thrive on, the challenge of making systems do what they’re meant to, so that I can just get on with my life, without having to constantly tell everyone, or repeat stuff that should be easy to replicate, share or just make available.

But alas, the best Google Calendar could do, is let me import my external calendar, into my computer.  (Ok, as I’m writing this, I distinctly remember it being iCal format into iCal on a Mac – so I’m guessing this was quite a few years ago, pre-Lightning and Sunbird – the Mozilla Open Source counterparts for Calendaring).  There was no way that iCal would let me write something into this calendar that I could then sync with my online calendar.. Not that I was using multiple computers at the time (back then it was just a form of online backup in my mind)…

Eventually, with nothing really working quite right, I ended up just leaving it, and never really used calendaring at all, just because life wasn’t too complicated, or busy, and I didn’t need to see every little thing that I was working on, or keep track of, or be on time or as punctual back then…

Fast forward a few years, and a few countries later, and being back in London, and having discovered and now that I’m starting to regularly attend some interesting and cool events, conferences, networks, communities, and groups, I’m often and quite frequently asked about other events that I could suggest and recommend to others.. I guess being someone who’s quite interested in these things, I’m often discovering events through word of mouth, or just happen to know about the places to find things, like meetup.com or upcoming.org…

But I guess that’s not always the case.

So anyways, I was getting a touch annoyed, at just always finding events, or seeing events I wanted to add to my Google Calendar, and tired of Google Calendars lack of integration with Firefox, to be able to just clip an event, and tag it for my calendar, the way I can do for my bookmarks with Delicious, I thought I might be able to save some pain and hassle, by having at least a desktop based client that I can then later sync up with Google Calendar… And as I’m writing this I’m also getting an idea for something, which I’ll share in a second…

So anyways, I set up a bunch of calendars on my google account, which I’ve set up as public calendars…
If you happen to be interested in seeing them, before I’ve properly integrated them into this blog, you can check them out here for now:

For all events even vaguely Spiritual that might be of interest to me:
XML, iCal, HTML

For all Talks and Workshops in London, that might inspire, or engage people working in New Media, Technology, Social Change, Innovation, Culture, or just generally anything else that I think might be interesting to attend:
XML, iCal, HTML

For all Networking Events, Unconference Events, MiniBars, MiniCamps, basically any “unstructured” event, where there’s an opportunity to meet people, connect and network, that I’m generally interested in knowing about. These can be related to Technology, Social Media, Web 2.0, New Media, Startups, Entrepreneur Stuff, Innovative Stuff, pretty much anything that I think is cool, and suited to the general ConsciousComms Community (more about ConsciousComms in the near future):
XML, iCal, HTML

And I’ve only have set these up, because I have found a simpler way of capturing the “events” to add to the calendar, because the pain of trying to add events to Google Calendar was just too great a burden to make me even start taking the first step towards getting the events onto public calendars in the first place..

It’s at this point, that I want to say a huge, huge, thank you to Jonny Reeves, a contributor to a blog called simply bfish.xaedalus.net for taking the time to write his excellent article on Integrating Google Calendar into Thunderbird using Lightning!!  Admittedly, I figured, that I should be able to just add Google Calendar to one of the Mozilla Calendar tools myself, and found the plugin for Gcal from the Mozilla extensions repository.  But if it weren’t for his article, I might have had to experiment with Thunderbird and Lightning, to make sure things worked, and then to figure out how to make it work.. If it weren’t for this well written and properly documented entry, I wouldn’t have been able to just make these tools just work, and get on with my work, so thank you Jonny!! I love that you’ve gone and done what I would have done, had I known it so long ago, and had the time to go through and document so clearly and simply what needs to be done… (It does make me wonder though how comes I didn’t use Google Cal integration with a desktop until now?!?)

I’m pretty sure that article alone will bring down the barrier to entry for so many competent technical users who might not have adopted the hybrid solution to get their systems working otherwise..  It’s nice when you see such clearly documented stuff, and having benefitted so greatly from it, I’ll be sure to remember to share things in as clear a manner as possible, in the near future around some of the things that I’m a bit of an expert on, and feel like there might be people who could be interested in having more help with..

For now, I just had to write this, to express my gratitude, and thanks to scribefire, I just had it pop up, and it let me start writing.. now I just need to catch up with all the other articles that I’ve been working on..

And as an afterthought… I’ll just share an idea that’s occurred to me.. based on the way delicious works – how about a product that lets you “clip” events, to a calendar??  Does anyone thing such an idea has legs?? If you could be at a web page, and just want to record the event, in a calendar format that you could easily share with others.. would you want to use something like that?? Obviously modelling the style of delicious, i.e. having plenty of tagging, networks, etc.. but having a uniquely “Farhan” spin to it.. if you’re interested drop me a note in the comments, or just let me know what you think of the idea through the blog’s comments… (and don’t worry, if you happen to post me your email address in your comment, I’ll make sure I don’t publish it..)

thunderbird, lightning, google calendar, desktop, london events

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When configuring and setting up Confluence, it’s possible to hit those roadblocks along the way that can slow you down, or completely throw you off track… I hit one such hurdle recently.  Not being someone who is proficient in Tomcat, MS SQL Server, and all things Java, and JDBC related.. 

Steps – install MS SQL Server

Install Tomcat Apache

Generate EAR to install into Tomcat, with the desired version of Confluence.

Install the EAR, through the Tomcat Manager,  to install Confluence.

Then comes the fun..

First Create the MS SQL instance.  Then in that instance, create a database, that will then be used to store the data from Confluence in.  [important note, once you've created the instance, it's important to make sure you create the database, inside the instance that you'll want to use yourself, otherwise you will go through countless hours, trying to connect to the instance, when all the app can do, is connect to the database, inside of the instance.

I then would strongly recommend you  go to SQL Server Configuration Manager, go to SQL Server Network Configuration > then protocols for the SQL instance that you've created and which contains the database in it.  Make sure that the Protocol for TCP/IP is enabled, then go to the properties, and on the IP Addreses tab, take note of the TCP Dynamic Ports number.  If you want, you can change this to 1433, which seems to be a general recommendation, everywhere I've ever seen it.

If it weren't for The Java Ranch Forum I wouldn't have gotten that vital bit of info - so huge props to whoever wrote it!!

 Next, on the server, make sure you open up all the ports, that relate to MS SQL server, so that it can work properly.  After  that you may want to then download the helpertest.jsp file from atlassian, which will only work, once you go into the WEB-INF folder, and rename web.xml to backup web.xml (once you've got things working, and tested you'll want to return that name of that file back...

Next, load up that test file, and pop in the following information:

 (At this stage we're assuming that you have downloaded the most recent, or already have the jtds driver saved into your webapps/confluence/lib directory)
Test a Standard Database Connection:Driver Class Name:  JDBC URL:  DB username:  DB password:  

NOTE: Port number, is as set up in SQL Configuration Manager, under the TCP Dynamic Port for the particular instance that contains that database that you'll be connecting to.  Also, when using the JDBCURL, the first part is just the same as the one up top.. the part that says [goldmine] should be replaced with IP, or servername, followed by the correct port number.  After the forward slash, you don’t write the name of the instance of the database, you write the name of the database itself created inside of the instance.  Hope that’s clear!  So for instance Confluence, where you create a database of confluence-data, you only need the confluence-data part in the JDBC URL..

Crazy, but it works…

Once the test passes as ok, for it all, you’re ready to complete running the setup in the main program.

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I’m going to be part of the team advocating WordPress tonight, as a blogging platform of choice,  and pulled together some brief notes on what makes WordPress so great.

Would love to hear your thoughts, on why you prefer WordPress over other blogging platforms, and also, a link to your WP blog, would be appreciated.

If you happen to also think WP isn’t so hot, or doesn’t meet your needs I’d love to hear why??

My rough notes so far (mainly from wordpress.org and wordpress.com):

wordpress founded in 2003
largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world
Open Source
Requirements:
* PHP version 4.3 or greater
* MySQL version 4.0 or greater
(The mod_rewrite Apache module)

http://wordpress.com/stats/
4,581,919 blogs on wordpress.com

9.8 million WordPress publishers:
4.2 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com plus
5.6 million active installations of the WordPress.org software.

3,249 plugins – 14,532,117 downloads
601 themes – 1,232,704 downloads
1,906 ideas, 51,228 votes

In September 2008, an impressive 236 million people visited one or more WordPress.com blogs, and they viewed close to a billion pages on those blogs:

Almost everything on WordPress.com is free, and things that are currently free will remain free in the future, but we do offer paid a la carte upgrades for things like CSS editing and custom domains. How do we pay for everything? WordPress.com is run by Automattic which currently makes money from the aforementioned upgrades, blog services, Akismet anti-spam technology, and hosting partnerships.

WordPress Links
WordPress Pages

Full standards compliance — We have gone to great lengths to make sure every bit of WordPress generated code is in full compliance with the standards of the W3C. This is important not only for interoperability with today’s browser but also for forward compatibility with the tools of the next generation. Your web site is a beautiful thing, and you should demand nothing less.

No rebuilding — when changing templates
Changes you make to your templates or entries are reflected immediately on your site, with no need for regenerating static pages.

Easy Importing — We currently have importers for Movable Type, Textpattern, Greymatter, Blogger, and b2. Work on importers for Nucleus and pMachine are under way.

XML-RPC interface — WordPress currently supports an extended version of the Blogger API, MetaWeblog API, and finally the MovableType API. You can even use clients designed for other platforms like Zempt.

Multiple authors

Spam protection

Comments

Cross-blog communication tools— WordPress fully supports both the Trackback and Pingback standards,

Bookmarklets — Cross-browser bookmarklets make it easy to publish to your blog or add links to your blogroll with a minimum of effort.

Ping away — WordPress supports pinging Ping-O-Matic, which means maximum exposure for your blog to search engines.

Workflow — You can have types of users that can only post drafts, not publish to the front page.

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So, this is the second time in a row, that our SBS Windows Server has caused trouble.. It decided to just die, over the weekend, and upon returning to the office this morning, and after doing much troubleshooting, and checking, I decided the fact that I couldn’t reach the firewall, because of IPNat.sys and that I could get an internet connection, from the server, that I could reach all the machines on our network, but that I couldn’t reach the server from other computers, then it just had to be something to do with either the firewall settings, or some sort of routing, or permissions settings..

The last time we had a problem like this, where the server could connect out, but nothing could connect in, I had discovered some trouble on the internet with IPNat.sys, and since it was this troublesome file that was stopping me from reaching the firewall settings, I thought it might be related… so on the prowl, after googling IPNat.sys, and looking for any possible help with disabling this file again, I discovered the instructions to:

“Go to Device Manager, choose Show Hidden Devices, and open “Non-Plug and Play Drivers”. Open “IP Network Address Translator” and go to the details page. You can start ot stop it and change the startup type to disabled, which I have done.

Source: Windows IT Pro Forums [as at 27th Oct 2008]

To my joy, after doing this, things seemed to just “work”!! Not being an SBS Windows Server Pro, not professing to be, nor wanting to be, it was just another crazy day in the office, where with no-one else able to fix it, I was left with the responsibility of fixing the broken tech again…

Perhaps one of these days, I’ll get to actually do what I love, which is advocating, and consulting people on how to use technology, and then helping people get to grips with the tools they have.. as well as being able to consult with people, and have a tech team to call upon… perhaps once I get my own startup bootstrapped, and off the ground, I might have something of substance to work with.. Till then, I’ll keep on enjoying the challenges of working where I am, and look forward to moving onto something a little bigger, more structured, and better organised in the near future :)  (All suggestions, are most welcome!)

At least for now, having blogged this, should this problem happen again, I’ll have a reference I can turn to, to avoid having to start from scratch next time!

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So I attended the SeedCamp Interview Day yesterday, and I have to say it was a real eye-opener…

I managed to arrive at the right building, in time, and found that the interviews were running a little late.  That bought me a bit of extra time to get to know some of the folks that were there before me, and also to find out a bit about Michael Orland, one of the hosts of SeedCamp.

Calm, mentally prepared, and ready to pitch BillionInAYear.com I stepped into the room full of all the Investors from the SeedCamp Selection Panel, and got thrown a little by the fact that my presentation hadn’t been received.. Though I was sure I had sent it, and I’d gotten an acknowledgement from one of the Seedcamp folks, I’d foolishly not put the presentation on a memory stick, and was invited to start, whilst Reshma frantically tried to find the presentation slides, and get them onto the screen.  Ironic really, that the start to my presentation was a perfect example of how BillionInAYear.com was a solution to the problem that had just occurred.  Of an email, being sent, and received, and not being readily visible, in the information streams, of the intended recipient.  How often do you get an email from someone, that’s important to your work at that moment, and it gets lost in the stream of email flows coming at you?

Well, fortunately, I recovered from the start, communicated the essence of the idea, answered all the questions that came at me, and before I knew it, the ten minutes were over, and I was invited to step outside..   I guess sometimes, time really does fly when you’re having fun. I just hope all the Selection Panel enjoyed themselves as much as I did.  The body language in the room seemed very closed, and dis-interested to begin with, though that might have been as much to do with trying to hide their true interest, or just a ploy to feign dis-interest.  By contrast, by the time I left the room, I could see some visible indications from some of the audience, of a real interest, and I think I had managed to get some people’s curiosity a little further aroused, but then that could have just been my own imagination!!  I guess once the results of the SeedCamp Interview Day are published, with the finalists for SeedCamp week being announced, then I’ll know just how much interest there really was.  Fortunately, the whole experience got me thinking a little more pro-actively about how I might go about raising funding, and actually taking the time to review the websites of some of the investment companies, that are involved with SeedCamp.   I guess now I really have to keep pushing outwards, and pursuing potential avenues, and sources of funding, to see if I can finally secure a proper seed development budget to build a prototype of BillionInAYear.com – since I really don’t want to be the one to have to write the code for the system myself (mainly since programming is not my real passion, or strength).  There’s been plenty of people who have made offers of support along the way, perhaps now I need to start bringing those people together, and raising some seed funding through those sources, if I don’t get funding through SeedCamp this year.

Well, after the ten minute interview, I had a real eye-opener, when chatting with fellow attendees at the Interview.  One team, who had applied to SeedCamp, weren’t even on Facebook – another preferred to use Xing instead of Facebook, and I slowly started to realise, how the entire web 2.0 world doesn’t revolve around facebook, and twitter, and blogging, as much as I thought it might have done.  In fact, trying to find an online presence for each of the members of the selection panel made me realise how people use these online tools in diversely different ways.  So much so, that to presume that all of the people in SeedCamp are all in Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Twitter would be a huge mistake.. In fact some of the members of the SeedCamp Selection panel, don’t even have a website, like Mark Esiri, and Venrex.  (At least they don’t have any website that I’ve been able to find as yet.. though I’m still looking!)

I’ve come to realise that whilst there are certain tools and services out there that are more popular in certain countries, and less popular in others, Web technologies, and web2.0 startups can exist completely under the radar, Investment Funds can exist without any visible online presence, and the whole world of Technology Startups, is at a significantly different state of play, compared to the bleeding edge technologies, and early adopters.  The fact that colleagues at each of the last two companies I’ve worked with are all on Facebook, illustrate the widespread mainstream adoption of certain technologies by specific demographics, or cross sections of society.  Why, even my dad has joined Facebook, to stay up-to date with photos, and family happenings, seeing as both my sisters live abroad, and our family is distributed across three continents. But even as tech savvy as he is, he’s still only a small percentage of the people in my family who use Facebook.  Some would argue that Facebook is the way forward, but I would have to argue otherwise.  I think inherently we should only ever see online social networks, for the publishing and storing mediums that they are, allowing, us as individuals to express what we want to through the net, or get our message out, to the people that we want to communicate with.  But to see it as a way of staying in touch with others, or staying informed as to what’s happening in other people’s lives is an assumption.  The assumption being, that others are using the same tools to publish information about their lives.  Except when they’re not.  Then we have to create a new login, start a new profile, and succumb to another login, and another URL. Until such a time comes as we can go to one place, find everything we need, and be able to not be overwhelmed by all the information.  FriendFeed does a great job of helping bring people and their content together, but unfortunately, if you’re friend hasn’t signed up, or is a member, you might not be able to see everything they’re publishing.  And when you find a friend writing a blog and being published elsewhere, you won’t be able to use FriendFeed’s service to add it to your friends profile… I don’t think anyone’s yet that forward thinking apart from BillionInAYear.com  But then I could be mistaken.  I’d love to be proven wrong, if you know otherwise, just let me know through the comments!

So, lesson of the day, most people have email, but not all.  Most people are online, and use a social network, but not all. And Web 2.0 is about using the technology, not necessarily being on all the social networks!!

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It seems the blogosphere is awash with talk of Google Chrome, a browser that Google is launching.. Though, according to their Blog, it was meant to be available across the world today..

“We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.”

9/01/2008 02:10:00 PM [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html]

Though at present, there seems to be no sight of the Browser at the promised URL of http://www.google.com/chrome, or the legacy url of http://gears.google.com/chrome

Strangely enough, last night, when I stumbled across this story, I happened to find a page at the gears.google.com/chrome web page, which let me choose my language of choice, and then download chrome – unfortunately, at the time, nothing seemed to happen when I selected my language of choice, and started the installation process.. Thinking perhaps I needed to install Gears first, I went to the google Gears website, installed gears, returned to the Chrome download page, and surprise surprise, it was no longer there!!! Instead, I was re-directed to the Main Google webpage..

It’s kinda ironic, that a company as large as google can release a cartoon, that does a great job of explaining their product to techies,  they can write a blog post announcing the launch of their product, and then not make their new product available at all.. Instead of it being publicly available today, as promised on their blog, it seems to be hidden away somewhere, out of sight, unavailable, and invisible to the public…  Ironic really, that most people worry so much about the “timing” of their launches, making sure everything goes smoothly, according to plan, and instead of delivering on their word, they’re keeping everyone waiting..  This could be an entirely deliberate marketing ploy, to drum up lots of interest, and activity around the internet about the product – but truthfully, if they had just launched the product, there would have been just as much interest, and talk about chrome, with people discussing it’s features, rating, and reviewing it, and generally just comparing it to other browsers… But this way, it seems, with the cartoon, and caricatures, and then non-delivery of the actual software that was promised for launch today, you have to wonder, if a company as large as Google, is capable of keeping it’s word to it’s customers…

It really does make me wonder, if they can write on their blog about a product launch, and then not deliver it, then what does that say about the credibility of the company? Perhaps they think they can get away with it, because of their size.. but I believe that inherently, there is an issue of trust, that gets slowly eroded, when companies the size of google don’t deliver on what they promise they say they would do.  It’s all very well when the company blogs about releasing a product the next day, and then doesn’t – but what about when they promise that they’ll be there when you need them?? Or when they promise they’re services will be available, and all of a sudden they’re not??

It’s one thing to keep Gmail in Beta, for months after it’s knowingly being used as a critical email piece of many people’s every day lives, but when you say on your blog that you’re offering a new product the following day, and don’t deliver – I wonder what that says about the way in which Google keeps themselves accountable for their word, to their customers… So far, can’t say I’ve been impressed with Google’s blunder.. Especially as there seems to be no official announcement, or comment, to update folks looking for Google Chrome…  I for one am going to just ignore it for a few days, instead of adding fuel to the fire of desperation, and desire to see Google Chrome… After all, if they can’t keep their word of delivering it when promised, why should I waste any more of my time looking for something, that clearly isn’t yet ready for the world??  What do you think?? Should a company such as Google be allowed to make promises, and then not keep them?? Or is there some way we can possibly hold such a large international company accountable for making such false promises?? I would love to hear your thoughts, both in blog track backs, and in comments..

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SeedCamp Season is now upon us again!  The applications officially opened on 30th June ‘08, and the official deadline is 23:59 10th August.. I wonder if that’s GMT or BST?? Well, it sure seems like only yesterday, when fuelled by the possibility of launching through SeedCamp that I seized my idea, and started desperately looking for the right team of developers, and programmers to work with.. And it looks like a year later, I’ve yet to find the right combination…  I went to South Africa for a few months at the end of last year, in the hopes of meeting some developers interested in creating technology that would lead to collaborative knowledge sharing, but left there disappointed, with nothing solid to work with.  Since then, I’ve worked in two full time jobs (not at the same time!), met a great developer, who just can’t afford to work for free, and have started refining the idea a little more, in terms of breaking it down into smaller and smaller pieces.  And yet, I guess it’s become an obsession of mine, to find someone who I can work with, and having gotten married a few months ago, I’ve lost the ability to take a gamble, and work on my project, without a job anymore… Now that I’m looking after my wife too, I’m going to have to make sure I keep paying the bills, and clearing off some of that debt I accrued, whilst travelling, or volunteering…

Well, I guess the good news is, I’ve found a new form of dating that might provide the answer.. and no, before you all start thinking that perhaps, I’m being unfaithful, it’s not that kind of dating!! No, SeedCamp Tech-Dating is for potential Entrepreneurs/Business Minded individuals with ideas, techies, and Graphics Designers/UI designers to come together, and work the floor, in a sort of speed-dating kinda manner, pitching your idea, your needs, and searching for the right partners to come together with, and create a founding team with, that you can apply to SeedCamp with…

I think the idea’s legendary, and can’t wait to see who else comes along.. in the meantime, to help promote the event, I’ll be sure to spread the word across my networks, and see who might come crawling out of the woodworks, to come and join in…

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I came across this article and thought it would be great to share!

Imagine what you would do if your internet connection was 40 gb/sec?

Published: 12th July 2007 11:07 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/7869/

A 75 year old woman from Karlstad in central Sweden has been thrust into the IT history books – with the world’s fastest internet connection.

Sigbritt Löthberg’s home has been supplied with a blistering 40 Gigabits per second connection, many thousands of times faster than the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user has experienced such a high speed.

But Sigbritt, who had never had a computer until now, is no ordinary 75 year old. She is the mother of Swedish internet legend Peter Löthberg who, along with Karlstad Stadsnät, the local council’s network arm, has arranged the connection.

“This is more than just a demonstration,” said network boss Hafsteinn Jonsson.

“As a network owner we’re trying to persuade internet operators to invest in faster connections. And Peter Löthberg wanted to show how you can build a low price, high capacity line over long distances,” he told The Local.

Sigbritt will now be able to enjoy 1,500 high definition HDTV channels simultaneously. Or, if there is nothing worth watching there, she will be able to download a full high definition DVD in just two seconds.

The secret behind Sigbritt’s ultra-fast connection is a new modulation technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers up to 2,000 kilometres apart, with no intermediary transponders.

According to Karlstad Stadsnät the distance is, in theory, unlimited – there is no data loss as long as the fibre is in place.

“I want to show that there are other methods than the old fashioned ways such as copper wires and radio, which lack the possibilities that fibre has,” said Peter Löthberg, who now works at Cisco.

Cisco contributed to the project but the point, said Hafsteinn Jonsson, is that fibre technology makes such high speed connections technically and commercially viable.

“The most difficult part of the whole project was installing Windows on Sigbritt’s PC,” said Jonsson.

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It seems that finally the notion of breaking down the silos, and letting people get at their relationship data is starting to bubble up in the blogosphere… It was only a matter of time, before someone else was bound to start blogging about it, (I think I first wrote about it back in August 07)…

I happened across a blog post written by Jeff Nolan of Venture Chronicles, pondering the social graph and the nature of identity, as a consequence of a blog written by Brad Fitzpatrick, and his thoughts on the Social Graph, and the way that web 2.0 style social applications are plagued by the need to re-build your social network in every application that gets built… Re-inviting your friends, re-acknowledging your invites, in each social network, that you uncover the same people over and over and over again…

And I guess, it’s time that the ideas, and potentials to bridge this space, are really starting to bubble to the forefront…. Ironically, I’d arrived at the same basic need “an open source style repository of relationships” that could be accessed by anyone, in order to get the “relationship” information, based on the authenticated user using your application… But in my model, the database was open, and free for all to use, with potential revenue models, including charging for access to the data, when the demands per application exceed a certain usage limit, say 20,000 requests per week, or something ridiculous like that… Then, the idea was, that the volume of relationships that are contributed to the network, act in your favour, and the more relationships you add to the system, earlier on, the more access that buys you, on an ongoing basis, so that as time goes on your loyalty early on pays off in terms of having access to reliable relationship data… or something like that…

What really intrigues me, is the potential ways in which a system like this could be brokered, between a bunch of startups, to really get collaboration happening, at the local level, with a small team of core start-ups, sold on the potential of this level of collaboration, buying into the concept, contributing to the core development, and making it possible for a core aggregate database to start emerging… Of course, the earlier a start-up is caught, the more likely it is, that they can build into their system a component that could interface with a centralised database system, and the more open and receptive they might be to contributing, and being a part of this project.

This is, however, a challenge that isn’t just unique to the web 2.0 online social networking space, it’s also a challenge that a lot of folks in the non-profit, and charity sector have been struggling with… Since going to the Non Profit Developers Summit, in Oakland, back in Feb 07, it seems, Open API’s and the ability to access ones own data, such as donor information, or constituent data from one application to another has been a real thorn in the developer and non-profit community… It’s just another example, of having defined relationships, having all your information in a system, and then not being able to access it, when you want to use the functionality of a different tool… There’s a good summary of the “challenge” faced by the non-profit community written on the NTEN blog, by Dahna Goldstein and Jennifer Bagnell Stuart.

But the fact of the matter is, whether it’s us as users, looking out in the web 2.0 world, desperately wishing we didn’t have to invite all 30 of our friends every time we log onto a new portal, or non-profits, trying to integrate their accounting, crm, and mailing list systems, the fact remains, that at a most basic level, we have started to become technologically more sophisticated with our technological needs, and the technology just hasn’t been able to keep up, with what we want…

It’s kinda ironic, given that in the past technology was developing faster than it was able to be adopted, but I think when it comes to data integration, and cross platform compatibility, especially when it comes to getting that information about who you know and how you’re connected, in whichever platform or online tools you come across, it’s safe to say, that there’s a huge gaping unmet need, that is yet to be filled… And whoever fills, it, in my opinion, will be able to become the google of web 2.0 (but I shan’t share all my ideas at once… Unless you’re interested in collaborating, in which case drop me a line, and I’ll tell you more about this vision, of how this relationship data could be used…)

For now, the potential benefit to just the social, and non-profit sector of bringing all that relationship data into one place, is just huge!! And for that reason, Paul Hawken, initiated WiserEarth as a potential mechanism to help make it happen… He’s an inspiring speaker, you can hear him at the bioneers conference, in 2004 , in this you tube video a video which I’ve seen quite a few times, used by many people to make the point, that we are potentially part of a defence mechanism, as we each take part and make a small difference in the world…..
I think there are still flaws, in terms of everything that could be done, with that relationship data, and how it’s all been put together, but then, considering that so far, I only have a small crew of three or four mentors, with only plans, and technical infrastructures of a final solution, but no way to implement it properly, I guess Paul’s a long ways ahead of me so far!! Still, my trip to South Africa, to work on GrowSouthAfrica.org, might be one way to get the neccessary financial injection, to kick start this project, and start creating the future now… (as well as creating the platform much needed by the non-profit and Corporate Social Responsibility communities down there!)

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