Posts from November 2008

Dont bother with my slow, tortuous methods,

Just be Stephen Fry.

Dear Prudence

Thats excellent news. I am glad to hear you have managed to get PDO installed and now have Habari up and running on your site.

As for how I happened to stumble across your site, well....

There's an army of committed, passionate Habari enthusiasts who routinely conduct Twitter, Web and blog searches for every single mention of the word 'Habari'.

In addition, one of the primary responsibilities of the mysterious organisation - the Cabal - is to infiltrate Government intelligence agencies worldwide (GCHQ, NSA, Mossad, KGB) and access transcripts of all mobile phone conversations and SMS text messages. Sophisticated AI algorithms (grep with regular expressions) are then used to mine that data, searching for Habari related terms.

Then whenever we identify anyone using Habari, we leave a 'Welcome to Habari. Enjoy the ride' comment on the blog.

If people are having problems, we desperately marshall all available technical resources try to assist and claw them back from the abyss.

And if we discover individuals who have tried, failed, given up in disgust and gone back to Drupal, Joomla or WordPress, well we pay them a personal visit and shoot them :-)

Peace, love, empathy

The Habari Evangelist.

Last week, I travelled to Hamburg, near Germany, on business. As Mark Burgess (lead singer of The Chameleons) now lives there, I took the opportunity to send an email to one of my all-time heroes (even though he is a City fan).

Unfortunately, I guess Mark must be busy with his musical commitments as I haven't had the courtesy of a reply (yet).

Hi Mark

Excuse the intrusion but I am coming to Hamburg tomorrow on business. I'm staying at the SIDE hotel and need to know:

1. Location of Sports Bar that serves Boddies or strong German lager and will be showing MUFC versus QPR (Carling Cup).
2. Music venue with decent indie live music. My favourite bands are The Smiths, The Fall, The Chameleons, Pixies, Nirvana, Joy Division, Interpol, Editors, R.E.M though not necessarily in that order. Bands doing cover versions of any of the above are automatically excluded.
3. Decent bar where I can get a pint without being ripped off or beaten up.

PS. Enjoyed your book (which you kindly signed) a lot apart from the last chapter that left me a bit cold.

Peace, love, empathy - Andy

My support for the Disqus commenting system used on this blog is well documented. I have also had great support whenever I have had minor issues with a service I paid precisely nothing for.

Disqus are a small company with less than 10 employees. However, Disqus are not a cottage industry operating out of Daniel Ha's garage. Disqus are funded by venture capital (Union Square and angel investors) and raised $500,000 in the last round of funding (March 2008).

So it's not surprising that Disqus are growing and hiring people. However, what fascinates me is that in addition to hiring talented developers to develop, improve, enhance and fix the product, Disqus have recently appointed Giannii as a 'Community Manager'.

Ignoring the lack of a surname and some of the Web 2.0 terms sprinkled in this introductory post; for example, 'Chief Happiness Engineer' is frankly cringe worthy, it is worth noting that Disqus have many channels available for people to contact them:

• Twitter
• Disqus forums
• Email
• GetSatisfaction

More importantly, Disqus don't just sit by the computer waiting for people to call in - they proactively monitor all these channels and participate. Moan about a Disqus problem on Twitter and count the seconds until you get a response.

What is interesting about Disqus hiring a 'Community Manager' is not necessarily that a small startup can afford one but Disqus (and presumably the people controlling the purse strings) actually view this role as one of the first ten, and most important, positions to be filled in the company.

So what ? Every company has a 'Community Manager' - they are just called different things 'Sales', 'Marketing', 'Partners', 'Customer Care', 'Public Relations' - every company does this stuff but they don't a) shout about it and b) dress it up in Web 2.0 tinsel.

To pick just one example, Apple are a big, successful company who make clever videos and sell expensive, stylish computers, iPods and iPhones to this type of demographic so surely they must have a 'Community Manager' ?

Surprisingly, they don't. In September, Apple released the 2.1 firmware for the iTouch and this update broke WPA2 wireless connectivity. Having recently acquired an iTouch and been hugely impressed with the device, I was surprised Apple could have introduced such a fundamental bug but I ignored it and waited patiently for a patch.

Unsurprisingly, lots of Apple customers experienced the same issue and multiple threads arose to discuss the issue on Apple's official support forums. The most popular thread now has 36,208 views and 436 replies.

• How many of the 436 replies came from Apple ? None.
• Did Apple respond to any of these threads ? No.
• Did Apple even acknowledge the problem ? No.
• Do Apple care about their customers ? Not sure.
• Am I encouraged to give more money to Apple by spending in the iTunes Store ? No.
• What impression does this give to a recent Apple convert ? Arrogant.
• When is 2.2 scheduled for release ? Not known.
• Will 2.2 include a fix for this issue ? Not known.
• Is a fix even on the horizon ? Originally, I would have bet money on it but, given Apple's lack of response to date, I am now starting to have doubts.

It's obvious that Apple don't have a 'Community Manager'. Does your company ?

This is the first in a series of open letters when I send emails to people who I admire or have had a major influence on my life.

I will post my open letter and subsequently will post the individuals response (with their permission).

To kick things off, an open letter sent in February 2008 to Tony Hawks (UK author, comedian and occasional 'talking head' on those interminable BBC series that look back to the 1980's).

Obviously, Tony has been very busy this year which must explain why I haven't had the common courtesy of a reply (yet).

Hi Tony

You don't know me (I bet a lot of your emails and fan letters start like this) but many years ago I saw you in the reception at the Chine Hotel in Bournemouth.

I recognised you, you saw me staring at you and gave me a weak, knowing smile, probably dreading the awkward exchange that you feared was about to happen.

I was considering coming up and introducing myself. However, I didn't for the following reasons:

1. I had this awful mental image of stuttering 'Hi Tony. I've see you on TV and I think you are quite funny' while you were trying to query a mysterious charge on your hotel bill.
2. My wife has never heard of you and would wonder why I was accosting a complete stranger at the reception desk.
3. I had to go to check on my two little children who were at loose in the soft-play area.

Anyway, I never did make it over and many years later, I still think you are quite funny and I have just finished 'Piano in the Pyrenees' which I thoroughly enjoyed. So much so I am immediately going to buy your other books ('Fridge Round Ireland', 'Playing Moldovans at Tennis' and possibly 'One Hit Wonder').

All the best, Andy

PS. Tell those techies who designed your Web site, it doesn't appear to work on Firefox thus alienating a large part of your target audience.

The gift that simply keeps on giving.

• '914 scam' - if you don't know the correct name, you may already be doomed to failure.
• 'reasons for isolation' - spending too much time on the Internet searching for 'reasons for isolation'.
• "craig gordon" "ian curtis" - odd combination of a dead pop star and a living Sunderland goalkeeper.
• 'my wife's shapely legs' - yeah right. Take those stockings off. Now.
• "("current vacancy" or vacancies or opportunity or careers or "working with" or "working for") and ("oracle dba" or oracle dba )and london" - with such a superlative grasp of search term syntax and semantics, you would simply be wasted as an Oracle DBA.
• 'dead bodies in the floor boards' - stop it. You are worrying me with the use of 'in' as opposed to 'under'.
• 'how to become a virgin again' - Please sit down. Have a drink. I have some bad news for you.
• 'ian curtis hanged ice block' - Look I've already told you twice This is an urban myth.
• 'make friends under 14 to 16' - try Facebook or Beebo. Just don't get caught.
• 'oracle killed siebel' - Mr. Ellison with the lead piping in the library.
• 'selling strategy of siebel system anatomy' - yet another reason I don't work in sales.
• 'the most important decision of my entire life' - undoubtedly left disappointed at my lack of insight.
• 'urinal pulled his zipper down' - yet another reason I always favour a private cubicle.
• 'why durex gossamer withdrawn' - apparently on the advice of the Pope.

Last night, I flew home to London from Hamburg, near Germany. The flight was punctual and uneventful enough apart from the fact I was sitting next to a blind man.

When the seat belts sign extinguished, he got his laptop out, booted up and started typing into a completely black screen. So, I assumed he must be blind and using a braille keyboard.

However, this gentleman wasn't blind. He had been reading 'High Life' while we taxied onto the runway. Oh and he also had a complimentary copy of the Financial Times.

There was only one conclusion - this was a security measure to stop inquisitive neighbours peeping at his screen and reading confidential documents and email correspondence.

This could only mean one thing - the gentleman worked for a Government agency, probably MI6 or was the CEO of a FTSE100 company.

Although it killed my last three cats, two hamsters and seventeen tropical fish, curiosity got the better of me and I painstakingly reverse engineered all of my neighbour's typing by analysing his actual keystrokes in real-time.

Here is the exclusive transcript...

To: Sebastian Browning (VP marketing) Cc: UK Marketing Subject: logistics for Partner Golf day

Due to the current 'difficult and challenging times', the Partner Golf day at The Old Course, St Andrews has been cancelled. However, as I know a lot of you had customers booked and after my pledge to do 'anything it takes', I am delighted to tell you an alternative, lower cost venue has been found.

We will now meet at Solihull municipal Crazy Golf course at 2pm on Friday 28 November. Looking forward to meeting you and your customers. Alan will send handicaps and pairings out next week.

There now followed a 5 minute lull - no typing - just a frenzy of trackerball activity punctuated by various muttered expletives. The most likely cause was the poor individual trying to resize a picture within a Microsoft Word document. Then back to the 782 messages lying in 'Inbox'.

To: Bernard Barnstormworth (Director Fins) Subject: status on Megabank opportunity

Megabank is dead. The client was expecting to be hosted at The Emirates to see Arsenal versus Manchester United followed by dinner at The Ivy. What they got was a mini-bus to Leyton Orient against Hartlepool and some cockles and mussels at half-time. The CEO just called me to say the deal is off.

Another pause for thought to consume a cheese sandwich and a glass of water.

To: Hannah Brown (IT security) Subject: privacy and security

Hannah - As per your recent memo, my two hard disks are now fully encrypted and I have affixed the privacy screen overlay to my laptop. I must say it is absolutely fantastic to be able to work without idiots gawping at my screen, trying to read my email and watching me visit those dodgy Web sites.

PS. Please can you order me a new 4GB USB memory stick ? I can't find it anywhere. Must have lost it in Hamburg.

For reasons that are too long and tedious to recount here, I have had cause to rebuild my Lenovo T61 laptop many times over the last month, using a bewildering range of operating systems, Linux distributions, live CDs and dual boot configurations.

During this time, gparted and an external USB 500GB disk drive have become very close and reliable friends. In fact, I have only lost data once and, inevitably, that was due to my own stupidity.

Here are the invaluable Firefox plugins that I always install first:

• DownloadThemAll! - download manager featuring multi-threaded, lightning fast, resumable downloads.
• is.gd - URL shortener.
• Diigo - Great bookmarking service.
• Google Notebook - Useful for random thoughts, reminders, lists of people who have crossed you, transient bookmarks and, well, notes.
• Firebug - HTML and CSS diagnostics

Rejoice ! After 18 months, Rupert and Richard have ended their standoff and the Sky channels will be returning to Virgin Media.

Now, I wonder if some kind soul could fill me in on the last 18 months of 'Lost'.

Occasionally, I commute into London on South West Trains. I normally listen to music or podcasts during the half hour commute into Waterloo.

Whenever I buy a ticket at the station, I always pause the music and remove my earphones. This is for two reasons:

1. I need to be able to communicate with the person to purchase my ticket.
2. People behind me in the queue may not want to hear 'Serve the Servants' by Nirvana.

Last Monday morning, I joined a short queue to buy my Travelcard and removed my earphones as usual.

The lady immediately in front of me was talking on a mobile phone and moved forward to the ticket booth. Much to my surprise, she continued her obviously unimportant conversation with a friend while conducting the entire transaction.

'Yeah so then we went on to the Slug - weekly Travelcard, zones 1-5 - No, no, he wasn't there - he was drinking in Putney with his mates...'

'£41.40 please.'

'...but we met them later - Sorry - what did you say - someone just interrupted me - Anyway, what about tonight ?

'Please can you enter your PIN ?'

'Sorry - she just interrupted me again - What ? - there you go - Yeah - well I'll get back about half-six - then we can go for a drink and then get - sorry what - oh my ticket.'

I then approached the ticket desk, waited for the young lady to move out of earshot and said:

'Honestly, I can't believe what she just did. I think that is incredibly rude and disrespectful.'

The lady smiled ruefully: 'Yes. We used to have a polite notice but most people simply ignored it.'

So, if and when Jonathan Beckett secures the domain name 'ignorati.com', I'll be an avid reader.