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This commercial free Bank Holiday Monday is brought to you by Magners. - Virgin Radio (25 August 2008)

Well it may have fooled some of the listeners but it certainly didnt fool me.

[ This post also had working titles of Friends, bloggers and countrymen and anti-social networking. ]

A few weeks ago, a gentleman called WaveyDavey001 was kind enough to invite me to participate in a Fantasy Football League.

Rather rudely, I attempted to invite several of my friends into the same League so I only needed to manage one team. WaveyDavey001 politely agreed with the caveat; 'I'd like to vaguely know most (of them)'.

This innocuous, throwaway comment started me thinking about the nature of relationships on all these social networks.

WaveyDavey001 only 'knows' me from Jaiku. He knows I support Manchester United and knows I like football. Therefore, just like any clever marketeer, he knew it was possible I might be interested in a Fantasy League.

The only biographical details I have published on Jaiku are that I am from 'London, near England'. I also publish an avatar on all social networks but this is merely a picture of Alan Partridge dressed up as a drug crazed zombie, caked in flour. This often leads to disappointment when people meet me in the flesh.

If you followed my various online presences for a period of time and/or trawled through the archives, you could probably gather lots more information about me (where I live, who I work for, my age, my marital status, my full name) but that would just make you a stalker and I could get a restraining order.

Now Michael C Harris maintains that every single utterance on Jaiku, Twitter, identi.ca, FriendFeed (et al) is divulging information about me - my interests (football, music, tennis, software, blogging etc), my attitude, my sense of, err, humour, and, of course, he's absolutely right. Michael sums it up succinctly in this related post: 'The body of tweets is indicative.'

I have encountered various, interesting, humourous, friendly, helpful people since I started blogging three years ago and yet I still really struggle with what to call these people - friends, mates or blogging acquaintances.

A long time ago, one of my earliest and longest standing blogging acquaintances, engtech, made a comment on a blog where he referred to me as a 'friend' and I was genuinely quite taken aback.

I have never met most of my 'blogging acquaintances' in person. I haven't spoken with most of my 'blogging acquaintances'. I don't know what most of my 'blogging acquaintances' actually look like.

To me, a friend is someone you have met in person and shared a pint with. A friend is someone you could rely on.

I suspect the social networking equivalent of 'sharing a pint' would probably be Instant Messaging. Most of my relationships start with comments on blogs and may subsequently develop into email contact and occasionally conversations on IM.

And the point of all this ? Well - I'm not too sure but this post has been gathering dust in the dark recesses of my mind and hogging an entry in 'Drafts' for far too long. Plus the Partridge-esque title was simply too good to resist.

What do you call your blogging acquaintances ? Is my attitude to 'friends' simply typical British self-reserve ? Or am I a tortured soul prone to over analysis and introspection ?

Disqus recently released a update which includes the ability to export comments on a WordPress blog so I have just exported all historic comments left on this blog (when it was running WordPress) into Disqus.

This operation was slightly complicated because this blog now uses Habari but the necessary steps were:

1. Download and install the new Disqus 2.0 plugin for Wordpress.
2. Delete all obvious spam so the export only processes genuine comments and runs faster.
3. Switch the archived WordPress copy of the blog back to the original location.
4. Export all comments from WordPress into Disqus.
5. Claim comments left by myself using an alternative email address before I had even heard about Disqus.
6. Wrap the WordPress blog in cling-film, label and place back into cryogenic storage.
7. Reinstate the Habari blog.

However, because I am pretty stupid and overly hasty, inevitably I omitted step 3. This meant that while all comments appeared on the Disqus site, the permalinks to the individual blog articles were incorrect and referenced '/wordpress/' instead of '/blog/'.

As it wasn't obvious how to rectify this issue or perform a selective bulk delete so I could repeat the process, I sent an email to Disqus support explaining the problem and asking for help.

24 minutes later, Jason from Disqus emailed me saying he'd fixed all the URL's.

What a fantastic service. What a fantastic product. What fantastic people.

So now I can put the kettle on and reaquaint myself with 886 comments (including some old friends) that have now been restored to their rightful place.

The only gap that remains is that a relatively small number of comments left on my blog after the Habari migration and prior to the adoption of Disqus are not currently visible. Hopefully, when the Disqus API is fully released, even this may be possible.

Holidays are a time blissfully free of the modern distractions of computers, mobile phones, games consoles, televisions and a time for the family to spend some quality time together and eventually fall out.

Inevitably, this leads to varied, interesting, thought provoking discussions. During the Brightside annual vacation in Venice, the following thorny questions were posed:

• If you immersed yourself in a foreign country, how long would it take for you to become proficient in the language ?
• If there was a 15 km stretch of beach resort including hundreds of young people, bars and restaurants in England, how many riot police would be required ?
• If soldier ants are so damn clever, how come they didn't land on the moon first ?
• When the bus was forced into that emergency stop, was it the German tourist or the Italian bus driver who screamed 'BASTARD' ?
• What's the Italian for 'Cornetto' ?
• If mosquitoes could be trained to attack people with the same blood group, would the bites be rendered harmless ?

• Look for people with similar interests.
• Look at the friends of people you have just followed.
• Look out for people who have criteria for following others e.g. I will only consider following you if you have ever replied to me (and made me laugh out loud)'. Satisfying the first is easy, the latter less so.
• Scan the Public time line. Occasionally, you will find a gem in the fast flowing river.
• identi.ca currently doesn't have an 'Import my friends' but they will undoubtedly use the same old tired nickname with the same old, tired profile pic.
• Old technology, admittedly but you could email an invite to friends who might be interested.
• Never, ever unsubscribe from anyone. This is easy on identi.ca as this is not currently supported..
• Use searches to find like-minded individuals talking about common subjects of interest.
• If you stumble across interesting content on another service (FriendFeed, blog, Twitter) with a link to their identi.ca profile, follow them.
• Blindly follow anyone who replies to your posts.
• Look out for people located close to you (town, county, country).
• Do not troll for followers on other services although subtle, understated evangelism may prove worthwhile.
• Do not, ever, under any circumstances, beg or plead for followers.

In my job, I am often summoned into very important, high powered meetings at short notice. It doesnt matter what I am doing, who I am doing it with or where I am, I simply have to make my apologies and leave.

Last week, a client took this approach to conducting business to extremes. I was standing at the urinals, fondly remembering previous posts on manners and officious, distracting and confusing corporate directives.

As I attended to business, a gentleman in a dark suit, no tie (yes, you've guessed it - 'Dress Down Friday') and wearing a rather incongruous pair of white trainers, came into the adjacent stand.

'Hi, David. Listen - just a quickie. I just want to check that we've covered all bases before the call at 3:30'

I looked down. Thankfully, I hadn't covered all bases and everything had landed in the urinal. If only she could have witnessed this, Norma Jeane would have been so proud.

'OK Dave. That sounds cool but Debenture will be on the call so I just need to check we are all aligned.'

I looked down. We weren't really aligned that well. Subconsciously, uncomfortable at my noisy, immediate neighbour, I had slightly turned away. Acceding to his plea for corporate alignment and strategic business partnerships, I re-aligned myself by facing forward.

'Listen David - I don't think your team really appreciate the enormity of the matter in hand here.'

I snatched a surreptitious glance sideways - above average perhaps - certainly not enormous but then Norma Jeane does say that men do tend to exaggerate a little.

'David - look if we don't get any joy in the next 25 minutes, we are going to have to escalate this to the very highest levels.'

Well, I would probably describe what I had just experienced as 'relief' rather than 'joy'.

Pause. Bliss. Peace at last.

'David - are you still there ? Speak up. The reception is this place is appalling - it's as if I am calling from a toilet. Absolutely. Unfortunately, the worst case scenario does mean dragging Anthony into this.'

What did this idle threat mean ? Was the mysterious 'Anthony' was going to be summoned from cubicle #3 to join us in a Holy Triumvirate ?

'Hey Dave - I fully understand your position but I am going to have to drop off the call now.'

With that, the important man in the suit and white trainers, equipped with the Borg headset, ended the call, shook hands with the unemployed, pulled his zipper up and left the Gents urinals.

On Friday, Norman Junior III and myself loaded up our picnic hamper, packed the cool box with brightly coloured Bacardi Breezers and set off for SW19.

We had been lucky enough to get tickets for Wimbledon tennis in the public ballot last year but, thanks to the English weather, we only saw grey skies and 63 minutes of play. It was scant consolation that we saw Maria Sharapova in the flesh. OK, I'll admit it - that was a massive consolation !

This year, we applied again in the public ballot and we got lucky. Very lucky. We were allocated Centre Court tickets for Friday 4 July, the day of the Men's Semi Finals. Or as those posh stewards from the Wimbledon Championships prefer to call it, the 'Gentleman's Singles'

We used my own private and exclusive 'Park & Ride' scheme which entails parking on a residential road and walking through Wimbledon Village, admiring the beautiful people, en-route to Wimbledon Tennis Club on Church Road.

After clearing security, ('No sharp objects just ham & cheese rolls') we wandered around the outer courts which were hosting doubles and junior matches. We saw the world's sporting journalists and TV crews setting up in the media centre, had a look at Aorangi Terrace - sorry 'Henman Hill' - sorry 'Murray Mount' and gazed at hundreds of people, soaking up the sun and the atmosphere, preparing to watch matches on a very big screen.

Norman Junior asked why Wimbledon was charging a staggering 85 pence for a Toffee Crisp and £2.60 for a bag of Maynard's Wine Gums. I told him it was so the LTA can pay off the rest of Brad Gilbert's contract and finish the retracting roof.

At 12:30, we took our seats on Centre Court and were delighted to discover we had brilliant seats on row 10, to the left of the umpire's chair, bathed in brilliant sunshine.

Roger Federer against Marat Safin was the first match and Federer did indeed look impressive in his cream cardigan, with five gold embossed buttons (signifying the number of his Wimbledon triumphs). Federer beat Safin in straight sets and he's an awesome player. It must be soul destroying to play against Federer as the guy never seems to make a mistake and barely seems to be exerting himself. Safin tried manfully but rarely looked like breaking Federer's serve and, after losing a second set tie-break and smashing a racket on his chair, Safin understandably lost heart and Federer triumphed 6-3, 7-6, 6-4.

After a quick break to play 'Spot the Celebrity' in the Royal Box (Prince Michael of Kent, Des Lynam, Michael Parkinson and Trevor Macdonald), it was time for Rafael Nadal. When Norman Junior III asked me for my prediction, I loudly said 'It will be close but I'm going for Schuettler in four sets' which drew some puzzled looks from our immediate neighbours.

Nadal is a big man and taller than I imagined. He is very strong, athletic and muscular. In fact, I think he has muscles on top of his muscles. Nadal swept into an early 3-0 lead after breaking the serve of the German, Rainer Schuettler. The game looked like it could be an embarassing, one -sided affair but credit to Schuettler who actually broke Nadal's serve and was on top in the second set. Nadal came back though and levelled to take the set into another tie-break. Inevitably, just like Federer and like a true world class sportsman, Nadal went up a gear and won the tie-break (and the match) easily.

We finished our cheese and cucumber sandwiches, drained our flask of tea, cracked open our packet of Wine Gums (60p from Asda), took some more photos and watched one set of Mixed Doubles (Jamie Murray) before making our way home to try to (successfully) spot ourselves on the TV highlights.

Obligatory photos (with captions) here

Although its very cool to post on the corporate message board: Hey - why dont we save the company millions of dollars by using Linux, Gmail and OpenOffice ?, there are obvious barriers (security and Excel Luddites to name but two) to large corporations adopting server based software.

However, I always thought Google Mail would be an obvious fit for academic institutions to reduce the costs of software licenses and IT management. Adoption of such 'software as a service' would make sense as although some students are 'late risers', the majority could also be classified as 'early adopters' who are comfortable with the technology.

This recent announcement that the Department of Education in New South Wales will roll out (a customised version of ) Google Mail to 1.5 million students is an interesting development.

The cost of the new system will be $9.5 million as opposed to the $33 million for the previous Exchange/Outlook based solution with students getting an increased quota of 6GB (previously a miserly 35MB).

Although the initial contract is purely for email services for students only (no Google Talk), the obvious extension is to include Google Docs and Spreadsheets to displace Microsoft Office.

Two weeks ago, I made my annual pilgrimage to the Surbiton Trophy where I enjoyed a day in the sun watching an excellent Mens Final between Frank Dancevic and Kevin Anderson.

Norman Junior III also plays tennis at Surbiton albeit not to such a high standard. In the lull between the main event and the Men's Doubles Final, Norman Junior III and the juniors came on to entertain a handful of spectators on the two main courts, performing some standard drills with their coaches.

After two hours on court on a blisteringly hot day, I expected the winner, Frank Dancevic, to hoist the trophy for the obligatory photo, pocket his cheque and beat an hasty retreat to get a shower and a cold drink. However, much to my surprise, Dancevic joined in with the boys and girls playing with some 6 year olds on a quarter size court with orange balls.

Dancevic was absolutely brilliant with the kids, laughing and joking and even throwing in some grunts if he struggled to make a return. He then rallied with some up and coming teenagers who were very keen to score a point off the professional. Even after the fun session was over, Frank still made more time available to chat and sign the kids' tennis bags.

Last night, on Court 1 at Wimbledon, there was a minor shock as Frank Dancevic beat David Nalbandian in straight sets (6-4, 6-2, 6-4). Nalbandian was the 7th seed for Wimbledon while Dancevic is ranked 98 in the world and unseeded.

Well played Frank and good luck in the next round against Bobby Reynolds.

Oracle AppsLab is one of my longest standing and favourite blogs.

Jake Kuramoto (and the AppsLab team) always post interesting and thought provoking articles and I also share a few areas of common interest (Twitter, Disqus, FriendFeed et al).

Although I happen to work for the same company as Jake Kuramoto, I have never actually met Jake in person. Curiously, I have had more interactions with Jake by commenting on the blog as opposed to communications via Oracle email.

When I read this recent post announcing a new version of Oracle Connect (an internal networking initiative within Oracle behind the corporate firewall), my immediate reaction was: 'Why did he post this to the AppsLab blog ? Why on earth would this possibly be relevant, or of interest, to non Oracle employees ?'

Then I realised such internal developments are of interest to a wider audience as it demonstrates Oracle's commitment to 'Web 2.0' technologies.

I also pondered how long it would have taken me to find out about this upgrade if I wasn't subscribed to the AppsLab blog.

There is a certain irony in finding out about internal developments within Oracle on a public blog.