Posts

beyond the expected

Just been down to Asda. Not because I am a Nineties man but mainly because the element on the kettle just blew.

I went fully equipped with what I believe is known as a ‘shopping list’. I managed to decipher all of the entries (some were written by Norma) and successfully secured everything. I was debating whether to pay at a till or risk self-service where you swipe your own goods.

identica poised to pounce on Pownce

Pownce (a microblogging service) has been sold to SixApart and decided to close the service on December 15 which is a nice early Christmas present for all their users - both freeloaders (like me) and ‘Pro’ users who pay $20 per year.

Although I have a dormant Pownce account, I don’t actively use the service. However, I find it odd that Pownce have decided to close the service and provide all their users with just two weeks notice to extract all their data and find another home.

why Reddit is useless for bloggers

Yesterday was 1 December and an innocuous post on identi.ca about an Advent calendar immediately reminded me of an amusing (and completely true) blog post I wrote two years ago.

This, in turn, prompted me to write this short note on identi.ca and the post on identi.ca subsequently appeared on my FriendFeed stream.

Normally, when I post a new blog entry, the post gets visited by a handful of people - presumably a subset of those subscribed to this blog. In this case, this wasn’t a new post so regular RSS readers wouldn’t see this content so any visitors had to come from identi.ca or FriendFeed.

how to make 131 friends on identi.ca in 14 hours

Don’t bother with my slow, tortuous methods,

Just be Stephen Fry.

evangelism - Habari style

Dear Prudence

That’s 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.

open letter to Mark Burgess

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:

Read more

has your company got a Community Manager ?

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).

open letter to Tony Hawks

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 individual’s 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).

more fun with keyword searches

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.

black screen of death

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.