Colin Charles Agenda

The other day, my friends and I decided we’d like to participate in a video-conference. At this point, I was the only stumbling block – the Luddite on Linux, with Skype 1.4 Beta, and no webcam. I proceeded to move to my Mac OS X powered laptop, that are all now coming with built-in iSight’s (and thinking back, I’ve been Intel-Mac for a little over a year now).

Shiny happy people, video-conferencing

Guess what? Skype does not do multi-party video-conferencing. Sure, you can do multi-party voice chats (these work on Linux too, obviously), but they only do one-on-one video conferencing. This is where Global IP Video comes to the rescue… In a nutshell, its a Flash-based application that harnesses your webcam and allows multiple parties to video conference. From what I gather, it doesn’t do voice – for that you still need Skype.

Everyone else had no problem working it, except me (as always, the non-Windows running person). To make Global IP Video work with the iSight, you need to right-click the Flash application, click Settings, then go to the 4th tab, which has a graphic that represents a webcam. Choose the appropriate Camera – for the built-in iSight its USB Video Class Video. Close the tab, and like magic, you’ve got a working webcam now!

The correct Camera allows everyone to video-conference

Bandwidth usage for both video and voice seemed to taper around 20-30KB/s, so you have a pretty clear picture that video is taking about 15-25KB/s. Everyone was on a DSL (or Cable) connection of some sorts, and this spanned countries far and wide. No real delay in the video, so we were all pretty impressed.

Update (09/09/2009): Removed the link to Global IP Video because the service is no longer available.

Technorati Tags: voip, skype, video-conference, video, conference, video conference, macosx, windows, linux, flash, global ip video, ip video

If you’re in Kyoto, Japan on the 20-21 July 2007, consider visiting the Open Source Conference 2007 Kansai (page is in Japanese, with no English translation, but never worry, Google Translate Japanese to English Beta means that you and I, now read Japanese – read the English translation).

There are a lot of participating parties, there is no cost to attend the conference (I understand this is very commonplace in Japan), and if you’re a MySQL person, you’ll find Yoshinori Matsunobu giving a couple of interesting talks:

• On the 20 (Friday), his talk is titled “MySQL High Availability, and Scale-out solutions” and will focus largely on replication, and the use of heartbeat and DRBD.
• On the 21 (Saturday), his talk is on the ever popular MySQL Cluster.

Its nearby the Kyoto station. Its a 3-hour trip from Tokyo. Consider it a weekend getaway, where you’ll be pumped with knowledge :-)

Technorati Tags: mysql, conference, kyoto, japan, open source conference

Came across ask a SQL guru today. Service is run by the Microsoft DB MVP’s. You call them (via Skype), and they answer your query, via a video cast. Its quite new, hasn’t proven itself (I mean, why not just ask a forum?), and also offers itself as a video podcast. I’m thinking it can be useful for newer folk, especially if you like step-by-step instructions.

Going by how useful the Guru Bar at the MySQL Expo 2007 was, and how easy it is to make screencasts these days, I wonder if this would be something some guilds members would consider in addition to the wonderful podcast by Sheeri?

Technorati Tags: ask a sql guru, sql, sql guru

Vertical advertising. I just stumbled upon The Problogger Job Board. They advertise it as such: post a job ad, for 30 days, at only $50.

People that visit the Problogger website, or job board, are definitely bloggers. Visiting the latter, means they’ve bought the hype that they can be a professional blogger, and make a living out of it. So what better way to hire journalists. Professional bloggers are no different to writers in a newspaper, magazine, and so forth. Turnaround times are quicker, the idea of formatting is probably a plus, but generally you’re a writer.

The FAQ lists the 37signals Job Board – $300 for 30 days. They’re a company that came to popularity thanks to a good blog, and Ruby on Rails. People that read the 37signals blog are probably programmers and developers that have an interest in cutting edge technology, are ready to improve, and possibly the cream of the crop. Or at least thats what they want you to believe. 37signals also does the ultimate geek thing: their job board has an RSS feed. And an amazing live search. And if you’re a contract killer just up for a contract, there’s always the Gig Board.

All this made me want to check out Joel on Software’s Jobs page. After all, thats another popular blog, and when you read the RSS feed, you get thrown ads about job offers. Joel’s demands are greater – USD$350 for 21 days. There’s even a rationale as to why 21 days, and he makes The Fog Creek Promise – unsatisfied with applicants, get a refund. The Jobs page also has an RSS feed. And they require the company name – talent have a right to know whom they’re going to work for.

So if its not been obvious, here’s the pattern – write amazing content for your readership, get them hooked, and tell advertisers only the best read your writing. Then, sell advertising (in the form of job ads). Joel/Fog Creek are bold – they even offer a refund.

MySQL have had a jobs forum for ages. It is advertised as a “forum for companies looking to hire MySQL talent”. It contains a hodgepodge of people looking for work, and people offering work. Nothing ever expires, there is no barrier to entry (its completely free to make a posting), there is an RSS feed, and the job ad itself, has “no format”. Do you think the MySQL Jobs forum should change? Should there be a barrier to entry – a simple charge, but a guarantee of better applicants? Requirements can be made clearer, there could be better search, and it probably should not be a forum, per se. Would you pay, to have an ad for 21-30 days, to hire top MySQL talent?

Technorati Tags: jobs, job boards, gig board, mysql jobs forum, online job boards

I don’t claim to be a security expert, but I’d like opinions from people in the field, as well as database experts that view security highly. Here are some opinions from a discussion with Chad and Lenz a while ago. What do you consider a security hole, that warrants immediate action or a release of a server within a sensible timeframe?

• Remotely exploiting MySQL without login credentials
• Remotely crashing MySQL without login credentials

The above two are definite problems. What about:

• denial of service attacks
• data loss
• data changes
• data insertion

Chad tells us, “security is policy enforcement.” And the policy should state: “the service should always be available to authorized people, never to unauthrized people”.

Opinions, please. Tell me what are on the “definite list” that should be fixed within 24-hours, whats on the possibly annoying list, that should be released within 72-hours, and whats on the its an annoying bug, but its not a “high”/”large” security violation (like, Chad finds “a function SUBSTR that always returns one too few characters” a problem in his definition) which can be fixed during the next release cycle.

Also, if anyone has pointers to how other OSS projects or major release software deals with security. Say, like Mark Cox’s security information (he’s Mr. Security at Red Hat, and they’ve got some amazing turnaround times).

Technorati Tags: mysql, security

As more and more people get on the Twitter and Facebook bandwagon, advertisers are bound to crop up. I bring you, a rather devious ad company, Twitcash. Everytime you place an ad on your “stream”, you get paid per follower, per post on Twitter, and per friend, per feed item.

Granted, its not easy to get followers (on Twitter) or friends (on Facebook) unless you actually have interesting content or really, real friends.

Will Twitcash take off? Are you willing to risk your friends being annoyed by your adverts? Somehow, I doubt someone “un-friending” you on Facebook for an ad or two (similarly with Twitter). On Twitter, you can just “leave” the person, yet be a friend. On Facebook, there’s a good chance you’ll miss the ad, amongst all the folk adding (or removing) applications :)

I think this is just a start of the market, for advertising firms to look into the next generation of advertising. For instance, no one paid me to get blown away by the Heinz ad on tv last night. But I Twittered it, and blogged it. And therein lies what an advertising company should be looking at if they were to start a marketing campaign.

On another tangent, I for one think Friendster is nearing the end of its life, with Facebook being the clear winner. However, reading today’s newspaper, it seems that it still gets 22.5 million visitors monthly. ” It is also the top site in the Philippines and the No 2 site in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. It has a strong presence in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Macau.”

Technorati Tags: ad, advertising, twitcash, twitter, facebook, social networking, friendster