Colin Charles Agenda

With the upcoming general elections in Malaysia, I’m sure quite a number are fed up of reading mainstream news, that really are extensions of the ruling coalition government; aka they’re government mouthpieces. Now’s your chance to read Malaysiakini for free, until March 10 2008. Its the general election special.

Technorati Tags: malaysiakini, malaysia, free, online newspaper, government, general elections

I didn’t get to attend many sessions at the Tech Days, as I was mainly meeting with people, or at the PostgreSQL on Solaris booth (figures someone from MySQL should’ve been there too). I had plenty of interesting conversations with Tom Daly; we met by chance since I had a blue MySQL shirt and he figured he’d be cheeky and offer me a PostgreSQL one.

I was going to take a photo with him today, but he called me from the airport last night to say he had to go back. Oh well.

Laurie Wong, and me

Instead, you get a photo of Laurie and me (MySQL cap, PostgreSQL on Solaris t-shirt). I’ll blog later about the sessions that I did attend – I wish I could’ve done so earlier but staying at the Sheraton in Darling Harbour, meant that there was no in-room Internet access. Wireless was available in the lobby or business center, but on the first floor where I was staying, your only options were dialup. In 2008.

The Tech Days is an interesting event. At MySQL, we’d have called this a “structured MySQL Camp”. Or maybe the Japan User Conference. Either way, it was interesting, and I learned a lot about OpenSolaris, Containers, DTrace, NetBeans and Java. So much so, I’m looking into toying with Java again (something I promised myself, I wouldn’t do, in the new millennium).

From a database perspective? Talks on PostgreSQL and MySQL, another on JavaDB, an Oracle booth (giving away a Wii to lucky winners) in the expo hall. Truly, impressive.

Oh, and the Atlassian offices are right next to the Sheraton. Now, that would be a seriously cool place to get an office. I got to peek into the office from the outside, and truly impressed. I actually recognised the Aeron chairs during my walk, and only upon coming back later, realised it was Atlassian.

I’m at the Sun Tech Days Australia 2008, these few days, in Sydney, Australia. Its March 4th – 6th, and if you’d like to catch up, it looks like there are free evenings, from the agenda. At the event, I’ll be the guy donning MySQL attire, of course ;)

Expect blog posts, photos (I’ve got my pocket camera), and more soon. Don’t know if my expensive room at the Sheraton Four Points has free Internet (how much you want to bet, it doesn’t).

If you want to meet me, or catch up, don’t hesitate calling me at +61433 580 941.

Technorati Tags: sun tech days, sydney, australia

Written Saturday, January 20, 2008, probably in Los Angeles (LAX)

I got The 4-Hour Workweek on Wednesday, and while finding out the company I work for had been acquired for a billion dollars, I proceeded to read this book to see what all the hype was about. Despite the busy schedule at the meeting, I managed to finish reading all 300 pages using in-between toilet breaks, and airport layovers. Its Saturday now, and am I any wiser?

Tim’s book is great if you’re interested in starting an online retail business. Its interesting if you get turned on by the word drop-shipping. Its definitely interesting if you’re into hiring virtual assistants in 3rd world countries.

The whole mantra that is sold in the book is to outsource your life. Hardly applicable to the career path I (or most of my open source loving hippie counterparts) can apply.

Sure, there are some good general tips on reducing information overload. Reading less email. Becoming more efficient. However, its nothing new, per se.

Would I recommend it? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean you can’t buy The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.

Some select quotes follow.

‘What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attnetion of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.’ – Herbert Simon, recipient of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, and the A.M. Turing Award

A great example of perseverance: when Tim was in college, if he received less than an A in anything, he’d spend about 3 hours asking questions of his lecturers, to ensure that he understood his class, and to discourage the lecturer to ever want to provide him with a lesser grade, unless there was real reason to do so.

‘The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.’ – Bill Gates

‘If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.’ – chinese proverb

‘I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.’ – Woodrow Wilson

Technorati Tags: books, quotes, 4-hour workweek, tim ferriss

It seems that Badawi has caught on the Internet trend. Malaysians can now send their gripes, suggestions, and comments to the Prime Minister, via the Warkah untuk PM website.

Comment to t he Prime Minister in all four languages

The Star reports that it was the DPM, Najib, who had to launch the website. Whats interesting is that each message from with public will get a response from Abdullah, according to Najib. Does this mean that the sleeping PM will now spend all his waking hours responding to email? I highly doubt it. More interestingly, creative and innovative ideas, by the first hundred submitters, will ensure you get to visit the PM. Its gotten the blogosphere talking.

What I don’t get? They fear public debate, seeing that there’s easy comparison now with the American elections, yet they are interested in hearing public gripes and responding to them?

On open source friendliness…
What pisses me off? The website is running Windows Server 2003, on IIS/6.0. This is even more a waste of public money for a site that is simply a feedback form.

In comparison to the open source friendly, DAP, PKR, and PAS. I’m impressed, they all run Linux, save for the latter, in where PAS runs FreeBSD with the Suhosin-Patched PHP. All served up via Apache HTTPD, and DAP has got a smattering of lighttpd even.

For what it is worth, Barisan Nasional’s website, bn2008, is also running Windows Server 2003 and IIS/6.0. Disgusting.

If they can waste your ringgit on buying proprietary software licenses, when there are clearly open source alternatives, can you trust them with spending and budgeting for a country?

Technorati Tags: abdullah badawi, najib, warkah untuk pm, website, feedback to the prime minister, public debate, public spending, open source, windows server 2003, iis

Today, I decided to start a FriendFeed account (I’m byte there). The first question that came to my mind was, how is this any better or different from Mugshot?

I first found out about it, through Jeremy Zawodny’s blog post. He mentioned he liked the fact that people could comment on activities. I see this as no different to how people can have conversations within Mugshot (also known as quips). And with the Mugshot client, these comments tend to become interactive, so it starts becoming an immediate conversation with people that are around.

FriendFeed, and what you can share

The striking similarity, between what FriendFeed offers (basically, a combination of all your feeds, with the ability to get comments on feeds, which promotes a conversation/social network kind of feel to it) is pretty much what Mugshot has been offering, with a desktop client (albeit, only on Windows and Linux). Mugshot’s desktop client can even be used as a Facebook Notifier, of sorts (when you get a message, you get notified by the client).

Mugshot, and what you can share

Hmm. Almost no difference, right? Now, you’re wondering if you can have a conversation? Yes, yes, you can as I said earlier, thanks to the idea of quips.

A quip, about a blog post

Notice that I was the only one online, for the group. If more were online, within that group, there could have been a bit of a chat, similar to what you get on IRC. Wow, so Mugshot allows you to group your friends. Not something I found, easily with FriendFeed.

What FriendFeed does, that Mugshot doesn’t do? Recommend new friends you might want to keep track of, i.e. folk that are popular among your friends. Honestly, the recommendations are nice (it recommended me to read Robert Scoble, for instance), but if FriendFeed wasn’t aiming to be a social networking tool, why bother with recommendations?

So, what made FriendFeed get money, in their recent Series A round? Could it be the strong recommendation by early Googlers? Early Gmail team members like Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh, and some Google Maps engineers are on board, so do VCs see this as something big waiting to happen?

Maybe I’m missing something, unique and original, that FriendFeed has over Mugshot. I’ve tried reading a review on it, and still can’t see the value of yet another “life stream”.

Wait, I found it. It might be the stats that FriendFeed offers. It looks strinkingly similar to what Google Trends (in their Reader even), shows – people you find interesting, top sites used by your friends, my top sites, and so on… But really, doesn’t stats just wear out? How often do you look at your Google Reader Trends? Or Google Web History? Probably not a lot.

I think it all boils down to bad marketing/community creation from the Red Hat folk. Mugshot has been around for a substantial amount of time. The source code has been public as well. The idea of tying it with the online desktop (in fact, nowadays, a lot of Mugshot is running at online.gnome.org, pushing the GNOME Online Desktop) is a good one, but should not have been the only focus. Leaving it for the Linux geeks only, in general, might be a big mistake – a Mac OS X client should have been priority one, as OS X users seem to be early adopters. With Havoc having left to start LiTL, I do wonder if the online desktop, social networking site, Mugshot will continue getting the pushing that it needs.

The future of logins – mail, AIM, Facebook, and well… a password

Besides, Mugshot is filled with nothing but good ideas. It would be a shame to not see more good work and community acceptance and take up of Mugshot.

Technorati Tags: friendfeed, mugshot, red hat, vc, funding