Colin Charles Agenda

Congratulations to the Debian team for releasing Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 Lenny on Valentine’s Day. This version comes with MySQL 5.0.51a.

I had been pestering Norbert Tretkowski to see when MySQL 5.1 will move from experimental to main, and he told me once Lenny was released. This is because Debian itself needs to make a library transition from libmysqlclient15 to libmysqlclient16, and every package that links to libmysqlclient will need to rebuild against the new version. It couldn’t be done any earlier, and now that Lenny is released, we should start seeing MySQL 5.1 in Debian/unstable, real soon now.

So, if you’re a Debian user, know that you have 5.0.51a in stable (Lenny), 5.0.75 in unstable, and 5.1.31 in experimental.

I read Tokyo Cabinet: Beyond Key-Value Store today from one of the news sites, and it reminded me of Brian’s hack on Tokyo Cabinet == Tokyo Engine. Looking at TokyoEngine in Brian’s Mercurial repository, there have been no updates in over a year. Is anyone planning on taking up development of this? Tokyo Cabinet looks really interesting, and Brian has already started the enabling of making it a MySQL engine.

I’ve always liked Ayumi Hamasaki’s music. And to see that her next album, will be released on a USB drive (instead of a CD; do they still release albums on cassette tapes?), is simply great news. You get a diamond-studded two-gigabyte thumb-drive, with the songs only taking up a mere 800MB (for 13 tracks, 6 videos, and the lyrics booklet). Its expected to sell anywhere between 4,000-5,000 Yen (RM156-195, so a lot pricier than a CD, which normally retails for RM40), and no word if the songs are DRM-free, what quality the MP3’s are, and so on. This is the first in Japan, and probably the first in the world!

Now, the newest Honda City isn’t just shipping with a CD Player, but a USB port too. They reckon it’ll be easier to connect and charge your iPod. I reckon, that if more and more artistes start distributing USB thumb-drives, we’ll be seeing more USB ports in cars.

Read more at: Ayu takes digital music to the “Next Level”

I’ve seen a bunch of sites/articles that are Twitter related recently. I’ve compiled them, and commented appropriately.

• Splitweet – this is useful, as it allows multi-account Twitter management. A lot of corporations are using Twitter for business, and if you’re a small business owner, chances are you have Twitter accounts for all your businesses (if you’re social networking savvy, that is ;-)). Today? I use twhirl for that sort of thing (multiple account management, that is).
• Twitter to begin charging brands for commercial use – I wonder how this will work? Go after the folk that have trademarked their brand? Go for people with more than n-followers? I just don’t see this as completely viable, without also affecting all those pro-twits. Maybe Twitter should acquire a service like Splitweet, and sell that interface?
• StockTwits – this is Twitter search, for stock lovers. Looks like its only useful for the American stock market, but there can be lots of potential here. Some popular ones to look at: JAVA, GOOG, and even AAPL. Note the comments (looking to short, etc…) When will there be insider trading thanks to Twitter, one wonders?

I’ve been noticing that more and more Starbucks outlets are not just having the “timezone” wireless access point any longer, but also having one named “Starbucks”. Timezone is available for free, without registration (except in KLCC’s concourse), however, the Starbucks AP is provided for by MOL AccessPortal.

They’re quite annoying. They make you watch an ad for 30 seconds, before granting you “free” Wifi (in exchange for some information).

The real problem? I run Flash Block in Firefox, and don’t see the ad playing! In fact, once that ad is done with, and you’re done registering (that seems to be a one-off process), you are shown a five-columned website, in where you see relevant information about Starbucks, however, there are three columns that are also blocked via Flask Block (the ads!).

Maybe I’m not the ads target market. Then again, browsers don’t come built-in with ad blockers, or flash blockers, so this probably doesn’t affect majority of the people showing up at Starbucks. I wonder how effective the 30 second ad actually even is?

For folk going to Starbucks, its a win all the way. Two access points, double the chance of having faster Internet. For those going to Coffee Bean? Sigh, Airzed, you’re losing out… For those in other countries where Starbucks makes you pay for the Internet (I’m looking at you America [t-mobile] and Australia [horrendously expensive Telstra]) – you’ve found another reason to move :-)

On another note, I’ve noticed that from February 1 – April 13 2009, Starbucks is running a loyalty program, that rewards you after buying seven tall cups of any beverage – you get the eight one free. Starbucks isn’t normally into these loyalty goodies, so I’m guessing they want to keep you loyal during the down economy (besides, coffee at the mamak is averaging RM1.50-1.80 now).

Loic Le Meur published an interesting video interview with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, an online shoe sales site (that serves the Americas – OK, they have international shipping, but the rates are pretty expensive), that prides itself in excellent customer service (even their tagline is “POWERED by SERVICE™”).

I planned on summarising it, but the folk over at ReadWriteWeb did a good job, so go forth and read: Zappos CEO Talks Culture Fit and the Important of Creating a “Wow” Experience.