Colin Charles Agenda

Malaysia’s General Elections are today. I’m not voting.

The opposition, aim higher

I did not receive my postal ballot papers. I’ll have to file a complaint soon. For fun reading, do read: How Secure is the daftarj.spr.gov.my Website?

Then, read from Malaysiakini, Programme reveals ‘twin’ postal voters. 49% repeats exist in a random selection of about 560. Shocked?

Should election commissions be trusting and running closed source software?

Update: Read Would I Vote if I Could? by Shaolin Tiger. Its great reading. Ideas like having a shadow ministry is just crucial.

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

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

Dear Computers and Parts Land (CPL), and/or Hewlett-Packard (HP),

Yesterday, a nice sunny Friday afternoon, I bought a printer. A HP LaserJet 3052. It worked moderately well, to scan (xsane does multi-page PDF scanning, I like), and it worked as a networked printer for about a dozen or so pages. The only reason I bought the printer was that it was a Laser printer, that worked over the network, and was relatively affordable.

However, it seems to have stopped working, in under-24 hours. Is this HP quality? Now, everytime I try to print, or even turn the machine on, all I hear is a loud grinding noise. One would think that there was a paper jam, but there is no paper to be found anywhere. Printing now gives me this magic message, “jam in output bin”. And I have to hear the loud, grinding noise.

So, I decide to call CPL up, to see if they would give me some warranty service or an exchange. After all, I purchased this machine at about 11.30am on a Friday, and I’m calling at about 2pm on Saturday. I finally get to speak to one of their consultants, and they tell me that they can’t do anything, as I have to call HP up first! On a Saturday!

Naturally, 131347 is their number, and they are closed on a Saturday; I now have to call them back during working hours, on the earliest possible day, Monday.

So, who sucks here? Is it CPL or HP? Let’s find out on Monday.

Technorati Tags: CPL, HP, LaserJet 3052, HP LaserJet, quality, warranty, HP printer, support