Colin Charles Agenda

Not having played a game since Prince of Persia (and we’re talking the original game, with block-like graphics, on some ancient hardware, back in 1990), I decided to try out Second Life today. Surprisingly, the getdeb folk have this for Ubuntu, even in its 64-bit variety. Installation was simple:

• sudo dpkg -i secondlife-install_1.18.1.2-1~getdeb1_amd64.deb
• Realise that I’m missing a dependency, so install lib32asound2
• Attempt to start secondlife

And fail, of course. I got a Window Creation Error. Not content with this, I started it up from a terminal, and looked at the error messages pass by. Finally found the rather telling line: WARNING: createContext: window creation failure. SDL: Couldn’t find matching GLX visual. It seems that its all got to do with the bit-depth of colour, so a quick replace of the DefaultDepth in xorg.conf was in lieu (it originally was DefaultDepth 16 but its now DefaultDepth 24).

Restart X, and I launched Second Life with success! Now signing up was a bit of a chore as I had to find a new name and so on. A lot of ideal names are taken up, so I settled with Colin Pichot. One of the things I quickly changed was how much bandwidth SL was allowed to use - quick reduction to 50kbps from its usual default (of like 700kbps+). I joined the Linux Australia group, I’ve not developed anything in SL, and I haven’t given them my credit card details (yet). It seems to create a group, you need to fork out $100 Linden Dollars.

I’ll play with this after midnight I guess, when we’ve got more “off-peak” quota to utilise, but initial impressions are its a pretty impressive environment in 800×600. I’ve not met anyone, I’ve added a friend (I think), can’t for the life of me figure out how to put a photo in my profile, and here’s hoping that eventually, I understand what all the fuss about SL is.

Technorati Tags: second life, secondlife, sl, ubuntu, window creation error, glx visual, colin pichot, alter ego

Not long ago I returned from Mobile Monday Melbourne, and this month I got to see Manny Christophidis from Streamezzo give a talk about what they do. Being my first Mobile Monday event, I had a great amount of fun and learning, and found out that many used MySQL in their work, sometimes passively without even knowing what database sat below them.

Surprised I was, to learn that this event had been going on for nearly two years. If you’re not in the mobile space, you tend to miss out on this not-very-well advertised event, I guess. Seeing as there are more mobile phones being sold these days than personal computers, I think this space is going to get even larger in time to come.

Back to Streamezzo. They make mobile clients, that are really lightweight (100kb Java, and about 200kb Symbian), that realistically serve as ad clients. As common sense would have it, they’ve found that putting ads at the application start and end seem to work the best (i.e. notice when fring is loading, it has a silly message saying “fring is loading…” - replace that with a targeted ad, Streamezzo says) and annoy the user the least.

Streamezzo’s server requires Java and can have either an Oracle or MySQL 4 (or greater) database. Back-end OS can be either Windows 2000 and up or Red Hat Linux.

Some of the more interesting things they’ve done is that they’ve re-skinned an entire mobile phone, and made the device home screen the actual portal. This ensures folk can pull down data based on the location (cell) they’re in. With all the modern rave about the online desktop, man, this sounds like an early version of the online mobile phone.

Applications they developed that caught my eye included:

• a promo for Nelly Furtado, which delivered rich media music (and video). One could preview songs from her latest album, buy the song, buy a ringtone, or preview video clips. These previews incidentally were controlled at the server (so they’re full-length songs in reality, but the server only pushes out say, 5s for a preview). The mashup with online chat seems to make this app pretty cool - if you’re a Nelly fan who got this app downloaded, you’re bound to want to chat to other Nelly fans
• a client for vpod.tv, which is the French version of YouTube. They speak video publishing for the masses, and they definitely use MySQL for their back-end as well

Sadly, Streamezzo’s stuff isn’t open source. They claim that with knowledge of XML, you should be able to create applications pretty quickly. Apparently it can set you back 0.75 Euro cents per active mobile client per month; this doesn’t include the minimum establishment fee as well. One might really be better off with Flash Lite (though I wonder how the free/OSS tools for creation of content fare).

In other quick news, omg.tv organise the event, and one of their specialities is Second Life, and more importantly, the Second Life Cable Network slcn.tv! I’ve got to give this Second Life thing a try, soon. Also, MTX Media develop a lot of primarily Symbian software, but also do Java based stuff and they’ve got some cool things that are out there - a targeted ad for Honda that gives users information about all available Honda’s, but what I found most useful is the Yellow Cab app - book a taxi, via the mobile web, without ever having to make a phone call! Coming to Melbourne in under-3 months, as its proven to work in Sydney. MTX back-ends are all MySQL Enterprise based, for what its worth.

Technorati Tags: mobile monday, mobile monday melbourne, mysql, streamezzo, mobile client, advertising, rich media applications, second life, mtx, java, symbian

Brilliant. Alcohol-related advertising is hindered upon quite regularly. Then there’s the problem of selling cigarettes. Vices are just finding it harder to advertise, and reach their prospective markets.

Hence, I have got to commend Smirnoff. They pick up a bunch of “A-list” bloggers, invite them to a party (a launch party for new Vodka flavours), and by the virtue/nature of bloggers, there are blog entries before the party, and what’s really important are the blog entries after the party. The lifestyle, is being sold. Drink Smirnoff, and you’re going to be having as much fun at similar parties (and maybe, you’ll be an “A-list” blogger).

Kids these days find the Internet more important than television (probably largely because they can get their television via the Internet, but that’s another story). Why try to fight with regulators (Philip Morris are starting a tobacco concept store on Chapel St., amidst much slamming), when blogs and the Internet are out there, for you to get community, grassroots, free advertising?

Smirnoff makes use of YouTube too - check out the Smirnoff Experience. They’re inspiring their best customers to advertise for them, not controlling them in any way.

As Seth Godin says: “The network was always there, but the Internet makes it powerful. It amplifies the happy user and spreads the word.” “Hand the megaphone to your best customers, who can help turn their friends and colleagues into your new best customers,” he adds in Forbes 90th anniversary issue on the power of networks.

(Yes, Nokia seems to be giving away free phones to bloggers in Singapore, and LG has aligned with Jeff Ooi of Malaysia, they too are harnessing the customers that have a voice, to turn their readers into potential customers. No corporate blog rubbish in general - just pure users, with megaphones.)

Technorati Tags: new media, advertising, blog, party, promotions, vice, alcohol, smirnoff, business

Disgusting. What will they think of next? (for context, read See you in hell Muhamad son of Muhamad) Using draconian anti-terrorism laws against those insulting Islam (a religion, supposedly official for Malaysia) or the country’s very much figure-head of a King.

How is this not strangling freedom on the Internet? How can he (Raja Petra) have crossed the line in making racist remarks, when we have ministers wielding daggers or parliament house used as a slaughter-house for sixteen cows & goats?

The ISA was something formed to use against the communists, something I believe Malaysia has not had in a long time. It was misused by the former recalcitrant Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir, during his lengthy tenure. And it looks like its making a comeback, against bloggers. It seems that “This is to put a stop to the freedom to lie in the blogosphere” - anyone reading should also note that Malaysia lacks press freedom, and all print media is a tool for the government of the day, controlled by the Ministry of Propaganda.

Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!

Technorati Tags: bloggers, blog, malaysia, silly, free speech, online censorship, stop internet censorship, free speech for all, .my, anti-terrorism, ISA, islam, king

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

I don’t normally get excited by seeing an ad on television. In fact, I don’t normally watch “live” television that has ads in it, to begin with. But on this cold day in Melbourne, I was blown away by the Heinz soup ad.

I found that in 2002 Slate had an article about this exact ad. Leo Burnett/London created it, and I’m wondering if they’re reusing it or its just reached Aussie shores. A must read, Ad Report Card: hot soup, cold comfort.

Technorati Tags: heinz, soup, ad, instant gratification, 2 minutes, hot soup, cold comfort

Liferea 1.2.10 actually rocks. It does duplicate detection in posts, and makes my feed reading life, a lot easier.

Liferea Duplicate Feed Detection at work

It also supports bookmarking with del.icio.us, which is nifty. It feels a lot faster than the previous version. It had some internal database change and did the honorable thing and keep a backup of the old one, in case I was planning on rolling back.

All my technical related feeds have been imported into Liferea, and I’m a happy camper. In my idea of making NetNewsWire even more useless to me, I’ve moved all photographic related blog reading to Google Reader.

Now, thats a nice piece of software. With access to the Internet, I can read my feeds and have them always “synced” - i.e. I’m never going to have to read an entry twice, or anything of that sort. The only caveat is that I need to actually be online.

So while it’s handy to read Google Reader feeds while I’m sitting in a shop waiting for my take-out, its also pretty darn expensive. I’m paying something like $4.95 for less than 5MB of traffic per month I think (or maybe its 10MB), with Optus.

Does there exist software to read Google Reader offline (Linux preferred, Mac OS X is OK, Windows tolerated)? Do Series 60 Nokia phones have such ability? I ask because soon I’ll not only have the N73, but an E61i (which has WiFi). If only Liferea read/synced with Google Reader, then I can move all my feeds to a cool backend.

Technorati Tags: liferea, google reader, series 60, rss, feeds

The MySQL community is just great. I’ve been suggesting that we get recordings for the Conference & Expo, alas, its generally not in the roadmap. I mean, look at Apple and their WWDC - all attendees get amazing video recordings that switch between slides and the speaker. Last year, they even delivered it via iTunes! In previous years, they distributed DVDs (valuable, though with WWDC a lot is generally new technology announcements, and I can hardly want to reference what was cool for Panther or Tiger any longer…) Mad props also to the linux.conf.au 2007 team, who also did amazing recordings - sessions were available by the evening they were given!

The MySQL conference is a lot different. There are lots of reusable sessions. Some that you attend, you’ll get knowledge committed for life. The tendency to not see too many roadmap talks makes it very useful for future reference.

Back to why the community rocks. They’ve done exactly what should have been done - record the sessions. Give much applause to:

• Sheeri Kritzer, for a lot of 2007 MySQL User Conference & Expo Presentations & Videos. Sheeri walked around with tripod, and video camera, and did an amazing job. She has MP3 audio and VMV video (it plays on Linux…)
• Baron Schwartz, has a few files, that are available in OGG Vorbis format.
• However, that’s not so good for iPod users, so Kevin Burton decided to make MP3’s of Baron’s recordings!

If that wasn’t enough, let me take a moment to thank all the Planet MySQL bloggers, who pretty much created content so regularly, that you could follow the conference, even while you were not there. Kudos to all!

Technorati Tags: mysql, mysqlconf, mysqlconf07, video, audio, recordings, new media, community