LinkedIn and old Contacts

So I have never been a user of LinkedIn. up until last week. I think that LinkedIn is a way of dealing with business contacts so I am trawling through all my business cards from the last year or so and trying to connect to them in LinkedIn. I have no idea if I will actually get any benefit from this but I am going to give it a try, updates to follow.

I also sent out a question to the twitter folk to see if they have any ideas on this being a good or bad thing.

Any thought appreciated.

Twitter Clients

I have been doing some investigation into twitter clients and I just wanted to share with you a few useful links.

Lotus Notes Twitter Client

Lotus Notes Twitter Client video

A review of available twitter clients

Using Adobe Air - Twirl

Using Adobe Air - Tweet-r includes file transfer

and of course those clients provided by twitter for download.

Go check them out and have a play!

Twitter for the Enterprise

I am currently pulling together a presentation for my enterprise to talk about twitter and how I think it will impact two areas, Telcos and Message bus software.

As part of my research I have found the brilliant video from common craft. if you have ever wonndered what twitter is all about this video does quite a good job.

Twitter marches on

In reference to the article in the provided link using twitter as a public announcement system is an interesting advance. It does open up the possibilities of Twitter as a stateless Low QoS message bus.

Twitter will need a few extra pieces of function in order meet the demands of these public services e.g. message by provider, location, area, town, country, user etc and by device - pro, friends, anonymous, government etc which will bring in security reqs. Some comments to the article talk about adding sensors to tower bridge. Thjis technology is provided by SCARDA devices that publish events through a message bus to some other system - this technology is common umoung oil pipelines for measuring flow rates across the pipe network.

It very interesting to see public consumer messages converging with enterprise messaging s0olutions.

Neutral Buoyancy and the duck

After bathing our baby girl I took upon myself the task of seeing if Neutral buoyancy of a small plastic duck was achievable. After a period of time I videoed the scientific results for you enjoyment and education.

Go the duck.

BBQ CHicken wings and veggies

I want to share with you my favorite summertime meal. Chicken wings and BBQ veggies. The trick is to marinade the chicken wings for about an hour in olive oil, salt, peper, soy souce for about 30 mins, then mix the veggies in olive oil, salt and pepper and throw on the BBQ - how easy is that?

Mobile phones in the classroom

In a news story this evening on One News in New Zealand there is a school in Hamilton that has a mobile phone in every classroom. The purpose of this mobile phone is for students to call home when they have done something good or bad in school. This program has helped motivate students to perform.

While the use of a mobile phone is of interest it is not that relevant. What is relevant is motivation of some students comes from sharing information with loved ones immediately rather than waiting until the end of the day....another twitter scenario?

Eddie Izzard

My most favourite comedian is Eddie Izzard and I just wanted to share with you one of his funniest moments. I have embedded the video below with some great lego animation that brings the sketch to life.

I hope you laugh as much as we do.

As a Web 2.0 guy I try to spend a bit of time everyday looking at Web 2.0 sites to grow my knowledge and understanding of changes in the cloud. I found this great music site called imeem. I am sure all you Web 2.0 folk know it but I love it!!! As a huge Snow Patrol fan I loved this play list and track 3 in particular as shown below.

Enjoy!

Web 2.0 and Universities

Here is my first presentation published to slideshare. I was pretty nervous putting this on a site external to IBM but it is also exciting.

I really enjoyed building this deck not just researching and finding the right slides but by having an original thought or one that I had not read elsewhere.

This presentation has led me to think about a few papers I would like to write.

- White paper this presentation
- Twitter Vs Text Messaging
- New Business Models for Universities
- Web 3.0

Watch this space!

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Around the Bays

Today was the Round the Bays run. It starts on Quay Street in Auckland city centre and snakes around the bay area through to St Heliers Bay where the race finishes. The total distance is 8.4 km.

Lucy dropped me off at the bottom of Parnell rise and I walked to the start line on Quay Street. I then waited around with the rest of the crowd for the race to start. The weather was warm but not hot - perfect conditions for a run, very exciting.

I have included a map of the run below.


I set out quite slowly as there was a lot of people about. I must confess that I found it fairly hard going all the way to Kohimarama (45 minutes) and for the next 8 minutes I almost sprinted, I think it has something to do the endorphins that hit my brain.

My time was 53 minutes and 34 seconds which is great as I was aiming for under 60 minutes. Next year I will take Delphie in the stroller so it will be a bigger challenge!!

Are you sure you want kids?

I received this in an email and I found it so funny as it is all true....

Test 1
Women : To prepare for pregnancy, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front. Leave it there for 9 months.
After 9 months remove 5% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for children, go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself.
Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home.
Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Test 2
Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild.
Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behavior.
Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

Test 3
To discover how the nights will feel:
1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 - 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
4. Set the alarm for 3am.
5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.
6. Go to bed at 2.45am.
7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.
10. Make breakfast.
Keep this up for 5 years. LOOK CHEERFUL.

Test 4
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems:
1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out.
3. Time allowed for this: 5 minutes.

Test 5
Forget the BMW and buy a practical 5-door wagon.
And don't think that you can leave it out on the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment and leave it there.
2. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.
3. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Test 6
Getting ready to go out:
1. Wait
2. Go out the front door
3. Come back in again
4. Go out
5. Come back in again
6. Go out again
7. Walk down the front path
8. Walk back up it
9. Walk down it again
10. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
11. Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
12. Retrace your steps
13. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
14. Give up and go back into the house.
15. You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Test 7
Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

Test 8
Go to the local supermarket.
Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child.
A full-grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.
Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Test 9
1. Hollow out a melon
2. Make a small hole in the side
3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side
4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.
5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.
7. You are now ready to feed a 12-month old child.

Test 10
Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney..
Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.

Test 11
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out:
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains
2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds and then rub them on clean walls.
4. Cover the stains with crayon.
5. How does that look?

Test 12
Make a recording of someone shouting 'Mummy' repeatedly.
Important: No more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy - occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet if required.
Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years.
You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Test 13
Start talking to an adult of your choice.
Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above.
You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Test 14
Put on your finest work attire.
Pick a day on which you have an important meeting. Now:
1. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it
2. Stir
3. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt
4. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture
5. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel
6. Do not change, you have no time.
7. Go directly to work

I was just researching a presentation on Web 2.0 for local Universities when I came across this excellent presentation that you must take a look at. It is required reading for all Web 2.0 folk.

One of the ideas that came to me from chart 113 is a bullet "Current behavior: Web data entered by humans. New behavior: Web data automatically entered by devices (Flickr)" so i wonder when the first digital camera will be released in conjunction with Flickr. The device will populate your Flickr pro account....

Once we start down this path there are loads of device - web 2.0 site tie ups.......tell me your ideas.

Business Idea today

I have been doing some work for a family member who needs a bit of help with IT. He runs a small business of 60 staff and 11 branches and he wanted to build a web site. As I am in that game we had a sit down and a chat about it. It was really interesting to hear how small businesses make IT choices.......

The quotes that he received to build a web site were a right rip off......anyway maybe i should set my self up as a weekend consultant for small businesses as they clearly need a lot of help.

Our dream property

Lucy and I were looking for a dream property in which we will live once one of our ideas come off!

What are the criteria?

- Walking distance to the beach
- Private boat berth
- Some land to;
- grow herbs to build our cut and buy business
- Fruit trees to make chutney
- 4 bedrooms
- Plenty of water tanks
- Access to main roads

I think that will do for starters.....http://www.accommodation-auckland.com/bayvista/for-sale-newzealand.htm