Azure BizSpark Camp Sydney
Today I’m checking out Microsoft’s BizSpark Camp. I’ve just had a wander around to meet some of the teams that are tucked away in spacious rooms. Yesterday the teams had training on Azure and in an hour they will be presenting their Azure products the’ve build since to the judges for a grand price of $5,000.
One of the participants said: “Before yesterday if you’d ask me to move to Azure I would say ‘No f*****g way’, but now I’m seriously looking at moving all our stuff over.” I guess that means the camp is already a success from Microsoft’s perspective.
There seven teams that will present are:
Aussiemen.com.au – Men seeking men dating website
Looking to move all his systems into the cloud with Azure and has calculated that moving to the cloud will save them 42% in hosting costs.
EARCHWARE – Enterprise Architecture Repository in the Cloud
Not sure if I understand the plan, but I think they want to put all enterprise informations (read: word and excel documents) in the cloud in a single repository. At the moment it’s just an idea, some powerpoint slides and mock-up screenshots. People that know me know what I think of slideware.
Freedombase.com – Cognitive Data Management
Hmm… I’ve heard the pitch before the presentation and I’ve watched their online tour, but I’m still not sure what they do. Maybe the presentation helps. They claim to reduce coding costs by 90% with something that sounds like coding for dummies. The demo sort of showed that it’s kind of a visual database editor where you can write business rules like an Excel foruma. Their main innovation seems to be an expression builder, but maybe I’m not getting it.
Team Aimee Marie Forsstrom and Erle Pereira
Their idea is to build reporting and analysis systems for open source solutions by loading the data into SQL Azure. They are planning to do “fancy, wancy stuff with it” and build some “awesomely cool super slick interfaces with pivot tables and what not”. Sounds good to me, because the tools available for MySQL are impressively underwhelming. Currently it’s just an idea, but the plan is to get something out in the next 2 months. Too bad it’s only slideware for now.
Ignite Intelligence
Green.Global.Connect. It’s some system to help a city council reduce their carbon footprint. Or something like it. Go Green sounded good, but they totally lost me after that.
Apparently the available budget is $7M, but I’m not sure what it is. The image above would make me very worried if it was my $7M though…
EyeKnowIt.com
Ever seen some weird insect and wondered what it was? EyeKnowIt lets you upload a photo of it with your question so their community can answer is for you. It’s kind of like Aardvark with images. There is obviously an empty restaurant problem here, but the team reckons that with Facebook integration they can get some virality going to overcome this. This is a presentation that resonates with me more than the previous ones because I understand what they do and they’ve shown me the actual product.
Blogosaur.us – Location based blog search
Blog search is terrible. Blogosaur.us allows you to search blog by topic and location. It’s build and should go live soon. Looking to index a billion blogs.
And the winners are:
1. EyeKnowIt
2. Blogosaur.us
3. Freedombase
Time for nibbles and drinks…
xs2.me – Day 4
Today was filled with useless activities such as a trip to IKEA and a dinner with friends. But I did get some excellent work done yesterday between midnight and 4AM. I managed to get to the point where I pressed a toolbar button in my firefox and 20 minutes later all my 422 LinkedIn connections were listed neatly in my database. It mainly took this long because I’m on a 3G connection at the moment. The new apartment doesn’t have internet yet. I managed to import Firstname, Lastname, Image, Email, Phone, Title and Company. I’m pretty happy with the progress on this front as it seems the client side scraping idea is working out so far.
Beta sign-ups are up to 41, this time mainly due to a self promotion post as a comment on a Techcrunch post about Plaxo. Interestingly most of the comments were flaming Plaxo. Looks like they’ve got a seriously bad reputation. I’d better check out at some point how they got that and not repeat their mistake, but instead do the opposite.
Tomorrow and the weekend are not looking good to get work in, so I’ll probably be back on Monday. I’d better get cracking since I’m aiming to publicly launch on the 30th of April… three weeks from now. More soon, time for bed.
xs2.me – Day 3
It’s a rainy day today in Sydney, so a good day to get stuff done. However, somehow I didn’t really get to work on xs2.me until 10:30PM. I find that I tend to work in bursts and these happen mostly late at night. I’ve often wished I could induce these bursts of “being in the zone”, but I’m not sure yet how. I certainly noticed that when working on Tjoos was done more during the day because we hired employees my overall productivity dropped quite a bit. It’s a great feeling to work on something new as this is the best part of a startup. No BAS to file, no customers, no employees, no SVN permissions to change, etc, etc. Just me and a computer.
Anyway, so yesterday I put up a beta signup page:
And it seemed to work. So far 32 people signed up primarily because yesterday Kim Heras did a writeup on TheNextWeb Australia that got syndicated to TheNextWeb US. Yay!
Technology
The website runs on IIS6 with a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database. It’s written in JScript (Classic ASP) and uses a custom javascript framework that for now I call JASPR. It’s geared towards quick development of database driven sites with very easy use of AJAX. With every site I built I try to improve the framework. It was also used for DateBrowsr.
My main development tools are Notepad, Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio and Paint. Firebug is awesome for debugging the website. I do run a local development copy of the website, but use the live database server for development. I find that keeping track of and deploying database changes are too much work.
Missing?
It might be interesting to point out all the things that I haven’t done or worried about:
- Business Plan/Business Model
- Incorporation
- Funding
- Deployment (Currently I FTP individual files manually)
- Unit Testing
- Backups
- Scalability
Should I worry about any of these? Why?
xs2.me – Day 2
Ok, Day 2 of xs2.me and the “open design” of it. I think today would be a good time to get a logo and do some wire frames. Maybe some use cases.
Data Retrieval Design
One of the key barriers to making this work I think is the retrieval of data from social networks. Most network have API’s, but access to some data might be limited and if the network doesn’t like what you’re doing they can ban you. This is why I’m leaning towards screen-scraping of the more closed networks (read: Facebook) by using a browser plug-in on the client side (the user reading their own information). This can be combined with APIs of networks that are more open.
Homepage
Since the main tool is a firefox plug-in, downloading the plug-in is step one. If you’re already logged into Facebook for instance, we can probably just bring up your profile page and get all your info from there. To not scare people we should probably pop-up a question like: “Would you like xs2.me to automatically retrieve your name and other details from your Facebook?”. Hmm… even better if I can get the webpage communicating with the toolbar (to be researched).
Import Page
Beta Invites
Since you can’t go live early enough I’ve put up a beta invite page. Might just as well capture a few email addresses of early adopters so that I can generate some initial traffic before we go live in a few weeks. This way the major bugs can be ironed out before the actual launch. I’ve limited the beta to 250 people. Well… actually it’s not limited, but I thought having a counter might make it feel more exclusive. See if it works.
Logo
Do I design one myself, or do I just put it on 99Designs, DesignCrowd or crowdSpring? Should I use a “real” designer? I’m leaning towards using one of the crowdsourced services because this is time I don’t want to spend, but I don’t want to pay too much for it. What is your experience, what have you done in the past?
Start-up, round 2: xs2.me
Although I’ll still be making sure the transition of Tjoos goes smoothly over the next few months, I do find myself with a fair bit of time to work on new stuff. Recently I was part of the team that launched DateBrowsr while on the StartupBus (thanks Elias!). More seriously I’ve been doing some initial work on an old idea: xs2.me
I have a problem. I have facebook, twitter, an iPhone, Outlook, LinkedIn and I use all of these to connect with people and communicate. It’s a mess. I don’t know who I’m connected with where. I never have someone’s phone number when I need it most. As I said, it’s a mess. To solve this problem I thought it would be cool if a website could get all the contact details out of all my accounts and de-dupe it. Then I would be able to tag my contacts (friend, business, ex-girlfriend, collegue) and setup a rule so that I automatically connect on LinkedIn with all my business contacts.
I’ve pitched this idea a few times and I’ve heard others pitch very similar ideas, but has anyone built it yet? I’ve had a look at Plaxo, Soocial and UNYK, but it’s not quite what I’m after. Has anyone found anything better? Unless someone has:
I’ve decided: I want this tool, so I’m building it!
While I’m designering this start-up I’m planning to share lot’s of information on the process, because the more and the earlier I get feedback, the better the end result. Especially since I’ve met so many smart entrepreneurs over the last few years! I’ll be roughly following the StartupCamp formula, only spread over a longer time period. So let’s get started:
Domain Name: xs2.me
About 18 months ago I registered this domain. It’s short and hopefully memorable. It refers to the fact that xs2.me (pronounce: access to me) gives you access to your digital self (hmm, bit fluffy).
About Us
xs2.me helps you manage your connections across social media, email and mobile.
(this section needs a lot of work)
Features (the bare minimum)
- Import Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn contacts
- Tagging of contacts
- Auto-connect on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn
Is this really the bare minimum or could I launch with less?
More features
- De-Duplication
- Import CSV
- Import Outlook, (iPhone)
- Synch with Outlook and iPhone
- Sent message to a group using whatever method is available (Email, Twitter, Facebook message, SMS, etc)
- Update status on all or some platforms all at once
- GMail integration
- API to access all your data
- Find additional info about contacts (such as their blog/flickr/twitter/etc)
Crazy future features
- Full backup and history of all changes
- Import all updates from all networks, etc and aggregate onto a single dashboard
- Aggregate all status updates, blog posts, photos posted, tweets etc of your contacts onto a single page
- Also aggregate the above for all your contacts or for certain tags (an overview of what is happening in the world of your friends, or your family, or people in your company)
- Etc, etc, etc
I obviously think this rocks with bells on! But am I missing something? Is this only cool for me and 3 other people, or is there a need for this? Comments please!
Since yesterday I’ve read Conroy’s speech, many articles and blog posts on the Governments announcement to go ahead with the “cleanfeed” and the release of the Enex Testlab report. I found that not only is the information provided by Conroy and the report vague and lacking supporting facts, so are the sensational articles and “cleanfeed” bashing blog posts. I thought it was time to do some research and find out what all this really means. My findings follow…
What was actually announced?
Senator Stephen Conroy has announced “new measures to help Australian families stay safer when they are online”.
These measures include:
* The introduction of mandatory ISP-level filtering of Refused Classification (RC)–rated content.
* A grants program to encourage ISPs to offer, on a commercial basis, additional optional ISP-level filtering services for wider categories of content identified by households.
* Increased funding for a range of education, awareness and counseling services.
Clearly the first point here is what all the commotion is about. Conroy gave more detailed information on this:
The Government will introduce legislative amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act to require all ISPs to block RC-rated material hosted on overseas servers.
RC-rated material includes child sex abuse content, bestiality, sexual violence including rape, and the detailed instruction of crime or drug use. Under the National Classification Scheme and related enforcement legislation it is already illegal to distribute, sell or make available for hire RC-rated films, computer games and publications.
This material is currently subject to take-down notices by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) if it is hosted online in Australia. However, ACMA is unable to directly regulate content hosted overseas. This action is an additional measure to the existing take-down regime for Australia-hosted content.
What is RC-rated material?
In the announcement Conroy says RC-rated content includes child sex abuse content, bestiality, sexual violence including rape, and the detailed instruction of crime or drug use. Conroy clearly states that “the criteria for Refused Classification is determined by the National Classification Board and is underpinned by legislation”. There seem to be two distinct RC classifications, one for publications and one for movies and video games. Instead of trying to understand what an RC rating is, I found it easier to find out what isn’t an X18+ rating: “…This classification is a special and legally restricted category which contains only sexually explicit material… …It does not allow sexually assaultive language. Nor does it allow consensual depictions which purposefully demean anyone involved in that activity for the enjoyment of viewers. Fetishes such as body piercing, application of substances such as candle wax, “golden showers”, bondage, spanking or fisting are not permitted….” This X18+ rating however only applies to the ACT and Northern Territory. The states in Australia only have an R18+ rating which excludes any depiction of sexually explicit material. Does that mean that sexually explicit material will be rated RC? Considering the statement referring to child sex abuse content, etc it seems like X18+ content will not be filtered, however, it is currently prohibited to host X18+ content in Australia making it likely that amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act will actually include X18+ rated content in the filter.
What will be filtered?
It’s unclear how the filter will be implemented, but considering the blacklist will be a list of web addresses it seems it will only block web browsing to those addresses. Clearly not filtered are: Email, Newsgroups, Peer2Peer Traffic, FTP, Proxied web traffic, Instant Messaging. Judging from the leaked ACMA blacklist posted on wikileaks (to which I won’t link, as that might get my blog put on the ACMA blacklist) some sites get blocked completely, yet others such as wikipedia only have a few pages blocked. What happens to User Generated Content sites such as facebook.com, flickr.com, twitpic.com, etc, etc. These are all heavily used sites and anyone can upload RC rated material to these. Will only some pages be blocked, or the entire domain? Does this mean that if you’re site is big you won’t be completely blocked but if you’re a small site you’re more likely to blocked completely? Facebook is an interesting case, because it’s not possible to block content based on the url in many cases because facebook is a full AJAX driven site now.
Currently the ACMA blacklist contains only about 2000 to 3000 URLs and unless you are seeking out RC rated content I think it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever end up on any of these sites. Most of these have already been removed from Google, so you won’t find them while searching Google. Funnily enough it seems that the ACMA blacklist is the definitive source on where to find RC rated content on the web. Most RC rated content however is spread through other media such as email, e-groups, newsgroups, Bulletin Board Systems, Chat rooms and P2P networks. If the web is used the sites generally only stay up for a very limited time because they get shut down by ISPs or they are run from hacked computers. The proposed process of a complaint driven list won’t have any effect on these sites as it’s likely to be too slow. So it seems to be that the main outcome of this filter will be that families get protected against content they will never go to, while not being protected against this content in places where they are more likely to accidentally run into it. That is if the only thing blocked is indeed RC rated content and not X18+ rated content. While the system has very little use to block child pornography, it could be used to some effect to block gambling sites, forums where users discuss topics such as euthanasia, gay/lesbian or whatever at the time is considered “revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults”.
Is there a demand for this filter?
From an SMH article: “a national telephone poll of 1100 people, conducted by Galaxy and commissioned by online activist group GetUp, found that only 5 per cent of Australians want ISPs to be responsible for protecting children online and only 4 per cent want Government to have this responsibility.”
Net Alert, which was a government program to provide free filtering software was canceled at the end of last year because it was only installed on 26,000 computers.
So even though not many Australians actually want this filter, it seems it is still being pursued because it was an election promise.
What is the goal of the filter?
Some excerpts from Conroy’s announcement:
…Most Australians acknowledge that there is some internet content which is not acceptable in any civilised society. It is important that all Australians, particularly young children, are protected from this material. … The Government should do all that it can to protect Australians from exposure to RC-rated content. … Reduce Exposure—through mandatory filtering of RC material, expansion of the RC content list to incorporate more child sexual abuse material hosted overseas, and optional filtering for additional material as determined by families….
From the statement it seems the goal is to protect Australian children (there are a lot of references to family/parents/children) from inadvertently stumbling upon RC rated content (child pornography in particular). The goal and the means seem to not fit very well. Many of the other proposed measures however make a lot of sense, such as improving awareness and educate children and parents.
Who is going to pay for this?
At least one is clear. Tax payers will pay for any money that the government spends on trials, maintaining the blacklist, etc. Internet users will pay for the extra cost for the ISPs to implement the filters. I haven’t been able to find any information on how much this would cost for ISPs to implement and therefore how much it will increase our internet bills.
Will it slow down the internet?
According to Telstra the filtering will slow down the connection by one seventieth of the blink of an eye. The average time of the blink of an eye is 300 to 400 milliseconds, so it will slow our connections down by about 5 milliseconds. Considering that my connection time to bigpond.com is currently about 25 milliseconds, this filter adds 20% to my latency. This sounds like a lot, but you won’t notice this while browsing the web. You might however notice this significantly in latency sensitive applications. Australia has already fairly high latency compared to other parts of the world and adding to this certainly doesn’t help.
Can the list be used to harm your competitors?
With “User Generated Content” sites it is possible for anyone to post RC rated content on their site. So if your competitor allows user generated content, all you have to do is post some instructions on how to build a bomb and get your competitor blacklisted. The leaked ACMA list had dates in it indicating those were the dates the list was updated. There were weeks between updates so if you get accidentally listed it will be interesting to see how long it would actually take to get unlisted. Long enough to make your competitor go bankrupt.
More good stuff on wikipedia.
Ok, I only got through about half of what I planned, but it’s time to get some sleep.
Diving with whale sharks
Just installed wordpress for my iPhone. Testing. Here’s a photo from a whale shark in the Atlanta aquirium. Kim and I went diving there recently. Amazing!
Marketing Fail: Most plebeians love a deliberate scale of habit…
On Tjoos we have a merchant portal where our merchants can update their details, today this came through for http://www.china-jewelry-supplier.com/:
Most plebeians love a deliberate scale of habit when arrangement adornment. There are so many spaces out there largesse bracelets and at epoch can be esoteric to horde which companies are all-purpose and which ones are off-target. When looking at jewelry rings, clients lack to care for appropriate equipment in persuasion. Toll is, of agent, boss. If the freedom is too expanded, trade should eye someday supplementary. There are a member of various merchants out there that suit an inexpensive outlay, so customers should never get lured up with a burden that overcharges. When arrangement jewelry rings , customers should be sophic that they should treasure rare that is affordable. That stanchion that scrutiny prices can be very treasured. That allows for customers to get the unique scenario on the bazaar.
No further comment… enjoy.
Even Google has bugs?
At Tjoos we have seen Google entries with a hostname that includes an open bracket for a while and I didn’t think too much of it. But in asking around I haven’t found anyone who has ever seen anything like it. Looks like even Google Search is not completely perfect, so I guess we startup guys shouldn’t worry too much about the bugs we create on a daily basis…
Check out http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3A(www.tjoos.com&btnG=Search
Google Open Bracket Bug
As you can see, Google lists results for these URLs, but when clicked they don’t go anywhere.
I wasn’t too worried as I didn’t think it would have any real impact on our rankings, but then I noticed this: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Stouffers+Coupon+Codes&btnG=Search
Google Open Bracket Bug affecting ranking
This only affects a very small number of our pages, but as you can see, the phantom page starting with the open bracket ranks for this search. Our real page is not listed. Maybe our real page has been removed from the listings as a duplicate content.
I assumed this was a temporary glitch at first, but it has been around for a while now. Has anyone else seen this, or are we the lucky exception on an otherwise perfect Google?
Marketing on a Budget
Melbourne University is hosting the inaugral Student StartupCamp, a StartupCamp exclusively for university student. Six groups of 4 or 5 students are pulling an all-nighter and working Friday to Sunday to create a web business from scratch.
Obviously their marketing budget is non-existant, so guerrilla marketing is the way to go. Some interresting ideas are floating around and the first outcome is the following video for oneoffjobs.net…
Brilliant work. How can this video NOT go viral…
