Share what you know, Learn what you don’t. This is the evolution of one Afrikan.
“Critical to our plan,” Mr. Speyer said, “is an advanced ticketing system where people will be able to buy - up to months in advance - a ticket for a specific time.” He added, “There’s no reason for anybody to stand in line more than 10 or 15 minutes.”
We’re all very proud 
PS - try BugMeNot to get access to the article if you’re not already a NY times reader…
FYI
From Paul Graham. I started with “How to Start a Startup“, then went to “Summer Founders Program“, then mailed him curiously asking what it was all about.
This was his reply.
~~~
Our idea for a startup school has morphed into something more hands-on:
http://www.paulgraham.com/summerfounder.html
Now instead of just hearing talks about how to start a startup, you get money to actually start one. The talks are now going to be spread out over a series of dinners during the summer.
We can’t of course accept so many people into this new program as we could with the original idea, but we encourage you to apply. We’re prepared to accept younger founders and riskier ideas than anyone currently believes practical.
And since the deadline is approaching, we’d appreciate it if you could tell any friends who might be interested in doing something like this. If this new idea takes hold this year, we will make it an annual thing, and that could have quite a big effect on the world.
Thanks! –pg
~~~
“Without a sense of caring, there can be no sense of community.”
- Anthony J. D’Angelo
Got that from my mate Walter in SA. He sends me a “thought of the day” every day, and I really, really appreciate it.
I really believe that community is something that is increasingly important - humanity is changing so fast so much that I think to some extent we’re losing our roots, our sense of identity, the stuff that bonds us all together.
At least here in London, it feels that way.
I’ve been thinking seriously of putting up a list / database of my favourite quotes (this is now one of them) and stuff that makes me think. I want to pass on the goodness, I want you to read something every day, and I want it to challenge you. I want you to come out of your torpor for 5 seconds and actually contemplate something. Just once would be nice.
What do you think? Would it be too geeky? schwarmy? offensive? would it make you think negatively of me?
Just think tho’ - with an RSS feed, you could have a daily dose of good writing delivered to your favourite newsreader
Tell me what you think by adding a comment below.
My colleague Roche has a new blog at seffrican.com. And it’s Wordpress!!
She’s on her way over to the UK for a contract with a very large software company, so the guys in the office in the UK set it up for her, and gave it to her as a pressie.
So, go say hi and wish her well
Edit:
Craig from our Cape Town office just sent this definition of Miché from Urban Dictionary.
If he had a blog, I’d link to him
Yay!!! - we saw the sun for the first time today - spring is finally here
If you’re one of the enlightened that is using Firefox, and if like me you like to customise things to make them look nicer, or work better, then you may be pleased to know that there is help on the way…
Code Ninja Aaron, who has very good kung fu, has given us Greasemonkey.
From the horses mouth:
Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML (”user scripts”) to any webpage to change it’s behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a webpage’s style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a webpage’s design or interaction.
_ There’s an article on customizing GMail here.
_ I’ve already tried persistent searches and think it’s great.
_ I know Nurm has been up to his usual tricks doing some funky stuff.
_ Simon talks about fixing MSDN here.
Get Firefox to do NTLM is a great little trick for Sharepoint users - basically allows you to log automatically, which makes it easy peasy.
My only issue is that the UI Sharepoint displays, using Firefox, is not as good as when using IE - there seem to be some DHTML tricks which are specific to IE, which is fair enough I spose, but not ideal.
So, I end up using IE for our office intranet, and Firefox for everything else
I’ve been talking to a few people recently about how to promote their blog, so I thought I’d post some stuff I’ve come accross that should set you on your way, or add to your knowledge already.
_ Robert Scoble - How your blog will get discovered
_ Promoting your blog
_ Eugene Volokh
_ You have to tell someone - Sifry talks a little about pinging
_ You have to have good content - write the living web
_ Edit: Shelley doesn’t agree with Robert
Edit: I’ve taken out the ping services to add them to a new separate post.
Jason puts it nicely in this post about feeling overcommitted.
I know that sometimes I do make too many agreements with myself, and others, and it inevitably leads to either disappointment or frustration, neither of which is good for me in general. So, my trick is to try keep my calendar acurate as far forward as possible, so that I am with integrity able to make agreements with myself and others that have a chance of coming to fruition. A daily checkup to see what my engagements are, and a weekly review keep me in check - the next habit to take on board is the monthly 10 and 20 000 feet review.
I’m also learning to say no, which has been a massive learning curve, and one which I can now start to see the real value of. How ften do you say no to people, not becuase you’re mean, but because you know that you’re honestly not able to keep up to their expectations. Try it - what happens?
Brad first brought this into my radar a while ago, while the Write the living Web article on A list Apart goes into much more detail. I know Brad was concerned about a few things at his previous employers, but felt that he couldn’t talk about it, even though it could have been really useful to a lot of people in the industry (not trade secrets, but something about sql triggers - ask him!).
Recently while lurking in my RSS feeds, I came accross this post from Scoble in reply to A Public service announcement from Chuq, where they talk about being an employee and blogging…
It’s an interesting dilemma, ‘cos on the one hand bloging is a pretty new phenomenon. My take is that if you blog about Apple, but don’t do anything naughty like talk about a new product before official release, then you should be fine. We’re not in the dark ages here. My girl Sarah is a lawyer, and she would argue that it depends on your contract - does it explicitly state that you cannot blog, or blog about Apple, or communicate confidential information etc etc etc - you could go on and on. So you probably should read your contract before starting employment at a firm where you are likely to get a lot of attnetion.
Anwyays - so that’s what I was thinking, when I came accross this little gem on the Sun blog site:
The individuals who post here work at Sun Microsystems. The opinions expressed here are their own, are not necessarily reviewed in advance by anyone but the individual authors, and neither Sun nor any other party necessarily agrees with them.
Note that it talks about opinions. What do you think?
Edit:
Technorati man Dave Sifry says something nice about Niall Kennedy’s post entitled “Whose voice is it anyway?”
Interesting stuff here - I’m sure this debate will rage on and on…
_ NearlyFreeSpeech.NET
They offer “1GB/$1 hosting with no gimmicks”. Looks interesting, and it seems that they’re doing ok - I’m not sure that business model is sustainable, and as talk is cheap on a website, there’s really no way to know other than to watch them and see what transpires…
_ Scoble’s link Blog.
If you’re into tech at all, it’s worth a visit, and probably worth the RSS feed too.
which lead me to…
_ Productizing Open Source
Firefox is open source, and I love Firefox. It simply kicks IE ass all over the place. What more is there to say.
That doesn’t mean that half the browser population doesn’t even know what Firefox is tho’…
_ If you’re a Geek and you’re in London…
Hey, if I can catch a ball does that mean I can’t come?
_ I read How to Start a Startup with some interest this week, sent Paul an email, and got a reply sending me to the Summer Founders Program, which looks damn cool shit hot. If I was a pup and in the States, I’d sooooo wanna do that. The application form is pretty cool as well - should sort the men from the boys, so to speak.
_ The New Rules of Email Marketing
Haven’t read it yet, but looks interesting, and will do - another arms race. Evolution is everywhere
Norman sent BugMeNot - Bypass Compulsory Web Registration to me a few days ago.
Looks pretty interesting, and ethics aside, I think it’s kick ass. I did try it on the New York Times (our company did some work that was mentioned in an article that I wanted to read) and it was cool. There’s an article about it over on Poynter.org which talks a bit about it, and discussion which seems to swing both ways.
I’m thinking with my business hat on now:
I give advertisers, who pay my wages, stats on who visits my site, what they look at and when they come - so I think that BugMeNot isn’t really that cool. It kinda makes me feel violated.
And thinking with my user hat on now:
I don’t have the time or the inclination to give any site my details, unless I visit there a lot, and read their content regularly, so BugMeNot makes my life easier… Besides, who gives their real details anyways?
So it’s a moot point methinks, and more to the point, an arms race which looks prety interesting… One thing I can say is that it seems it’s a case for better analytics, not necessarily user intrusion?
What do you think?
OK - so Andrew says I’m a pleb, ‘cos I didn’t know I could get point to point directions in the UK from a website. So sue me! - I’ve only just started driving in the UK, having been here for the last three years (and loving the public transport system).
Anyways - this is magic - if you didn’t know (like I didn’t), then I hope this is useful for you too
Welcome to the personal blog of Gareth Knight. On web 2.0, technology, living in London, business, software, the web, Africa and sustainability. This is the evolution of one Afrikan.
