Apr 2009 13 th
Minor Tweetrush Outage
Well Tweetrush is still beta, and after 200+ days we’ve suffered our first major outage. Basically we ran out of memory. Normally not a problem, except we all went on a break for Easter. My bad, I knew of the error when it first arose, but decided I’d handle it when back. I’ll parse all the data (Which should be tonnes) over the next few days. it should be interesting as there was some Twitter worm doing the rounds.
Update to final pre-release Rush hour is coming soon too, finally this one will enable the geo location stats as well as some other interesting info. Nice to if our feed was accurate.
Add a commentMar 2009 17 th
Head Wreaking HeadSearch.ie
Okay, I get thousands of spam mails, normally I never see them in my inbox. But today I got a mail from a woman called Linda O’Connell from an organisation called Headsearch.ie. Normally I would not let spam mails bother me, but given what was being pitched in this mail I took an exception to it.
Considering that there are so many people unemployed or facing the prospect of it, its my opinion its not a time for a “Professional Headhunt/Recruitment Organisation” to be charging people for reviewing their CV. It would, in my opinion, be akin to profiteering from the situation or indeed potentially exploitative. Perhaps I am being too harsh however on Miss O’Connell. Perhaps she has a magic wand that can turn wrongs into rights, darkness into light. Maybe she should in fact run a small country. I doubt that I am wrong however.
The second thing that I took exception to is that no professional recruitment agent or indeed Irish company I know of (And I know lots of both these days) would harvest the Monster DB for users emails and then try to solicit business from the results of their harvest. I am pretty disappointed with Monster.ie for allowing this to occur in the first instance. I signed up to find a job months ago, I did not sign up to receive UCE from the likes of headsearch.ie, which is what this mail is.
10 CommentsDec 2008 31 st
2008 The year that was, 2009 the year that will…
Well 2008 has been a mixed bag for me. Lots of friends moved away from Cork and I have begun to pack too, however it was a great roller coaster of a year. Several memorable moments, but getting onto Tech Crunch was pretty cool for me as well as a great trip to Cuba.
But what about 2009? Well here are a few of my predictions.
1. Damien Mulley will go from strength to strength, I’d be expecting him to be on TV a lot more in 2009
2. Some type on pan European organization will kick off in earnest help European based start-ups. It will have some initial success but die because it will become populated by loud-mouthed egos that do nothing except talk themselves up all the time.
3. There will be a close passing of the Nice treaty in Ireland, very close, circa 1% margin
4. There will be an Irish election
5. Rush Hour will be launched
6. Twitter will grow and still not sell. Perhaps adverts will be added, but those on the service since the early days will begin to wander off
7. Google Friend Connect & Facebook Connect will battle it out for the identity market. MS will pimp their own and nobody will care about it. The Open ID and OAuth guys will step up and they shall prevail
8. Social network financials will slow down but investment in web utility ware will increase
9. Skype may be passed onto another company as Ebay focus on core operations
10. Credit squeeze will end in the summer as the Obama feel good factor kicks in, however banking systems will be worked on for years to prevent issues in the future
11. Irish start-ups will continue to be neglected by the government, however a private initiative will step up and take the bull by the horns.
12. International Telco’s will suffer large financial losses as the growth of VoIP apps become more visible in daily life
13. Apple will release new version of iPhone with better battery life. They’ll also introduce a touch screen computer
14. MS windows dominance will decline by 3% as alternatives are sought
15. Loic LeMeur will be proven right that video commenting works as Sessmic gains popularity, probably evolve into a messaging system similar to Twitter.
16. Facebook fatigue will kick in globally
17. Google App engine will support PHP, in fact it won’t be app engine anymore
18. Smaller Irish start-ups will join forces in a co-op style
19. Someone will finally start something to replace mail (SMTP) protocols
20. I’ll be living in Limerick
For 2008 I can’t say enough thanks to the following people who’ve helped me get through it,
- Justa – A great girl friend for letting me work those crazy hours
- Damien Mulley – Great at PR, Great honesty, Great thinker, Great Guy
- Pat Phelan – For someone I’ve meat for a total of 15 min, he has helped no end, a true gentleman
- Walter, James, Greg & Slawomir – Tweetrush would never have been without them
- Patrick Buttimer for just being yourself
- Adam for calming me down at times and putting what I want to say into a more reasonable, human friendly manner
- My friends, for keeping me going. Promise I’ll be over soon in .fr and .es
- Everyone else for taking some of my crazy ideas seriously and working them out with me
That’s it, look forward to 2009 and the challenges it will bring. Wish you and yours the best in 2009.
Nov 2008 3 rd
AWS User Group Ireland – You Can Get Involved
Well, given my current situation, there is an upside. I get to spend time on projects and things I’ve been putting off for a long time. One of these things & something which I am very passionate about is Amazon Web Services.
As a web guy and sys admin, I’ve been using AWS for quite a while now, and I see the real advantages to its use in many different scenarios that many Irish developers encounter on a day to day basis.
I also often get asked by others about AWS and their plans for it, how to use it etc, and most of the time I find its just a case of the other person needing a sounding board to bounce their ideas off.
Nov 2008 3 rd
On the move – I’m back on the market
Yes, alas its very true. Owing to the current economic situation I am on the hunt for a new position after a long time spent with my current employer. November the 4th shall be my last day and end my tenure as IT manager for a great company. For the past month I’ve been submitting forms, CV’s and running through all sorts of hoops the recruitment agencies have in place while doing my final handover. Alas that magic position has thus far eluded me. I could write numerous posts on just the experiences I’ve had with agencies, some good, some just jaw dropping, but I won’t. Everyone has to do it, everyone knows how good or bad it can get.
So I am looking for a new home. When I say new home, I really do mean a new home! Work is like a glove. You either fit or you don’t. I like to fit into a place where I can contribute and help achieve, but also to learn. No matter who you are or what position you hold, there is always something or someone you can learn from (Especially true in IT). Work after all, is a two way street. You only get back what you put in. I’ve been lucky enough to have worked with some of the best people in many sectors over the years. I managed a few of them, they have managed me, but we’ve always been working together to achieve something we are passionate about & something great. Sure there have been highs and lows at times, but thats part of the process and I would never change any moment over the past few years.
Anyhow, if you have a position and you think I would be the glove that would fit your hand, do let me know, I’m very approachable and will be very happy to talk about any opportunity that may arise, if I am not the one well then I can tell you rather quickly. But I may know someone else who is ideal for you. Feel free to check me out on Linked In & I can of course provide first rate references. I posses too many skills to go into in a blog post, but my CV is only a few clicks and a send button away, so do reach out and contact me.
Finally, at a time like this, I have to say a big thank you to everyone who has helped me in my search. When my heads been wreaked by another bad recruiter experience, they have been a source of unmeasurable help and support. With a bit of time I’ll find my new hand and I will be treating those to something more than a pint or a few Yorkie bars. You know who you are and how you have helped. THANK YOU!!!!
Aj
Oct 2008 25 th
Slowly getting there – first tweetxt screen
Inspired by the Contrast Crew’s build an app in 5 days, I’ve spent my spare time this week playing a lot with the Twitter API. My aim here is to enable SMS and IM updates without hammering the Twitter servers for myself and my friends & to do so in as short a time as possible. To do this I am employing some fun and new ways of speaking with Twitter. In fact sometimes I don’t even have to speak to them, they speak to me!
I’ve managed to get SMS back up and running, it usually takes between 3 and 10 seconds to get to my phone after someone I follow updates. I am still fighting with some IM issues but it appears to work, but is rather flakey. I don’t know if thats Twitter or myself just yet. Anyhow see below a wee screen grab of where I am at.Yes I know it looks crap, but that because uber cool designer Walter is still on his honey moon. Once he gets his hands on it, he’ll sort out my dodgy photoshoping. In case Flickr is funny, the original is already there.
Oct 2008 21 st
Tweetrush update – now tracking the client stats
Just a quick one. We’ve released some updates to Tweetrush.com that has now enabled to the public, Twitter client stats.
While every attempt is made to validate our stats, there are some issues around source identification. However by and large the % totals should enable client developers to gauge the take up of their application. As an added bonus, we’ve also added the top 30 daily users of the client, just in case developers want to reach out and touch base with their most devoted users.
This release also marks an important milestone in the development of Rush Hour, our action and event based analytic engine. We’ve all been busy over the past few weeks, testing and adding new features. We expect to be on time for a version one release Q1 of next year. We’ve also had contact from some really cool companies wishing to use it, which for us is very flattering for us. But we’re also confident that our little app will more than meet their requirements and look forward to putting some really heavy hitting beats into place.
Right, back to work.
Oct 2008 18 th
Building a Simple PHP Twitter Client Without Twitter
Part One – Getting to Grips with GNIP
Okay so now I suppose I better start doing some geek stuff as its been far too long. What I’m going to try and accomplish is to build a simple Twitter client using PHP and GNIP and as little help from the Twitter API. Sure this may fail badly but we’ll learn something along the way. Why Twitter? Well I do lots of stuff with Twitter data, so why not. But I also want to demonstrate the power of GNIP to you as well as showing that there are ways to be friendly to Twitter & other providers without having to hammer their API’s.
Sep 2008 30 th
Irish Web Awards & IT@Cork Nominations
Well, I’ve been very busy of late converting Druid DNS over to Oggim DNS. That’s going well during the day and I am glad to say its coming along very nicely at present. Still have lots of work to do on the UI, but the port to Zend Framework is going very well.
At the same time I am busy writing Rush Hour, our brand spanking new whatever analytics package (which is moving leaps and bounds now). Out of the blue I got two rather surprising and humbling emails.
Sep 2008 11 th
The Utility Web
I’m watching the TechCrunch 50 and its great. Ustream.tv are doing a great job streaming and its a very impressive demonstration of their abilities.
I can’t remember who said it, but someone critiqued a company for not being the next FaceBook. This got me thinking about a David Heinemeier Hansson video from StartUp School 08.
I constantly keep hearing about someone planning to be the next Face Book or YouTube, all it seems to be about now is this beast that is the Social Web. While this is great I keep thinking the same thing.
WHAT ABOUT ALL THE OTHER COOL STUFF?
In particular, what about the Utility Web?
What is the Utility Web I hear you say? Well its a mixture of all those cool web applications that sit quietly in the background actually doing something useful while you are buying someone a Han Solo on Face Book.
To be specific, they are apps such as Freshbooks, an online accounting package for freelancers and small business, our own Rush Hour and Oggim DNS service, Amazon AWS, data exchangers like Gnip or as in the Tech Crunch 50 case, Ustream.tv. This list is endless.
The thing about a utility web company, is that they are generally quite focused on solving a problem that exists and focus on one or two areas. They are not wanting to be the next Face Book, they don’t even want to be a Face Book for their given domain, but just good at what they do and profitable.
To use Hannson’s example, 2000 people paying you €50 a month equals €1.2 million in trade. Getting 2000 people to use your utility is the hardest part after you’ve built the killer app.
So don’t get hung up on trying to be the next Face Book, the real money is in being a utility provider to all those web 2.0 social startups.
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