Bug-Man’s Blog

What is Twitter?

A Micro-Blogging platform that lets you post messages of up to 140 characters in length. You follow people and people follow you. It has been very high profile, is used by a large number of news and tech-news sources. It has an abundance of clients for OS/X, Windows, Linux, iPhone and probably other phone platforms as well. It has an extremely large userbase and is, as far as I know, the first one on the scene.

What is Identi.ca?

Identi.ca is a similar service based on http://laconi.ca/, an open source “equivalent”. It has a smaller userbase and lesser third party applications but way more potential for growth and expansion because it’s open source.

So what’s the difference?

Twitter has been on the scene for a long time now and users are still being drawn to it based on the hype and discussion going around on the Internet. But people aren’t talking about this cool new thing called “micro-blogging”; they’re talking about Twitter, the current king of micro-blogging.

Twitter has a well established, well known presence on the web now, and is commonly discussed. It’s also becoming somewhat of a household name which is the best way to market yourself. Consider other biggies like “Coke” which can also refer to any other cola beverage. Well OK, so Twitter’s not as big as Coke, but you get the drift.

These micro-blogging services allow you to tap into their network and control them or display them from external sources, including Facebook, blogs, RSS feeds, Instant Messenger hook-ups, your iPhone or BlackBerry. I can sign up for an account with Identi.ca that is able to push updates to Twitter so that if I update on identi.ca, my twitter followers don’t miss a trick. They instantly see the update because my identi.ca account has a one-way link from identi.ca to twitter. But what about the other way? I can’t. Twitter doesn’t work like that and they choose not to. It’s fundamentally flawed because I can’t tie it in reverse. I can’t go to Twitter and update and expect my Identi.ca followers to see my update. If Identi.ca implemented something like this they would need to poll the RSS feed from each twitter account constantly just to receive new updates. A nightmare. Also, my friend might have an account called purpleman on twitter and one called terrytips on identi.ca. When I reply to him on identi.ca I am saying “@terrytips ” which also appears on twitter, but doesn’t readdress that to purpleman.

So Twitter have decided to close their doors opening only a few cracks. Nobody can see their platform code and nobody can peer into their data store, which is the opposite of ideas like identi.ca. Is it always the case that an idea will appear on the scene, become “uber-popular” but far too late for any other, better, or more open similar ideas to surface?

If you consider that in Australia, the UK or the USA our supermarkets are very much driven by these giant corporations who dominate over all of the little guys. The big ones made it, they are household names and are ubiquitous throughout society. Nobody has heard of the small guys other than the “locals”. The small ones might be better with their friendlier staff, local knowledge, family values, but ultimately the big guys will win in terms of traffic because that is where everyone is. What’s the point of a social networking site if none, or only a handful of your friends are on it? None. If they’re all elsewhere you might as well be there too. Just as it is when you go out with your friends who mostly decide to go to a pub you don’t like, but majority rules, you don’t want to go elsewhere without your friends, so you suck it up and go to that venue instead. Majority rules here!

MSN, Facebook, Twitter, Internet Explorer, Windows, Microsoft Office, The QWERTY keyboard! And they’re just some geeky ones.

Jabber (an alternative to instant messaging and the technology that drives Google’s GTalk) did the right thing — it built a network standard that was completely open source, allowed an API to other Instant Messenger networks, allowed you to run a complete Jabber server on your own computer, set up an account on it with your own email address and you’d be able to add contacts from any other Jabber server that exists out there in the world. My traffic goes out of my own server and directly to my other contact’s. It doesn’t rely on third parties. It’s that flexible. With Jabber you can do super-cool things, for instance, at your workplace you can run a server internally for internal communication between staff. You can have your server plug into your LDAP tree. You can create a contact like “Alert” who is really a bunch of scripts on a back-end receiving updates from your alerting system. Server breaks and not only are oncall notified but so are all of your tech staff because they receive an instant message.

With MSN messenger you’re stuck with a proprietary and closed protocol, no plugins to other networks and if the central servers go down you’re out of luck. Add to that your messages and conversations are transmitted around the world to those central servers and who knows what happens to them in transit or when they get there. Did you know that the only reason there are alternative messenger clients for MSN is because the protocol was originally reverse engineered? When they change the standard, it still needs to be reverse engineered. Madness? Maybe — but do you have an MSN account? I would guess that the answer is yes and this is because the rest of the world uses it.

Oh with Jabber I could easily set up a Jabber server, my own Jabber account and install an MSN transport — a plugin that was written with code that reverse engineered the MSN Network protocol — I’d be able to use a client of my choosing and it would all appear rather seamless, but it’s just not happening around the world. We should be in a position where these networks (Twitter, MSN and the like!) are all configured in such a way to allow openness and intermessaging. I should be able to have an identi.ca account and subscribe to someone’s Twitter feed or their uber-micro-blog feed and it should all just work. PEOPLE want this, but BUSINESS doesn’t. Will the world ever catch up?

A few links for you:

Twitter: www.twitter.com
Identi.ca: identi.ca
Jabber: www.jabber.org

(Look at that, I even put Twitter first without even thinking.)

I trialed MobileMe when it came out and I didn’t find it useful. When the trial subscription was coming to a close I made sure that I jumped on to the Me.com website and cancelled the trial. “Your credit card will not be charged” says the website. Adam leaves happy.

Lo and behold I check my bank account details and I’ve been charged £59! I checked it out and sure enough, it’s a charge for “17 Nov APPLE COMPUTER INTL INTERNET GBR 59.00″.

I was able to log in to the service with my old details however, I had thought that it was cancelled, so shouldn’t my account and password no longer work anyway?

I checked on the Mobile Me help website and you are able to cancel your membership with a full refund within 45 days, so I logged in, went to account details and cancelled my subscription. Their website did say my credit card would be refunded. Unfortunately they don’t give you an opportunity to explain in words why you have cancelled your membership and I am still going to write to them to find out how this happened, as I am unimpressed!

I sent the following to Apple:

Hi Apple,

Sadly I have lost a little faith in Apple after my experience today.

I’ll wait and see how it goes!

So after a year of being away from little old Adelaide, Lindsay and I finally touched down on Friday night! How weird. We dropped off our bags at Mum’s place and headed out for coffee. I forgot my PIN for my ATM card, which finally came back to me. Handling currency was bizarre. Seeing all those little Aussie creatures on the coins again was quite surreal and getting back a big red $20 note and a bright blue $10 note was also really odd. I can see why it might even be weird for the tourists!

Since we’ve been back we have been seeing some friends and family as well as seeing all the Adelaide things we’ve not seen in ages. I’m driving Mum’s car, so that really helps. How easily I am reminded of the things I like and dislike about Adelaide.

My friend Adam, for instance, lives up in Mawson Lakes and while up there we had a couple of beers (yes Mum, light beer) and the pub we were in was a giant modern oaf of a pub with bright lighting and modern fixtures. It was quite unpleasant. Pubs in London are a treat in comparison because they are so cosy and ancient.

Wednesday was a particularly stressful day for us, as Lindsay and I flew to Canberra to process our Work Permits for the UK. While mine is approved on paper, I still have to go through this submission process and what’s worse is that Lindsay and I have to provide proof of our relationship akin to marriage and the likes, so that Lindsay can be approved as a dependent on my permit. This means that while my permit is basically approved and this is a formality only, Lindsay’s dependent permit is a complete grey area until we receive the permits back in the post. This means that if Lindsay’s is denied, then our plans are completely out the window.

Why might his be denied? Well, we have very little paperwork to establish our relationship from a over a year and a half ago, and we are supposed to prove a marriage-like relationship for a minimum of two years. Though we have been together longer than that, we have not lived together that entire time nor have we had combined assets or bank accounts together. We had a tenancy agreement in Adelaide on which we were both named and in the UK we are joint on most things so that’s OK. Hopefully the officer at the British High Commission can see the clues we’ve laid out.

After finishing up there, we walked through Canberra to the Old and New Parliament Houses. What a fascinating place, the old Parliament House is! It was turned into a museum during the Hawke Government and most things of the period were left, including the furniture, fixtures, House of Reps and Senate, etc. You can walk through almost the entire facility, even into Bob Hawke’s old office which is left pretty much the way it was when he left. Everything was so retro with big clicky buttons and things.

All of the rooms were much smaller as was the standard of construction for the day, so the only wide open spaces were the Senate/House of Reps and the main reception hall. Everything else was a rabbit warren.

Pictures will be on Flickr as soon as I’m able and I’ll stick some in here, too.

The current Parliament House building is not as interesting, as you can only go into the Senate and House of Reps balconies, main reception halls and on the roof. Everything else is in use for everyday governing and therefore closed!

Lindsay and I have just spent the entire day in the dark. We left London Heathrow bound for Adelaide on Friday night at around 10PM. Once aboard it was dark, and we set off for KL. Heathrow to KL is the long part of the flight. 12 hours! 12 hours and I only got up and walked around twice.

Last time we flew over, Lindsay and I had a seat along a row of three by the window, which is always preferable. Sadly, last time we ended up near the galley and had light thrown in our faces every time they opened the curtain. This time was better, again in a row of three. Unfortunately for us a guy came and sat down in the aisle seat on our row. On a 12 hour flight this isn’t ideal as it really, really doesn’t give you any room to spread out. Here’s our stranger:

I was quite annoyed, as our row was now full but the one in front of us was completely empty, and there was only one guy in the row behind. Oh why can’t they spread things out more nicely. We considered hijacking the row in front of us so we could spread out before anyone else did, but just before we were about to taxi to the runway a lady sat down and got the whole row to herself. Maddening!

But seriously, are those flights ever completely full? I don’t fly internationally all that often but on the two long-haul flights I’ve been on, not every seat is taken. What’s the average seat utilisation on these flights? If it’s 70%, that’s 30% extra room that they could be giving to economy! We want more leg room!

I don’t mind flying and I shouldn’t keep going on about the negative aspects! Oh, but surely I can at least finish on this note. When you are done with your 12 hours of flying you walk towards the front of the plane and you exit through business class and realise that they have all this nice leg room, no strangers sitting next to you and a whole lot more luxury. Then, if not just to rub your economy nose in it even more, you walk further forward and exit through a first class section, which you never really get a chance to see properly because you’re on the move but it’s full of funny looking pods and so much room. About six in an area of space that would usually fit about 30 economy class customers! So sad.

Here’s one of the pods. Compare it to Economy, somewhat illustrated in the picture above!

I am sitting in KL at a Starbucks, re-fueling both myself (with caffeine) and my laptop, with power, and my iPhone, with USB power! It ran out of batteries on the flight over and I need to escape into some music to pass the time!

I am going to go for a walk with Lindsay now… back later!

Tonight is the last night I’ll be in London for a little while, as tomorrow, Lindsay and I fly back to Australia! As I mentioned previously it’s been a reasonably stressful time for both of us and I am hoping that once this has all passed I’ll be back to my bouncing self. We fly out tomorrow evening, land in Adelaide at 7AM or so and then go through 3 days worth of stress flying to Canberra, doing the bioscans, dropping in the forms, then back to Adelaide to just wait it out.

As for the Bye, well, when I’m back in Adelaide I plan to collect nautilus’ hard disk and take it with me, effectively taking my website offline. This will be for at least a few weeks until I get things back online. I went down just recently, too, sorry. But this is just a quick message to let you know why I’ll be down

Cheerio, until next time!

And wish Lindsay and I luck with the permit…

It’s Movember already. Good luck Evan!

Sponsor him.

After the coldest summer I’ve experienced in a long time we are heading in to Winter here in the UK and the last couple of days have just been bloody cold! Warm breath is now condensing, daylight saving is officially over and I’m now leaving work when it’s dark, and it will only get darker earlier!

Ahh, Britain. I have been working for many, many months now, and have established myself quite well in my job although I do work very, very hard and long hours. Work has finally got the paperwork in place to sponsor me — let me give you a bit of background here.

Lindsay started working in Mid December 2007 and I started in April 2008. We’re only allowed to work for 12 months maximum so very soon he will be unable to work. Under my work permit he will be allowed to remain with me as a dependent and in order to have the UK Government accept this we will have to prove that we have been in a relationship for at least two years in a marriage-like capacity. This should be easy enough (I hope.)

During November the requirements for work permits change significantly; so much so that I may not even qualify after that date however, because my work permit is now in progress for acceptance I am hoping that it still qualifies under the old scheme and all goes through nicely. It’s really quite disconcerting having one’s own life in the hands of work or the UK Government. I am (well we both are) feeling reasonably stressed at the moment about the whole thing but I do think I’ll feel better once I know the permit has been accepted.

Lindsay and I will be back in Australia in late November and I’m hoping to catch up with whomever I can. Due to the lateness of my application going through I might even have to come back a second time, as during the work permit process we are both required to go back to Australia and present at the UK Home-Office, and we may even need to remain for up to three weeks. We booked our trip back to Australia some months ago and hoped that it’s timing would match up with the permit but I’m starting to seriously doubt that considering it’s now less than three weeks away. But who knows!

I effing hate it!!! I just spent an hour painstakingly organising and describing my Berlin photos (finally…) for upload, hit the Upload button and it cleared its screen and instead, decided not to upload anything.

IT MAKES ME SO MAD!!

Now I have to start again, because it doesn’t save sets.

OH I F’ING HATE THIS PROGRAM. But what alternative for Mac *IS* there?

GAHHHH!!!!!!

Here I am writing this blog post on my iPhone, traveling at 200kph back to London. AND I can receive calls and browse the Internet as well. The Technology Age is full of amazing wonders! I’ve just been to Oxford. As I walked past the computing sciences section today I wondered what they used to teach there before such things were even dreamt of!

Well I wouldn’t call myself at mid-life yet, but I definitely had a crisis. This house has got a few different storage devices at the moment, including a Western Digital MyBook 1TB (it sucks, which I may explain in a future post!), a new Apple Time Capsule, 1TB, as well as a couple of other hard disks floating around.

I decided to reinstall my MacBook Pro the other day because it wouldn’t install the 10.5.3 update properly, and I had also recently installed some software which didn’t remove itself properly and tainted the system. I thought it would be a good opportunity to clean out the cobwebs. I carefully backed up my data however, due to a bug with the Western Digital MyBook which causes it to stop with a “permission denied” error and requires you to reboot it, I was having trouble backing up. The bug is so annoying that you have to carefully check what has been copied and what has not, because the only method for copying you’ve got is Samba.

Anyway the fact of the matter is, I backed up my photos carefully. The Time Capsule wasn’t in use yet, as it was new, and I decided to start doing regular Time Capsule backups AFTER the fresh Leopard install. Anyway, it was over a week ago when I performed this backup and with all the issues and what with having a new Time Capsule and all the issues with the MyBook I couldn’t remember which device I’d ended up backing up to. I was confident it was the Time Capsule because of the broken MyBook but alas, when I went looking for them tonight I couldn’t find them anywhere! After looking everywhere around on my MyBook and the Time Capsule, my heart sank. I couldn’t find my damn photos anywhere and I realised that I may have just lost 10Gb of photos and many, many months worth of snaps. I was so upset when suddenly I remembered my iPod! I had backed them up to my iPod! Oh wow, I was so relieved.

Lesson #1 - BE CAREFUL when you’re doing this kind of thing!

Lesson #2 - Get an Apple Time Capsule or an external hard drive and start using Time Capsule NOW. If you don’t you’ll regret it. We so often forget to back up and disk is cheap. When it comes to things like your photos, the couple of hundred pounds spent on backup disks is worth every penny. Nobody wants to lose their memories!