It’s been a while between posts – and I apologize for that but frankly I’ve been flat out working full-time at FlucMedia hoping to get our product released this month in beta – a bit on that later in the month. Since it’s been a significant period of time since my last post – I’d thought I reopen with a fresh post about the utilization of time and a commitment to trying to getting at least 1 post out per week. Yes, that’s per week at this stage with the hope that eventually it will come down to every few days.

Time Utilization you say ? Yes, Time utilization and the rationalization of a time within a week. I sat down the other day to try and figure out where my greatest “time sinks” were in any one week and came to the conclusion that appropriate planning of time can really change the manner in which you work and which you relax. For the last few months, I have been working pretty crazy time schedules which has lead to ridiculously inconsistent sleeping patterns and very little sleep indeed. This isn’t necessarily a long term endeavour and is a facet of building a start-up – but I wanted to try and normalise my time within any particularly week and figure out what exactly I was doing.

In any week, you have approximately 168 hours at your disposal (TT = total time = 168hrs). That is – for those that can’t be bothered to do the maths – simply 7×24 hrs which arrives at this magic number. Now let’s assume that each day you sleep around 7 hrs – that means your total time (TT) is now reduced by 49hrs to give you an available time period of approximately 119 hrs (AT=119) or around 17 hrs per day. Frankly, when you think about it – that’s a lot of hours available to be doing stuff. For the “average 40 hr week worker” – this would break down to be something like

1. 2 hrs for work-related travel
2. 8 hrs of work
3. 1 Hour for lunch
4. 1 hrs of personal time [waking up/shower/cleaning etc]
5. 5 hrs of relaxation time

On this basis of a typical working week, then approximately 17 hours of time are available on weekends or a total of 34 available hours. Such a break down infers that the total relaxation time per week available to any “average” worker is around 25 + 34 or approximately 59 hrs of disposal time (FT = free time) to do stuff – or around 35.11% of Total Time (TT) or 49.5% of Available Time (AT). In my mind – this is quite of a bit of time to do anything you like. I often listen to people complain “I never have enough time” – and after breaking the week down – I think as an average proportion of the population – you actually have 49.5% of your Available Time per week to do what you want – evidently, you are either the % proportion of people outside the above proposed structure and therefore have different Total Time variables – or you really have a lot of time but you aren’t utilizing it correctly.

Of course, in my view at least, I think the key differentiators to the above model are:

1. People sleep for greater than 7 hrs per day – inferring that they are losing a higher proportion of their available time (AT) and therefore eating into their Free Time. But – I would argue that is a choice – and therefore it should eat into Free Time – since you’re choosing to sleep more than 7hrs and therefore [in my mind] this IS leisure time.
2. People work longer – thereby increasing the level of working time and reducing the level of Free Time. Arguably, not a Free Time choice and therefore the question here is one of effectiveness and efficiency.

For those whose time “melds together” [ala me] – the key is that a lot of the relaxation time is “mixed” with the working time. That is, as a function of the working week – the time I utilize for work mixes with the relaxation time – but it is all related to work. This is perhaps a key problem (although I enjoy it) – because it means that the differentiation between the above 1-5 segments is broken and creates the inevitable “I never have enough time” scenario. Again, however, a specific choice of mine.

So how can one fix all this ? What I’ve proposed to do is to significantly proportion and timetable my week – I want to see how effectively I am using the time I have allocated for specific tasks and see whether – within the time allocations – I am actually performing the tasks I have actually allocated to try and form an optimal structure. For example, if you’ve allocated 4 hour block of working time – but you find yourself drifting to News sites or writing blog posts – you’re eating into allocated working time and this has to be redistributed to leisure time. Importantly, this is suggesting that a 4hr block of time isn’t working – so perhaps reduce the length of the blocks and reallocate them to more short blocks to ensure that you using this time effectively. For example, 5×2 hrs blocks or 3×3 hr blocks and 1 “miscellaneous working” block (email/planning etc). This would give a 50hr working week and still ensure that you have 49 hrs of FT per week (way more than I am getting at the moment).

Of course, you might be thinking “Um, this sounds quite ridiculous” – but I think that most people have a lot more time available to them each week but they just aren’t using it correctly. If you really think about it and you fall into the above structure – you’ve got 59 hours per week at your disposal to do with what you want – 49.5% of the time you are awake. The key question is – what are you doing with this time and are you using it effectively. Equivalently, if you’re finding yourself working way more than the above structure – or the variables are completely wrong – I question the effectiveness of the time you’ve allocated to working and whether the change you need to make is working more effectively as opposed to working longer. Propose & make changes to your working structure (if its possible) and this will enable you’re free time to “truly” be allocated free time.

That’s what I’m thinking anyway. Thoughts?

For those of you extremely concerned about your Facebook privacy settings in the wake of Facebooks f8 conference and the release of their Open Graph API – which allows developers to store your available data for as long as they want (instead of storing it for 24-hours as directed previously) and the launch of Facebooks “Instant Cross-Site Personalization” feature which customizes your experience on partner websites by accessing your data –  then you need to use this new open source tool called Reclaim Privacy. It is a small browser bookmarklet run by a snippet of Javascript which, when you are logged into Facebook, will scan your privacy settings and inform you of the relevant privacy settings for your profile. To get it working, basically:

1. Drag this link to your web browser bookmarks bar: Scan for Privacy
2. Log in to facebook.com and then click that bookmark
3. You will see a series of privacy scans that inspect your privacy settings and warn you about settings that might be unexpectedly public.
4. Update your settings and then delete the bookmarklet.

When you do this, you will see something like this menu pop-up above your profile which will give you a rating of your relevant privacy settings:

You can then click on each of the relevant links highlighted in blue to get taken to the relevant privacy page to update your privacy settings. Alternatively, you can simply click on the relevant options to Prevent Data Sharing and the bookmarklet will automatically update your settings. I am recommending this bookmarklet because the site clearly states that they

• never see your Facebook data
• never share your personal information

And most importantly – the code is open source so you can actually see where the data is being sent (which is absolutely nowhere when I checked the source code). This gave me a reassurance in using it and I would strongly recommend you follow the steps above and then simply delete the bookmarklet from your browser bar.

Of course, if you aren’t concerned about anything – then you don’t need to bother. But to just highlight how ignorant people are – check out OpenBook. This site is devoted to exposing users status updates who have not updated their privacy settings on Facebook using the new Open Graph APIs. If you enter a search term, things can get pretty rough in terms of exposing users who don’t actually realise that their Status Updates and Profile is entirely public and available to everyone.

Either way, ReclaimPrivacy is a great little tool to quickly check all your Facebook Privacy Settings and update them appropriately.

Yes, it’s true – Apple have finally released the pricing details for Australia in relation to the coveted iPad and I almost fell over when I read them. The most amazing part – Australia hasn’t been insanely ripped off in relation to the pricing which is a great thing considering most of Apple’s product are overtly expensive. The pricing is basically identical to that of USA when incorporating the conversion rate and GST. As Apple’s Official Press Release states, the iPad pricing for Australia is:

Wifi Only

• $629 – 16GB [$499 USD at Exchange Rate of $0.88 - $560 + 10% GST [$56]= $616 which isn’t too bad at all]
• $759 – 32GB
• $879 – 64GB

3G Pricing

• $799 – 16GB
• $928 – 32GB
• $1049 – 64GB

Given that Apple usually increases Australian prices by around 30% in comparison to our USA counterparts – despite any associated exchange rate differences – I was expecting the iPad to be priced around $700 – $750 AUD range. Evidently, I think that would have priced too many people out of the market for the iPad and many Australian’s would question whether this is within the permissible range of their budget or whether it’s simply more economically efficient to go and purchase a new computer. Granted, the iPad is a ‘cool’ multi-functional device but the more expensive models are the ones that really have the best functionality in terms of 3G connectivity.

Would I buy one ? No. That’s primarily because I already have an iPhone and this is more than useful enough in terms of reading web-pages. Adding this to the existing PC and iMac – I just don’t see when or where I would use something like an iPad. The use case that it presents for me at the moment does not scale up the utility curve that much. That’s not to say that it wouldn’t be a great device to use for reading or watching movies while chilling out on the couch. My old chunky laptop is fine and dandy for checking the web [that's cool enough for me though] and the sleekness of the iPad evidently is more comfortable to hold & move around – but I’m just not willing to fork out $630 AUD when the new iPhone is being released soon and the feature set included in this will more than compensate.

I guess if I was asked the question – new iPad or new iPhone? [and budgetary constraints only allow me to choose one] – well, the later wins by a mile over the former – simply because the utility of the later is so much greater than the former. In my mind, it has been a little unfortunate for Apple since had the iPad been released earlier and not when it’s about to overlap a pending product release [the new iPhone expected in June] – then it might have been a better proposition to many people. For me, a new iPhone is a much greater value proposition than a new iPad and better yet – companies like Virgin Mobile basically subsidize the phone over a 12 or 24 month period.

So while I welcome the iPad, I await for the next iPhone.

Very often, a video comes along which puts life in perspective. Luckily, the medium that is YouTube allows us to visit such moments in the mere click of a mouse button. The video I stumbled across while surfing around on YouTube was Carl Sagan’s – A Pale Blue Dot. A video devoted in some sense to the art of astronomy but in another – the tiny significance of the earth and all that humanity has done to it in the wider perspective of our universe.

Indeed, once you view this video – the enormity of the universe is vastly apparent and perhaps also the fragility of the human experience and all the sadness that the human race brings upon itself. Sadly, no other known animal seeks the narcissistic triumphs and extreme destruction that human kind does and while we have brought unspeakable wonders and advances upon ourselves – we have equivalently brought unbearable pain. I encourage you to view the video below and share it with your friends. In my opinion, the more people that put themselves in perspective – the better the world will become.

Text: The spacecraft was a long way from home.

I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.

It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos—but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it’s just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth’s surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalisms is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.

Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known.

The pale blue dot.

This is an excerpt from Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. It talks about the photo of the same name, Pale Blue Dot, taken by Voyager I on February 14, 1990.

I am typically very wary of venturing into the extremes of political activism and voicing concerns in relation to Governmental policy. Socially, the discussion of political issues is typically a facet of ones personal life which – in it’s infancy – draws deep parallels to that of ones parents – and, I would certainly hope, as one ages – develops into a personal and individual understanding of the policies and legislative implementations affecting Australians now and into the future.

By admission – I am a swing voter. I don’t vote on haircuts, or a politicians demeanor, or even the shirt, jacket, tie or skirt combinations that seem to be the collective extension of some voters opinions on political parties in Australia today. Indeed, the beauty of Australia is that indeed some people can vote on these aspects and while I may fervently disagree with such uneducated and uncaring notions – it’s fantastic that in our free democratic society – a person can express their individual rights to vote how they like and on what basis. Too many wars have been fought to save this democratic right and cast it aside carelessly. Myself – I choose to actually read the policies and legislative instruments that each party is attempting to impose on our Country and determine whether – in my opinion – this is truly going to shape the path forward for Australia now and into the future.

Indeed, this genuine care for our country is why this post has arisen.

For long time readers of this blog – it’s undoubtedly evident that I am a person who is deeply passionate about Technology, Law and the Internet. This passion is almost now 12 years strong and continues to grow as I and a small team of developers – develop our own technology – and as I continue to explore the legislative instruments which govern intellectual property in both Australia and abroad. The truth is – all Australian’s should be concerned about the growth of technology – the opportunities and risks it presents to our society and the increasingly reliance that our country places on it’s unfettered dominance. The future of technology holds increasing promise – from medical advances, to the streamlining of national security, to social and gaming endeavors - technology is becoming an ever increasing part of our lives.

This is why you must advocate a deep & passionate opposition to Senator Stephens Conroy plan to ‘filter the internet’ in Australia. Join Facebook Group Here.

Before my scathing criticism of this Senator’s supposed endeavor begins – it’s useful to turn your mind back just 10 years to the start of the new millennium – the year of 2000. Indeed, the world was ‘apparently’ going to end on the stroke of midnight on December 31st 1999 due to the Millennium Bug or Y2k. Yes, there was a run on funds in banks and huge increases in the purchasing of non-perishable food items – a common site both domestically and around the world. The result? No big bang - albeit due to extremely hard work of many companies (and indeed many overpriced contractors) and the problem that was the Y2K bug dissipated in the end.

In the Year 2000 you were undoubtedly using a Nokia mobile phone – the dominant mobile phone of choice at the time – and were sending text-messages at a ridiculous charge out rate as the dominance of Generation Y’ers took hold. You were probably also searching the Internet using Alta-vista or Yahoo – the super powers of the Internet at the time – and checking your email on Hotmail. No doubt – the operating system your PC was running on was Windows 98 or 2000 (around February of 2000). If you were really hip – you might have even stumbled onto a Mac computer – the iMac G3. Yes, the world of technology in Australia was at a tipping point.

Of course, to now look at the socially-connected-information-rich-mobile-driven-flat-screen-gaming society of Australia today – you can only smile in awe. Google has risen to dominate the Internet in just 10 short years and bring information to the masses in ways which was never – perhaps even conceptually – thought possible. The collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2000 was the lowest point for technology at the turn of the millennium - driven by hyper-inflated valuations and unsustainable business models. In the post-dot-com era – the rise and rise of the internet has accelerated technologies advanced in unprecedented ways. From Google Search, to Skype, to Facebook, to Youtube, to Wikiepdia, to Twitter and beyond – you can now share with the world your laughter, tears, thoughts, dreams, opinions and information. This is core aspect of the socially connected world we now live in – you – yes, you – have the right to do as you please on the Internet. To talk about what you like, to dream about what you like, to create what you like, and to access content which is within the permissible realms of the law. It is my belief that you should also be allowed to discuss, talk and speak about issues which also fall outside it – this is fundamental aspect of Australian society.

This is also the definition of a true democratic society.

The structure of the political system in our country – namely, the separation of powers – is founded on the notions that we cannot become an autocratic society because our legislative, judicial and administrative arms are separate. This founding basis cannot and should not be forgotten – now or into the future. Yet, it is my strong belief – that Senator Stephen Conroy’s plan to filter the Internet in Australia reeks of political ineptitude, misunderstanding and a genuine reduction of democratic values our country has long been founded on and holds so dear. Indeed, as a previous political heavyweight once stated (and one whose policies I did not always agree with)

Australia is not the kind of country where you would feel comfortable if you were opposed to democracy, parliamentary law, independent courts and so I would say to people who don’t feel comfortable with those values there might be other countries where they’d feel more comfortable with their own values or beliefs – Peter Costello

The reality is – a reduction of democratic values leads to a reduction of ones liberties  and any reduction in the right to free speech is arguably a reduction of theses rights (enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights). The cornerstone – and indeed the core objective of the Internet Filter proposed by Senator Conroy is stated as

The core purpose of the plan stems from the the Draft Guidelines of the International Telecommunication Union. Senator Conroy wishes to

introduce legislative amendments to require all ISPs in Australia to use ISP‑level filtering to block overseas hosted Refused Classification (RC) material on the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) RC Content list.

The fly in the ointment in this statement is that the Refused Classification (RC) list is not available to the general public and the legislative amendments proposed are broadly defined and wholly encompassing. That is, neither you or I would even know of the sites being blocked, flagged to be blocked or those which are now unblocked. There is no question – it would act in part – like the Great Firewall of China. To illustrate just how encompassing the legislative amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 may be – if website A was hacked and RC classification was shoved on the site – and a competitor who runs website B then decided to complain about such material, then Website A would undoubtedly hit the governments blacklist. No questions. No appeal process. No information passed to rectify the problem. Access to Australian’s – and indeed me – would ‘vanish’. The transparency and procedural fairness of the proposed amendments are entirely non-existent – natural justice is in no way served.

Relevantly, to suggest in any manner, that I object to the protection of children online, is nonsensical. There is no doubt that children need greater protection online than teenagers and adults (of course, this is arguable as well given the somewhat idiotic tendencies of the two). But the manner and mode in which Senator Conroy’s plan is being structured is built to fail. Those who seek to abuse systems are often those who seek to abuse the foundations on which they are built. Such logic infers that the very nature of filters can be by-passed through proxy cloaking – or even more simply, purchasing a server in the USA and accessing content from it – in addition to the plethora of additional methodologies available to accessing material through VPN’s and even extra-jurisdictional VPN’s in Eastern-European countries who have no restrictions or filtering on Internet content.

Even an idiot could search Google for “Proxy Servers” or “Virtual Private Networks” and find a range of products to provide them connections to computers located in other countries – a simple way to by-pass any filtering system. The reality is the filter uses a basic system of IP – Internet Protocol Address – filtering. That is, any time you connect to the Internet in Australia through your Internet Service Provider – you are provided with an IP Address. For example, a well known block of IP addresses in Australia are within an approximate range of 60.220.XXX.XXX to 60.250.XXX.XXX and accurate lists of such ranges are freely available by companies such as MaxMind or IP2Location. You can check you IP address now by simply visiting – whatismyip.org – and you’ll see your unique address. The proposed filter basically takes all IP Address’ at the ISP level – which ensures they are Australian – and applies the filtering system to them on a URL basis. Change your IP address to one located in an extra-jurisdictional country – America, Sweden, Russia etc – and you immediately bypass any filtering system because the connection your ISP ‘sees’ is one which is not prohibited. Your ISP thinks you are just accessing a server in another country and then you are free to access whatever you want – whenever you want it – making the whole system fundamentally flawed.

The unfathomable truth is that those who wish to view content will educate themselves on ways in which they can access it. Logic suggests that such approaches should be mirrored to those who do not wish to access it. Are we so ignorant to forget so quickly what Nelson Mandella – one of the greatest proponents of democracy in the free-world – stated

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

and yet our society is so quick to forget it. The protection of children online stems from a pure and realistic education of the dangers that lurk online and the consequential horrors that can result. The young inquisitive mind is evidently going to explore the internet and should be allowed too. The domain of such exploration should fall on the parents of the child and simple strategies such as requiring a child to access the internet in an open and transparent environment would go a very long way to solving this problem. Transparency is what sets the world free while the cloak of secrecy merely seeks to suffocate societal advance.

To this date, I struggle – given the 174 submissions provided to the Australian Media and Communication Authority – that the plan is still attempting to be tabled in parliament. Why ask for submissions from some of the smartest technologies companies in the country if you are simply going to ignore them? The most prominent of the submissions to the AMCA are – for example – from Google – a strong opponent of the plan. Indeed, as Google highlight on Pages 3 and 4 – the most effective tools to combat Online Safety are:

1. Education
2. Search and Software Tools
3. Legislative empowerment of Law Enforcement Agencies

Evidently, it is through the promotion of these three items which would allow more effective ‘Filtering’ to take place than any ISP level architecture. A simple and effective methodology would be to propose legislative amendments to Federal and State law enforcement agencies to increase sentence terms and pecuniary penalties for those found violating the law in relation to child pornography material. Longer sentence terms are an effective measure which categorically increase the ‘core risk’ to those who wish to engage in the dissemination and viewing of such abhorrent material.

The reality of Internet filtering is that the problem is not a singularly-based jurisdictional issue – blocking content here does not mean the content does not exist. The content very still much resides on a server – somewhere on the planet and is therefore accessible. The key issue is how such content is found by those looking for it, and you can rest assured that the networks built around repulsive material are not only based on message boards, but on skype and other real-time technical mechanisms – a facet which cannot be stopped by any means of ‘URL Filtering’. Indeed, the problem is multi-faceted and passes through many vertical and horizontal channels. This is elegantly framed in Article 1(3) of the United Nations Charter – which Australia is a signatory of – which articulates that the purpose of the UN is

To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and

While, it is universally and realistically accepted, that any attempt to achieve a resolution through the United Nations would take around (lets say) 10 years to achieve given the speed at which veto powers are directed. The better and more realistic approach is to create bi-and-multilateral agreements with our neighbours in relation to the internet content and standardise criminal and pecuniary enforcement in respect to the accessibility and dissemination of such content. Introducing a filter, as Senator Conroy proposes, with a wide legislative scope – does not in any way seek to advance the democratic society we live in and does not make the content “disappear” – the perceived intended aim. A wide filter also will undoubtedly “catch” a significant amount of content which is not offensive at all but which may have been mistakingly added to the list or which the Administrative Delegate holds personal views upon.

Indeed, the right to access information is a fundamental right and promotes discussion, debate and indeed increases transparency across all sectors of our society. The reduction of such transparency does not seek to promote intelligent debate as much as it restricts it. Of course, all of the above has not even touched on the technical nuances that such a plan creates. Indeed, the own Technical Pilot conducted by the Government – on which the majority of it’s proposed amendments are based – omitted (as Google highlights on Page 10)

1. Testing a blacklist of up to 10,000 urls
2. Testing a representative cross section of ISPs
3. Testing new technologies such as IPv6
4. Gathering the costs of filtering

Evidently, it seems that the Government has taken the approach of – “Let’s try 100 sites … oh that works – now lets filter the Internet’. Relevantly, such an approach is entirely absurd and fails to demonstrate the case for Internet Filtering. It is perhaps this point which is so illogically debated. The Government has not even satisfied the relevant testing requirements in relation to Internet Filtering and their attempt to impose mandatory filtering on all ISP’s in Australia is untested on a large strategic rollout (look at the national insulation scheme as evidence of this). This begs the question – to what detriment will Internet filtering place on the speed of your Internet connection ? The large number of submissions tendered to the ACMA suggest a significant reduction due to the increase processing and “checking” (aka filtering) when accessing content.

Putting aside the long number of additional technical issues I could discuss (given the length of this post already) – the key and perhaps most important point is – the Internet is dynamic. Any proposed websites which are banned will be reviewed and a relevant case must be prepared by the ACMA Administrative Delegate in relation to whether the site should be added to any constructed blacklist. Indeed, as soon as a site becomes inaccessible – those who wish to access the site could be simply contact the site owners, ask them to replicate the site onto another URL, on another server, with another IP address in a matter of seconds (made even easier by the prominence of virtualization technology) and the so called “filter” is now useless again. There will be countless processes such as this one which could take place and indeed even more sophisicated methodologies to trancend the ‘boundaries’ of internet filtering.

In conclusion, your access to the Internet should be open and free within the bounds of the law. If your access extends outside those boundaries – increased legislative power should be provided to those relevant agencies to prosecute your actions and the judicial arm should serve strong sentences as a result. This should of course, be coupled with education and software restrictions, which ensure that children are in no way abused when accessing the Internet. Parent accountability also plays a significant role in a child’s experience on the Internet and is perhaps an often too forgotten aspect. Fundamentally, the Internet is designed as a resource to engage in discussion and debate, to view content, to share experiences and enrich your life with information – it is not a medium which should be restricted by a closed and ambigous filter with no procedural transparency and which can be easily abused by an overzealous Government – or individual Government official – in determining which content should be viewed by it’s populous.

Write letters, vote against Senator Conroy, contact your local Minister – voice your concern. These legislative amendments must not be enacted or content on the Internet as you know will change in Australia forever. It is unquestionable that through knowledge one grows power, and the Internet provides that to all citizens in Australia – regardless of political standing, religion or belief. Legislation should not be enacted to increase ambiguity – more transparency is needed in our country – not less. There is no question – the future generations of Australian depend on us.

Do something now.  Join Facebook Group Here.

You have two ears and one mouth – use them in proportion.

Why is this so important?

It’s so important, at least in my mind, because it can be successfully applied to almost every aspect of our lives. If you run a business, listening to your customers is paramount. If you are in government, listening to the populous increases your understanding before legislating or creating new policy. If you are a client-servicing business, listening to your clients and understanding their concerns and problems before providing advice is critical.

I am by no means suggesting that you merely listen and then take no action – indeed the quote when my grandfather says it to me – by no means directs this. Rather, it suggests that you should do more listening before you talk.

Don’t interrupt. Don’t put someone on hold. Don’t interject. Don’t talk over the top of them. Listen to people – then talk.

I am actively trying to achieve this daily as I really think it’s a positive step in the right direction for listening more about what people have to say – and then responding with relevant arguments. Many people I have discussions with tend to try and talk over the top of me and this is ultimately extremely frustrating. It’s a little like ‘hey you’ve had your turn, now it’s mine’. Of course, the better way to approach this is not to take such a view but rather simply take heed of this quote and listen more.

Since I’ve been doing this – the counter arguments are often more effective as I have listened intently to what someone is saying rather than forming thought patterns in my head – ready to hit back at a singular particular point or two points. By waiting and listening you are able to draw upon the whole argument – and most importantly, you are able to listen and feel like an engaging person in doing so. This helps the person you are talking too feel like they are contributing to the conversation and having their chance at speaking – rather than being cut off all the time.

People love listeners – they don’t love talkers.

I thought I would put together a little section on Clerkships – my experiences and my general thoughts. I also have put together an Example Cover Letter which might assist you if you have never done a cover letter before. I am, by no means, suggesting that this is perfect – but it might help you out in your applications for Clerkships. I also intend on doing a similar type of scenario for CV’s and I hope to get that up here at some point as well.

The following is simply my thoughts on Clerkships and Law generally. You may agree – or disagree – with these general thoughts and feel free to open a discussion thread on the All Things Law in this regard.

Clerkships – The Naked Truth

Law Firm clerkships are an inherent part of becoming a lawyer and they are also perhaps the most stressful.

Clerkships are typically viewed as a nightmare – they are ultra competitive, there are only so many firms, and there are only so many positions on offer. Most of the larger firms typically receive more than 1,000 applications for seasonal clerkships and usually have only 60-75 seasonal positions on the table. This means to even start, your chances are narrowed to around a 6% or 7.5% of even getting a seasonal place. This is then reduced even further for the now so called ‘Professional Legal Trainee’ program where the pool of 60-75 seasonal graduates is reduced to 30 who actually receive graduate offers.

The outcome? A 3% chance of getting a graduate place from the moment you click that ‘Submit’ button when you are applying at firms in comparison to your peers. Picture this as you stare around the lecture theater, only 3 out of every 100 people around you will end up working at a big firm. This is, of course, based on the assumption that you want to go to a big firm. There are positives and negatives to the entire process and in my experience it’s critical that you allow yourself the best opportunity to work in a big firm and in a smaller or mid-tiered firm.

Back when I first started the JD, I sat down with a very senior legal friend who was General Counsel at one of the largest financial organizations in Australia. His key advice in a nutshell was essentially that …

Continued at All Things Law

Something that really shocks me – is the ease at which Google Gmail accounts are being targeted by scammers and hackers. It’s a concerning trend and something really needs to be done about it from Google’s – and all free email providers - ends in order to better protect email account holders. Most email attacks originate from hackers infiltrating one users email account and utilizing the data within that account to consequently infiltrate other accounts. For all Google’s might – it flaws me they don’t implement, what would be seemingly easy to add security measures for Gmail accounts so that consumers are generally made ‘smarter’. This is part of the inherent problem – consumers, by their nature, are patternistic and use the same password for multiple accounts – which make them easy targets for hackers.

So what are some ways to solve this problem?

The primary issue with Gmail accounts – & in fact all free email accounts – is directly correlated to the sign up process. Companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are torn between getting a user quickly through the sign up process and using their products – against ensuring that accounts are made secure. Most are seemingly opting for the former and ultimately disregarding the latter. Email signup needs to be rethought and refocused by incorporating a mult-stage signup process rather than a single stage one.

For example, the process I have added below would be extremely beneficial to all Gmail users and would allow Google to easily require users to update their security information to ensure that accounts are not hacked.

More importantly, the information that Google requires to be compulsory needs to change with the modern age. When a email account is hacked, the scammers are quick to change all information within the account to stop you gaining access back to the account – this is part of the fundamental flaw of the sign up process and indeed the entire security process. Let’s look at some measures in which this could so easily change.

1. Require Mobile Phone Number – Everyone has a mobile phone in this day and age – and if you don’t have one, then chances are you aren’t on email anyway. The simplest methodology would be for Google to force you to add your mobile phone number as an added layer of security and automatically SMS you password changes. Most email users rarely change their passwords unless they are forced – so the degree to which SMS’s would be flying in from Google would be low. The mobile security feature could then be activated for password resets, core account modifications and so forth.

2. Match Country to Mobile Prefix - This is another big one that Google currently doesn’t do. Google has a huge record, and consequently a pattern, of the most common places you access your email via IP. I would go so far to say that they know even the physical location through reverse geocoding. In light of this information, why doesn’t Google force a Country Mapping to mobile numbers ? That is, you can’t change your mobile phone country unless you specifically enter a unique SMS code – which, of course, is SMS’d to your current phone and then ultimately a confirmation sent to the new phone. Why is this important? Because as soon as a hacker gets into an account, they change the mobile number. Most hackers aren’t in your own country – so this makes it impossible for them to attempt to change your mobile number to another outside of your country.

3. Backup Address Termination or Confirmation – The whole “Security Question” is so flawed in email systems that if I had my way – I would just terminate it. The world of social media and privacy disclosure now means that everyone posts everything online. And if they don’t – they post it on Facebook and befriend everyone who requests an invite. So what you say ? Well, 90% of the time, the answer to your security question lies in the data that you have posted around the Internet or on facebook. The “Security Question” just shouldn’t exist – there is really no need for it in our modern world – so lets just terminate it.

Of course, if Google aren’t willing to do that – then they should require confirmation of the secondary or “back up” email account. Do they do this at the moment? No, and it’s clearly a fatal error as the first thing hackers do is change the backup email so if the account owner attempts to reset the password – the reset confirmation is getting shot back to newly changed email. This should be linked back to your Mobile – so if changes occur you receive an SMS notification with confirmation code OR require confirmation from the old email address and the newly changed one.

4. Confirmation for Contact Deletion – This is another common trick for scammers – hack your account, copy your contact list then delete them all. Google could again implement SMS notification or secondary email confirmation which requires if >X contacts are deleted in any one session – or in any one amount – you are required to confirm such an action. Most people rarely purge huge number of contacts in any one session and if they did do their “spring cleaning” – then a simple confirmation confirms that they are trying to change their contacts list in large numbers.

5. Data Security Plugin – This one is my personal favorite idea – Google need to implement a lab plugin which allows your to customize account lockouts relevant to data changes or combinations. How would this work? Simple. You could setup Rules – or Google could do this automatically for you – similar to those filtering rules you have for your Email inbox as new mail arrives. i.e. if {forward email added AND 10 emails are sent in 10 minutes AND password attempt change} = lockAccount, send SMS with Unlock Combination. This would be such a cool plugin which would seriously beef up account security because it would be difficult for scammers to ascertain what account customizations would trigger a lockout. In some respects, this could be called the “Last-Line-of-Defense” plugin – since any number of combinations could be setup to really stop scammers or hackers who have infiltrated your account.

The reality is – while some of the above suggestions may be going too far [although the Data Security Plugin would be insanely cool] – the mobile and secondary email confirmations is really just something Google should enforce in a multi-step process. Sure, users want to sign up and start using their account – but just give them 30 days to complete Step 2 before it’s forced onto them. 99% of users will complete it within the first week anyway if they really want to use their email account as its for their own protection anyway.

Such simple additions would make email hacking incredibly more difficult for scammers and create an ultimately safer environment for consumers. Google do a pretty good job as it is and Gmail is an awesome product – but this would make it, well, “awesomer”.

I get a lot of people coming to this site and asking me questions about my Law Notes, Papers and a range of law questions in general. To assist with this process and to allow other people to provide their view on a particular subject, clerkship and a raft of other similar questions – I have created a new forum on this site – aptly named All Things Law. The exact address of the forum is through a subdomain on this site – http://law.timdavis.com.au. The premise behind this forum is quite simple – ask a question and hopefully many other students and even senior lawyers from around Australia can add their commentary. More importantly, the responses and the discussion are publicly available for everyone else who is looking for answers to particular questions or for people who are just stuck on a particular concept and need assistance.

The more people that we can get onto the site, the simpler and easier it will be for people to post questions and receive answers. The whole point of originally releasing my Law Notes on this site was to assist people with their study and understanding of the law, and ensure that they aren’t freaking out when exam time roles around. In upholding this concept, I am now trying to extend this in a way which allows any person to post a question and hopefully receive an answer. In this light, I am also looking for some forum Admins to assist me and to generally promote the site through their Universities and the like. You’ll note that it’s free to join and is a simplistic forum which allows for anyone to post questions and answers.

If you are keen to get involved, just drop me a note with some information about yourself and I’ll get you onto the Administration List for the All Things Law Forum. No doubt, this would also look handy on the CV that you are an administrator of what will hopefully become – with a bit of help – a well utilized resource ;)

There is no doubt online that all metrics are measured by clicks. What you click, where you click, how you click, why you click, the time between clicks and even your mouse movements prior to a click. Of course, the question is whether all this information is ultimately helpful in respect to design and user interaction. If a user takes 5 clicks to reach a conversion and ultimately an income generating event, is this better than a user who takes 3 clicks to achieve a similar outcome ? The answer, in my mind, may very well be yes.

“Yes, you say? What are you crazy of course it’s not better – lower clicks are always better?” Yes, prima facie this is the exact answer that most people provide – but the reality is that just because a user has taken more clicks does not mean that it’s a better conversion. The missing variable in the equation is the difficulty in relation to the clicks or rather, the ease. A user who makes 5 easy clicks and generates income is a much better metric than a user who takes 3 clicks but is totally confused with the process. This could be ultimately measured as a function of time – but even this may be a misleading variable because some users like to pause and read and analyse before clicking. Of course, 3 easy clicks is much better than 5 easy clicks as the later just means a user is having to do more work and the site is poorly designed or set out.

Let’s take an example of a big eCommerce site like Amazon to see how it fares in both respects – ease of use and clicks.

When you first hit the Amazon home page, your eye is naturally attracted to the top right hand corner. There is no doubt – as previous studies have concluded – that a persons eyes focus on the top-left corner of the page, the headlines, and then scans the page in an “S” or “F” like pattern depending on the format. Relevantly, Amazon users are able to quickly choose the appropriate category of items on the left hand menu, or alternatively, they can select from the dropdown Category Selector – set by default to “All Departments” – and enter a keyword into the search box.

As an aside – something that Amazon could improve upon from the outset – which you may or may not have noticed – is automatically focusing the cursor in the search box when the page first loads. Why should they do this ? Simple, because it would require the user to not have to separately click on the search box. That is, the user could load the page and just start typing – a very simple change that would save the user time. Such a change is an ease of use change – sure, as a facet of this improvement it reduces clicks – but it enables a user to save time and enables them to complete one less process on Amazon.

“It’s such a tiny change, whats the point?” Well, let’s assume that a consumer visits Amazon 1000 times a year to search for items and spend 0.06 sec on clicking on the search box every time – thats around a minute a year lost in clicking on the search box. It’s nothing right ? Well, considering approximately more than 600 million people visit amazon a year – thats a lot of people but ultimately includes repeat visitors. For the sake of this post, let’s assume 30 million visit 1000 times each – that means its around 30 million minutes of people’s time lost a year just from not having the search box automatically focused on load. That is a big deal and is something that Amazon should really be taking note of.

To continue, let’s now select the category “Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry” and click on “Clothing & Accessories” – this is our first real click – and a very simple process to undertake. There is a question here of whether Amazon should provide another sub-level of menus so that we are able to “Shop by Department” [see below] directly from the main page. Of course, such a change may impede width on smaller browser resolutions – that is you can’t see the next level properly – and reduce the user experience. Amazon may also have rejected this extra level as by “forcing” a user to get to this page, they are presenting them featured brands and special offers under the broader “Clothing & Accessories” category.

If Amazon had instead introduced this third level menu from the main page, this would mean that most users would miss Amazon’s “Special Offers” and would may reduce the users experience – and a possible income generating event. This is a great example of why click optimization was not favored over ease of use for the user in an informational presentation context. As an aside again – you’ll note, that the mouse is not focused in the search box when we have arrived at this second level page – costing the user another click if they want to search.

The left hand side of this page features a number of categories that the user can select to go to the fourth level of the main hierarchical category of “Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry”. It also attempts to generate some cross-sell or cross-promotion through the “Related Categories” selector – which would take the user into another categorization of products. Relevantly, if a user hovers over the “Men’s” category – they are presented with another sub-category menu which allows the user to dive deeper again within the category of “Clothing & Accessories”.

This new menu provides a much deeper sub-selection towards “Men’s Clothing” and clicking on the broader category of “Men’s” – that is, not clicking any particular sub category on the menu below – is our second click. This now presents us with yet another broad based page with special offers and featured brands – most probably ranked by popularity. This new page presents us with even more options down the left hand side with clothing specifically related to Men such as “T-Shirts” and “Shirts & Polos“.

I am struggling to understand why Amazon hasn’t introduced such menu options along their “Horizontal” Menu featured at the top. You’ll notice that if you move your mouse over the “Horizontal Menu” that you won’t see any additional hover menu like the one above. This is particularly annoying when you click on a sub-category such as “Shirts and Polos” and you want to get back to the main “Men’s” menu. Instead, you must click on the “Men’s” menu – as seen below – which takes you back to the previous page. If Amazon introduced the above Menu on their Horizontal menu for sub-category pages, it would vastly improve the usability of the site and allow users to skip directly to the categories above without having to go back to the main “Men’s” menu. This is actually an example of time optimization in addition to reducing the number of clicks and ultimately making the site easier to use. There is absolutely no reason – I see at least – why Amazon could not introduce the above hover menu to their Horizontal menu on sub-category pages.

Now that we are finally at the “Shirts & Polos” page – we get to see products. The vertical menu down the left hand side is now quite long and shows “Department, Fabric, Shipping, Brand, Special Sizes, Customer Reviews, Prices, Seller and “New Arrivals”. In my mind, this is an over utilization of the left hand menu which makes the left hand side of the page now too long. On small browsers, most of this information isn’t even visible when the page first loads and the requires the user to scroll. Some of this information would be better presented horizontally across the top menu – in addition to on the vertical menu – such as critical information like Price and Fabric. This would allow users who are quickly searching to filter by price when they are at the top of the page, and then also have the option of filtering as they scroll down the page.

One thing that actually really irks me is the lack of color selection. Sure, Amazon provide a neat little color selector – for individual items – but I want a global color selector for all items. For example, why can’t I search across all “Blue Shirts & Polos” directly from this page ? It seems that Amazon doesn’t have any image recognition software to determination the range of colors within individual product images that are contained across its website. Such technology would really greatly assist a consumer in filtering through products to easily get what they are looking for. Another missing aspects of this page are the reviews for each product or even brand. Why doesn’t Amazon allow us to see the reviews of the “Armani Exchange Shoulder Logo Crew” displayed on this page to determine whether other users have suggested that this is a fantastic product. Providing such information from the outset would vastly improve conversion rates on products that users are looking for without have to click backward and forth on individual items.

To finish this, already quite long post, once you select an individual product on Amazon you are presented with a large scale product image and “Customers who Viewed this Item also Viewed” to show other users pattern history and attempt to drive relevant cross-sell. This is a great concept and one which would see many users click and purchase other items which are similar to the individual product they selected. From a design perspective, a lot of the information on this page could be presented in “Tabs” – rather than as a long individual page. For example, the “Products Features, Product Description, Product Details” could all appear as individual tabs at the top of the page near the product image – rather than requiring the user to scroll down the page to see this information. Even reviews could be added so that it would make the whole thing easier to quickly access this information.

In conclusion, many of the aspects of Amazon are great and many are not so great. Relevantly, Amazon requires a user to click on multiple items to finally arrive at their end product. While many of these clicks could ultimately be improved – Amazon simply aren’t doing this for (I assume) the simple fact that it works. Users can select items “pretty” quickly, they are used to the format of the site and don’t mind clicking through different hierarchal structures to finally purchase products. While this post has perhaps been a little critical more on the design side of things, it does highlight that despite these design flaws – Amazon works. The design works, the site is ultimately easy to use and millions of people purchase – and purchase big.

In this light, hopefully I have shown (albeit ultimately digressed a little) that the ease of the site has won over click optimization. Sure, by optimizing clicks it may be even easier to use – but why change something that ultimately works and people love. My only big piece of advice for Amazon – fix the focus on the search box, it’s simple and seriously is something that would improve the user experience.

Oh and also feel free to fix all the other things I mentioned as well!! :)

So I am all excited to get modern warfare 2 for a little relaxation time when I get the chance [which is not often] – only to discover that an install on Windows 7 x64-bit is an absolute nightmare. It’s a ridiculous proposition that a Gaming Studio – Infinity Ward – would release a game without even testing it on Windows 7 – yet this is exactly what they have done, and this is why there has been a huge amount of backlash in respect to this game. However, in order to get things running on my PC I thought I would post something to assist those trying to install on a Windows 7 x64-bit build. I note that this is the setup that allowed me to get it working and this may not work for everyone [different hardware etc].

1. The first error I got was a “Failed to Run Install Script” error. To solve this, you must download and install Steam as a separate download first – then open Start –> Run and type “C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\steam.exe” -install “CD Driver” – where “CD Driver” is “D:” or “E:” or “F:”. So for example the final line would look like – “C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\steam.exe” -install “F:”. This will get the Game installed.

2. When I attempted to run the game after install – all I got was nothing but a blank screen which required me to do a reset. To resolve this problem, I needed to fix DirectX. Goto C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\call of duty modern warfare 2\Redist\DirectX and run DXSETUP.exe. Install this file and Restart your PC

3. After restart, I got the same error again. So I searched around and found that I had to make the screen size 1024×768 for launch – so I had to adjust my settings for launch. This launched the game but presented me with yet another error.

4. Now I had the game started – but I received nothing but Garbled Text on load. So the game wouldn’t work at all. To solve this, I needed to update to the latest version of ATI Catalyst Software - but of course this is not supported in Windows 7 for my Graphics Card. When you attempt to install this on Windows 7 – it doesn’t get past the install splash screen. To resolve this, you must download a fix from MSFT to install ATI Catalyst Install Manager as Windows 7 has a problem with any sort of legacy card except the newest hardware. This solves the VC++ 2005 redistributable problems which prohibits installing and fixes the garbled text issue.

5. The game still seemed to have a “blackscreen” onload and so I thought that this problem might be related to the fact that it was in fullscreen – so I wanted to shift the game to “windowed mode”. To do this, you have to go into C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\call of duty modern warfare 2\players and you will see 2 .cfg files called config and config_mp. Open both these files in Notebook [config is for single player and config_mp is for multiplayer] and find line seta r_fullscreen “1″ and change it to “0″. This will fix the game to run in Windowed Mode and you can change it back at any time. When the game starts [and this fix was a key for me] – ensure that you just change the graphics under “settings” to basically make the window full screen.

6. Another problem I experiencing throughout this entire process was a fairly common one such that Comodo Personal Firewall kept buggin me to accept the game as a permissible firewall program. I had to edit a Custom Rule in Comodo to allow the game to access the Internet.

So after close to 4 hours total – combining a 40 minute game install time and then all the time spent trying to resolve these bugs – I managed to the start the game. To be honest, it is completely unacceptable in this day and age to purchase a game and have to go through hoops to try and run it. I would definitely not have purchased this game had I known all issues were present from the start and quite frankly any future games that Infinity Ward produce I will not be getting.

As a consumer, they owe a legal responsibility to ensure that their products are tested on all relevant platforms before they sell the game. It’s so evident that their strategy was to release the game as quickly as possible in order to grab as much revenue as they could in lieu of Christmas and deal with the fallout as it comes. Whilst the official gaming merchandise says “Vista” – it was a fatal error to release the game without testing on Windows 7 and prepare a patch fix for immediate release. Instead, they have angered the very hand that feeds them and in this regards many gamers in the future will not purchasing Infinity Ward games.

While it’s a good game, it’s unacceptable to except a normal consumer to have to go through all this simply to get the game working.

One of the companies that I greatly admire is Zappos.com led by a fantastic CEO - Tony Hsieh. The company essentially drives its revenue from the sales of shoes and has managed to etch its mark in the same manner that Amazon.com did for books. Zappos.com’s statistics are a little mind blowing for a company that is essentially still growing – more than 3.6 million products from 1,250 brands and more than 146,000 different styles.  But that is not really what makes me love Zappos – rather, it’s the companies fanaticism about customer service – something that is seemingly lost in this day and age. It’s interesting to parallel & compare today’s customer service to that of the ‘olden days’ – the 1950′s and 1960′s – which was driven by person-to-person sales and advice with the primary business differentiator being which had a better & more engaging customer service paradigm. In my opinion, it’s something that needs to return to business in this day and age and technology should assist the promotion of such endeavors rather than seek to reduce it by pushing the customer experience to ‘automation engagement methodologies’.

The reality is that customer services cost a significant amount of money. To maintain call centers and front-line sales staff is an expensive exercise when you slap on top of this training, turn-over, culture problems and sales incentives. The model is one that needs a high degree of tuning – but it’s one that is not overtly difficult – something along the lines of what my father says about marriage – “happy wife, happy life” – except in this regard it’s more “happy staff, happy path”. That is, make the staff happy and watch the path of your company skyrocket forwards. You see, the reason I think Zappos has got things so right primarily relates to the fact that the staff who work at the company are generally excited to be there. They love what they are doing, they are passionate about the Zappos brand and they honestly believe that they are making a difference to the customer experience. It’s a far cry from other organisations – particularly at the enterprise level – which aim to cut cost by outsourcing the customer experience and who generally have poor employee morale which has been inherited through write-downs, management changes and degradation of the purported ‘Company Mission Statement’ or ‘Company Values’.

It goes without saying that by setting up your staff to be happy, you are maintaining their enthusiasm to be engaged in your business and as a facet of this – be engaged in the customer. The customer drives revenue, and the revenue sales drive the ability to keep staff happy and the business ticking over. You can see the cyclical action in this regard – it’s definitively not rocket science – rather it’s taking business back to basics and really looking at what makes it overtly tick in the first place. Most notably, it’s also fairly amazing to see how simple it is to achieve employee happiness. I would suggest that in small business, it’s primarily ensuring that you employ the right people who fit similarly with you – this is perhaps the hardest part – and one of the reasons that Zappos offers staff who get to the final round of the interview process more than $2,000 to leave. Yes, you read that right – to leave. Tony Hsieh believes by offering staff an incentive to leave – you are able to weed out those people who really don’t want to be there and who aren’t really interested in the organisation. It’s an interesting strategy and perhaps one that is not available to all business’ but one which has considerable merit.

After the post-employment process – that is the interviewing, questioning, cv-reviewing and generally attempting to ascertain whether a person is the best fit for your company from meeting with them for 2 hours or so (ridiculous in my opinion) most staff – and I say this as a vast generalization - are looking for flexible hours, safe working environment and good colleagues. Additional perks like free lunch or free t-shirts cost surprisingly little but go a long way in terms of staff ‘loving’ your business and wanting to over-extend themselves in times of need. Perhaps my former comment also deserves a little more explanation - interviewing someone for 2 hours is hardly the best way to get them to know whether they work for you – at most, it should be a prima facie indicator but by no means the final stamp of approval. Getting the person into your office, working with them on a project or asking them to interact with your colleagues at drinks is by far and large the best way to determine whether they are suitable for your business. While this isn’t always possible – for example, overtly hard in computer science engineering roles were source code is confidential – it is definitely possible for sales or customer facing staff.

In my opinion and experience so far, attempting to keep your staff happy is the only way to succeed. The have to love what they are doing and they have to believe in both the management team and what the company stands for. If this is enshrined in a ‘Company Mission Statement’ all well and good – but if it is not actively and knowingly reinforced every single day then it’s just another worthless piece of paper which sits along side – no doubt in such companies – the other 1000 ‘brain storming sessions’ which have gone no-where and ‘business continuity meetings’ which are pointless. Create the best culture you can in your own unique way, keep your staff as happy and engaged as you possibly can and then your business will grow organically through their enthusiasm and drive. Dislodging any aspect of this carefully crafted ‘Tim Davis Path to Success’ (ha) will result in probable downfall. As Jim Collins – author of Good to Great - puts it

first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. People are not your most important asset – the right people are.

Once they are on the bus, drive it like crazy.

So the world has been abuzz about Google Wave – the new Google product which purports to “revolutionize the world of email”. Having recently received an invite as part of Googles ‘developer preview’ of the system – I can say that it’s a fairly slick offering. The ideology behind wave is that it’s a real-time collaboration platform which allows you to communicate with your family, friends and business colleagues in sync. It’s basically a system which allows you to “see it happen as it happens” – so when your friends are typing a response to a wave that you sent them – you will see exactly what they are typing.

In this sense – it’s sort of merging Instant Messaging with email – for good or bad – to allow you to see  what your contacts are typing as they type it. The system allows you to inject ‘blips’ (what Google call parts of a wave) into any area of a wave – which it’s great for document collaboration, but I’m not so sure this works as well with email. Injecting blips effectively allows you to break up an email and comment on particular sections of it – which is great when you want it turned on but having this feature available all the time – in my mind – confuses the flow of the wave when you are sending it to multiple people. Maybe it might take a bit of getting used too – but it means that everyone that the wave has been sent too can add and edit blips all over the wave at different points. This means, for example, that you could have 20 people leave comments on the first sentence of an email and then leave comments on the 2nd sentence and so forth.

One of the most confusing things for me at the moment is that you cannot do this with normal emails. You can only collaborate with other people that have wave accounts. What would make wave much more user friendly would be allowing waves to be sent to any email address and then users can simple comment inside the wave. At the moment this is not possible – so I can only send waves to other Google Wave Account holders which sort of restricts me using it all that much at this stage.

To show you how all works, Google have actually allowed waves to be “embeddable” – that is, you can embed waves into blog posts. So – you can actually respond to my wave and speak to me – if I have wave open, I will be able to see what you are typing in real-time and respond – in real-time. This is one of the cool things about the platform and I can see this becoming extremely popular when the system hits main stream. I did try to do this below, but it seems that this is again only a feature that is available to people who have wave accounts – so I disabled this feature because it’s pretty much useless at the moment for the majority of the population. Instead, I replaced the editable wave with the Google Wave movie.

I can understand that Google Wave is in in beta and they have a huge community development program in place so I have no doubt that the future will very much allow waves to be embeddable and sent to any email address.

OK – let me start this post by saying this is absolutely NOT for the faint hearted. This was a serious – and I re-emphasize this – serious pain in the arse to the do. Having almost no experience in Linux before – copSSH emulates the Linux environment through cygwin – let me tell you that this process was not easy. If you are an expert and thought – “pfftt, this process was easy” – I will reserve my language and ask you to kindly move along :) For those of you with no clue at all (ala me) – then this post is for you.

Firstly, full credit goes to the fantastic team at msysgit – these guys rock for porting GIT to Windows – GIT is an unreal DVCS and so I cant thank them enough for making this all possible. Secondly, full credit goes out to the guys at StackOverflow – unreal website and lots of fantastic users that have helped answer questions which have allowed the making of this guide possible. Please feel free to ask me questions, but I strongly recommend StackOverflow as your first port-of-call as I may take longer in getting back to you than they will. Also, this instruction guide is how I have set it up – if you start changing things – may the force be with you!

Finally, if this process worked for you – please leave a comment telling me (and everyone else) that it works and share this article around. It took me quite a bit of time to figure all this out on Windows – not to mention the time to type up this guide – so I would appreciate a link back ;)

Pre-setup

1. Download copSSH [SourceForge Link]
2. Download msysgit
3. Download TortiseGIT
4. Download PuTTY Installer
5. *Optional Download Git Install Guide (this guide as a Printable PDF)

Step 1 – Installing copSSH

1. You’ve got copSSH – now go on and install it.
2. Install copSSH into the c:\SSH directory
3. Write down the SvcCOPSSH password – you will probably never need it – but just in case.
4. It will install and create a bunch of directories – (Aside: I have found that you don’t need to create a password on your Windows User account – it’s not necessary if you use the settings I have later)
5. Goto Start –> Programs –> copSSH –> Activate a User
6. You can only activate existing users on Windows – so you can choose Your Own Account or Administrator (or indeed another account but I’ve used the primary)
7. Uncheck the option – Create keys for public key authentication – we will do this ourselves.
8. Finish the Installation Process.

Step 2 – Setup copSSH

1. Open Windows Explorer – go into C:\SSH\etc and open BOTH your ssh_config and sshd_config in WordPad (Aside: Note – one has a “d” and one doesn’t – it’s an important difference)
2. ssh_config – Delete the # (pound) key next to “Port” and change this to something like 4837 (or whatever Port you want to use)
3. sshd_config – Delete the # (pound) key next to “Port” and change this the same as that in ssh_config – i.e. in this case 4837
4. sshd_config – Delete the # (pound) key next to MaxAuthTries and make this 2
5. sshd_config – Delete the # (pound) key next to RSAAuthentication & also next to the PubkeyAuthentication
6. sshd_config – Delete the # (pound) key next to PasswordAuthentication and make this no.
7. Save all the changes to ssh_config and sshd_config.
8. Open your Router IP Address (or however you access your router) and open the Port you are using – i.e. in this case 4837 (Aside: If you don’t know it – c:\cmd –> ipconfig /all – will tell you)
9. Save these Port changes in your router (& restart your router if needed)
10. Open Windows Firewall with Advanced Security Settings and create a rule which allows the Port you set in both ssh_config and sshd_config – in this case 4837 (also do this in your Firewall if your firewall requires it – maybe/maybe not)
11. Restart Your PC.

Step 3 – Installing PuTTY

1. Welcome back after the Restart – now Open the PuTTY Installer you downloaded.
2. Install Everything
3. Navigate to the Putty Installed Directory (usually c:\Program Files\PuTTY)
4. Open PuttyGen.exe
5. Enter in Number of bits in a generated key: 4096
6. Move your mouse around randomly as instructed until finished – don’t close PuttyGen!
7. Open Windows Explorer and Navigate to c:\SSH\Home\<user>\.ssh\ – i.e in our case c:\SSH\Home\Administrator\.ssh\ (Aside: If .ssh doesn’t exist – you can only create it via a cmd.exe prompt – open cmd.exe and enter cd C:\SSH\Home\<user>\ then enter mkdir .ssh)
8. Create a new file called authorized_keys (Aside: if it’s not there – Right Click – New Text Document – Delete everything (including the *.txt) – name the file authorized_keys)
9. Open PuttyGen and Copy/Paste the Public Key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys files code.
10. Still in PuttyGen – save the Private Key as private_key.ppk in the same c:\SSH\Home\<user>\.ssh\ – i.e. i.e in our case c:\SSH\Home\Administrator\.ssh\private_key.ppk
11. You should now have 2 files in this directory – authorized_keys and private_key.ppk
12. To test our connection – load up putty.exe from the same c:\Program Files\PuTTY
13. Enter your IP Address and Port in the Session window (Aside: If you don’t know your IP – c:\cmd –> ipconfig /all – will tell you)
14. Click on SSH in the left hand menu and select – Auth – then navigate to your private key c:\SSH\Home\<user>\.ssh\private_key.ppk
15. Hit Open and a terminal will open asking you to Enter Login Name: – enter your <user> – i.e. in our case Administrator
16. You may get a message about Accept Public Key – type yes & if you get logged in great!

Step 4 – Installing msysgit

1. Open the msysgit installer package.
2. Ensure its C:\Program Files\Git (x32 bit) or C:\Program Files (x86)\Git (x64 bit)
3. Set Use Git Bash Only (Aside: I wanted to only Use Git Bash console but if you want to Run Git from the Windows Command Prompt then you have to select this option – I would recommend only options 1 & 2 unless you really know what you are doing)
4. Select Use (Tortoise)Plink available via C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoisePlink.exe. If it’s not available in the installer then set the variable in the windows environment to GIT_SSH=/path/to/TortoisePlink.exe. (Aside: I set this as using just PuTTY Plink.exe as opposed to TortoisePlink.exe – would recommend settings this instead to c:\Program Files\PuTTY\plink.exe but it’s up to you)
5. Let it install and have a laugh in the meantime.
6. Once it’s installed – you now have 2 windows which I will name 1. Git Bash (Right Click Mouse on a file/folder in Explorer) and 2. Start –> Programs –> copSSH –> Start a Unix Bash Shell – Unix Bash.
7. Finally, goto your Git-Core folder in the GIT installed directory - C:\Program Files\Git\libexec\git-core (x32 bit) or C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\libexec\git-core (x64 bit) – and copy the files git.exe, git-receive-pack.exe, git-upload-archive.exe and git-upload-pack.exe and paste these into your C:\SSH\Bin.

Step 5 – Modify the User Environment

1. The problem with copSSH is that it sets its $HOME environment to the c:\users\<name> or c:\Documents and Settings\<user> variable – and GIT looks for authorized_keys in this folder. Of course, we don’t want this – we setup our Server Environment in the C:\SSH\Home\<user>\.ssh and so we want GIT to look for keys in there.
2. Open Windows Explorer – go into C:\SSH\Home\<user>\ and open the .bashrc file using a text editor (Aside: Be sure not to attempt to format this file as it has Unix Encodings NOT Dos encodings – i.e. just open it in a text editor and don’t use another viewer unless you want encoding errors – you don’t need to read the text in this file if you are following these instructions to a tee.)
3. Put the Cursor at the beginning of the .bashrc file and use CTRL+F to find the following text - bashrc file.
   # User dependent .bashrc file
   #
4. After the text .bashrc file# (after the pound with a space) – paste in - export HOME=/c/SSH/home/<user> - i.e. in our case export HOME=/c/SSH/home/Administrator
5. Ensure there is a “space” before and after this paste in – i.e. .bashrc file#<space>export HOME=/c/SSH/home/Administrator<space>Shell Options#
6. Save this file and close it.
7. Copy this file and navigate to your windows assigned home directory (Aside: GIT will still be looking for your path in this directory so we need to set to refer to our C:\SSH\Home\<user>\ directory instead)
8. Paste this in your c:\users\<name> or c:\Documents and Settings\<user> – so it now has c:\users\<name>\.bashrc for example.
9. Open both a  Git Bash (Right Click mouse in Explorer) and a Start –> Programs –> copSSH –> Start a Unix Bash Shell – Unix Bash shell
10. Type echo $HOME – into both – they should both spit out – /c/SSH/Home/<user>
11. If one does not – you need to set it via - export HOME=/c/SSH/home/<user>

Step 6 – Install TortiseGIT

1. Install TortiseGIT per the standard installer using plink.exe (Aside: This should be the same as that setting at Step 4.4)
2. Once the install has completed, open Windows Explorer.
3. Right Click on anything and goto TortiseGIT –> Settings
4. Select General and ensure the MSysGit path is seting to C:\Program Files\Git\bin (x32) or C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin (x64)
5. Select Network and ensure that this is set to the same plink.exe path that we set in Step 6.1.
6. Select Save then OK.

Step 7 – Using GIT and Plink

1. Navigate to c:\SSH\Home\<user> and create a new directory called <myapp>.git – i.e. c:\SSH\Home\Administrator\myapp.git
2. Right click on this new directory and select Git Bash
3. When the window loads enter git –bare init
4. You’ll now see a (BARE: master) appear and can close the window.
5. Navigate to c:\Program Files\PuTTY and open pageant.exe - a small icon will appear in your system tray at the bottom right hand corner of your screen (a PC with a Hat on it) – open this and add your key from c:\SSH\Home\Administrator\.ssh\private_key.ppk (Aside: I recommend adding pageant.exe to your Start –> Startup folder so this will load each time you start your PC. To do this, goto Start –> PuTTY and right click on pageant.exe. Then change the target path to c:\<path-to-dir>\pageant.exe dir:\<path_to_private_key>\private_key.ppk. Then drag pageant.exe to your StartUp folder – this will then load both pageant.exe and your private key each time the system loads. Refer here if confused.)
6. Now it’s time to clone this repository to our local development environment and finally start using GIT
7. Navigate to where you want to have your local repository – in my case D:\Git\
8. Right click inside this Directory and hit Git Clone
9. Enter your URL as ssh://<user>@<ip_address>:<port number>/SSH/Home/<user>/<git directory> – i.e. in our case ssh://administrator@127.0.0.1:4837/SSH/Home/administrator/myapp.git
10. The Directory should have the correct path – i.e. in my case D:\Git\myapp
11. There is no need to Load Putty Key as we have already done this using pageant in Step 7.5.
12. Hit OK and with a bit of luck (a lot of luck) you will get a successful clone.

Step 8 – The Real Test

1. Cloning is one thing – the real test is pushing a new commit.
2. Go to your newly cloned directory -  D:\Git\myapp
3. Add a New Text Document.txt
4. Go back to just  D:\Git\ –> Right Click on the Folder –> Git Commit –> “master” …
5. Enter a new Commit message “Test” & tick the checkbox for Not Versioned commit on the file New Text Document.txt.
6. Hit OK & then hit Push.
7. Ensure Local: master to Remote: master (for this test) & Remote: origin
8. Hit OK and you should get below

Counting objects: 1, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (1/1)
Writing objects: 100% (1/1)
Writing objects: 100% (1/1), 244 bytes, done.
Total 1 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
To ssh://administrator@127.0.0.1:4837/SSH/Home/administrator/myapp.git
0526eba..a1bf4a4  master -> master

If yes (get a beer), if no (see Problem Guide and get ready for tears, profane language and keyboard bashing)

Problem Guide

copSSH

1. I don’t understand how to install copSSH – can’t you add some pictures? No, but this guy can.
2. I want to add another directory instead of installing my GIT repo in the home account ? OK, see here which must be done via Unix Bash.
3. When I check services.msc – I can see that the service has stopped :( – what can I do ? You can setup a dependent copSSH service if you are brave. (tip: if you don’t know what you are doing, don’t stop the service ever – when you make changes to c:\SSH\etc\ directory restart your PC instead)

PuTTY

1. Can I create keys with less encryption than 4096 from Step 3.5? You can never have enough encryption so no (well at least it’s my opinion!)
2. I cant connect via PuTTY? You may have to regenerate your keys via puttygen.exe and put them back into your /.ssh/authorized_keys file per the Step 3 Instructions above.

GIT

1. I keep getting “fatal: the remote end hung up unexpectedly”? Open a Git Bash window and type echo $HOME – ensure it is set to /c/SSH/Home/<user>/. If it is not – enter export HOME=/c/SSH/home/<user>
2. I get “fatal: connection refused”? Check that you have correctly opened the port you have set on the service per Step 1.
3. I get “fatal: no authorized methods accepted”? You will have to regenerate your keys with puttygen.exe and follow steps per 3.
4. I get “git-upload-pack:command not found”? You must ensure that you have completed Step 4.7 and copied the relevant files into your c:\SSH\Bin directory.

Other

1. Sorry cannot read your mind? But these guys can help instantly.

One of the annoying things in ALL windows systems has been the lack of native support to create user defined services. Yes, you can type in the cmd prompt “sc create /?” to get some instructions to get some services that rely on executable files in Windows – but nothing really exists for web services and hosting in this regard. Way back in 2003 Microsoft released some developer tools for Windows Server 2003 and they have been used ever since – including (yes, it is true!) in Windows 7.

To setup a user defined service in Windows 7 for hosting purposes (in our case for our development server) – hopefully the following steps help you (its been written for the Trac project)

1. Download instsrv.exe and srvany.exe from Microsoft 2003 Resource Kit (I’ve included them in this post but feel free to download them from Microsoft if you want)
2. Open a windows cmd prompt (run as administrator) and punch in the service you want (in our case tracd) i.e. drive:\path\to\InstSrv.exe tracd drive:\path\to\SrvAny.exe
3. Goto your Start Menu, type in “regedit” and goto the new service (in our case tracd) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\tracd
4. Create subkey *Parameters* below which you must create 2 string values:
5. Create an String Value called App- then right click on this and add drive:\path\to\Python25\Scripts\tracd.exe
6. Create an String Value called AppParameters with the relevant parameters of the tracd.exe - i.e. drive:\Python25\Scripts\tracd –port 8080 –auth=proj_name,drive:\path\to\proj\digest.txt,trac drive:\path\to\proj\ if you were using Trac and wanted to generate passwords without apache
7. Run net start tracd
8. Complete!

Obviously, you can change this around and run it for any service you want to run it for and it will start up and appear in services.msc where you can start around the rest of the settings as you please.

So I am all excited to install the new Windows 7 Ultimate x64 operating environment. The installation was a breeze – but the internet setup not so. I would have thought that the internet setup would have been a piece of cake – but unfortunately I was sorely mistaken. Now I am a huge Microsoft Fan (although I also use an iMac) and was a bit perturbed when this happened – hoping that Mum & Dad Windows 7 users wouldn’t face the same issues.  The solution was relatively easy to fix but did require a little bit of playing around as the cmd –> Run as Administrator console was denying all relevant “ipconfig /renew” or “ipconfig /release” commands.

In the end – I discovered the solution as:

1. If you have already setup your internet and you are now getting this error – you MUST click Start –> Type “cmd” –> Right Click –> Run as Administrator
2. A black window will appear (for those who have never done this) – you must type in “netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt” and “netsh winsock reset c:\winsock.txt“
3. You must now reset your computer.
4. On reboot – right click on the “Network Connections” and open the “Network & Sharing Center”
5. Click on whatever connection you have – a new window will appear with “Details, Properties, Disable, Diagnose” buttons
6. Click on “Properties” and then uncheck the Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCIP/IPv6)” checkbox.
7. Click OK and then Close.

Now you can either Reopen this console if you need to enter a Static IP Address or you can ask Windows to find your Network via the “Network & Sharing Center”. Everything will now work (or should anyway!)

Wow, so the reaction to the launch of our new FlucMedia site has been amazing with lots of positive feedback from design websites and from people who have visited the site and generally love it. Perhaps, what has been more amazing to our team has been the reaction to our IE6 Not Supported implementation - spurned from articles at Mashable and numerous other sites which have commented on IE6 and it’s viability as a browser. You only have to look at the numerous sites which have popped up asking users or corporates to ditch IE6 – Bring Down IE6, IE6 No More, Stop IE6 – the list goes on and on.

So what are the main issues?

The main problems with IE6 stem from the sheer age and out-dated technology associated with the browser. The primary problems with the browser are three-hold:

1. PNG Transparency – *.PNG image are not officially supported by the IE6 browser which significantly stops many websites across the Internet from being correctly displayed. *.PNG images can be compressed immensely (*.PNG8 images) in comparison to other images which significantly increases webpage load time. Accordingly, browser support of these images vastly increases the speed of the web and reduces bandwidth and so forth.
2. CSS v2 – The IE6 browser does not correctly support v2 Cascading Style Sheets and this infers that what works in IE6 won’t work to the same degree in other browsers. Most of the time, this substantially increases the size of CSS sheets as additional classes have to be added specifically for IE6 or a web team has to have an entirely separate IE6 style sheet just for IE6 – increasing development time and most importantly – cost. An option not always available to all companies (aka us).
3. Security & Reliability - IE6 is extremely susceptible to the new web because it was designed for the old web. Hackers can easily inject code into websites which can cause the IE6 browser to crash and cause major problems for users. This makes sense of course because the browser is 8 years old and was designed at a time when javascript was not king. Now of course, javascript is used extremely widely and requires heavy processing which IE6 was just not designed for. You just have to look at Wikipedia to see all the issues.

What is Microsoft response?

The increasing resistance from the web community has lead Dean Hachamovitch – the Head of IE team at Microsoft - to respond. In his blog post – he rationally justifies the existence of the IE6 web browser as one that is inherently left up to the individual entity – whether person or corporate. To quote him,

The choice to upgrade software on a PC belongs to the person responsible for the PC.

I tend to agree with this logic … up to a point. Increasingly it seems that many people are criticising the exclusion of IE6 on the basis of “users have no choice and are left at the whim of their corporate environment”. Even we have been criticized - you only have to look at the comments in this post to see that not everyone is happy about our exclusion of the IE6 Browser and I absolutely respect that opinion. However, as I commented in return – corporate entities take the view that they don’t have the time or the resources to update their software to support modern browsers – we’ll we certainly don’t have the time to code and spend resources on supporting their refusal.

Change always comes about slowly when dealing with new technology in large corporate entities. Most of the time, it only ends up changing in these environments when enough people advocate for change and become generally disgruntled at their working environment. The entire premise – as even Dean Hachamovitch from Microsoft stated – is to upgrade all PC’s to modern browsers for safety, security and speed reasons – Microsoft want this just as much as anyone else. And while I accept the notion of choice for corporate entities – I also believe that corporates much accept the notion of choice from technology companies in refusing to code just for IE6.

How have we handled it?

For us, it really has nothing to do with “doing anyone any favors” or “saving the Internet” by blocking IE6 users. The simple fact of the matter is that we are a small company and just don’t have the resources to devote an additional XXX hours to solve IE6 related issues primarily when support for the browser is undoubtedly waining. We would rather devote this time to focusing on, and building out, our product as opposed to sitting and attempting to figure out IE6 legacy browser issues. It seems that many corporate companies are taking that exact reverse approach – “we don’t have the time or resources to upgrade to IE7 – so everyone has to cope with it”. A view (as conveyed above) not supported by us.

Indeed, it may be antithetical to the logic that “most IE6 users don’t have a choice” – for us, the choice is really spending time on IE6 or spending time developing our product -we made the decision that the later is far more important. Our product supports IE6 – have no doubt – but when we calculated out the cost of solving IE6 issues for the website and more importantly the time required – the cost-equation just didn’t make sense in terms of IE6 users vs. new features we can develop. Additionally, it seems pretty clear that many of the big corporates are also pushing users away from IE6 – you only have to visit Youtube or Facebook or Basecamp or a plethora of other sites to see that IE6 is either no longer supported (Basecamp for example) or won’t be in 2010 (Youtube).

Microsoft are also pushing IE8 through their distribution channels – even offering incentives to upgrade from IE6 – in addition to Chrome, Firefox and Safari – so it doesn’t really make sense to spend hundreds of hours ensuring that every works in IE6 when the browser will start to hit a brick wall from next year – 2010 – on a lot of websites. I would also argue that it’s very website dependent – if you are a site that is going to primarily targeted by other website publishers – then it’s fair to assume that they are not going to be using IE6 – on the flip site, news sites are targeted by the masses so you undoubtedly have no choice but to support IE6. In this regard, the nature of the website is also fairly important in the decision making process as to exclude IE6 entirely and the users attached to this browser.

How can you exclude IE6 if you want to?

So in order to exclude IE6 we have used some really easy code commenting. If you checkout FlucMedia you can see how we have done this -

Through the insertion of comment which redirects the IE6 browser to the IE6NotSupported.html page. While many of you may not accept the logic of excluding users to our website – our rationalization is that as a small company we are more product focused in rolling our new features than supporting almost 9 year old legacy browsers. Feel free to copy & use our implementation if you want too – a linkback might be nice too :)

Conclusion

As Microsoft stated – it’s all about choice. Our choice is not to support IE6 and we believe it to be a justified one :)

Agree or not? Drop a comment.

Finally, after much much and I reiterate it again – much – work, I have finally been able to put up the new flucmedia website. We also have a new logo that we will be using going forward – which I think looks pretty cool myself (considering I designed it :D).

Overall, the new company site took around 400-500 hours of work I would think (I am not really exaggerating either because each of the bottom background images took me forever – adding in all the “out of memory” errors and constantly finding overlapping images) but the end product has been definitely worth it I think. There is nothing more satisfying than sitting back after working so damn hard and long on something and going “I am happy with it”. If you also check out the site in IE6 you might notice a special surprise I put in for anyone tempting to visit the site in IE6 – if you want a spoiler you can see it here.

The graphics for this website were all done with painstakingly great detail. There are more than 20 rotating  background images with a width of 3840px and relevant customized CSS – so even the largest screens can enjoy the graphics and browsers can expand far beyond standard sizes. Each background rotates when you select another section of the site and I threw in our company twitter account FlucMedia – although its more really for people leaving feedback – if you want to follow me, much more activity occurs on iamtimdavis.

Overall, really excited about this site and all the hard work that has been put into it. I have learnt so much about User Interface designing, web designing, basic javascript coding and so much more from this process and from the other work we are doing. Although I am not a coder by trade, I would now say that I am definitely a designer and that I can both design and code HTML/CSS and basic JavaScript functionality. I think its a really cool outlet to just go and start designing things and see the creative juices flow in what comes out. I had no idea what the site was going to look like when I started – I was just playing around designing stuff and then the idea for the flucmedia site jumped into my head.

If you want to leave any feedback please provide it and hopefully there are no errors (I tested on basically every browser I could find but I may have missed something). Thanks and hope you love the new site! Exciting things ahead.

The investors dream business is predominately focused on one word in the end – scalability. If you here it uttered once, you will here it uttered at least a thousand times more. Many of you may be asking right now, what exactly is a scalable business? Well, essentially a “perfect” scalable business is one which can achieve huge revenue growth with little additional investment capital required. It’s a business whose revenue model is not constricted by factors such as manufacturing outputs or human capital considerations – it’s one where the revenue (y-axis) vs. cost (x-axis) graph looks much like a vertical line sloping on a 89 degree angle. The cost of each dollar invested is far outweighed by the revenue per dollar returned so the overall incremental cost is reducing as the business expands. To put it simply, a scalable business is one where revenue is exponentially increasing as a function of time.

Of course, such a “perfect” business is never truly possible in real life – this is half the battle. People are needed to run business (damn those humans), markets are different, risks in each market are different, market share is different, brand power and intellectual property considerations are all different. All these factors play into the battle of finding companies which are working towards a highly scalable model, and companies which investors want to focus their funds on. Of course, even taking investment capital suggests – at least in the beginning – that the business is not a truly scalable one, since the investment infers that cost per dollar invested is already outweighing return. Of course, a longer term growth return projection may set this initial failing straight – but applying the narrow definition stated above – it’s an observation that is still true.

So what are some scalable businesses? To start, it’s important to state from the outset – humans are not scalable.

Yep, that rights – any business which solely relies on humans is not scalable. Businesses restricted by human capital and output volume as a function of time do not scale. For example, a legal firm is inherently unscalable - lawyers have lengthy skill development (education), time is limited to a maximum of 24 hours per day which means revenue restrictions, billing time per day fluctuates and most importantly – there is a ceiling limit on what clients will pay for legal advice. Even the best lawyers can only charge so much – as people and businesses – the customers – are themselves limited by cost constraints and will go to the next best lawyer who charges slightly less. This is a perfect example of the inability of an entire industry to be scalable businesses because it is fundamentally restricted by revenue as a function of time – that is, revenue per hour hits a limit.

“OK Then” you are thinking, “well, what is scalable?” Well, practically any industry that is not solely reliant on those pesky humans. Take the Internet for example.

Internet businesses can be hugely scalable because the market available online is not restricted, for example, by jurisdiction. You can purchase a domain name and any person in the world can access this domain name. Sure, they might not even know that something exists at the domain name you have purchased – but it doesn’t limit them accessing it. On the flip side, legal advice is restricted by jurisdiction as laws are different in every country. So Internet businesses have the potential to be hugely – not infinitely – scalable. Of course, a lot depends on the nature of the Internet business and the degree to which it exists entirely online. Business which are built and rely entirely on software are not restricted in anyway by manufacturing output for example – since software can be distributed and replicated an infinite number of times. In comparison, Internet businesses which rely on the processing of physical goods are restricted since they rely on channel, production and distribution partners to assist them with the delivery of the customers order.

This is why a lot of “new age” business are moving online because it entirely removes the need for physical distribution locations – which have heavy costs of staffing, leases, safety, insurance, internal shop fitting and all the rest. It all comes down to the revenue as a function of time. The faster the revenue as a function of time, the more scalable the business – conversely, business which are restricted by such an equation are either not scalable or no longer have the same degree of scalability. If you own a business, you need to look at your revenue drivers and try and establish the highest revenue areas as a function of time and then focus – or promote these more – since it is probable that these are the areas of your business that will increase profit in the long run.

Of course, importantly – this article is not in anyway suggesting that businesses which are not scalable have no chance at being successful – that is a ridiculous proposition. It is merely pointing to the establishment of businesses which are scalable and have a “higher chance” at being able to generate huge revenue quickly as a function of time. Any business can generate huge revenue – but typically they do not fall into the high revenue businesses as a function of time. The key is too look for businesses which can produce $2 or $3 or $100 per second and have no ceiling limit on what this rate can scale too.

No business can do this forever, but the ones that consistently maintain high levels of revenue as a function of time are the ones to watch.

It’s has been amazing to watch the torrid of information and critical analysis floating around the web relating to Google and Bing – Microsoft’s New Search Engine product. I have read numerous articles and have reserved comment on all of them, instead waiting until something particularly erked me enough to write a post and pass my judgement. Interestingly, it was a New York Times article and the respective comments which really provided the passionate to write this post.

So, a few months ago Microsoft released their new search product – Bing – into the wild without a great deal of fanfare on launch. The product was initially demonstrated at the AllThingsD conference where Steve Ballmer was generally excited about the product but withheld the expectations that Microsoft was placing on the success of Bing – accepting that Google was a significant force in the market. Of course, the natural succession to the launch of Bing was the comparison to Google and whether a paradigm shift would occur with users willing to change from Google to Bing, and whether it would adversley affect Google’s bottom line. The initial reaction from the numerous articles I read was that generally internet consumers thought Bing was good – but it did not provide users with enough incentive to change. Articles and commentary appeared that presented an underlying connotation that Bing was a great product – but presented too late in the game to make a difference. Microsoft were also criticised about the effectiveness of their $100 million dollar advertising campaign to promote the product.

Soon after, several separate impartial engines were established which contrasted the results of Yahoo, Google and Bing together on the one site and asked consumers to generally pick the best results before revealing which search engine was responsible – here is one such experiment called ‘BlindSearch’. Such experiments significantly changed the basis on which technology enthusiasts reviewed the search engines and I think, surprised a number of people with the quality of results from Bing in comparison to Google. Of course, this lead to some influential technology journalists and bloggers writing increasingly positive articles about the search engine and how they were more willing to give Bing a go – and this is probably where the situation currently resides.

Of course, my opinion on the whole matter relates most specifically to who provides the best all round consumer experience. In my mind, this tends to be heavily influenced by where ones brand allegiance lies. I do not believe the issue is based entirely on the delivery of the best results – it was increasingly apparent from my testing that the results illustrated were both fairly similar. This is not to say Google was always better than Bing, or indeed, that Bing was better than Google – both returned varying degrees of satisfaction in the searches I conducted. The search terms I entered ranged from extremely easy subject matter right down to overtly abstracted searches relating to all sorts of weird and wonderful law and medical terms. Of course, over time it is expected that this is going to significantly improve as both Google and Bing continue to build out their products – but all in all, my testing provided me with the information that I needed to write this article.

I think the issue in this whole debate rests on brand power as opposed to who provides the better results. It is evident in the short-term future that both Microsoft and Google are going to have solid search products – solely from the sheer volume of money being poured into search from both sides of the fence. The purchase of any technology which will significantly improve search will be hotly contested by both Google and Microsoft and so will the human capital that is actually able to continually engineer and build out both products – after all, a company is only as good as the people it has working for it. But I digress, the point of this article is to focus on the flawed comparison of why one is better than the other – I believe this is non-argument. Google is of course a better engine – solely from the abstracted basis that it has invested all of its resources in the last 10 years to building an extremely successful search engine – Microsoft has not. Microsoft is now starting this process – and in my mind, has started significantly well with the Bing offering – but it’s going to be a long-term project to dint Google’s market share and I believe Microsoft also acknowledge this.

Importantly – Google, as a product, has been drummed into my generation as the pre-eminent search engine since the company was founded in 1998 and since I started using it in late 1999. Their culture, the effectiveness of their results and the entire Google story was something that related specifically to my friends and I – and pretty much everyone else. Of critical importance however, was that the product exceeded so many other search engines available at the time in scouring the Internet, finding and returning the information that was keyed into it – nothing else offered even came close to Google. It is therefore a fruitless, and down right pointless argument, to suggest that Microsoft is going to make significant in-roads into a product that has been relied on by people for the last 10 years on the Internet because natural bias will win through to Google’s corner. A similar analogy would be expecting the majority of consumers to just change to a new operating system after using Microsoft for more than 10 years – it just doesn’t happen that way. Brand power is an incredibly powerful thing – and the trust, faith and continual delivery of great results resides well in a lot of consumers on the Internet who correlate search to Google. In fact, Google as brand is so powerful that many people now even correlate Google as a browser – as witnessed in this video.

The point of my argument is that Internet users tend to very brand loyal consumers. If you check out the top sites you visit – it is more than probable that you have a list of no more than 5 to 10 sites that you visit regularly on a daily basis. For me, this would include Google, Gmail, Google Reader, Facebook, The Age, Digg, New York Times, Stack Overflow and of course our company’s product websites. This generally would infer that I am a loyal Google user and this absolutely rings true – because the only real search engine I have consistently used in the last decade has been Google. Furthermore, Google has successfully cross-promoted their products and I am also a regular user of Gmail and Google Reader products. The code and continual feature roll-outs in these products far exceeded anything that Microsoft offered in its Hotmail – now Windows Live – system and so the change became more of a Darwinian takeover as opposed to any associated choice decision equation. The converse is also true – I have never used anything except Microsoft Operating Systems for the last 10 years and would be very resistant to change. While it’s true that I own a iMac – I only realistically use it for Photo Editing and Movie creation as the products offered in iLife are extremely user friendly and I could not find any PC related software that exceeded the offerings by Apple at a similar price.

So for now, when I read an article – such as the one published on the New York Times –  and see the majority of comments include words such as trust, faith, relevancy, monopoly, market domination, advertising, speed, bias media, paid reviews, MS copying other products and all the rest – I pretty much laugh. I find it very difficult to believe that the majority of this is driven from anything other than pure brand allegiance and genuine belief that Google is a company that “does no evil”. Most of the non-tech populous does not even know about the huge struggles that each company is going through to beset the other – generally, they just want a product that works and want to trust the company that provides it – something Google has succeed with on the web. Of course, this is pure marketing genius and the power of the Google brand – as opposed to the reality of the situation regarding the actual data privacy concerns that majority of the world holds over Google. Consumers trust Google and do not trust Microsoft to the same degree, and it is this trust that emanates so wildly in the passion that is stirred up in any Google vs. Bing, or indeed Google vs. Microsoft debate. This infers that Google’s search product will continue to dominate over Bing – until Microsoft is able to breakdown the resistance that Consumers have built up towards Microsoft. Generally, becoming a more open and transparent company, creating more ads like these that consumers generally find ‘cool’, listening more intently to consumer desires and responding faster to feedback, and continuing to deliver more products like Bing is going to have a serious impact to the trust argument that consumers place in Microsoft. It’s an area that Microsoft really need to work on if they are succeed as spectacularly online as they have in the server and operating system market. Perhaps a good place to start would be attacking Googles data retention policies, making consumers aware of just how much information Google holds and changing their own policies to pass control to the user would be a very good place to start in my mind.

The flip side to all this – is that while consumers trust Google, businesses trust Microsoft. It is absolutely true that businesses are responsible for driving Microsoft’s bottom line – an area that I believe Google has the exact same problems that Microsoft has in the consumer space. Many businesses are extremely wary of trusting Google because of the advice they have received regarding Google privacy policies and the overall data retention policies that Google holds. Each company would actually be wise to analyse the positions of the other in each respective competitive field and I think they would find they have more in common than each actually believes. The key to all of this ? Listen to consumers, implement features they want and go out of your way to provide them with a great product – this builds trust and ultimately – this builds success in the online world.

At Fluc Media, we love cloud computing – in fact, for what we are doing cloud computing really makes the world go around. Interestingly however, is just how little a lot of my friends really understand about cloud computing and the coined phrase “in the cloud” – so I set about explaining the entire concept in this simple post.

So what is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is essentially a method of delivering applications over the Internet directly using a dynamically scalable system of computers which can be quickly scaled upwards or downwards as demand changes for the delivery of  the application. The term ‘cloud’ is effectively a metaphor for the word the ‘internet’ such that the cloud hosted applications are delivered through a large host of networked servers which are interconnected by high speed bandwidth connections at server farms around the world.

The hosting of a cloud computing system is typically provided by the Internet giants of the world – primarily because they have the financial resource capacity to purchase thousands of servers, strategically house them for optimal performance delivery and most importantly – develop the internal cloud computing software which allows the whole process to work. Amazon has one such service called Amazon Web Services which is a full-featured cloud computing service such that any application can be developed and delivered over the service and which supports multiple languages of code. Google also offered a  service called Google App Engine – which is not a full-featured cloud computing service, as at the moment applications can be only developed in a coding language called Python (written in C). Microsoft are also developing a full-featured cloud computing platform that can run any Microsoft based software program and it’s called Microsoft Azure Services Platform – which is what Microsoft are basing a lot of their future strategy on.

Why use cloud computing?

The beauty of cloud computing in comparison to a standard application server configuration is the ability to scale resources indefinitely as demand changes through a simple click of a button. Under a traditional computing model, the application is delivered over a set number of servers and if capacity changes quickly – the speed at which new servers must be built, activated and added as additional capacity is quite slow – meaning that the application either crashes under heavy load or the application provider must stop the service until more capacity can be added. Then of course, if demand drops after the additional server capacity has been added – the application provider has paid for this increase which means that there overall CPH (cost per hour) of computing has sky-rocketed for a short-term increase in demand. A very ineffective use of resources.

So the obvious way to manage this is to only pay for the resources which are required at any one time – hence, enter cloud computing. The effective paradigm of cloud computing is its ability to create large economies of scale and facilitate a reduced cost opportunity (cost per hour of computing) for application providers. This infers that the ability to quickly add and remove capacity as required is simply handled through a custom interface which allows the cost perspective to be paid on a per-usage basis. Typically, this means paying for bandwidth and per-hour instances of server usage. So, if demand skyrockets – additional capacity can be rolled out quickly and the application load can be distributed over this additional capacity in an instant – ensuring that the application doesn’t break under the changing demands for load. Once demand falls, the added server instances can simply be switched off and the per-hour usage for the additional capacity can be charged to the application provider – who has potentially saved thousands in not having to build and deploy new servers which may not be needed again in the short-term.

Sounds great, so why isn’t everyone doing it?

Currently, while the benefits of cloud computing are numerous and the ability to rapidly up-and-down scale applications can occur at the flick of a switch – the data storage, security and privacy aspects are building resistance to wide-spread corporate adoption of cloud computing. All these aspects are effectively outsourced to the cloud computing service provider – which in my opinion is better, as it allows industry specialists to constantly maintain and upgrade security and privacy aspects of the service with the latest technology principles – aspects which are financially and operationally impossible for most companies.

Of course, a lot of service companies – such as financial providers, law firms, health services, employment providers – all hold extremely sensitive data which must have the highest privacy and security standards. Many executives balk at the thought of having all this data sitting “somewhere in the cloud” instead of at the bottom of their building in a server room – and in some regards this is not an baseless concern. Cloud-computing is still a very much cutting edge set of technologies which are rapidly evolving – and as it rapidly evolves so must the law – a key concern for companies. The litigious nature of our world now means that data security and privacy must be basically 100% guaranteed and this infers that cloud computing must provide a much better service than what is currently offered internally in the corporate environment for there to be a strong cost-security-performance argument to change.

In Australia for example, our Privacy laws are governed under the Privacy Act 1988 and the National Privacy Principals (NPP) for organisations who have a turnover of more than $3 million per annum. These laws do not address cloud-computing in any way, shape or form and so any privacy issues must be addressed under this legislation. Of course, when data is stored in the cloud – the data can be distributed across any number of servers in order to optimise performance – and it’s even possible for information to be cached at multiple distribution points across the world to increase performance delivery. All this means that while Australia privacy principles apply, the information may not actually be stored in Australian server facilitates at all – rather, it could be stored at any server farm around the world. The obvious concern for corporates is that they don’t want this to occur due to the legal implications which may arise – so cloud service providers must be able to facilitate jurisdictional boundaries and allow the provisioning of application data storage to occur within the confinements of countries using the Service – an issue that really requires detailed legal advice and may dip its toes into the world of cross-jurisdictional and international law.

The other main sticking point for many companies is SLA’s – service level agreements. Any company engaging in cloud computing must ensure that the service provider has 99.999% up-time guarantees – and this has also been a point of resistance for many companies moving their applications into the cloud. Most cloud technology at the moment is still developing quite rapidly and hasn’t matured to the level that many companies expect outsourced technology services to be at. At most, only one to two year development cycles have occurred at the largest and most well-known cloud service providers – with some offerings having cloud software development cycles at levels much less than this. This all infers that companies are simply starting to ‘test’ application hosting in the cloud – but in no way are committing heavy financial resources to it just yet. It is my opinion that this will change in the next 3-5 years as many companies see the amazing benefits of outsourcing server, application hosting and performance delivery into the cloud – but more development needs to be achieved before many CIO’s (chief information officers) will recommend cloud computing to their executive level counterparts. The cost-benefit ratio needs to not only exist but so does the legal aspects of cloud computing from a risk mitigation perspective in ironing out the data security and privacy aspects of such services. Only then will companies commission a serious foray into cloud computing and start moving their applications, services and data accordingly ‘into the cloud’.

Hope this has help many who are confused ;)

In the spirit of my last post, I thought I would also tell my loyal readers about how to really speed up their Firefox web-browser. So much so in fact, that you will be amazed at how much faster your web-pages actually load. This little trick is really designed for website users who have broadband connections – but those of you that do not – you are probably able to adjust the settings to a slightly lower level and it will still increase your page load time. This works best on any version of Firefox 3+ :)

A little unknown fact about Firefox is the HTTP application-layer protocol that most web-pages are transferred with and the “safe” limits that Firefox developers put into the config to ensure maximum stability. The problem is that these settings are really really conservative – and while sure thing this improves stability – it slows the whole process down. To really increase your web-page speed and make your browsing experience better – and more importantly faster – with 99% stability – we need to tweak the HTTP application-layer protocol. The logic behind this is much the same as the logic behind tweaking the maximum number of connections when using Peer-to-Peer systems. The more HTTP connections the application can make on a broadband connection the better – so use the settings below to make your web-pages load at least 4-5 times faster (and indeed make Firefox load faster when you open it):

1. Type in the Firefox address bar about:config
2. Accept the Warning notification and continue
3. At the top of the page will be a filter – search for, and adjust, the following settings:

network.http.pipelining: true
network.http.proxy.pipelining: true
network.http.max-connections: 50
network.http.max-connections-per-server: 40
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy: 20
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server: 10
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: 20

4. Then right-click anywhere in a blank space and select New –> Integer
5. Name this integer “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to 0.
6. Right-click again anywhere in a blank space and select New –> Boolean
7. Name this boolean “config.trim_on_minimize” and set its value to True.
8. Now in the Icon Tray, right-click on the Mozilla Firefox Icon and select Properties
9. Under “Target”, you will see the line “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”
10. Change this line to “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” /Prefetch:1″
11. Ensure that there is a space i.e. \firefox”(space)/Prefetch:1″

Enjoy your new found Firefox load time and speed!

Being in web development – nothing irks me more than slow web browsers. I typically use Google Chrome (because of its rendering speed and the javascript engine which is written into the browser) but during any web development the “IE Clan” of browsers still accounts for some 70% of the market and therefore development and testing on it is a must. When I upgraded my browser sometime ago to the latest IE8 – I was astounded by the sheer lag of the browser on Vista Ultimate when loading pages, new tabs and even just in starting. Because I don’t really use the browser regularly – it has never really bothered me – but more recently I have been doing some testing on it, and the slow response time is just so painful.

Luckily, I have discovered a solution that improves IE8 Speeds hugely on my PC – regsvr32 actxprxy.dll - from the command prompt. This command re-registers the ActiveX Interface Marshaling Library – which controls ActiveX/COM object interfaces – or in normal English translation – allows your PC  to load IE faster. This results in seriously increased performance and therefore with some other minor tweaks – allows you to have a smoother IE8 experience. To get it all happening simply follow these steps in Vista:

1. Press the Start Button and type into the Search Bar – cmd.

2. It will appear under the Programs list, and you can right click on it and Run as Administrator.

3. A new black window will appear with the command line window on c:\Windows\system32>.

4. Type into this window regsvr32 actxprxy.dll

5. A prompt should appear with DllRegisterServer in actxprxy.dll succeeded. Click OK & Restart your PC.

6. You can stop here – but if you don’t notice any improvements continue.

7. Once restarted open IE8, go to Tools –> Internet Options –> Advanced –> Reset (this will reset browser to default settings)

8. Close & Restart the Browser and you will go through the Welcome to IE8 screens again – here is where you need to adjust things:

• Select Suggested Sites – No
• Select Custom Settings
• Set your Default Search Engine (Google, Yahoo or Bing)
• Select Yes to Updates
• Select Turn Off Accelerators
• Select Smart Screen On
• Select Compatibility View Off

9. Once this is done, you should see some serious improvements in your browsing and rendering experience :)

Drop a note in the comments if this has worked for you!

If you are into Social Media and the Internet – the Facebook.com/Vanity-URL experience is – or speaking in past-tense was - a must  for you. On the 13th June 2009 at approximately 2PM Melbourne, Australia (GMT+10) – Facebook opened their service to include Vanity Urls – that is, instead of the old “facebook.com/profile.php?id=123456789” – you could now have “facebook.com/YourName“. If you still haven’t done this, you need to goto www.facebook.com/username/.

The response was unbelievable – more than 500,000 names were registered within the first 10 minutes. Lucky for me, I was able to secure the exact name I wanted – which makes things much easier now to tell everyone where to find me on Facebook. Unfortunately, for the millions of users who did not login when the process began – most, if not all, of the common English name associations would be taken inferring – much like emails – that you will have to have a combination of letters and numbers and wont be able to secure the name you want.

My name is common with more more than 1000 other people around the world – so having to be quick off the mark was pretty essential. Luckily – the exact name I wanted was not one of the “suggested” names or combinations – so I had to select more “Choose your Own Name”. My trick was that I had previously setup “Copy/Paste” for my name, so I was able to quickly hit Ctrl+V on this field and then select the “Set Username” – meaning that I was luckily enough to get in immediately – while more than likely, another Tim Davis around the world was typing the exact name. I was in all likelihood – only milliseconds ahead.

Now you may be reading this post thinking “you are such a nerd” – but for me – having an easy-to-remember facebook URL makes life so much simplier. I can tell friends, family, colleagues and business associates where they can find me on Facebook without forcing them to remember combinations of letters and numbers – which often get lost, can’t be remembered and could result in lost opportunities. Considering that once a name is set – it can never be changed - I don’t necessarily think it was such a bad thing to be online for and secure a little piece of Facebook real-estate.

If you secured the name you wanted, drop a note in the comments :)

It has been absolutely fascinating to watch the technological developments unfold as the world judges the probability of a Swine Flu pandemic. The current primary information repositories seem to be entirely based on information being released from the World Health Organisation (WHO) Swine Flu site located here, and the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States located here. Google has released an interesting tool to plot the spread of the disease from their website which you can check out here which maps the latest information from a number of sites in a RSS feed. Interestingly, if you check out the Google News site you can also see the sheer number of stories being published around this disease, and more than 10,000 Tweets on Twitter are being posted every hour in relation to the latest news and information showing that real-time information surrounding the disease is quickly accessible.

The sheer number of searches being conducted online is clearly illustrated on the Google Trends search feature, which highlights a sharp rise in “swine flu, swine, flu, influenza” searches compared to the normal number of searches at the beginning of April.

What is most surprising, is the media’s massive exposure of the disease and the unprecedented global response to prevent the disease from entering nation States borders. To be frank, the sheer amount of coverage of the virus shows the power of new social media and most importantly – the gravity of the disease and perhaps the hype surrounding it. At the very least, the Internet is allowing people to stay so informed around the latest outbreaks that it is almost impossible to decipher all the relevant information. Perhaps more importantly, is the effect of the disease in our already fragile economy. Some news stories have stated that the economic impact of even a ‘mild’ dose of the disease would be around $330 Billion USD  in lost output as the world shudders and people remains indoors. Of course, on the absolute end of the scale the damage would total around 142.2 million lives and cost more than $4.4 Trillion to the world’s economies – something that we could ill afford considering the current financial crisis.

Thermal imaging scanning to detect body heat in airports, surgical face masks, commercial airline pilots being required to report the health of passengers, doctors and nurses at airports, quarantining ill people in their homes and even an increase in the sale of gas masks are the responses taken thus far to prevent the spread of the disease. If Mexico is anything to go off, increases in food shortages and clean water could also be a problem. Of course, this is all very much an ‘alarmist’ view and is not balanced in perspective to the number of people who die each year from influenza through a standard winter. At the moment, very few people have been affected by Swine Flu as a proportion of the standard number of people affected by influenza each year. But as is standard in this day and age – the sensationalist attitude of the media prepares everyone for the worst and an ill informed populace over compensates as a result.

Of course, whenever there global fear surrounding the disease – someone always seems to come out on top financially. The makers of the two most effective anti-virals against the disease are Biota Holdings Ltd and Roche Holdings AG who each produce Relenza and Tamiflu respectively – both the most effective influenza drugs on the market, and both seem to have an solid impact on Swine Flu. Smartly – Google have always denied advertising on drugs as part of their Adwords program and all searches related to Swine Flu – are advertising free. But of course, if the media continues to hype the disease and not report the truth of the spread accurately – then more and more people will begin to become alarmed about the disease – leading to the natural probable cause of panic.

So in writing this article, and doing some basic research online – it seems the most prudent course of action to take at this stage is simply standard smart and healthy personal care. This would include, both from common sense and from the CDC FAQ and Swine Flu and You pages, the following:

1. Cover your mouth when coughing
2. Sneeze into a handkerchief or tissue
3. Keep your hands clean at all times – my recommendation are the hand cleaners that don’t require water.
4. Avoid touching public surfaces and then touching mucous membranes (nose, eyes, ears, mouth etc)
5. Stay away from sick people
6. If you’re feeling ill – don’t go to work – go to your Doctor and take their advice.

Realistically, this is advice that is common to all genus of diseases and viruses – not categorically ‘just’ for Swine Flu. Most importantly, stay informed about the relevant outbreaks of the virus – but don’t start necessarily digging your outside nuclear bunker or moving to the country just yet. While the age old axiom – ‘better to be safe, than sorry’ – does ring true – I think that keeping healthy, fit and taking the proper precautions should ensure that the world contains and eradicates Swine Flu.

Stay Safe & Healthy! :)

I see many interesting on projects on the web everyday – tonnes of new technology mediums which are launching or adding new features, or startups that are getting their product ready for launch. There are also countless other projects which are just impossible to see – merely because I have just never heard of them, the almighty Google hasn’t indexed them, they are not in English or simply because they remain undiscovered and not as yet “popular” by the masses. That changed today when I found a really cool project while just surfing around the web looking for peoples experiences in user interface design. I would say that I effectively just stumbled onto this site in my search (and no, not using stumbleupon).

The site I found is called we feel fine and it is a fascinating journey into the world of human expressionism. What is so unique about this project is that it deeply explores the web and the countless number of human emotions which are posted every single second online. Currently, the site just explores weblogs and extracts huge amounts of metadata from these sites which it then compiles into feelings in a structured manner. To quote from the site

We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling”. When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the “feeling” expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). 

The site has a database of several million human feelings and it increases by around 15K to 20K of feelings per day. The interface of the applet requires Java to run (I am assuming because of the sheer size of the database) and the graphical interface is organised into a particle system which allows for a ‘scattered data layer’ approach to viewing and searching feelings from around the world. Each particle on the applet can be clicked and the feeling – including text and photos, or a combination of both – is displayed on the screen.

It really is an amazing use of technology and a great insight into how people are feeling at any one time. People often regard Twitter as one of the greatest sources of human expressionism in that it allows everyday people to communicate their thoughts in small passages of text commonly known as ‘status updates’. Thousands of other websites have since incorporated this small feature in someway or another (although I really think that the 140 restriction helps to keep status posts on point). Of course, feelings may be harder to decipher in the twitter system because people often just post status updates merely because they are bored or want to let people know what they are doing. While it’s possible to argue that real human emotions probably don’t feed into a twitter stream because people don’t want to let others really know how they are feeling (and because many followers on the twitter system are friends or business colleagues) – I would still contend that across the entire site feelings could be extracted.

In some respects this is what makes the twitter a fantastic, open and asynchronous system and on the other – what makes it really stop true human emotions from being published in a stream. My issue is that there is no way to select only a small group of people to see your posts without closing off the interface entirely – and this means that most people will limit posts relating to human feelings and focus on other points of interest in their lives such as interesting articles, reviews or opinion. Of course, you may be thinking at this very moment that if you want to publish your emotions on twitter you can easily – and you would be completely correct in thinking this – but I doubt you would actually post them to strangers you don’t know (or work mates that you do). Although it’s fair to say that the we feel fine system indexes blog posts and this is no better than twitter – I would argue that there is more text, you don’t have to compact your feelings with SMS style punctuation and you can publish it so just your friends can see. 

But I digress, this is not a post on the twitter system (well, it sort of is :D) and rather a look into the we feel fine website. Check it out and you will begin to see what is in peoples blogs, hearts and minds around the world and perhaps understand that the feelings you have can often are felt by other people too.

It’s big picture stuff . Enjoy :)

A satirical poem I wrote about law, meant to amuse those in the industry who understand the funnier narcissistic side of law.

The Art of Law

The market creaks, the money awakes – so long it’s been in slumber,
The M&A teams get prepped; a world is ready for plunder.
The Investment Banker hits the phone, a new deal is to be done,
And so the market is alive again and law is on the run.

New suit, new pants, new shirt and tie – a handshake and smile,
‘What deal can I assist you with today kind sir? – i’ll walk a country mile,
Funds management, restructuring, IP or project finance?
The more I can provide you with, the more that we can dance.’

The money flows, the deals get done,
A toast, a cheers, a bravo!
A new house, a new car, another holiday –
It’s all part of the show.

The regulators twist and turn, the boom is in full swing,
The cash is flowing, companies are so pleased – surely not a time to step in?
‘Free market, free rein, self management – no policies defeated,
Why bother the legislator, when no regulation is needed!’

The margin hits, the bankers bust – they no longer meet the call,
The phone calls start, something’s amiss – don’t tell me of a fall!
It’s now insolvencies turn to shine, the pessimists fine show,
Bankruptcy, debt and receivership – the world does not yet know.

The newspapers hit the streets – the populous roars with anger,
‘It’s the bankers and their god-dam risks – their salaries and their squander!’
The Government screams ‘it’s no time for blame, let’s try and fix the problem’,
They make promises of transformations only to deepen our debt for longer.

The law firm shifts, the parties stop – the champagne fountains halter,
‘It would be unruly of us to continue in this light’ – says one truly pompous partner.
‘As while times get tough around the world, and the deal flow stream dries up,
The insolvency practice is our new success, our knight in shining armour.’

The market slows, production halts and companies shut for good,
The cycle has hit the bottom again, time for a recessionary hood.
And quietly in the background, against all the market changes,
The law firm is engaged again – this time for spades and aces.

The work pours in, the candle burns – insolvency stares down the hours,
While the entire M&A Team sleeps soundly, without so much as even a cower.
The billing rate does not stop, it counts against the clock,
The firm a presence recessionary proof – the law clearly is not.

– by Tim Davis (Feb, 2009)

Update: This data has now been provided freely – mainly because I am a great bloke (and also because I had so many requests from people wanting too use it for good causes.)

I have been sitting on some data for a while now that took me a considerable time to put together simply because there were no sources I could find on the Internet which provided it. This data is being released under a commercial licence share alike license solely because of the *pain in the ass* it was to compile and put together – not to mention the time involved. It is a list of 202 ISO Countries and their relevant States and Territories from all over the web since I couldn’t find one source that had the data aggregated easily.

I’ve tried to keep it relatively cheap in cost and the only reason a price is attached is because of the manual effort involved in getting this together – pretty much meaning it’s done and you don’t have to do anything. I am sure someone out there is going to find this data useful. Feel free to Contact Me at any time about this data if you have questions or queries.

Includes 202 Countries and total Unique States of 3697. Microsoft *.XLSX or *.XLS is downloadable.

• ISO Alpha-2
• ISO Alpha-3
• ISO 3166 Country Name
• Individual Country States

To find out more or visit the Data page above.

You know, it’s amazing – the slogan “The Wonderful World of Disney” no longer makes me think about Disney. I have since destroyed this one fantastic childhood slogan that was instilled in me from the age of about 3 and replaced it with “The Wonderful World of Free”. Yes, it’s perhaps a little sad but working on a technology startup tends to do that too you when you are trying to establish viable revenue streams for your business.

You see the world of “Free” has really taken over the Internet. Content is now consumed on the Internet at a rate that has never been witnessed around the world before, and people who access the Internet expect this content to be free. The predominant reason for this is that people pay for their access to the Internet and believe that this is the ceiling point for their use of products and services on it. Take content for example, I read an article on the NY Times website from a fantastic author regarding the state of the Internet. If this author intended on charging me to read the article – I am presented with two options:

1. I can simply pay for the article because the authors writing, style, opinion and experience on the topic supersedes any other content available and the value equation of his writing exceeds any other content available (or that I can find).
2. I can simply scour the Internet looking for similar articles which comment on adjacent subject matter that is relevant to the thought process I am attempting to collate in my head. If the end justifies the means and I discover relevant content which is free – no need to pay and my value equation is satisfied.

You see Internet users now expect content on the Internet to remain free. The age of “charging” for content – or any products or services for that matter – is only valid when the consumer cannot get that particular content, or that particular product or service anywhere else. The value equation for the user has to reach the climatic point where attempting to search for similar content can, and simply does not, satisfy the users needs. It’s at this point, and I believe only at this point, that a user will cough up some hard earnt dollars in order to satisfy their desire to pay for products and services on the Internet.

If we take another example that is more prevalent in this day and age – Facebook. People use and consume content on Facebook everyday and just expect the services to work. The mere fact that it costs Facebook millions of dollars per month to provide these users with this service is irrelevant to those whom consume such said content and use it daily. After all, the service started out as free and users expect it to remain that way – right?

Of course, that’s right – it’s Facebook duty to monetize their business and ensure that they keep providing their services to their users otherwise they will simply change to another service. It’s important to recognise that Internet users are fickle and perhaps they have every right to be – the Internet has an abundance of information and hands the power back to consumers to find the best offering at the lowest value – whether this be in real economic terms or in ‘free’ terms.

So we come to the question that exceedingly enroaches on my mind daily – how can a service such as Facebook “remain free” ad-infinitum? Surely, an apex point will some day arrive where the cost of running the company entirely exceeds the value equation relating to revenue generation? Or perhaps more probably, the product that Facebook is offering no longer fulfills the desire of the millions of users who connect and use Facebook everyday. It is somewhat happening to Myspace, and it is possible that it will happen to Facebook. Facebook was inherently designed for a specific purpose – to share and communicate with friends – yet such a statement does have its idiosyncarcies. The world we are moving into is one where this statement is no longer simply enough – Internet users now, more than ever, demand real-time and up-to-date information in a format that Facebook might not be able to provide moving into the future. Even the design change on Facebook took months, if not a full year, to implement and users are still unhappy about it. But I digress from the purpose of this post (and perhaps this topic deserves another seperate post in itself)

They key question I am really trying to answer is what about all the other products and services out there who simply do not have 1/10000th of the financial capacity of a company like Facebook?

Well, it’s clear that such companies offering these free products and services will simply not cut the cheese in a rescissionary climate where advertising revenue no longer pays for development, hosting, marketing and the like. The days of offering a free product – no strings attached – are long gone in my opinion. The Internet is ruled by a fickle generation of users who demand – no – expect content and services to be free, and if they aren’t – they simply move on. For every paid product on the Internet, 5 more are competing with it that are free. For every service that is launched and becomes popular – another 10 spring up which offer the same service for free. 

So how is it ever possible to beat this seemingly caustic like trend?

The answer is simple – continually innovate. 

There is no other solution to the free problem that to continually innovate and offer features, products, services and content that no one else does, can or has the expertise to provide. Consumers will only pay for products when no other solution exists that meets their value equation. More poignantly, consumers will only pay when for products when no other solution exists that meets their value equation, and the solution that does exist exactly satisfies their needs. There is just no point in producing a great product that no one else has which simply sucks – you wouldn’t pay for it and neither would anyone else (me included). The ideology that needs to be entrenched in all companies (startup and Fortune 500 alike) is effectively this - why pay Peter when Paul is standing around offering everything  for free? Well, I contend that if Peter has something that Paul can simply not offer then Peter gets a new revenue source. If the converse holds true, Paul rears his ugly opportunistic head and takes Peters earnings. 

I believe this really is the unfortunate – nay, perhaps the realistic and capitalist minded truth. Innovation is the key to a great product or service, and a great service is the key to profitability. I believe it’s true to contend that the three are symbiotic in nature – that is, the correlation between innovation, great products and services and profitability is extrodinarily high. The dominance is, however, in my opinion innovation – loose that, and the other elements wilt. The consequence?

Darwinian theory tell us that something else will take it’s place.

Well, I thought you guys might be interested in this since we are getting closer and closer to launching Fluc (although we aren’t releasing a specific date yet!). A few months ago, a number of people emailed me asking whether they could order some Fluc T-Shirts – so I sat down one night and designed a whole bunch which can be seen at the Fluc Store. The main problem was I simply didn’t have the time to organise printing, reconcile billing, ship orders individually and all the other facets associated with t-shirt printing. As we started getting a bunch of people emailing requests to us – our time availability got lower and lower and although we did respond and sent some orders,  the emails kept coming and truth-be-told we simply didn’t have the time. Apologies! 

Well now all those problems have been solved with our new Zazzle Store. We have posted the most requested t-shirts online and you are more than welcome to email us if you want a design that isn’t up on this site yet. Zazzle makes it ridiculously easy for us to manage t-shirt purchases with betting shipping rates, faster turn around times and better printing and shirt quality at cheaper prices. You can order anytime from this site and just to let you know – we make basically nothing per t-shirt as we wanted to keep the costs to you as low as possible. Gosh we are nice!

Feel free to get on and purchase a few tee’s! We ordered a bunch before we made the store public and they really do look insane.

In the spirit of my current video posts, I thought I would post an article about the “Tenth Dimension” – a fascinating video about a look at Rob Bryanton’s exploration into the ten dimensions. It’s a really amazing video which explores some  string theory - a developing branch of theoretical physics that combines quantum mechanics and general relativity into a quantum theory of gravity. Rob purports to explore in this video that subatomic particles which make up our universe are actually created within ten spatial dimensions (plus an eleventh dimension of “time”) by the vibrations of exquisitely small “superstrings”. If you watch the full video, you can really see that the argument which is created is a truly fascinating one and really provides some food for thought regarding the number of dimensions that exist in our universe.

I have always loved Guy Kawasaki’s 10‐20‐30 Rule ever since I heard about it. If you have never read this post – click on the link now and have a good read over it. Guy basically highlights some of the main areas you need to consider when pitching to potential investors and he outlines a very simple methodology to follow when using PowerPoint to get your revolutionary product or service  across. The 10/20/30 Rule is simple and it makes perfect sense: 

• No more than 10 slides
• No longer than 20 minutes
• No font size less than 30

When I heard about this a few years back I really did think this was a great way to formulate a pitch strategy. Before this I came up with my own strategy for pitching investments – and this was the “3-Dot Rule” – basically, no more than 3 dot points per page with as little info as possible. “Speak to the dots” was effectively my strategy so your audience isn’t focusing its attention on the mass of text on the slide – but rather on you – the person they are listening too and potentially investing in. Of course, we could always merge the two together and get a hybrid “3/10/20/30″ rule which combines all the elements and gives you even more food for thought. 

I also like to throw in the “walk a mile in their shoes” thought process – that being, if I was an investor and had worked extremely hard to generate enough wealth to invest in emerging businesses – what would my investment profile be ? What sort of questions would I ask ? What sort of risks would I take ? How easily would I hand dollars across the table and at what valuation ? Of course, all these questions are highly dependant on the individual person and their net wealth – but it’s useful to throw this process into your thought train when you are considering your pitch. Obviously you have to get your idea across quickly, easily and with a certain “wow-factor” – I would suggest this must be a given and it only comes from ‘practice, practice, practice’ – but perhaps something just as equally important is considering what if you were on the other side of the investment table. What you would say if someone was asking for your investment dollars ? If you consider this aspect seriously – and don’t take the strategy of “well of course I would invest” – then you can really carve out, and sharpen up, your presentation substantially. 

Be excited and passionate – but also be realistic. The optimists best friend is the realist – one dreams big, and the other realises dreams.

- Tim Davis, 2009

Be passionate in the delivery but be realistic in the figures. Guy suggests that the best way to structure your presentation is to follow this format:

1. Problem
2. Your solution
3. Business model
4. Underlying magic/technology
5. Marketing and sales
6. Competition
7. Team
8. Projections and milestones
9. Status and timeline
10. Summary and call to action

It’s a fairly good structure, but you can chop and change it as much as you like. Many other people use different strategies. I thought I would put down some general thoughts on what I believe are important when pitching a new product or service. This is by no means a complete list, and nor should you include any of these items in great detail – or all of them for that matter as some may/may not be relevant to you company – but you should try and address most of them and make your answers as realistic as possible. Remember to “TIC” them off. (Please bear in mind I am thinking these up now as I go – so feel free to comment if I have missed something and I’ll add it in.)

The Investment Considerations (TIC)

Company Product or Service

• What is the Growth Opportunity ?
• What is your Competitive Advantage ?
• What can you offer that others cannot ?
• What are the Customer Benefits ? (both performance and psychological benefits?)
• Why would ‘you’ use your service ? Why would others ?
• Why would ‘you’ pay for your service ? Why would others ?
• What stage of development are you in ?
• Is the product and service ready ? Demo ? If not, timeline ?

Services Strategy

• What is the “value equation” ? That is, Customer Value = (Seriousness of Current State + Benefits of Proposed Future State) – Cost of Solution
• What is the product or service ‘really and simply’ – one statement or word?
• How will you improve your product or service ?
• How will these improvements allow your company to expand into other markets ?
• What is your “dream vision” of the product or service ? That is, if I gave you a bottomless pit of money – what would you do? Why?
• Is there any ‘uniqueness’ in terms of IP etc ?

Market

• What is your target market ?
• What is the “bottom up” market view ? (i.e. entry level, segments, industry, country, global etc)
• What is the “top down” market view ? (i.e. above in reverse)
• What is the current market state ?
• What is the market size and opportunity ?
• How much of the market are you wanting to penetrate ?
• How are you taking share off existing players in this market ?
• What are you “expansion axises” ? i.e. what markets do you want to expand into ?
• What are the barriers to market entry ? What are some mitigating factors ?
• How are you going to “increase” market share ?

Risks

• What are the risks ? Now, what are the real risks ?
• What are future and/or potential risks ?
• Operational Risks ?
• Human Capital and Retention Risks ?
• Financial Risks ?
• Legal Risks ?
• Political Risks ?
• FX Risks ? etc
• Which are Systematic (undiversifiable) and which are Unsystematic (diversifiable) ?
• What are your ‘personal risks’ in the business ? Are you taking risks ? If not, why should investors invest ! ?
• What are your teams ‘personal risks’ ?

Management

• What is your level of experience ? 
• If it’s limited, what are you doing about it to reduce investor risk ?
• What are your qualifications ?
• What is your previous business or operational experience ?
• Who is in the team ? What are there levels of experience/qualifications/operational experience etc ?
• Is the team well diversified ? 
• Does your team cover off a broad range of business disciplines ? (i.e. financial, legal, marketing, sales etc)
• What are your projected salaries ? Why ? Are they too high/low ? Are they realistic?
• Do you have any previous start-up experience ?
• If so, what was this business ? Did you sell it ? Was the product/market/etc ?

Sales & Financials

• What is your marketing strategy?
• What is the forecasted marketing spend ?
• The ‘what, where, why, how, who’ of your branding and promotion ?
• What is your sales strategy ?
• Direct sales vs. channel sales ?
• How will pricing fluctuate and is it market sensitive ? What factors make it so ? How to mitigate ?
• What is your project growth ?
• What are your financials (real and/or projected) ? i.e. Burn Rates, Gross Margins, Earnings, Cash Flow, Debts

Investment

• What is your investment ? Financial, sweat equity, etc
• What is the valuation of the business ? Be realistic.
• What is the Capital & Legal structure of the business ?
• Why do you need investment ?
• What will you use the investment for ?
• Why should investors choose ‘you’ over ‘another’ ?
• What % equity are you offering ?
• What is your ‘forecasted’ ROI (return on investment) ? 
• How long will you take to pay ithe investment back ?
• Is your Risk vs. Return fair ?
• How can the investors help without injecting money ?

Random Questions

• What is the problem you are solving ? I know of other services in the same space. What’s the differentiator ?
• Competitor ABC is the market leader in this field by X% margin. How are you going to compete against them ?
• Is your market size really reasonable ?
• Where did you pull the data for your projected growth and revenue streams ? Sales etc ?
• Are your direct sales vs. channel sales strategies sound ? Why not focus on just direct or just channel ?
• I want to know more about how you are going to market ? What are some of your other strategies ?
• Is there any defensible IP ? What stage is this at ?
• How will people associate your product with the industry segment ?
• I want to know more about you and your team ? Tell me.
• I have had 2 other people pitch me a similar idea – why ‘you’ and not ‘them’ ?
• Do you think the amount you are asking for is reasonable ? Can you do more with less ? Can you do less with more ?
• What are the largest obstacles you foresee in order to secure a greater market share ?
• You investment terms aren’t really reasonable ? X% for %X million at % revenue – is this realistic ?

So there you have it. Feel free to drop a comment and let me know about anything you think I should add!

For those of you who have often wondered how the Internet has become such a critical part of our lives, and more importantly, how the Internet actually all started – the 8 Minute video below provides you with an entire overview of how the Internet was created, who created it and how it has evolved into what it is today. The video starts at the beginning of networking technology and looks into how it morphed into a much more complex technology which ultimately created the worldwide communication network that billons of people now rely on everyday. The video does really cover the history very well and compacts it into 8 Minutes neatly and succinctly. It’s definitely a recommended watch, and provides you with an intelligent conversation starter to tell your friends around the campfire or when you are having a few beers at a party …. or, most likely and more probably … confirm your true nerdiness.

I thought I would share a funny story that is not overtly interesting, in fact it’s quite nerdy to be honest, but it’s one that has great practical significance in pretty much everything we do in our lives – and to be honest, I am glad I learnt this lesson very early on, regardless of how trifle it is going to seem. The title gives a basic hint as to what I am talking about but the underlying story is at the very least, slightly assuming – primarily because it makes a mockery of any supposed intelligence I possess and also because I genuinely feel like an idiot for the amount of time I wasted.

As a facet of the work I do in law and my genuine interest in technology, in addition to the mobile technology company that we are building, I have been customarily bestowed the honor of being the family geek – or “computer-go-to” guy. It’s amazing how every family has one, and typically this person is not always IT or Computer Science trained. Perhaps this is primarily due to the “don’t want to bring my day-job home syndrome” that every person on the planet experiences at some point in their lives from a family member or friend (i.e. someone who is a physiotherapist or a masseur or who can easily provide a service for free which gives a large utility benefit to the recipient for nothing, but it will never happen because the person does it all day and doesn’t want to bring it home). So I am regularly called on my mobile phone for “PC-Assistance” which typically involves a fair amount of profanity before the line “can you come around and help?”. At first, I really didn’t mind doing it for friends and family, and I freely offered my already full day to fix some problem that I had no doubt were primarily the result of some sort of associated porn site, or caused through the deletion of something which shouldn’t have been deleted (the attitude of I “well I didn’t do that” always rings true.) Of course, I am not about to start nailing my family and friends (and friends parents) for the reasons around how their PC got into that state – we both know how – so it’s better to just let sleeping dogs lie and pretend it was “something else”. 

Anyway, I digress – the real point of this story specifically relates to something that happened to me today. I was repairing a computer for my girlfriends father (so the pressure was really on) and I was basically doing a full reinstall, clean up, software upgrade and setting up the notebook PC so the performance would be maintained through scheduling and the like. I was decisively confident and perhaps a little too cocky in the manner which I approached the task – a combination of having done the same thing 20 times already but also because I genuinely thought it wouldn’t be all that hard to setup another PC again.

Boy-o-boy was I wrong.

I setup the entire laptop and it was purring like a tiger by the time I had finished with it – confidence was “i repeat” sky high. I packed it up, SMS’d my girlfriends father and say “all done, PC ready for delivery”. Drove over to their house, set it all up ready to connect to their wireless and … then the notebooks wireless doesn’t work – I get the error “Media Disconnected”. Now to be honest, I had a bit of time to spare because we were the only ones home and I thought to myself – “this is no probs, it was working at my house so has to be something small”. I try a few different things such as resetting the Automatic Wireless Startup, editing the TCP/IP settings, editing the configuration of the wireless transmission bands and so forth. None of this worked. I found an article on disabling the media sensing feature in Windows (I was reinstalling XP as Vista was not wanted) so I quickly edited the registry and thought I had it solved. That didn’t work either.

So by now stage I had pretty much exhausted all the options available to me under the pressure of promised performance and I had to accept defeat and admit that the PC needed a little more work (my facade of arrogance was quickly deteriorating). So I went home and started work on the problem – I tried everything – even attempting to hack into Windows a little as by this point, I thought I was going to have to reinstall everything anyway because – in my mind – it had to be a conflicting driver of some sort (since it was working, then stopped). So I again reinstalled XP and started the PC up only to discover it wasn’t working. To cut an already long story short, I spent probably another 3 hours surfing the net look for “Wireless Media Disconnected” related issues – from forums to blogs to large scale tech help sites. All solutions offered proved useless. I was completely and utterly perplexed and was actually considering ringing up Microsoft to ask them for help since I had exhausted all options.

Then I stumbled across the solution at 1:10AM – on the front of the laptop was a switch “Wireless On”. It was off. I needed it on. I almost punched the computer. 

Now I am not a violent person by any measure of the stick, but you have to consider the amount of frustration I was experiencing after spending more than 8 hours trying to fix a problem that was simply a direct result of a switch being turned off. I had installed and setup an entire PC twice – for free – and the entire time it was the switch that was the issue. This was the reason the PC was working and then all of sudden stopped – because when I put the laptop into its bag I knocked the switch off. Sure sure, you are probably saying to yourself right now, “pfftt – would have been the first thing I checked”. Well, thanks but I didn’t know laptops came with external wireless switches (which moron invented this anyway? Power optimisation can be done through software) – so I was pretty annoyed by the end at myself, the computer, IBM, Microsoft and the idiot who invented external wireless switches.

So what is the lesson here?

The lesson is summed up in this quote I thought of afterwards while having a “success beer” - 

The smallest oversight on the road to success has the greatest chance of being your downfall.

Sure it’s a simple quote – but it’s certainly one that taught me a valuable lesson – and that is that most problems are never actually difficult. Rather, they simply require you to go back to the basics, look in the simplest and most logical places first and don’t create greater complexities than those which need to be created. If I had of simply looked at the front of the laptop when the problem arose, it would have been solved. Additionally, if I had “read the manual” online when I was searching for wireless issues – problem solved. There are numerous “nodes” to success that I could have taken yet I was convinced that the problem had a more complex heart and so I assumed that this was the one that needed to be, and perhaps deserved to be, explored. (Of course, I wouldn’t have the pleasure of writing this post or the wisdom of hindsight.)

So to conclude – a few points. Firstly, if you are doing technology work – see what the external interface of a device offers by way of functionality before you delve into a software solution, and you will undoubtedly never make the mistake I did. Secondly, try and approach complex problems from the simplest of angels – 99% of the times they will have a lateral or tangential answer. Finally, make sure you cover off all the simplest and tiniest of oversights on the road to your goals – sometimes the “don’t need to worry about that” or “can do that later” attitude will be your undoing.

Wow, what a year 2008 was. It was perhaps one of the most momentous years of the modern era which saw the rise and fall of some of the biggest companies on the planet such as Bear Sterns, a newly elected US president, a market crash, a free fall in interest rates, a war in Israel, a Chinese Olympic Games, a large number of natural disasters such as the Tragic Earthquake in China and a worrying prediction for 2009.

Of course, 2008 was a fantastic year despite all the gloom and doom.

We saw the best brought out in Humankind through the Chinese Olympic Games and record numbers of people tuning into watch the Paralympic Games. We saw the election of what the world hopes will be one of the greatest US Presidents to ever rein over their country. We saw triumphs in technology, music, science and celebrated the winners of the Nobel Prize in their respective categories – who brought amazing change to the earth in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. We saw the best and the worst of people and we saw innovation flourish through the use of new technology such as the semantic web and the utilisation of social networks to achieve a purposeful outcome.

So what lies ahead for humankind in 2009?

Naturally at the beginning of any year, we always recap on the events of the last year as a precursor to the year ahead. The media is painting a picture of economic doom, recessionary outlooks, huge increases in unemployment, a slowdown in innovation and a year of belt-tightening and general unrest.

For me, I tend to disagree. I am naturally an optimist and don’t like to dwell on the negative sides of what “may” or what “might” happen. If the whole world looks at the negative side of 2009 in the first week of the new year, then how can anyone hope for a better and brighter year. A new year means new opportunities and new success stories. The world is an oyster at the dawn of a new year and I don’t believe for one minute that innovation is going to cease because of tougher economic times. The greatest idea’s always come from a time when money is tighter as entrepreneurs are forced to do more with less. 2009 will be a year of opportunity as humankind will need to become more economically minded. Recessionary periods are always a time for improving efficiency and ensuring that a forensic statistical analysis can be conducted across businesses to determine the weak points of the process chain. The greater the emphasis on efficiency, the more streamlined a business can be in tough times and a better utilisation of working capital can be achieved.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a realist as much as I am an optimist. But I think 2009 will be a great year. The 8 years of bullish market action had to come to an end because the regulatory legislation in place in the biggest markets around the world was outdated and simply ineffective. The market needs to implement fixes and it needs to move into the future a better and more transparent medium for trading and doing business than what currently exists today. Of course this is going to mean that people are going to struggle and that some people are going to loose their jobs. But this is a facet of any year, not just one which is recessionary.

Sometimes I feel that we all get caught up a little in the picture that the media paints for us, and this is because the media wants to grab your attention and provoke some sort of physcological reaction from you. I think 2009 should be a year of “stepping back” and really making up your own mind. Don’t get caught up in what the media is throwing at you everyday – take it all in by all means – but don’t get any knee jerk reactions to all the news that will be thrown at you. Take a calculated response to news and media, and ensure that you manage the risks you take in your life as best you can. There will be many opportunities which will come your way and it’s up to you to decipher which of these are the ones worth taking.

What what will 2009 bring for Tim Davis?

Well I have had a few people ask me this question and I have received some emails as well. 2009 is an exciting year in my, and my families life. Primarily because I will hopefully finally finish my Juris Doctor after completing my Masters in Business Law last year. I hope to allocate some time to posting more content on both this blog as well as SmallStocks - a site that I run in my spare time to post some thoughts on the Stock Market. However, perhaps the most exciting thing for me in 2009 will be the launch of our companies flagship product. We think the site rocks and although I don’t want to shed any more light on it just yet – we all hope that you will see it by the end of Q3 2009.

There will also be a tonne of new content on this site under the Notes and Papers pages as I post more and more open source articles relating to law and business. Of course, I want to state now that my door is always open and I am always happy to receive requests from readers about content. Just use Contact Me page above to manage these requests and feel free to contact me at any time.

Most of all, I hope that you, your family and your friends have a great year. Stay safe & healthy, get those new year resolutions achieved and have a fantastic year.

As part of my general strategy to try and help students in as many ways as possible, I have decided to open source my university notes to the general populace. Yes, basically all my old notes, as well as my new notes (as they arrive) are available for general download on the Notes Page Here.

Many thousands of hours have been put into compiling these notes and I really hope that many people benefit from using, updating, recompiling and most importantly – sharing these notes with their friends and collegues. The more information we can cram into these notes, the more it will help teachers, tutors and students in the future lecture and learn the material without have to stress about spending so much time formatting, arranging and typing up notes for exams. This is a trial project, so I’m really just putting it out there to see how it will go.

Why am I doing this ?

Well a lot more information is available on the page itself but basically (to quote myself) I am hoping:

I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. The entire point of me releasing these notes is for the academic community to keep an updated set of notes that everyone has access too. Take a positive attitude, and if something isn’t included in these notes – add it in and send me an updated version. You have freely benefited by all the time I have put into them, and since I could easily charge for these notes I think its not too much to ask that any updates are sent back to me.

So yes, feel free to download then notes at your leisure – but please take note of the license under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License. I really only request a few things:

1. If you add in content to these notes – you must send me an updated version so they can be shared for everyone else’s benefit. (this means you must freely consent your copyright to any changes/additions you make. If you don’t like this, don’t download the notes)
2. The copyright footer must stay in the notes (if you are unsure what this means click on the Creative Commons link above)

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All I can say is – this is the coolest thing I have seen on Youtube perhaps ever! It’s basically an interactive video where you get to the choose the path you take at the end of each “stage”. Do you remember reading those sci-fi books – Choose your Own Adventure – where you get to choose the path you take and the combination of different paths was almost limitless ? Well now imagine a video version that basically takes the same approach.

The beauty of web videos done in this manner is that they are highly engaging to the end user – which means that more eyeballs see them and therefore the opportunities for advertisers are huge. The ROI in producing something like this with a brand sponsor would be massive. Even internal product placements and ‘sponsored themes’ would enable advertisers to subtlety introduce their products into the videos without ruining the user experience by having pre-or-post role ads etc.

Really, really cool and well done. Check it out!

I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

1. If you add in content to these notes – you must send me an updated version so they can be shared for everyone elses benefit. (this means you must freely consent your copyright to any changes/additions you make. If you don’t like this, don’t download the notes)
2. The Creative Commons footer must stay in the notes (if you are unsure what this means click on the Creative Commons link below)

Full Details (and other legal and business notes) – Notes Page

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The balance between the right to free speech and the protection of a person’s reputation are the fundamental underpinnings on which defamation law is based. The root of this balance ostensibly stems from one person’s right to protect their reputation in light of another person’s right to publish comment on it. The judicial system has long upheld the notion that if a person deliberately or maliciously publishes material which adversely and unfairly affects another’s reputation – a cause of action will exist to the person aggrieved. Such a notion has historically only existed at common law and has been fraught with complexities associated with the interpretation of defences to any defamatory cause of action. The recent the introduction of the Defamation Act 2005 has attempted to uniform defamation litigation across all Australian jurisdictions and endeavoured to ensure that defamation cases are trialled with greater consistency. Unfortunately, such an enactment has still left countless unresolved questions with respect to the manner in which litigating parties interpret defamatory meanings and how such meanings are pleaded.

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The balance between entrepreneurial risk-taking and a director’s corporate responsibility are inversely correlated under current securities law. The success of any corporate enterprise is entrenched in the ability of its executive management to facilitate and incorporate risk as a function of its operating capability. It is antithetical to contend that shareholder value can be created without undertaking some risk as it is a fundamental component of the corporate profit-return ratio. Of course, these principles must be balanced in light of those directors who embrace risk as an extremity and who carelessly and dishonestly destroy value through overzealous adoption. While Australian corporate law has attempted to balance these conflicting notions with the enactment of risk assessment provisions such as the business judgement rule in s180(2) of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) – the degree to which the law fosters and encourages directors to undertake structured entrepreneurial risk still remains questionable. The function of a director is enshrined in Chapter 2D – Part 1 – Division 1 of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and their primary duties are to act in the best interests of the company and for a proper purpose. The extent to which this essential requirement is rationalised with unsystematic risk adoption rests on the judicature’s ability to interpret risk and determine the degree to which a managerial judgement was reasonable in the circumstances. Of course, the inherent nature of a judicial inquiry in relation to corporate risk infers that the risk undertaken was excessive and the complainant is disputing the efficacy of it. The Courts consideration in this regard must then fall to an examination of whether a director failed to exercise a reasonable degree of care and diligence in the discharge of his duties.

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The unparalleled advance of the Internet in the modern era has lead to vast new opportunities for marketers in the digital realm. The fusion of information technology and access to the Internet has acted as a catalyst for software based algorithms which purport to closely match online media content to highly targeted advertising. The adoption of cookie-based tracking technologies combined with internet protocol address geotargeting has allowed online advertising to be refined to such a degree that relevant and accurate advertising can be matched to any content that any particular Internet user is viewing at any particular time. Evidently, an important facet of this technology is the critical reliance of text based inputs in order to interpret and decipher the particular content being viewed. The fundamental dependence on text interpretation by advertising algorithms has lead to significant judicial confusion regarding the permitted use and manipulation of such text in the context of trademarked terms. The conflicting legal paradigm is the apparent statutory authority provided by trademark legislation which purports to provide the registered owner of a trademark exclusive rights over a sign for the goods and/or services in which it is registered – against the use of such a mark by advertising systems as a contextual input driver in order to accurately correlate the most appropriate advertising content to the inputted term. To further complicate this paradigm, the usage of trademark terms must be categorised into two distinct and separate groupings – those terms which are driven by direct user-input – entered into search engine interfaces which then render search results correlated with relevant search advertising – and those that are automatically extracted by advertising systems from the web page meta data layer. This latter category usually couples a machine algorithmic approach with human assisted text identification – commonly referred to as meta tagging – for the purposes of enhanced content interpretation which augments the advertising matching process.

Continue Reading – The Use of Trademarks in Meta Tags & Sponsored Links

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In any federal system of government, the constitution must regulate the legal relationships that exist between the central repository of governmental power and the regional or provincial levels of government which co-exist with it. In Australia, the regulation of intergovernmental power was first discussed in D’Emden v. Pedder where it was established that the Commonwealth was impliedly immune from any associated state legislation – the reciprocal position being established in Federated Amalgamated Government Railway and Tramway Service Association v NSW Railway Traffic Employees Association. This rationale was subsequently rejected in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers v Adelaide Steamship case and the constitutional interpretation of intergovernmental immunities was redefined by the High Court in the Melbourne Corporation v Commonwealth decision. The scope of immunity after the Melbourne Corporation v Commonwealth decision was poignantly termed the Melbourne Corporation doctrine and it consisted of two distinct limbs – framed by Mason J in Queensland Electricity Commission v Commonwealth. The first limb consisted of a prohibition against State discrimination such that the Commonwealth could not place special burdens or disabilities on the States, while the second limb was a prohibition against the creation or application of laws that ‘[i]mpose restrictions which prevent [the States] from performing functions or impede them from doing so.’ While the first limb of the Melbourne Corporation doctrine was applied by the High Court in the QEC Case, the second limb of the test was not definitively applied until Western Australia v Commonwealth where the High Court rejected Western Australia’s argument as to the validity of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) ruling that ‘[t]he Act does not purport to affect the machinery of government of the State’. Additionally, in Re Australian Education Union and Australian Nursing Federation; Ex parte Victoria the High Court again considered the second limb of the Melbourne Corporation doctrine – applying it against the Commonwealth Industrial Relations Commission in upholding the Victoria’s contention that the States should have the power to determine ‘[t]he terms and conditions on which its employees shall be engaged’.

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Importantly, the mortgagee’s registration of your mortgage entitles them to a redeemable interest in your property until such a time as the mortgage debt is discharged. This interest is measured as the difference between the amount of mortgage debt remaining and the value of the mortgaged property, and is termed a ‘mortgage covenant’ which remains affixed to your registered title until such a time as you dispose of the property or the mortgage itself. Typically, the right to enforce this redeemable interest is stipulated by the terms of the mortgage contract and a contravening event which triggers a breach of it. In the current circumstances, you defaulted on your agreed mortgage contract repayments from September 2008 and this has resulted in the mortgagee issuing you with a notice of default. Under s76(1) of the TLA 1958 – the mortgagee must provide you with a notice, in writing, informing you of your default and respective ways in which you can rectify the breach in accordance with s80(3) of the Consumer Credit Code (Vic) .

Continue Reading – Advanced Property – Power of Sale

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A transaction which is encompassed within the details outlined in 2.7 has been explained in detail via a two-trust mechanism in Barclays Bank Ltd v Quistclose Investments Ltd. In this case, the Court stated that a primary trust is formed to carry out a lender’s stipulated instructions as to how the loaned monies are to be used coupled with a secondary trust which would take effect if the primary trust failed. Modern law has since favored a singular trust scenario created through an express or resulting trust in favour of, and protecting the intention of, the settlor. The degree to which an express or resulting trust arises must be determined through intention, and if the intention is to benefit a third party through some contractual arrangement between the settlor and the trustee – Gummow J commented in Re Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust that the mutual intention of the settlor and the trustee should be examined in combination with ‘the essence’ of their bargain.

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A fundamental rule of evidence involves determining the admissibility of evidence by balancing the probative value of that evidence and the prejudicial effect of admitting it. In R v Swaffield the High Court addressed this fundamental issue in the context of voluntary confessions and the degree to which they are admissible in respect of voluntariness, unfairness and public policy considerations. Central to the High Court’s ruling in this case, was whether a voluntarily confessional statement – made to a person whom the confessionalist did not know was a police officer or a person acting for the police – could be admitted into evidence in a trial against the confessionalist for an offence relating to the statement. Most importantly, the High Court considered this in light of the confessionalists exercised right to silence. Toohey, Gaudron and Gummow JJ delivered a joint judgment in respect to the facts in this case holding that – following a determination that a confession was voluntary, the judge should firstly consider the discretion to reject such a confession on the grounds of unreliability before balancing this consideration on the principles of unfairness and public policy.

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The engagement in litigation is synonymous with risk and the inherent probability that the case brought forth against the defendant may fail. The burden of costs imposed on a party who has unreasonably rejected an otherwise reasonable offer of compromise has been a long established rule of judicial engagement. The increasing cost of litigation coupled with the sheer number of claims that are presented to the Courts each year compels the need for adverse sanctions to be enforced against those who do not attempt to reasonably settle a dispute prior to trial. It has been argued that the settlement of such disputes can often lead parties to a cynical view of the judicial system and the inherent belief that justice was not adequately achieved. Such contentions are principally unfounded given that all settlements are at the free will of each litigant and are decided with the guidance of their legal counsel in respect to an assessment of costs if the matters were to proceed to trial. The importance of a pragmatic costs judgment, in addition to a realistic assessment of the strength of each party’s arguments, forms the critical determination of whether an offer of compromise is accepted or rejected. The reliance on legal practitioners in this regard is paramount in balancing the outcome the litigant desires against the probability of success or failure in the trial itself.

Continue Reading – Civil Procedure – Offers of Compromise

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The Basel II framework is a multilateral framework that is built entirely on three cross pollinating pillars that seek to further align the capital requirements of financial institutions on an international level. The existing 1998 Basel Capital Accord, while undoubtedly effective in increasing the standards adopted by institutions in the international market place, has had many criticisms that the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision have attempted to rectify in the new structure. The most virulent criticisms of the existing Basel I framework include the imbalance in the precise amount of capital needed for any particular institution and the failure of operational risks to be reflected in the capital adequacy ratio. Furthermore, it has also been commented that the existing risk classifications and the current 8% capital adequacy ratio, are not indicative of the current banking environment.

Continue Reading – An Explaination of the Basel II Framework in the Australian Market

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Mabo and Others and The State of Queensland was a High Court native title, constitutional and real property law case involving a series of claims by the Meriam peoples for native title of the Murray Islands – a series of Islands Annexed to the Colony of Queensland. The High Court upheld these claims and also commented that comparable principles should be applied to circumstances regarding the Aboriginal people on mainland Australia. The High Court’s decision fundamentally changed the manner in which land law was interrupted in Australia, predominately due to the fact that it reversed the historical doctrine of ‘terra nullis’ on which the basis of all previous British possession of land claims in Australia were based. The decision formally recognised the original and traditional customs and rights that the Meriam people had established in relation to Murray Islands. Through this action, the High Court added the legal doctrine of native title into Australian Law and confirmed that native title did pre-exist in Australia before it was colonised by the British in 1788. In recognising this prior land right, the High Court additionally held that Indigenous Australians continue to own any fraction of land in Australia which has not had its native title legally removed. Immediately preceding the decision, the Federal Government of Australia introduced the Native Title Act 19932 which attempted to clarify the High Court’s judgment, and provide a clear and definitive legislative interpretation that Indigenous Australians could use in order to could acquire recognition for land which within their native title rights.

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The concept of self-determination and the acquisition of territorial sovereignty are highly deliberated concepts. The principal notion of self-determination is a people’s right to decide their State’s political status and its fundamental purpose in the international community. In correlation with this is the notion of territorial sovereignty which denotes the legal competence that a State enjoys in respect of its territory, and its use implies that a State retains relative control and ownership over its territory. There are five traditional modes of acquisition commonly accepted in international law– namely occupation, accretion, cession, conquest and prescription – and their contemporary significance in international law is questionable. This is primarily due to the modern requirement imposed by Courts that a State has to demonstrate it has a superior right to ‘possess a section of land’ as opposed to the actual ‘mode’ of acquisition to which the land was originally discovered and claimed.

Continue Reading – The Contemporary Significance of Territorial Sovereignty

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The concept of State and diplomatic immunity flows from customary international law and it is often expressed in the maxim par in parem non habet jurisdictionem, or more simply, that no State can claim jurisdiction over another. These immunities exist in order to promote stable relations between States and they are based on the notion that States will be able to conduct peaceful and passive diplomacy when they are in force. The establishment of diplomatic relations between nations takes place by their mutual consent – as stipulated in Article 2 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961. It is through this mutual Article 2 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961. It is through this mutual consent that agents of one State may enter the territory of another State and act in their official capacity. The privileges bestowed upon a diplomatic agent sent to a receiving State are such that the agent has exclusive power of the territorial sovereign to regulate and to enforce decisions of its organs while ensuring they respect the territory and the population of the receiving State. It is acknowledged that these privileges are limited to the rights bestowed by the receiving State, such that the receiving State can use reasonable force when ensuring that the activities being conducted by diplomatic agents are not in excess of the licence being conferred to them, or that their actions are in breach of international law.

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Copyright is a set of exclusive rights which are automatically assigned to an original piece of work for the purposes of protecting the creator’s skill, labor and judgment involved in the production of the work as opposed to any creative merit derived from the work1. The underlying premise for copyright protection is the impartial grant of an exclusive property right to control the replication and dissemination of the author’s work in order to moderate the supply of these works. Evidently, this secures and rewards the author with a financial incentive to keep producing the works, and acknowledges the creative effort and talent in deriving such works. Thus, it is obvious that there is a positive correlation between the financial incentive derived from the work and the degree of community recognition in endorsing the work. The recognition which is achieved by the author in the production of such works naturally spurs society to demand more of the said works, and therefore continues to stimulate the creative process forward.

Continue Reading – Works of Artistic Craftmanship and Copyright

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The regulation of information dissemination in free markets is a vital aspect in ensuring that investors and business are protected, and security markets maintain their integrity. As the internationalization of the world’s securities markets increases due to changes in economic forces, technology innovations and deregulation of major capital markets – accurate and full disclosure is necessary to ensure that information transparency assists the timeliness of the security price transformation process. According to Section 4 of the IOSCO Principles, the three core objectives of effective securities regulation are the protection of investors, the assurance that markets are fair, efficient and transparent and the reduction of systemic risk. Disclosure is a core component in each of these three objectives such that it ensures investors are able to make accurate and timely decisions, that the fairness of the market is maintained through transparency and abstraction of improper trading practices, and all relevant securities information is publicized to ensure that corporate failure is accurately forecasted.

Continue Reading – Disclosure is necessary but not sufficient for effective securities regulation

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The nature of the workplace and of working conditions within the organisational environment is rapidly changing. Contemporary workplaces now entirely depend on human capital with an increased knowledge mind–set, a greater reliance on technology and a thirst for organisational efficiency and process optimisation. With this modern cultural change arrives an increasing obligation for employees to perform at higher levels of intensity – while an escalating managerial directive forces them to improve both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of their role. Evidently, a by–product of this new organisational environment is a greater level of employee resistance stemming from an atmosphere fuelled by conflict, stress and often a misrepresented view of workplace justice. The majority of this conflict and stress is attributed to ‘work design and the organisation and management of work, and an employee’s social and environmental contexts, which have the potential for causing psychological, social and even physical harm’.

Continue Reading – The Relationship between Workplace Conflict, Stress and Justice

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There is a disparity between the application and function of the law and its underpinnings on the employment relationship when examining an employee’s perception of fair treatment and humility in the context of the organisational environment. The positivistic tendency of organisations to shelter behind the mask of the law often creates an imbalance between altruistic workplace mediation and a fair process to which organisational justice should apply. It is this organic deficiency by organisations and human resource managers in over applying the law when dealing with employees, which often leads to the law being viewed as a technical means of risk mitigation as opposed to an impartial mechanism which focuses on achieving justice above and beyond any associated organisational benefit.

Continue Reading – The Legal and Technical influence on the Employment Relationship

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The internet has intensely reshaped the manner in which we interact and search for content in our world. As the development of the internet continued through the early 1980s and 1990s it was becoming increasingly evident that a more precise method was needed to accurately sort, structure and search the millions of databases and web pages that were being accessed across the planet. It was not until 1998 when two Stanford University students created a search engine called Google – which was more accurate in organising and indexing information than any of its predecessors – that the Internet truly exploded as a manner in which information could be distributed.

Continue Reading – The Google Book Project & Copyright Law

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The internet is profoundly reshaping the manner in which we are interacting with technology in our world. It has transformed not only the way in which we share and communicate information but also how we locate, learn and explore different types of media online. Fundamental to the development of the internet is the principle of collaboration that exists between millions of different people scattered across the globe – who are able to connect, deliberate, ponder and solve complex problems which would have otherwise remained unsolvable. It is this organic and multi-lateral cooperative effort which has allowed researchers and entrepreneurs to innovate and create commercially viable applications which have not only increased the dissemination of media on the internet, but also improved the manner in which the internet is evolving.

Continue Reading – Open Source Software – Are patents going to stop the open source movement ?

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Copyright is the set of exclusive rights which are automatically assigned to an original piece of work for the purposes of protecting the skill, labour and judgement involved in the production of the work rather than any creative merit. Thus, the fundamental premise for copyright protection is the impartial grant of an exclusive property right to control the replication and dissemination of an author’s works in order to reduce the supply of these works. Accordingly, this secures and rewards the author with a financial incentive to continuing producing such works and for the effort required in creating such works. It is evident that there is a positively correlated relationship between the financial incentive which is remunerated for an author’s creative expression and the level of community acceptance surrounding the works. Thus, the recognition which is achieved by the author in the production of such works typically drives society to demand more of the works and therefore spurs the creative process forward. It is obvious that this is more of a critically important aspect in the online world than in the offline one because of the ability for authors to replicate and deliver their works at only a single initial cost. Due to advancements in digital processing and growth of the internet, the ability for an author to now produce only one original version of their work and then replicate it an infinite number of times to reach millions of people around the globe instantly is effortless.

Continue Reading – YouTube and Myspace – A comparison of Australian and American Copyright Laws.

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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

1. If you add in content to these notes – you must send me an updated version so they can be shared for everyone elses benefit. (this means you must freely consent your copyright to any changes/additions you make. If you don’t like this, don’t download the notes)
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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

1. If you add in content to these notes – you must send me an updated version so they can be shared for everyone elses benefit. (this means you must freely consent your copyright to any changes/additions you make. If you don’t like this, don’t download the notes)
2. The Creative Commons footer must stay in the notes (if you are unsure what this means click on the Creative Commons link below)

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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

1. If you add in content to these notes – you must send me an updated version so they can be shared for everyone elses benefit. (this means you must freely consent your copyright to any changes/additions you make. If you don’t like this, don’t download the notes)
2. The Creative Commons footer must stay in the notes (if you are unsure what this means click on the Creative Commons link below)

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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

1. If you add in content to these notes – you must send me an updated version so they can be shared for everyone elses benefit. (this means you must freely consent your copyright to any changes/additions you make. If you don’t like this, don’t download the notes)
2. The Creative Commons footer must stay in the notes (if you are unsure what this means click on the Creative Commons link below)

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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

1. If you add in content to these notes – you must send me an updated version so they can be shared for everyone elses benefit. (this means you must freely consent your copyright to any changes/additions you make. If you don’t like this, don’t download the notes)
2. The Creative Commons footer must stay in the notes (if you are unsure what this means click on the Creative Commons link below)

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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

1. If you add in content to these notes – you must send me an updated version so they can be shared for everyone elses benefit. (this means you must freely consent your copyright to any changes/additions you make. If you don’t like this, don’t download the notes)
2. The Creative Commons footer must stay in the notes (if you are unsure what this means click on the Creative Commons link below)

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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

1. If you add in content to these notes – you must send me an updated version so they can be shared for everyone elses benefit. (this means you must freely consent your copyright to any changes/additions you make. If you don’t like this, don’t download the notes)
2. The Creative Commons footer must stay in the notes (if you are unsure what this means click on the Creative Commons link below)

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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

1. If you add in content to these notes – you must send me an updated version so they can be shared for everyone elses benefit. (this means you must freely consent your copyright to any changes/additions you make. If you don’t like this, don’t download the notes)
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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

1. If you add in content to these notes – you must send me an updated version so they can be shared for everyone elses benefit. (this means you must freely consent your copyright to any changes/additions you make. If you don’t like this, don’t download the notes)
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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

1. If you add in content to these notes – you must send me an updated version so they can be shared for everyone elses benefit. (this means you must freely consent your copyright to any changes/additions you make. If you don’t like this, don’t download the notes)
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I have decided to release my all my university notes online in *.docx format for all the world to use. The idea behind these notes is that people can get access to solid summaries and not have to stress out about typing them up. The biggest frustration that I have experienced in my Commerce, Masters of Business Law & Juris Doctor degrees is a lack of quality “soft copy” notes about a subject. Please take note of the copyright at the bottom of this page – the only two things I ask are:

1. If you add in content to these notes – you must send me an updated version so they can be shared for everyone elses benefit. (this means you must freely consent your copyright to any changes/additions you make. If you don’t like this, don’t download the notes)
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I do not usually navigate into politics – but after watching his latest speech – I am reminded of someone who I have not seen deliver such an inspirational speech since JFK or Martin Luther King. I know I’m from Australia, and my vote or opinion counts for nothing – but Barack is a very inspiring, encouraging and motivating man. Do the right thing America – if at the very least – do the right thing for the rest of the free world.

Some notable quotes:

Firstly:

It was a reminder to me, that ahh … boy life sure is short and you better … you better seize the moment. 

Secondly:

It is that fundamental belief, I am my brothers keeper, I am my sisters keeper – that makes this country work. There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is The United States of America.

Thirdly:

I am reminded every single day, that I am not a perfect man. I will not be a perfect president. But I can promise you this – I will always tell you what I think and where I stand. I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you when we disagree – and most importantly, I will open the doors of Government and ask you to be part of your own democracy again.

Without a doubt – it is my opinion that Barack Obama will bring the change that America, and indeed the world, needs.

Hi All,

I thought it would be a good time to post an article about the tough times ahead for start ups. Starting a business is never easy – let’s be honest. Starting a business in an economic crisis, when funding is non-existent and debt financing is almost impossible to secure – is arguably, just insane. So, the question I want to answer today is what is going to happen to start up companies and innovation – in general – over the next 12 – 24 months?

Well, here is my opinion on the situation.

Clearly, the economic crisis is going to be a real issue for all businesses, not just ones that are starting up and trying to get their products out into the world. Obviously, the difference is that established businesses already have revenue flows and are able to cut back on spending by reducing key sectors of their businesses which are “overweight”. That is, where spending has gone a little overboard and they are able to make significant cost reductions by simply cutting staff, slicing spending and so forth. Typically, this will start with marketing and communication departments and then be followed closely by human resource allocations – namely, people reductions. 

The key question is not to ask what is going to happen to existing businesses, but rather businesses that are yet to even open to the world and ones that are just starting out. During times of economic crisis, most start ups are required to run on an absolute shoe-string. This is not necessarily a bad thing – since it requires to the founders to more than ever focus on the bottom line and do everything in their power to keep the business running and get the product released. Decisions have to be made which are economically viable and which provide real value to the business – everything else has to go to the wall. There is no point focusing on sections of a product which are not going to deliver real value when it’s released – the focus has to be on sustainability and revenue growth. 

Evidently, businesses which require large start up capital to begin operations – such as biomedical and other medico companies – are going to find it extremely tough to innovate. Intellectual Property is the biggest ‘game changer’ for these type of companies and without it – global conglomerates can simply steal innovative products and reverse engineer them. Equivalently, companies starting out which don’t have real and sustainable business models are going to suffer as well. The times of ‘Facebook’ and ‘Youtube’ building products without any idea of how they are going to produce money are gone. These are, what I like to call, ‘boom-time’ companies that were created when money was flowing like water and capital was injected into these businesses with absolutely no worry in the world. The attitude of ‘we will figure it out later’ was uttered every time ‘business model’ was spoken.

Of course, on the flip side of all these arguments is that during periods of economic recession, businesses can really ’strut their stuff’. Innovation, in it’s purest form, is all about the creation something new. ‘New’ being a word that is very broad in it’s application and meaning. It’s clear that new and sustainable business models need to be the focus for emerging startup companies and a clear plan to profitiability needs to be the focus – without this, these startups will simply not survive. The days of ‘boom-time’ are gone, and so is the ideology of ‘we will figure it out later’.

One such business model that I really like is the the idea of a ‘fremium’ business and I am really certain this is where innovation will start. ‘Fremium’ is a basically the strategy whereby you offer a product for free, and then charge for extra premium features. The key to this business model is, of course, that what you are offering for ‘free’ – people actually want. If the ‘free’ part of a product sucks, then there is certainly not going to be any ‘premium’. Get the free part nailed, and then offer some really cool extensions that you can charge people for and that they will want to pay for. If you can do this, then you will really start generating some solid revenue which can keep things running.

Another really cool model that I think start up businesses need to utilise – is the model of ‘high volume, low cost’. That is, the idea that you produce a really cool product and charge almost nothing for it. If the product is really great and people can relate to it – then the psychologically behind charging $1 – $5 dollars is really easily to put to consumers. If you can get 2,000 to 5,000 people a month at say $1 – then you are generating some real revenue that can start paying off bills and easing the cost burden to the overall business structure. I think that starting with a model such as this, and then adding the ‘fremium component’ over-the-top is really something that I hope businesses can integrate. Not every business needs to be “completely free”. I don’t believe that all consumers take this ideology on the web, or offline, nowdays that ‘everything has to be free’. Of course if you are offering a great service – people should pay for it.

Further to this, if you are offering a service that people are paying for – don’t include advertising. This may sound like Business 101 – but I have seen it and it sucks. You need to balance out advertising integration carefully. If you are going to integrate advertising as a revenue source into the ‘free’ part of your product, make sure that it fits with what you are doing so that people don’t get pissed off by it. To me – in your face advertising screams ‘click me, click me’ and ruins the products feel. Remember – if you piss people off, they won’t use the free part – which means they definitively won’t use the premium part either.

So to conclude, do I think startups are going to suffer during the next 12 – 24 months? Absolutely they will, no question about it. However, do I think that innovation is going to suffer ? No, I don’t think it will. Humans are naturally thinkers, and with so many problems existing in the world today – solutions have to be created. Sure, funding is tight and therefore products that would have previously existed without the need for a real business model will suffer – but this will allow for other people to produce the same product with a viable business model – and so the cycle starts again. While the enteprenurial spirit continues regardless of the economy – there is no question that it needs to be aware of it.

If you are starting a company and have just read this – don’t give up hope or become distressed. Manage your money, manage your team and cut back. Startup Business life was never meant to be easy. Grab a pen and a peice of paper, and start thinking of features and extensions that you can add onto your product which will deliver real value instead of focusing on ‘extra’s’ that aren’t going to deliver revenue, but are going to increase the number of product users. They real challenge is just to survive through the economic crisis no matter what. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be better off and a more prudent business person for it.

Best of Luck to Everyone : )

Hi All,

Recently, I have been playing around with some code from the Olson Time Zone Database and OpenID. The biggest problem I have found is that the Olson Time Zone Database doesn’t provide a Windows Standard Format Conversion in their database – so I set about doing this myself. I am by no means guaranteeing that this is 100% perfect – hence the reason I am releasing it on the web for all to assist in improving it. Basically, it converts the Olson Time Zone Database to the Windows Standard Format Time Zone for easy use with OpenID and websites. The *.xlsx and *.xls are available by clicking on each.

Olson-to-Windows.xlsx – Here (73KB)
Olson-to-Windows.xls – Here (192KB)

It’s taken a bit of Time (*pardon the pun*) – but I have come up with a pretty complete offering that I am publishing under an ISC Licence.

The detail of such a license are available in the file and below. Basically, your free to do with it as you want – although I would hope that any modifications, improvements and the like you make – you can send back to me so I can update this post for the benefit of everyone else.

Copyright (c) 2008-2078(s), Tim Davis, tim (at) timdavis.com.au – ISC Licence

Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any
purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

If you’re building a website, webservice or anything to do with the web (or indeed coding in general) – I give you this piece of advice:

“It’s in the implementation that makes a site popular. Not what existed previously. – Tim Davis, June 2008″

Think about this and all the services that have existed, that still exist and that have become popular while other services are still around.

Begs the question -

Are there really truly any new ideas or services, or just new and better implementations of old ones?

Leave a comment below.

There has been so much coverage in the Media regarding Location Based Services (LBS) and how they are the way of the future. While I tend to agree with the vast majority of what’s being said out there at the moment – I thought I would do a bit of exploration around how location based services are NOT going to be the way of the future. Or more so, how they are not going to be as big as what we all think they are going to be and perhaps why we shouldn’t rely on them in their entirety.

The main negative arguments that have been presented in all my readings about location based services is predominately focused around some research which was conducted in the UK by Dr William Webb from telecoms regulator OfCom. He discovered that of the 100,000 people tracked in his research – almost all of them had similar, if not identical, movement patterns day in, day out. This basically means that people don’t really change all that much – we move to work, using the same route that we use every day. We stay at work the majority of the day and then we go home. We don’t really explore other avenues of getting to and from work because it nonsensical to assume that we haven’t already mapped out the best way to get there already – so any sort of mobile location based service is not going to change our already proven best method. Additionally, lets say that it did find out a better route, we would then use that route everyday and not change from this newly discovered one again for some time. What’s interesting is that the research found that children and teenagers are much the same – they go to school using the same route every day and they spend the vast majority of their day at school. They then go home using the same route they took to school, and while they might deviate a little here and there to pick up food or go to a friend’s house – the overwhelming majority of their movement is within a 5KM to 10KM radius of their home and school.

So what does all this mean? Well, what seems to be the biggest trend in all this research is human consistency. People realistically don’t deviate from their typical everyday lives all that much. If you wrote down where you travelled day in and day out – you would discover that realistically you don’t really move more than a 10KM radius from your work or your home. When you are at work you might travel around a little or you remain stationary in the one place all day – when you are at home you go to the shops around your house, and commute to restaurants and use services within this limited area. Sure there will always be exceptions to this rule – so it’s not a blanket generalization, but what it is – is what the vast majority of people do. This also rings true for any interactions you have with your friends and colleagues. Most of the friends that you have, you have grown up with or you work with – and really you already know where they are located. Sure thing, you don’t know where they are located all the time but this then begs the question – do you really want to know? I have read arguments for and against this point and obviously the biggest factor in all of this has to do with privacy – perhaps something that deserves an entirely separate post in itself later.

So lets dig a little deeper – with the birth of ‘super’ smart phones (aka iPhone 3G) where you can be “always on” and your friends can interact with your every second of the day – how much will people really rely on location based services. I think it’s a moot point – I for one go to work each day and discover that only during the limited 1 hour I have for lunch would I look to see where my friends are located around my work. If they were within a close area of me, I would definitively give them a call or a message to hook up for lunch (of note is that I may already know they work close to me and so I don’t need to know this). Sure thing on a Friday night or around the weekend I would definitively use location based services more to find out what my friends are doing – but only if I could be bothered hooking up with them. If I didn’t want to go out – it’s pretty obvious that I should be able to “turn myself off” – which I think most location developers are on top of (or should be otherwise their service is going to have real privacy issues).

So where does that leave us? Well realistically the point that comes out in all these articles and all of research around location based services is that people don’t really change all that much. They go to the same places day in and day out, and the intrinsic similarity in their movement patterns suggests that they don’t like change. Most people develop an affinity for the same coffee shop, super market, clothes stores and so on. If you find something that you like at one location, you won’t often change to another location but rather revisit that same location over and over again. So realistically, location based services are pretty useless when it comes to trying to get you to change – because the vast majority of research has found that people resent change. Have a think about this – if you love your local coffee shop just around the corner and within walking distance of your home, and then someone came and told you “No, no you have to try this cafe, it’s the best coffee in the world but it’s not a walk down the street, you have to drive” – what would you do? 95% of people couldn’t be bothered to try the new coffee shop until they were in that area and it was convenient to them. I love the coffee down at my local cafe, and there is no way I would drive to another cafe just to get coffee which is better but requires me to get in my car, dodge traffic, park, get out of the car, wait for the coffee, get back in my car, dodge traffic and return home. The stress alone of that exercise is enough to make it not worthwhile. It has to be truly value adding for you to want to go through this, and like most things in life – if it’s not going to be an ‘amazing experience’, rather just a ‘good one’ – then you will not find yourself doing it. I can see some of you at the moment going “if the coffee was really unbelievable I would do it” – and maybe your thoughts really do have some merit to them, but I think in the vast majority of cases people rely on the age old adage “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”.

So in conclusion however, and I say this as a big however – I think where location based services will come out on top is by letting you know what you friends and colleagues are doing at any given time. Sure thing, the argument that people don’t move far from their location is a valid one (and clearly proven) – but this doesn’t mean to say that location based services are entirely useless. A 10KM radius is still a huge area, and many people will want to know what their family, friends and colleagues are doing. Being able to have the choice of discovering new places and new friends with location based services is an offering that has previously never been accessible to the masses before – so perhaps people’s movements and consistency patterns may change. While it’s undoubtedly true that the majority of people are resistant to change – location based services will assist in allowing people to communicate with the people they want too, and ignore the ones they don’t want to deal with. It’s all about choice – if location based services can provide people with more choice than they already have in their lives – then it opens up a whole range of avenues that have never previously existed. Something I think, which is ultimately very very exciting.

Thoughts? Drop a comment below.

Location Based Technologies

I have often wondered whether people really understand Location Based Services (LBS) technology and whether they would like a bit more insight into how exactly location based services work, and more importantly – what information is actually passed from your phone to a server in order to establish your exact location co-ordinates. Most of the time, the accuracy of your co-ordinates is entirely correlated to the accuracy of the method being used to determine your location – such that some methods use mathematical approximations to determine your location, and others use global positioning data bounced from satellites to gain a more accurate understanding of your position. Of course, some use a combination of both. All of the methods I will explain below do, very much, depend on your surroundings as well. Obviously, if you are surrounded by iron sheeting 100 meters underneath the ground – your location will be pretty hard to determine. Conversely, if you are standing next to a mobile phone tower and can see 5 other towers and have a clear vision of the sky – your position is going to be very accurate.

I will make special mention now that all this information is entirely understood by industry professionals, so nothing that I am going to detail here is “secret” or contains some sort of “special sauce” which I know that other people don’t. The idea of this post is to give people out there, who don’t know really anything about Location Based Services (LBS), a better understanding of the technologies which are utilized in a non-technical format.

Parameters on your Phone

Before I dive into an explanation about what types of location based technologies are actually out there – a good place to start is what information actually sits on your mobile phone which allows location based services to actually work.

A typical mobile phone contains a whole bunch of communication information which tells the mobile phone what network operator your mobile phone is connected with, and how to optimize your mobile signal in order to ascertain the best signal strength. You can usually access all this information by typing in a special character combination on your mobile phone which will take you to the engineering information screen. Most of you out there won’t really be all that interested in checking this stuff out because it’s a whole bunch of numbers that aren’t going to make sense – but for those that want too, just search the internet for your handset model and the unique engineering unlock code. It’s usually pretty easy to find.

So what information is available?

The information displayed on your phone varies from handset to handset, and I do not recommend that you meddle with it. Sure thing you can view it, but do not attempt to change predefined settings on your mobile phone or you might render it useless. While I could go through all the information listed, I am only going to focus on the location information that is really used as it’s most relevant to this post. It’s below as follows:

• AcsClas – Access priority class (not supported if 0000)
• MSTxPwr – Maximum allows transmit power in dBm
• MCC – Mobile Country Code
• MNC – Mobile Network Code.
• LAC – Location Area Code
• Cell ID or CID – Base Station Identity
• Radio Frequency (RF) Signal– The relevant signal strength between your current tower and the adjacent one
• Hopping – Whether any frequency hopping is in operation
• DTX – Whether Discontinuous Transmission is in operation

So what does all this stuff mean ? Basically, all this information informs your network of where you are at any one time. This is done by your network operator knowing the relevant latitude and longitude of all relevant base stations – or mobile phone towers –  in your country and correlating this information with the information shown above to determine your approximate position (this is called ‘network driven location approximation’).

For example, typically the process goes like this for signal strength or time based location identification:

1. Identification of your MCC & MNC occurs which recognizes the relevant country and network operator you are in/with.
2. Identification of the relevant LAC, or your location area code, to determine the approximate regional area you are in.
3. Identification of your Cell ID or CID – the relevant cell or mobile tower that your mobile is connected too.
4. The combination of your RF, Hopping and DTX allows both your network operator and your mobile phone to ascertain which signal is the stronger, and thereby determine a priority of mobile base stations (Cell IDs) with which your mobile should be connected. This can be done through signal strength and timing responses of your phone with the relevant cell tower.
5. Because your network operator has a database of relevant latitude and longitudes of all Cell IDs, or mobile base stations, they are then able to approximate your position using “triangulation” or “quadrangulation” techniques.
6. These techniques typically use a complex mathematical method of determining your location, which really relies on the good old Pythagoras theorem you were taught in school. For triangulation, this is then combined with a calculation to determine the barycenter of the mobile base tower ‘triangle’ (determined by the strongest three base stations) to determine your approximate position. (I’m not going to go into quadrangulation but you get the gist!)

It’s important to realize that what I have just detailed is a really simplistic overview of a network method of location identification – in real life it’s quite complex. Additionally, the method illustrated above is really just for network identification using signal strength or timing based calculations. There are, of course, many other methods, as well as hybrid combination’s of these technologies which is all detailed in the next section.

Location Based Service Position Technologies

OK, so we have briefly covered what’s available in your mobile phone as well as how your mobile and network operators use this information. Now let’s cover what technologies are out there, the pro’s-and-con’s of each and an overall conclusion.

Here is a table that covers the main types of location technologies out there:

Summary of the Table

GPS

Global Positioning Systems are basically a series of 24 (now 32 as of March 2008) Medium Earth Orbit Satellites (around 12,500 miles above the earth) which transmit exact microwave signals that allow GPS receivers to determine their exact location, speed, direction and time. A GPS receiver calculates your position by timing the signals sent by the GPS Satellites to your current location on Earth, and the receiver uses the arrival time of each signal to measure the distance to each satellite. Trialateration (triangulation) is used to determine the device’s location given the number of signals received from each relative satellite, and this information is then decoded into useful formats such as latitude and longitude. Typically, latitude, longitude, time and altitude are the 4 data sets that need to be interpreted – with the position time being relative to the GPS information and signal quality. This is why you need a clear ‘line of site’ with the sky in order for GPS to really work effectively because the receiver must have constant signal connection with a least 3 satellites in order to accurately determine your position.

Assisted GPS or A-GPS

This type of technology has garnered a whole bunch of attention recently because A-GPS is what is contained in the new iPhone 3G. Assisted GPS is basically an improvement on GPS because it combines the information received from satellites, with the information from your local base station. As explained previously, your mobile phone is connected to a relative base station or wireless network at any particular point during the day. Assisted GPS basically takes the known location of this base station and combines it with the information gathered from the GPS chip to improve the relative speed of locating your exact position. If your GPS chip is able to already have an approximate idea of where it is located on the planet, then it is able to look specifically for satellites in the region where you are located, instead of scanning for random signals and interpreting them. By using available network information, your GPS chip can more easily narrow its vision to search for signals in your current country and region. This basically reduces the time to fix your location because the data being collected improves the quality of the GPS receiver.

The biggest issue with Assisted GPS is of course, its reliance on the network operator to provide network data to the GPS chip. As indicated, for A-GPS to work, it requires the network operator to provide some information about the Cell ID in order to ascertain the relative, or approximate, latitude and longitude of the device. Alternatively, this information can be provided by WiFi network connections assuming they have position information contained in them, and WiFi is supported by the device.

Cell ID (or Base Station)/ WiFi Databases

Mobile devices must always have a relative wireless access point (for Wifi devices) or base station in order to determine the location of the device. The simplest example of location identification using this method is when you see your neighborhood or suburb name on the main screen of your phone. Your Cell ID or WAP point is transmitted to your network operator who is able to determine where you are located generally.

More recently, third party databases are being gathered in order to take away the potential monopoly that network operators have around this information. Google, for example, has been gathering this information by getting GPS users to download their mapping applications onto their phones, and then pairing your current GPS co-ordinates with your network information to map out every wireless access point and base station available. They do this by matching the signal strength and timing information, with the relevant MCC, MNC and Cell ID your mobile phone is connected with, and matching this up with your current latitude and longitude information passed from your GPS receiver – all this information in then bundled up and passed to the Google servers. This allows them to generate an approximate estimation of where exactly the base station is located and subsequently triangulating your location. No doubt, they also combine this with information contained in the current map tile you were viewing on the Google mapping application. All this information allows them to have a very extensive, and a very valuable location database. Of course, there are other companies doing the same thing in order to resell this information. SkyHook is a company which is basically hiring people to drive around in cars in all sorts of cities around the world to gather Wifi access point information and then resell this to developers who want location information. It’s really a combination of these methods which is going to provide the best location information moving forward.

WiFi databases basically take advantage of relevant Service Set Identifier (SSID) and Media Access Control (MAC) addresses of access points constantly. When you hook up your wireless router at home for example, you will notice the relevant SSID and MAC addresses when connecting to your wireless network. The MAC address is basically the unique device identifier which can be used to roughly identify where the receiving signal is coming from. As you would know from your home laptop or mobile device -most WiFi signals can only really extend a maximum distance of 50m-200m and so the position information from WiFi stations can be quite useful for easily determining your location. The obvious disadvantage is that you need to know hundreds of access points in order to make up a meaningful and worthwhile location database.

Signal Strength Triangulation

The example I provided in the mobile engineering information section above really explains how this process works. Basically, by leveraging the relative radio frequency (RF) of the signal strengths in the device and incorporating the base station information, a position is able to be determined. As explained previously, the complexity of the mathematics behind determining your location is really dependent on the quality of the data in the database. RF fingerprinting really looks at relative signal strengths of the base stations that the device is connected too, and prioritizes them in order to get the three strongest signals (triangulation). Basically, it then calculates the propagation of the RF signals and uses this to estimate your position relative to the latitude and longitude of the base stations. This type of method has been the most commonly used method of location identification because GPS and A-GPS chips are not widely available in mobile phones yet – although this is rapidly changing.

Time-Based Triangulation

Again, the example I provided at the beginning explains how this works broadly. The slight difference time-based triangulation has to signal strength triangulation, is that it looks at the relevant signal timing information from the network in order to ascertain your relative position to nearby base stations. Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) and Advanced Forward link Triangulation (AFLT) are the most common methods of location determination under time-based identification. The biggest difference between the two methods (TDOA v AFLT) is where the timing difference is measured – either in the device itself or in the network. TDOA is the more complex method and makes it impossible for third party vendors to use this it because the calculation is done inside the network. This makes TDOA a “LBS network operator monopoly” method. The AFLT method is a CDMA method and uses CDMA as opposed to the more common GSM to make the position known. The other method which is worth a mention is the Enhanced Cell-ID method which incorporates both signal strength and timing data received from GSM signals in order calculate an in-network position. Again, this is a difficult method to commercialize because of the network operator reliance on calculating the timing of the signal. Network triangulation is really around 50m-500m in accuracy.

Conclusion

I could continue writing all day about which method is better, which has a better timing-to-fix and which is the best fall back option – but it seems this post has already gone on long enough. Obviously, there are a whole bunch of factors that I haven’t mentioned such as hardware reliance, chip quality, battery and CPU drain and other general aspects of wireless and mobile devices that must be taken into consideration. I haven’t gone into these areas predominately because they are factors that need to be considered by developers only and not by the people who just want to understand location based services and technology generally. I will mention, however, which is the LBS method is the best.

None of them : P

The reason for this is because it’s combination of all of them which makes LBS useful. When it is apparent that one method is clearly working really well, and another is not, then this is the most suitable method to be used – it’s that simple. The real key is to have a number of methods available in your device so that the best method is always utilized at the right occasion. This is why in some respect that A-GPS is one of the best LBS techniques -although it’s not all that common at the moment in mobile phones – because you get the best of both worlds by having GPS and Network Information determining your location at any one time. With that said, as I stated at the start, the strengths and weaknesses of each technique always come down to the environment you are located in, and the current conditions within this environment.

Either way, all in all – I hope this helps any confusion you’ve had!

Feel Free to Contact Me at any time with your questions.

I modified this famous George Allen quote:

“Try not to do too many things at once. Know what you want, the number one thing today and tomorrow. Persevere and get it done.”

to my own version:

“Try not to do too many things at once. Know what you want, the number one thing today and tomorrow. Persevere and get it done above all else. Otherwise, who knows, if you wait – you may never know what could have been.”

Cool huh?

A concept in the software industry which is often heavily debated is that there are, in fact, no new ideas – rather just products created off existing ideas, which are done – to put it simply – much better. A perfect example would be the social networking phenomenon. There are now so many different social networking sites that they are almost impossible to track. Thus, it begs a very valid question – what is truly different about each of these sites ? The obvious truth is – there isn’t really anything different. Most of these sites are ultimately exactly the same – they are just presented in a different format and appeal to different niche audiences. For example, Myspace is still extremely well known for its Music and Bands – an area Facebook is trying to get into – but just can’t crack. Conversely, Facebook is getting huge adoption rates simply because it has marketed itself as a “safer” site than Myspace, and tends to be predominately used by late teenagers through to late twenty-somethings.

So then you may be asking – why bother creating any new products at all if they are all just going to repeat themselves ? Well, the reasoning behind that is clear – the innovative process always comes from building a product and then changing, altering or narrowing your focus on that product to area’s which appear to be working. Thus, in my opinion, the best way to create a product is to look at what an existing product has – and what it doesn’t have. For example, there are hundreds of companies now producing many very successful applications off social networking sites because they are trying to fill the voids that the site itself has – a very clever strategy. The key is to get a core idea, and build on this idea with a bunch of features that a user will want to use – as opposed to being forced into using. Forcing a user into a product isn’t going to get you anywhere – additionally – attempting to force a user to change from one product to another by producing a bunch of similar features isn’t going to help either. If you were going to do that – just build a clone of Facebook and you should be worth a few billion in a couple of years ? Unlikely.

The key to any application is to centralize your idea around a core concept – then flesh out features from this core concept. You can’t do everything – so focus instead, on things that work and that you truly believe are going to be value adding to your core idea and to your users. Therefore, the most important aspect in any new product chain, in my opinion, is to focus on the core idea – but also accept that you may need to change it in response to what your market – and more importantly – what your users are demanding. It’s important to recognize that if things aren’t working out the way you originally intended them to work, then you need to change your strategy to maximize the value of your brand as well as change what your doing in response to market demands, user requests and what people expect to see from what you are doing.

So if you are going into the start-up world – start with a pen and a piece of paper and write down a whole bunch of features that existing sites/products have, and then correlate these features to a whole bunch of features which are missing. Somewhere during this process – you will hit on a core idea and you may even be ultimately successful with this idea without having to change. However, before you jump out of your chair and start writing – the best piece of advice I can give is that you must recognize and be willing to completely change where you have started, or where you thought you were going if an opportunity presents itself. It’s important to be flexible and dynamic with your code to ensure you can make these changes, otherwise you may trap yourself into one direction and then you may not be able to get out of it. Keep the cash burn rate low, so you have the single most important factor on your side – time.

Love to hear your thoughts ? Drop a comment below.

I generally love Google and I think they have created some of the best services that the web has to offer. I am an avid user of Gmail and obviously use their service engine about 100 times a day to research and expand my knowledge. However, I have a one big issue with Google and with their world-famous “PageRank” algorithm. To put it simply, it has a flaw. Before you call me an idiot or laugh at me – “How can you call the worlds largest & arguably most successful internet search engine flawed?” – well, let me explain.

The problem I have with the Google PageRank algorithm is the manner in which the content is ranked on the engine itself. Let’s say you are a massive website and have a large pagerank – predominately derived from the number of incoming and outgoing links you have on your site – and you write a story on a topic. Your post is immediately ranked at the top of search results – even if the post is inaccurate or written without full knowledge simply because of the existing pagerank your site has derived. This means that when a user is searching for content relating to a particular topic, or searching for information about a particular company – your post ranks at the top of the Google results based on your sites existing pagerank – regardless of whether it is accurate or not. Is this fair ?

Of course it’s not fair, and it provides sites that have a lot of traffic with an enormous amount of power. It means that any site with a high pagerank can effectively write an unbiased and overtly critical review of a topic, company or situation and it will receive preferential treatment within the Google search engine based solely on the bias of the existing pagerank of the site. The consequential problem then lies in the fact that Google is then not “organising the worlds information” correctly because there is no way that humans can “demote” the post in Googles search results or let them know it’s wrong, inaccurate or poorly researched. In my opinion, I believe this is a critical flaw of Google search ideology and one that needs fixing or solving. The question is – how can it be done ?

Well obviously, the most effective way is by utilizing the power of human search to some degree. Companies such as Mahalo allow users to influence the results of their search to an “n th” degree, and therefore efficiently judge the relevancy of content which is delivered within a search. Sure, there are going to be people that disagree with the contents relevancy etc – but the majority of people will always rule. (Before you start on about “automated influences” - it is becoming increasingly more difficult to register, login, vote repeatedly and then logout without being detected as a “robotic” influence on these results.) So why is this human intervention or “voting” good ? Well it would assist in solving the biggest problem (in my opinion) that Google faces in respect of content which is heavily influenced by PageRank. Just because a website has a high pagerank – its posts should not always be assigned immediately with a high page rank solely based on the overall pagerank of the site itself. The post must “earn” (to some degree) the equivalent pagerank via other websites commenting on the post, and determining whether the post is subjectively fair and/or correct.

It is clear that there is no way Google can efficiently determine the relevancy of content or whether a post is subjectively fair and/or correct – and yes, I mean the content specifically. Sure, Google can determine the relevancy of a website and the popularity of that site perfectly by looking at the number of inbound and outbound links – but it is limited in determining whether a specific article is accurately and/or fairly written. It assigns the initial pagerank of the site itself, and then effectively keeps the post at this pagerank – regardless of other websites linking and writing about the validity of the post. Put simply, Google have yet to develop a method – without human intervention – to specifically determine whether an article is “accurate or fairly written”.

The only way to interpret this is to automatically string together the words that appear on not only the initial article/topic page, but on all other websites which link and have written about the original post. If Google could dynamically determine the “mood” of a post such that they are able to identify words like “agree, good write up etc” or “disagree, got it wrong, inaccurate” on all sites linking to and from the original post, and weigh these words in assigning the overall ranking to the page – then they would be able to more effectively determine the relevancy of not only the website and the post – but also of the “content within the post”.

I think if Google can solve this problem mathematically (or not), then it will be a key step in ensuring they remain the dominant search engine. Of course humans can judge this quickly and easily and Google have tested incorporating human search in their Labs page – although they have since removed this experiment. Either way – I really believe it’s something that needs to be considered and resolved.

Leave a note in the comments with your thoughts. Do you agree with me or ?

It’s really interesting being involved in a startup that hopes to change people’s lives. The most fascinating thing I find about technology is its application to human life, and whether it changes it. You know something is highly disruptive when it actually changes the way that people act, or the way they do something or even the way they will do something in the future.

If you look at the most successful technology companies on the planet – they all have changed human life in such a huge way. Take Google for example, before it was created, people would never have been able to find information as quickly as they can now. In creating any technology company, you want the technology you are producing to actually have a meaningful and positive impact on people’s lives – not simply be used as a way to generate income. Income and profit are typically by-products of a successful idea that has had real impact on human life. As much as people despise Microsoft, you could quite successfully argue that it was Microsoft which pioneered software and built huge in-roads into making programming ‘popular’. Put aside all the negative aspects of the company such as monopolistic and closed source behaviour – would Sergy Brin and Larry Page created Google or even been interested in programming if it wasn’t for companies such as Microsoft? I’m not entirely sure the outcome would have been the same.

Drop a Comment Below.

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It’s always difficult to write the very first post on your new blog. I haven’t been blogging for what some consider a “long time” but I have started nevertheless. As they say “The Journey of 1000 Miles begins with the First Step” and I guess I have just taken it.

I’m not entirely sure what I endeavor to achieve with this blog – I think mainly I started it so that people could get to know me better outside of Fluc and learn about all the other things I do. This blog is by no means a personal diary, and I do not intend for it to be. It’s rather just a place that I can write about some of the funny things I find on the internet, and touch on some of my experiences on the long and hard road as an entrepreneur.

While I am definitely not an ‘experienced campaigner’ in comparison to some of the seasoned veterans in the start-up industry, I am at least having a go and dabbling it in now with Fluc. I have this great book on all the speeches that changed the world, and one that Theodore Roosevelt said is probably particularly relevant now:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

I guess you could relate it to Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Poem from 1850:

“I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”

Either way, the point is that you have to take a few risks in your life and Fluc is one of mine. I think it’s also because I am the sort of person that needs to be consistently doing something, and I find it difficult to be bored. If I’m not in the books studying, then I’m either working to get more capital for Fluc, or I am working on Fluc – so by the time you add up all these hours into one day, you really get up to the 15 hour plus mark as an average.

It’s funny (as an aside) because I really love surfing and genuine beach life in Australia, and I used to try and get down to the beach most weekends in summer. It’s around 2 hours drive from where I live in Melbourne and I haven’t had any time at all to get even near the beach since Ruslan and I started Fluc. Summer is just around the corner for us Aussies, and day-light savings starts next week (28th Oct 2007). Typically, this really doesn’t mean much for me as I tend to work from 6pm till 4am as opposed to vice-versa. I mainly do this because there are fewer distractions when you are working away at night, in comparison to the daytime – notably the phone.

Either way I am going to finish up this first post now. I honestly have no idea how many people will end up reading this blog – and to me it doesn’t really matter – as at least I’ll have something to look back on in the future and laugh.