Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot

Image details: Festival of the Winds served by picapp.com

I think I quite like brightkite. It has a clean interface and seems to be “smoother” than other micro-blogging platforms. The one thing it doesn’t seem to have for me is any sort of momentum. There are too few people I know on it and because of that reason, I don’t really pop in that often. Because I don’t pop in often, I don’t have many friends .. do you see where I’m going with this.

One thing I love is the geo-location facilities built into it, which is a feature which is bound to increase in popularity, partly because it’s real information and partly because people are just nosy. What are your thoughts on brightkite?

If you’re on brightkite: here’s my brightkite profile. If not, drop me a comment and I’ll send you an invitation

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Image details: Questions served by picapp.com

I’ve just noticed that AskOwen has hit a total of 100 posts. I’m pretty pleased with how it’s going, especially as it hit an all-time high of 600 page views this week after Scoble commented on one of the posts on FriendFeed. Here are the posts that went up these last few days:

• How do I upgrade my WordPress blog with Fantastico?
• How can I get a Gmail user’s Full Name?
• Is there a market for “trial-run” websites?
• How can I receive faxes for free?
• How can I protect my blog from getting hacked?

That last one was the one that got me lots of traffic. Worth a read if you use WordPress as your blogging platform. Check them out

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Image details: Last-Minute Tax Filers Rush To Finish Returns served by picapp.com

Ever wondered if you should be using Outlook or Gmail? Well, Lifehacker have put together a great write-up comparing features between the two ways of approaching email. Now, strictly speaking, the two mechanisms are totally different beasts, with Outlook designed for the corporate market, while Gmail being focused on the masses. However, it’s good to see the strengths and weaknesses of each.

One thing worth noting is that features from different packages tend to migrate to each other as the products evolve. It will be interesting to see how the products develop in the future

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Recently the Isle of Man has joined the rest of the UK in banning smoking in public places, which means no smoking in pubs, no smoking in offices, not even in cars. Pubs and cigarette vendors aren’t overjoyed as you can imagine, but the interesting thing about this is that a secondary market in no-smoking signs and advertising on cigarette receptacles. The great thing about things like no-smoking signs though, is that you can always pick up a good deal online.

I had a look at a website called The Safety Shop for example, where you can get safety signs and other signs. They can even make custom signs for you if you need. Interestingly they have a great offer on No Smoking Signs, buy 1, get 4 free!

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Just picked up a post on Dan Karran’s blog that Google Maps is now showing street detail for the Isle of Man. It’s interesting how now there’s a whole selection of places starting to show this detail, including Cloudmade which is an interesting offering who source their data from OpenStreetMap.

I do like keeping my eye on the mapping scene, especially as I know the people involved with MannGIS, the government GIS initiative here in the Isle of Man. It’s always a good idea to see what other people are doing as it helps seed new idea for projects I’m working on and suggest cooperation that can increase value. Mapping is also one of those things I’m interested in just because of the usefulness that technology can provide in this space.

Image details: Globes Floating Against Red and Purple Sky served by picapp.com

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Image details: Lunch on Kitchen Counter served by picapp.com

Great lunch today. I have lunch on a Friday with an interesting bunch of people. It’s a varied group that has been having lunch every Friday for a couple of years now. Different people come in from time to time and different people leave. It really got me thinking about how social groups form and dissolve over time. I’m sure there’s been quite a bit written about it, probably in sociology or psychology forums, but it’s all fresh and new to me.

Who knows, maybe I might apply myself to social interactions and their impact on organisations. But first, I need to get back the results from my final MBA exams …

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I’ve just signed up for a new service called PicApp that give your images you can embed in your blog posts. So, here’s a test to see how they work:

Image details: Yellow Tulips served by picapp.com

And here’s another one:

Image details: Thinkstock single image collection served by picapp.com

Cute huh?

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Just got back from the IOM Social Media Club’s first meeting. Around 12 people came, including Leo, Sherrilynne and Jamie for the first meeting. Interesting mix of people too, from people working for mortgage lenders all the way to retired folk. We had some pretty interesting discussions about the state of social media today, different social networks and emerging technologies. It wasn’t purely a technical forum though, but also included some debate around how people use these networks and how corporates were getting more involved in social media.

Some photos:

Next one is on the 21st of August. Coming?

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A few months ago I posted that I had almost hit 80,000 spam comments on this blog. As you can imagine, I like reading about Viagra, diet pills and nude celebrities as much as the next man. And seeing the number was climbing at a rate of a few hundred a day, I looked for a better solution.

Enter Bad Behavior. Bad Behavior (shouldn’t that be Behaviour) is an anti-spam plugin that looks at the requests your website gets and block spam bots from even seeing your site. It’s actually pretty clever and quite comprehensive. For example, if a request hits your website that claims it’s GoogleBot (Google’s way of indexing your website), the plugin checks the IP that the request is coming from, and if it’s not coming from Google, it blocks it. And so on and so forth, it checks every request to make sure it’s legitimate. Once I installed it, spam dropped to a couple a day and it’s been holding there ever since.

So, my final word on spam on WordPress: A combination of Akismet and Bad Behavior is the best solution I’ve used so far!

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I’m going to lunch this Thursday with the Isle of Man Social Media Club. Well, it’s the first time the meeting is happening, so I’m not sure how many people are going to turn up, but it should be fun finding out. Just to make sure you all know about it:

Here’s the plan. Let’s all meet on the Third Thursday in July (the 17th) 12.30 -14.00 at Paparazzi in Douglas for some lunch. We can see how much interest there is forming a social media group, discuss potential speakers and subjects for future meetings and just generally get to know each other.

Everyone with any interest in blogging, social networks, online marketing etc is invited to come along. Let me know if you can come, so I can book ahead. General feedback and ideas for discussion are all welcome too! I can’t wait to meet you.

See you there, just leave your Bugaboo stroller at the door.

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Was just looking through some emails and I see that RapidSwitch have a new data centre in Berkshire. Here’s the complete press release:

RapidSwitch, a leading supplier of dedicated servers and one of the fastest growing hosting companies in the UK, is building a new data centre with a 20,000 server capacity, to meet growing customer demand.

Fit out work on the new site has commenced, and it will be ready for service in early 2009. The new site is near Maidenhead in Berkshire, close to the existing RapidSwitch Hosting Centre, enabling direct connectivity between the two sites at multiple 10 gigabit speeds. There is also diverse connectivity from the new site to London, again at multiple 10 gigabit speeds. The data centre is 600 racks in size, which will give a total capacity of 20,000 servers.

It’s always a good sign when a company adds a data centre. It’s a sign of increased growth and confidence in the market. It’s good news, both for RapidSwitch and all their RapidSwitch Dedicated Servers customers. RapidSwitch are interesting in that they are purely focused on the upper end of the hosting market, namely dedicated servers and co-location. Their dedicated servers start at £39 a month, which is a pretty good price if that’s what you’re after.

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It seems like everyone and his dog is after the new 3G iPhone today. Here are a few snippets of information from my feeds at the moment:

• The App Store: Day One - A synopsis what’s selling on the iPhone store and some interpretation of the numbers.
• New iPhone goes on sale - The Guardian talks about the iPhone going on sale here in the UK which they are expecting to sell out relatively quickly.
• iPhone gets dissected - What’s the first thing these guys did when they got their new iPhone? Call their mum? Book Lasik eye surgery? Nope. They took it apart!
• iPhone OS 2.0 Unlocked - Yup, the software that comes with the brand spanking new iPhone has already been cracked wide open.

To answer your question, nope, I’m not planning on getting one, but it is quite amusing to see the frenzy that Apple has managed to whip up for their shiny new toy. One day .. maybe one day.

And for all you WordPress users out there .. keep an eye out for the new WordPress App for iPhone.

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I came across an interesting Social Network today, aimed at people wanting to get the latest new from the Pop world. It’s called PopBandit, and it’s aimed at people wanting to keep updated about any new articles, products or events around anything you care about.

I haven’t created a pop bandit account yet, I’m already on too many social networks, but some of you may find it of interest. For example, if you’re into The Killer, you can find a “PopPage” here. Each PopPage contains details about the artist, as well we PopBytes which are little snippets containing events, news, products or anything of interest around the artist. If you see something you’re interested in, all you have to do is click “Track This” and you’ll be notified as soon as there’s something new related to that item. To do this, first you need to create a Pop Bandit account, and supply all your details.

It’s sort of like having your own “agent” who can go out there and scout the Internet for you, which is a great idea if you don’t have the time to visit all the news and fan sites every day. For example, if you wanted to know the minute an artist you’re interested in releases a new album, PopBandit is the way to go. Likewise, if you’re after Movie Recommendations for films with your favoutire actors. If you have the time, check it out!

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I’ve been asked by a couple of people in the past whether I had a Donation page on this website. It’s usually people using my WordPress plugins who ask this question, but I’ve had the occasional person who I’ve helped with something or other. Now, I’ve never really asked anyone for cash, as I’m a sincere believer that any contributions to an Open Source platform should also be Open Source, and I’m also perfectly happy to help someone if I’m learning something out of it; but someone recently asked if at least they could buy me a drink…. and that set me thinking about the possibility of creating a WordPress plugin to do just that ….

Except .. there’s already a plugin out there to do that. It’s the most excellent Buy-Me-A-Beer plugin written by Ankesh Kothari. I’ve seen the donation concept on a number of websites, with people collecting for African causes, saving to buy women’s lingerie and even surgical procedures! I always pause to wonder how much money they’ve actually collected, so what I’m doing here is partly experimental too.

Anyway, the plugin’s default is beer and while I enjoy the occasional beer, it’s really coffee that fuels my development work. A latte from our local coffee shop, Java Lounge costs £2.79, and if you click on the link in my sidebar, you can buy me one!

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I’ve just noticed that SearchMe, the visual search engine, has just added a feature called Stacks, which gives users the ability to group their search results, make them available for future searches and share them with other users. Here’s a video demoing the capability:

They have also added media searches to let you search through video (coming from YouTube) and images (coming from Flickr). It’s a great idea really, try looking for Vegas vacations for example, and you can get videos and images directly related to where you’re planning to go. Or search for Music Toad and find something surprising.

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