Joe Gregorio has a column,the Restful Web, and a great blog where he’s just mentioned that he needs a job. Well, I really like reading his stuff, and I am deadset certain he knows what he’s on about when it comes to scalable and efficient distributed systems built on web technologies.

We need a heap of developers on my current project but I don’t see him moving his family to Australia… and I don’t do the recruiting so I can’t help. But maybe you can?

Dare says…

I’m not sure I understand what Hugh means by Microsoft has opted to take the non-Cluetrain route but then again the entire Cluetrain trend is something I’ve never been too knowledgeable about.

Hugh’s thinking that Microsoft are heading down the path of ‘extinction management’; trying to keep the walls up and impermeable to conversation. I don’t see it that way. Maybe part of the organisation is on that track but there’s definitely enough people within Microsoft who are engaged in the conversation to make me believe they’ll pull through.

Where Dare does miss the cluetrain bigtime is in his suggestion that handing over Channel 9 to “professionals” could be a good thing in the wake of Scoble’s departure.

It may even be a good thing to have some professional media folks running Channel 9 instead of just amateur media geeks.

I haven’t ever used Ch9 but whenever I’ve read about it, it seems like a cool place. Replacing the amatures will suck, the real users will see through it in a second and it is so not what the cluetrain is all about.

Share My Wi-Fi is a cool site that brings together people who have Wi-Fi to share, and those looking for access.

I’m not a huge fan of the iPod, mainly cause there’s no FM reciever. Having said that, the new nano’s are quite visually appealing. iPod Linux looks pretty juicy and could provide the motivation to make a purchase.

According to Digg, SimpleTracking have hooked into UPS and USPS tacking systems and offfer status updates via RSS. I suggested this would be cool back in February.

I wonder if Aussie Post & Australian Air Express have any plans to do likewise?

I just came across the OpenNet Initiative.

The ONI mission is to investigate and challenge state filtration and surveillance practices.
…
Our aim is to generate a credible picture of these practices at a national, regional and corporate level, and to excavate their impact on state sovereignty, security, human rights, international law, and global governance.

The organisation has completed case studies for approx. a half dozen countries, most recently they looked at Burma. It turns out that “Burma filters certain content categories heavily, including political opposition sites, human rights pages, e-mail service providers, and pornography.”

I knew this sort of thing is happening in China as there’s been plenty said in the media (Eg. this Sydney Morning Herald article) and on blogs (Eg. Tim Bray: Microsoft and China) about Google being blocked and MSN customising their service. However I never realised that it was occurs in other countries too. For me personally, it drives home the importance of openness and the freedom of information.

I’ve never really spent a lot of time considering how different it would be living with state-controlled media. But since I hold the web in a lot higher regard than the mainstream press, I immediately feel a lot more passionate about making the web accessible to everybody.

The web has allowed us, for the most part, to circumvent geographic borders, social hierarchies and enthic differences which traditionally stiffled communication and limited the sharing of information and knowledge. I hope these positive aspects of the web can continue. I also really hope that people aren’t disadvantaged because some authority has control over what they can and can’t access on the Internet.

Sorry to leave you guys hanging for the last two weeks with no posts. Not blogging for 17 days is pretty pathetic.

Anyway I’m back in Brisbane after an excellent trip. The training will prove useful in time and the co-curricular activities were outstanding.

I need to get up to speed with whats going on in Techland. What have I missed?

This is just a quick follow up to my introduction to the del.icio.us firefox plug-in.

According to TechCrunch, it’s rumoured that del.icio.us may release a new toolbar.

The post also links to another plug-in for del.icio.us called Very Delicious that I might try out and post some comments up here.

There’s plenty of buzz around for the new music service, Pandora.

Basically it’s your own custom web-radio station. You start by seeding it with a band or track you like, then it automatically chooses the subsequent tunes that play from bands that offer a similar style. During each track you have the opportunity to give the thumbs up or down and move on. Or you can just let it play right through.

My tastes vary from quite punky stuff to more mild pop-rock so it’s useful that I can setup multiple ’stations’ that play to my differing moods.

I tried to start with a couple of Aussie bands (Something for Kate and Powderfinger) and it didn’t recognise them. No doubt as the user base expands the service will grow to include more worldly music selection.

I definitely agree with Scoble’s post suggesting a rich client front end would be good. At times the “everything has to be a Web app” argument annoys me too.