On Twitter today, Web Goldenboy Charl Norman posed the question: "When will Twitter innovate?"



 (Watch this video if you're unfamiliar with Twitter)



I suspect that Charl means to ask when Twitter will add more features, such as those seen in Plurk, where you can add pictures, videos and see responses to your 'plurk' (equivalent to a 'tweet'). Each Plurk and its responses even has its own URL!



Let's assume for the moment that Twitter does have ambitions to add new features. There's one major thing holding it back: its own popularity.



You see, the moment a simple web 2.0 app like Twitter becomes immensely popular, it becomes extremely risky to change anything. Running a company that provides internet access to thousands of users, I definitely have become more innately conservative when it comes to adding new features.



New features have to have a really convincing reason to exist. I constantly have to force myself to keep thinking like the computer science student for whom anything is possible, rather than the businessman trying to make sure the service just keeps working.



I'd like to call this phenomenon "Feature Stiffening" (as opposed to Feature Freeze). And although I've sometimes experienced this emotion (because that's what it is, really), I've managed to overcome it thus far by actively being aware of it when it attacks. But we only have thousands of users... not millions of users!



Millions of users use Twitter for what it is! And the moment you've achieved that, Feature Stiffening is a lot harder to overcome. Add to that Twitter's well-known capacity issues and constant downtime, and you can see why innovation might be the most dangerous thing they could do.



Innovate or Die? What do you think?

Cult classic Dr. Strangefrog is here to warm your winter blues. Its a “hot-line suspense comedy”.

“You don’t think I’d go into combat with loose change in my pocket, do you?”

 

Yes, it’s all the rage.

I’ve joined in on the hype as well:

http://identi.ca/highvoltage

What the heck, even got a page on whoisi:

http://whoisi.com/p/2755

The Final Part of our Secret Headquarters series. Here we find First Level Support. These are the call-center agents who are under the strict guidance of THE HIGH PRIEST OF THE TEMPLE OF THE FROG.

 

Ubuntu has been quite popular on DistroWatch for a long time now. Currently it is at the number 1 position for hits per day on the site over the last six months, 675 higher than it’s closest competition (OpenSUSE), and that doesn’t even count in the 1563 hits from Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Mythbuntu, Fluxbuntu, Ubuntu Studio and Ubuntu CE.

There’s a nice little Facebook app that’s called “Linux” that proudly displays which distribution you use on your profile page:

It also builds stats of which distributions and desktop environments people use, and which podcasts they listen to:

Once again, Ubuntu outranks them all. What’s even nicer is that Debian is second here. makes my theory feel stronger that all RPM based distros will probably become Debian-based within the next 5 years or so (or die out, unless something superior emerges (no pun intended)). I might be completely wrong… who knows, but, when you look at the trends (got this link from Mark Shuttleworth’s website), and if they continue the way they do, then things certainly don’t look good for the future popularity of RPM based systems:

I have not been blogging much lately. Go figure. Weekly news summary as usual..

• I entered Amobia in a venture fund competition. Should have some feedback by mid July.
• Added a Crackbook page for Amobia.
• Watched Zeitgeist, 40 Year Old Virgin and Oceans Eleven.
• We had a Frogfoot company photo taken for 2008. Pics at the usual place.
• Completed the Extreme Networks ECSP training course.
• Made a fact sheet for WAPA.
• Walked up Lions Head three times this week. Helps me think.
• I’m getting back into a swimming routine. Helps me think.
• Friday, made a new friend by apologising to an old friend. We avoided each other for the last 3 years.
• Removed two ~nasty blog posts.
• I brewed up Joe’s famous thai green curry on Friday evening. Nice to cook.
• Visited Wellington on Saturday afternoon.
• Anton is in ZA for a week. Had a nice dinner with friends at the Fishmonger followed by drinks at the Akker.
• Saturday and Sunday was Mia time. We watched Babe today. Sweet movie.

Joe’s news items..

• Random quote of the week: “What on earth would a man do with himself if something did not stand in his way?” — H. G. Wells
• Looks like Teraco raised its remaining funding.
• Tuesday, Georg’s home cooked veggie soup and red wine evening.
• Wednesday, downloaded Firefox 3.0 and moved some furniture.
• There seems to be good interest in a Cape Town peering point again. About 11 networks have responded positively so far, including Google.
• Finally found a use for the DMCA. Facebook is pretty quick with removing copyrighted material.
• Thursday, processed some iWeek paperwork. Amobia and Teraco are now Gold sponsors. WAPA will endorse the Thursday morning wireless session and will have a stand in the iWeek exhibition area. If you have not yet registered, go here.. it’s free.
• The Blio PBX passed 100% of the TBR-3 tests including the optional parts. This completes the 4th and final part of the ICASA requirements.
• I attended the 1st Cape Town Pecha Kucha night. The wine was crap. The Moscow Mules were good. The talks were pretty decent.
• Friday and Saturday was Mia time. We went for a swim again. She fell asleep in the car as we drove to go watch some rugby. Mia slept on my chest for most of the game. Not bothered by any of the excitement around her. It really is a magic feeling having her take a nap like that.
• Saturday night was Andy and Georg’s house warming party. Must be Andy’s 6th house warming in two years. All the usual suspects showed up, including my personal shrink, who’s birthday it is today.
• Sunday, had fish and chips at the Waterfront and watched Kung Fu Panda. A fun movie.
• Walked up Lions Head just before sunset and got some panoramic photos of clouds rolling into Camps Bay and Cape Town harbour. Cape Town is Rome.
• I now have a dinner table (again). Guess I’ll have to have a dinner party soon.
• I also have an Ubuntu PC and SIP phone at home now.. all I need is a big LCD screen for movies.

Peace.

At RedButton we run a network of hundreds of routers with our hardware platform of choice predominantly being the Linksys WRT54GL and also MikroTik Routerboards. In both cases the devices run RedButton firmware resulting in a fully integrated, managed and monitored network. Both devices are used by a plethora of local and international hotspot and wireless Internet service providers (WISPs).









Why do we point this out?



Well, we've recently had an amusing report of a competitor claiming that the we do not use enterprise grade, high quality hardware. While this claim in itself is laughable, as most hotspot and WISP companies would point out, it also misses the point in terms of what consumers want, and that is good service. Hardware in itself, regardless of technical merits, will never equate to good service. One company that just about anybody would bow down to when it comes to service is Google - who incidentally use off the shelf hardware, weaved together in ingenious ways.

The ISPA invited WAPA to endorse the iWeek 2008 conference by chairing the morning wireless session of Thursday, 18 September 2008. WAPA will be represented on the panel discussing wireless matters after a presentation by Jack Unger. WAPA will again have a stand in the iWeek exhibition area this year to create awareness of our industry. We [...]

Now and then I see something funny on the web. But it's seldom that a comment has me in stitches!



This screenshot is from a recent Digg post.



IE Mozilla Cake.bmp



The 2nd comment here did the trick, especially after a long day trying to make our new Portal and Welcome pages work properly in Internet Explorer...

By now you might have noticed that the Skyrove Portal Page (the very first page you see) and the Welcome Page (the one you see once you’re logged in) have changed quite dramatically! Many thanks goes to rockstar designer Adii!

Comparing the old with the new:

The Old Portal Page

The New Portal Page

We discovered a few problems with the old page. Firstly, we had the contact details at the top. This was in the spirit of making it as easy as possible for people to find our phone number. See Seth Godin’s Knock Knock eBook on Web Design on why this is (usually) a good idea. However, this actually confused many people. They didn’t want to phone us, they simply wanted to get online! Many people thought that they had to SMS or phone us before they could start using Skyrove. So we’ve moved the contact details to the bottom and now make it clear that this is for when you need Help!

Another common problem was that First Timers often didn’t know where to start! Initially we had a small Sign Up link below the username and password fields. This also confused a lot of people. We then moved it up the page, which is essentially the first obvious position for a FIRST time user. But we needed to make it bigger and bolder!

Let’s have a look at the Welcome Page:

The Old Welcome Page

The New Welcome Page

As you can see, the differences are even more glaring here. We’ve noticed that since our last change a lot of people didn’t open the Status Window anymore. There was no real need for it unless you needed detailed information, but that this was a bit of a nuisance factor. What we do now, instead, is to simply show the relevant info as a Status Section on the Welcome Page. If you’d rather have a separate window, you can simply click on Pop Out.

Importantly, if you now close this Pop Out, you will NOT be logged off! (What do you think about this change?)

We are committed to making some changes to the Welcome Page, based on the feedback we get from you! So please leave a comment. The first 20 users to leave a comment will receive a 100 Skyrove credits.

Hope to hear from you!

For several months Skyrove has been running a new firmware version at select hotspots. Here’s a quick overview of what it does:

1. Open Source OpenWRT based

Rather than claiming that our firmware is ‘proprietary’ or be presumptuous enough to call features such as an LED lighting up ‘cutting edge’, as some Skyrove copycats are wont to do, I’d like to point out that our firmware is based on OpenWRT, and in particular the CoovaAP fork and the brilliant work my friend Jeremy Collake has put into it. A special thank you also goes to Murray Long, Skyrove’s lead firmware developer.

2. AnyIP

AnyIP is a CoovaChilli feature that allows devices to connect to public hotspots, despite possibly having the wrong IP address settings. Business travelers often have Static IP and DNS settings. Even worse, these settings sometimes can’t be changed on company laptops!

With AnyIP, the Skyrove router essentially says: “Hey! I can’t give you the IP address I wanted to, so I’m just going to pretend that I did and send you all the internet packets anyway!”

3. Heartbeat Monitor

The new firmware includes our Heartbeat Monitor that has the Skyrove Router send a little message to Skyrove every 60 minutes, simply to say: “Oi! I’m still alive!”. If the server doesn’t hear anything from the Skyrove router for a while, we’ll send out the troops. (Or rather, an email to the technical contact for that hotspot!)

Besides for the email, you can also see how your hotspots are doing at any point in time by logging in to the Skyrove Account Manager. See the picture below for an example.

4. Automatic Updates

The new Skyrove WiFi Hotspot firmware will keep itself up to date, as any good software should! It will periodically check the Skyrove server for any new firmware updates, download it and apply it in the early hours of the morning, provided no one is logged on already!

5. SMTP redirect

One of the most common problems people have at public WiFi hotspots is sending email. You might have seen the ‘Relay Forbidden’ error yourself! The reason for this is that a mail server owned by, say, MWEB, won’t accept outgoing mail traffic from a Skyrove hotspot that might be connecting to the internet using iBurst.

To make things worse, you may not know which server you are supposed to use! This is no longer a problem. With Skyrove’s new firmware, the Hotspot owner can set up the preferred mail server in the router interface. So in future, all mail will be automatically routed through the Hotspot owner’s ISP’s mail server, rather than attempting a 3rd party mail server!

Conclusion

These are just a few of the new features. We don’t think of them as cutting edge, but rather as essential for any Hotspot provider that aims to provide a decent service. Around the corner is a dramatic change in how Skyrove networks will be configured, but more about that next time…

Please email me if you’d like to play with the latest firmware! henk@skyrove.com

We had a highly successful launch of our Free WiFi product at Long Street Cafe yesterday. To top it off ITWeb today published an excellent article Dining out on restaurant WiFi which effectively follows up on an ITWeb article Free WiFi is 'hard model to get right' published nine months ago.



We spent the time in between the publication of the above mentioned articles working on our Free WiFi product. Our intention has always been to get the Free WiFi model right, to make sure that venues are provided with a product that is flexible enough to make it work for them in their unique environment. Market feedback is certainly showing that we have got it spot on but we won't rest on our laurels, the work continues.



If you'd like to find out more you may be interested in our news release Boost your business with RedButton's new Free WiFi product.

WAPA asked its membership to respond to a few questions with the idea of creating more awareness in the industry. Featured Member: Amobia Communications (Pty) Ltd. How long have you been in business? Amobia was founded in mid 2005 and we connected our first client in November 2005. About 3 years now. Give us a quick company profile? Amobia Communications [...]

This is a test post on the new blogger and will be removed shortly...

I had a great discussion with my friend Greg Durst the other night about what drives people.



Greg has a Harvard MBA, worked at Bain, McKinsey, Chase Manhatten and in South Africa was the MD of the joint venture between DiData and Tata Consulting. He has an incredible network of big cheeses worldwide and is one of the most energetic and passionate businessmen I know. He could work anywhere in the world and demand enormous pay packages.



Currently Greg heads up Endeavor, a Non-Profit Entrepreneur network that provides support to high-impact entrepreneurs identified through a rigorous selection process.



So I asked Greg during candle-lit dinner (it wasn't romantic, the power was out again) why he chose to stay in South Africa, with it's crime, a corrupt government and constant blackouts?



Greg told me that there are 3 'primal drive' factors (once have a roof over your head and food in your stomach): Power, Wealth and (often unacknowledged) Impact.



I live my life by a simple (& selfish) philosophy of "Change The World, So That I Have a Better Place to Live In". However, I never realised that the motto by which I lived my life was perhaps a more primal instinct, rather than an intellectually motivated altruistic philosophy!



The fact is, Greg said, in South Africa he can have a much higher Impact! There is so much that could be fixed and improved if we set our minds to it. In many ways, South Africa is a frontier country. It is possible for individuals like you and me to have a significant and lasting impact if we simply decide to do so! Our actions today can make a big difference to the future of this country!



And of course, just like on any frontier, it doesn't hurt if we become Wealthy while we're at it!

SchoolWAN is now an associate member of WAPA, the Wireless Access Providers’ Association of South Africa.

SchoolWAN gets a new logo: