I’ve had 3 people from the Real Life (which is a very weird and disturbing place) telling me that I’m not updating my blog often enough in the last week. I’m not sure how much is supposed to be enough. I usually blog when I have some time and have something I’d really like to say. I’m completely fine with about 2 blog entries a month and perhaps more now and again when things get interesting. However, sometimes I like to cave a bit under pressure, so here’s a random blog entry for the bored:

• I heard the I-can-ride-my-bike-with-no-handlebars song for the first time on Friday. Listened to it 20 times over the weekend so far. Aparently everyone else knows it already. It’s an awesome little song about how power can corrupt (or at least, that’s my interpretation ).
• I played with Mac OSX again yesterday. It’s annoying. Recently Mark Shuttleworth said that Ubuntu will be more attractive than a Mac in two years. I think he seriously needs to take a look at a Mac again. I’ve installed plenty of add-ons and stuff to my Mac, and I just can’t make it match the usability and productivity of my Gnome desktop with Compiz on Ubuntu. In order to make Ubuntu really more attractive to the current Mac market, it will need to run the software that’s available for a Mac. I bought my Mac because I want to use the real nice video editing software that’s available for it.
• Still stuck in Jo’burg for work purposes. Tried to fix that but it failed. I’ll just have to try to get back home a bit harder. I guess I’ll be here for another 6 months max. At least my mother is visiting next weekend.
• Everything else is pretty much ok.

Some pictures from the real world (not sure where they’re originally from though):

Some people Twitter, I batch my news and bullet-blog..

• Monday, had a few Tanqueray no. 10 Martini’s at Relish. Seems I’m going to be on the board of Section 21 company, that’s a first. Met Jaco from Pangea.
• Tuesday, Sushi, watched Hancock, Jazz night at Asoka and a rather random 29th bday party for Matt.
• Matt figures I’m an INTP personality. It’s a nice model. Simple, well structured, good story, but may also be an easily workable falsehood. I’ll read about MMPI next.
• Wednesday, creative writing, lunch with Jonathan at Greens. Typed up this WAPA secretary job spec. Went for a run along the cable car road. Took a few nice sunset panoramic photos.
• Thursday, house shopping in Higgovale. A run along the Mouille Point promenade. A burger at Da Vinci’s on Kloof and Asoka again.
• Friday, House shopping in Camps Bay. Time with Meebs. Earl Grey tea with the ~ex-wife at Paradiso.
• Saturday, gym, swim, Knead, Deer Park, afternoon nap and a nice braai at Georg’s place.
• I can bench press a bit more than my body weight again, seems to take about 3 sessions with reasonable intensity to make progress.
• Sunday morning, Lion’s Head at 9:00 with Jono. Climbed up to the top with Mia in a baby-backpack. If you ever need motivation to lose ~16kg try climb a mountain with a 2yr old on your back.
• Sunday afternoon, Bloubergstrand with Georg, Blue Peter, walk on the beach, fish and chips and white wine at a nice beach front restaurant. Mia ran all over the place and made a few friends and enemies. She does not like to be pushed around.. *grin*. Ended up at Fandango’s.
• 200th Crackbook friend.
• See you at the Cape Town bloggers party on Tuesday night.

Man, I’m stiff today, but I figure the photos are worth it, no pain no gain… have a fun week.

Please note Frogfoot’s new phone numbers:

Office: 021 448 7225
Fax: 021 448 3754

At the moment the old numbers are forwarding to the new ones, but please start using the new numbers.

Frogfoot Networks announced the sale of its consumer client base to Web Africa this week. This move allows Frogfoot to focus on the business internet services market.

“Web Africa is most probably the best consumer focused ISP in South Africa and we are confident that our consumer clients will find a happy new home with them” says Johann Botha, director of Frogfoot Networks.

The ISP industry is South Africa is showing a trend of consolidation as the telecommunications market is faced with accelerated change. Successful businesses will need to adapt and move with these trends as more competition is introduced to the market.

Frogfoot’s new focus aims to address a rapidly emerging need for specialist technical skills in the networking and ISP market. People with these “deep tech” skills are a rare breed and are often lured overseas.

“We enjoy managing complexity and we are good at creative problem solving”, says Botha, “let’s just say we were not optimally using our experience and skills selling commodity services where we could not add much value”.

The new Frogfoot will focus on building networks. Scalable, highly available, carrier-class networks. Frogfoot’s strategy is to be ahead of the curve as new networking technologies are adopted in the local telecommunications market. Frogfoot builds and manages networks though its partnership with Extreme Networks and strong Linux and Open Source skills.

Frogfoot sees a need for aggregation in the local ISP market and aims to help its partners benefit from economies of scale by providing carrier and core networks, peering and traffic optimisation. Frogfoot will work with partners, helping them to provide new and unique services to the market.

Frogfoot Networks is an independent technology company providing innovative internet services and open source solutions for business. Frogfoot’s service offering includes: Wholesale Connectivity, Managed Network Services and Consulting. Frogfoot was founded in 2000 and is based in Cape Town.

More info:
www.frogfoot.com
0860 KERMIT

First, if you didn't know, Sequoia Capital are the guys who invested in Google, YouTube, Cisco, NVIDIA and a whole host of other exciting clients.

The problem is: It's pretty hard to spell "Sequoia" correctly, being such a weird word. A google search for "Sequia Capital" will give you more than a 1000 results!

I reckon that the spelling is part of a filter. If you can't spell it right, then your emails won't go through. Perhaps they even have a Word macro at Sequoia that shreds up business plans with the name misspelt, as they come through the door!

I personally had to ask my friend and investor, Vinny Lingham how to do it properly.

Anyways, the spelling is pretty easy to remember if you're a true geek. And the reason for this is simple: geeks recognize patterns.

So in the interest of spreading geekness (syn: awesomeness) here's the Sequoia pattern:

1. Notice that all five vowels are present in the word "Sequoia".

2. Start with the "Seq" (if you can't remember this part, don't bother sending your business plan to them)

3. You now have 4 vowels left; in alphabetical order they are: A, I, O, U.

4. Put them in REVERSE alphabetical order: U, O, I, A

5. Now add these vowels the "Seq" we discussed in point 2 above.

And there you have it! SeqUOIA

Disclaimer: I accept no responsibility for increased email traffic to Sequoia!

A bit more than a week ago I learned how to generate debdiffs. I wish I knew how to do it earlier, since it’s incredibly easy, and very empowering.

Previously, when working on bugs on Launchpad, all I could really do is make comments on what causes the bug, and make suggestions on how to fix it. Now, I can actually fix it myself, and attach the debdiff that can be applied to the current package that will fix it. It’s awesome, all you really need to do is download a source package, make the required changes, bump up the version number, create a new source package and then create the debdiff between the original and modified source packages. And all it takes to create the debdiff is just one simple command.

I’ve learned parts of the above previously from the Ubuntu-MOTU classes, but what made it much easier for me is the MOTU Videos, which you can get on YouTube, or if you want to view it off-line (like I did), you can download it via http.

I won’t achieve my goal of becoming a MOTU by the end of this month, as I said I wanted to nearly three months ago, but I’ve learned a lot the last month or so, and I’m glad that I’ve actually made some progress. I’ll just have to work a bit harder and maintain/gain momentum. The MOTU’s have been great with helping out and giving advice. A big thank you to all of you, especially the friendly people of #ubuntu-motu.

Back by popular demand, we have the Skyrove Status Window!

What do you think? Is there anything about it that we can make better?

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?

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.

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!