For fighting
Today we celebrate five, a whole, complete number and a stepping stone to many more.
Five is...for fighting. For the British Security Service. For those individual fingers that make a solid hand.
Awww #xkcd: Falling Asleep
via xkcd.com
What I did to my tyre this fine morning
Oh joy. #TRA to suspend #UAE #Blackberry services
Blackberry services are to be blocked from October. Jeff Topping / The National
The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has said that Blackberry Messenger, Blackberry E-mail and Blackberry Web-browsing services in the UAE will be suspended as of October 11.
The suspension is a result of the failure of ongoing attempts, dating back to 2007, to bring Blackberry services in the UAE in line with UAE telecommunications regulations.
Both telecommunications operators, Etisalat and du,were informed of the decision earlier today. The notification was delivered with an instruction to ensure minimal consumer disruption in the provision of alternative services.
All Blackberry services fall within the UAE regulatory framework developed by the TRA since 2007, however because of Blackberry's technical configuration, some Blackberry services operate beyond the enforcement these regulations, the TRA stated.
Blackberry data is immediately exported offshore, where it is managed by a foreign, commercial organisation. Blackberry data services are currently the only data services operating in the UAE where this is the case.
Today's decision is based on the fact that, in their current form, certain Blackberry services allow users to act without any legal accountability, causing judicial, social and national security concerns for the UAE.
Commenting on the announcement, the TRA director general Mohamed Al Ghanim said: "With no solution available and in the public interest, in order to affect resolution of this issue, as of October 11, 2010, Blackberry Messenger, Blackberry Email and Blackberry Web-browsing services will be suspended until an acceptable solution can be developed and applied."
"We informed both Etisalat and du that providing the option of alternative services to ensure the continuity of service from October 11 to its subscribers - both individuals and organisations - is the most important priority." Mr Al Ghanim added.
Mr Al Ghanim said, "The TRA notes that Blackberry appears to be compliant in similar regulatory environments of other countries, which makes non-compliance in the UAE both disappointing and of great concern."
via thenational.ae
Oh, brilliant. Coming hot at the heels of this news where they were "clear" that "we don't have plans to stop them" by the TRA Spokesperson, this is starting to get ridiculous. As such, we have issues with Skype, and restrictions over everything else. All the 20 years of building free zones and all that fun stuff to bring businesses to the UAE comes to nought if you're not going to let businesses communicate.
Yes yes, they'll either then announce, "Oh it was a misunderstanding," or the even better, "Look BlackBerry caved and we found a solution" memo before the deadline. But still, this is a huge issue for businesses. It leaves an unsettling doubt. Not a good sign. The right way would have been to give BlackBerry the deadline, sort out the issue, announce that you're working with RIM and then announce it when you have a solution. Golly, I don't even work in PR.
I'm an iPhone lover myself, but one thing's certain, businesses run on BlackBerry. And after hearing this, the iPhone or the Android are hardly out of danger, are they? I can already see the announcement: "We don't like their App Store/Marketplace."
Nice work @devinadivecha!
Earth, Wind, Fire, Water
How does one explain an erroneous successful transaction?
Q&A with Guy Kawasaki on how he tweets
This is a really good (and personal) insight into Guy Kawasaki's tweeting mindset, why he uses ghostwriters and how he tracks progress. Brilliant stuff.
How I Tweet: Updated 7/2/10
Update: Holy Kaw
By far, the biggest change to my tweeting is the creation of a section of Alltop called Holy Kaw. I started it because of the popularity of my Posterous blog where I uploaded pictures and summaries of interesting stories—basically stuff that was too long for a tweet and too short for a blog post. I noticed that these posts were getting thousands of page views, and there’s nothing that I hate more than an unmonetized page view, so we added it to Alltop.com. By the way, it’s pronounced “holy cow” as in “holy Kaw-asaki.”
This is how Holy Kaw works: a team of ghosts and contributors and I scour the Internet to find interesting, educational, and funny stories. The editorial test is that the story elicits a “Holy kaw!” response when one reads it—for example, “Holy kaw, Facebook is now worth $23 billion!
"We write up the story or embed the video and post it to the Holy Kaw part of Alltop (we still use Posterous for this). These stories are then tweeted out to @GuyKawasaki and @Alltop.
We never write up so much of it that there’s no reason to go to the source. For example, if it’s a “top ten” story, we only include two or three of the ten. We include a link to the source story—we’ve never had a complaint from the sources because we send them thousands of page views. Indeed, this works so well that sites such as HowStuffWorks.com and National Geographic have contributor accounts so that they can write up their own stories on Holy Kaw to point back to their site.
We make money because there are banner ads on the Holy Kaw pages, and there is a link to a relevant Alltop topic site—for example, if the Holy Kaw story is about social media, we include a link to Social-Media.alltop. There are also ads on the Alltop page, so we monetize the Holy Kaw page itself, “self-advertise” to an Alltop topic, and then monetize the Alltop topic page too.
General
Question: How can you follow so many people?
Answer: I don’t read the timelines of all the people that I follow. Instead, I only deal with @s, Directs, and tweets that contain “guykawasaki” and “alltop.” I am not reading everything everyone I follow tweets, but I answer almost every @ and Direct.
Update: no change.
Question: Then why do you follow everyone?
Answer: I follow everyone for two reasons: first, common courtesy; second, so that anyone can send a Direct to me. I like Direct messages because they are so much more efficient than email.
Update: no change.
Question: Why do you use @GuyKawasaki and @GuysReplies?
Answer: I created @Guysreplies in order to reply to @s that all my followers do not need to see. For example, when people tweet, “@guykawasaki I loved Reality Check,” I don’t want to burden everyone with my thank-you @ reply. Also, people publicly attack me as a kind of “tweet bait” to get more followers. Because @GuysReplies has few followers, this scheme won’t work, and I can still appear to be “engaged” with the losers.
Update: I no longer use @guysreplies because the only people who see my @replies are those who follow both me and the recipient. I added @Alltop as another account for people who do not want to see repeat tweets. It has the same tweets as @GuyKawasaki, but only once.
Dealing with relatives & their computer issues (Today's #xkcd)
via xkcd.com
