November 12th, 2009
Seems Godaddy implemented a new feature on their email hosting: “Auto-purge”. As the name suggests it will automatically delete emails. Now that’s fine for folder like Spam and Deleted Items but they put it on my Sent Items! Goodbye 7 years of email history…
As a loyal *paying* customer for 7 years, who has recommended them many times, I’m pissed off. After a few emails, they restored 30 days worth of stuff that I had already deleted (so I just had to delete them again) but not my Sent Items. Still waiting to hear if they’re going to do anything…
Looked at migrating to Google Apps. According to Godaddy though, I have to pay them MORE money to upgrade to an IMAP plan so that I can get my emails off them…
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May 17th, 2009
Ok, so I thought of developing a Facebook application using Rails and kind of assumed that there’d be some fantastic library that just did all the hard work leaving me to write the app.
It seems there are a number of attempts to develop a ruby library for Facebook but finding one that is still active and useful wasn’t easy.
A quick roundup of what I found (mostly via google).
Facebooker - This seems to be the one that is recommended and there’s a book on Peepcode although it’s been said that it expects your entire app to be a facebook app.
RFacebook - The author says “I may cease development on RFacebook in favor of Facebooker”
Giant Robots useful article (one of the most recent I found!)
Facebook on Rails - The author (Hoan) has discontinued support for this plugin.
Facetime - for adding to an existing system with a User model
SocialonRails - Nothing at all at their repository: http://code.google.com/p/socialonrails/
After some attempts at using these, I’m going to proceed down the path of using Facebooker. The docs indicate that there is an “excellent” tutorial at http://apps.facebook.com/facebooker_tutorial but it is out of date to say the least. So perhaps I’ll write one while I’m developing an app.
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January 19th, 2009
Took a few days but I finally got the Huwai e169 to work on Ubuntu 8.1. Seems there’s a bug with the Network Manager that means you can’t save the settings which meant you couldn’t log in. But there is a way!
From information you’ll find elsewhere, you should already have these settings:
APN: VirginBroadband <– Ensure this is not VirginInternet
Number: *99#
Username: blank
Password: blank
Then in the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) tab, under Use Authentication, you need to unselect everything except PPP. The problem is if you only change these settings it won’t save the changes! So, also tick Connect Automatically. Then hit ok and it should go and save those settings and connect.
Tick Connect Automatically to ensure the PAP setting saved
You may also want to go back in to untick Connect Automatically which will save - and you’ll also see that the other Authentication options are still unticked and have saved.
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October 30th, 2008
I gave up my full-time job to run a company and I guess I had pretty high expectations of what we’d achieve - even though we actually created optimistic, realistic and pessimistic plans. We’re currently behind on even the pessimistic plan. That is not to say that our product is not great value to those who use it, but running a company is more than just having a great product.
Robert Kiyosaki, in his book Before You Quit Your Job talks about five basic jobs of a business and labels them as Product, Legal, Systems, Communications and Cash Flow. Now my skills are in developing products and systems and I think we’ve done pretty well on those, but our marketing (communication) and cash flow are poor. While it is easy for me to focus on products and systems, it takes a lot more effort to just get the basics in each of the other areas and then, when you’re trying to do it yourself, that creates a lot of work.
Kiyosaki goes on to say that if you don’t have the skills yourself, to make an offer to someone who does have those skills - so that you build a complete team covering each of those jobs. The members of the team can be employees, external consultants or be offered a slice of the business if there’s no other way to pay them.
Our strategy so far has been to keep ownership of the company and either pay consultants (such as lawyers) or offer them revenue shares, but not shares in the company. After speaking with David Bolliger, founder and CEO of Storyz, I’m starting to think that perhaps owning the company isn’t so critical - we can offer shares in the company and still ensure that we own a controlling share.
I’m interested in how other technical start-ups have found good marketing, legal and capital-raising people and how you’ve convinced them to join you.
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