Book Review: Founders at work

Ok, Yes I know I am late on this one, but I think I have stumbled on a great book.

It is essentially a collection of interviews from a bunch of guys who have a lot of real startup experience. Guys like Steve Wozniak, Buchiet, Mitch Kapor (Lotus) and Max Levchin (Paypal). These guys are all celebrities in their own right and mostly  come from the last bubble. Thus they offer a wealth of knowledge and insight into how to run a start-up and the mistakes they made.

 

I have had loadsa fun reading this and I am about to launch myself into another tech startup book soon (Dreaming in code).

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/dp/1590597141

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Continue reading » · Written on: 10-29-08 · No Comments »

Databases in the cloud

Amazon, today expanded their EC2 offering to include db's in the cloud. This will extend it's native database application: EC2 SimpleDB. The two new options are Oracle and Mysql. This further reduces the "barrier to deployment" of applications on AWS.

One of the main problems firms had when trying to decide upon AWS, was the portability of their application once built using Amazon's proprietary services. Hopefully now, it should become that much easier to move your database at least unto this service. How the complexities regarding Oracle licence's and keys is yet to be seen, but it seem's they are working closely with Oracle so that might not be as much of a problem.

Welcome to enterprise in the cloud!!!

Continue reading » · Written on: 09-23-08 · No Comments »

Php, dynamic variable naming

I just found this out mostly by trial and error, and seem quite chuffed about it.

I have been moaning about PHP lack of deeper functions (Reflection, proper interfaces, generics). I am a C# guy by day and a PHP (CI) guy by night, and the difference in functionality really does get to me at times.

But here is my little code segment - You can have "dynamic " naming of functions like so:

$cat = "meow";
$noise = "cat";

echo $$noise;
//this will give you meow...

Simple stuff I guess, but it just made my life a little bit easier.

Continue reading » · Written on: 08-07-08 · No Comments »

Mojave Experiment

Just checked this out.   http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/

It's kinda cool, seem's as though Microsoft's advertising "guru's" are at their best again, trying to dispel the notion that Vista is crap.

The site shows some nice reaction video's of people who are first told to rate Vista based on what they have heard, then are given a "Mojave" OS and told to rate it (they all gave it a 10). Then the twist, the "Mojave" is revealed to be Vista to great dramatic effect.

Still does not convince me to finally take up Vista though.

Continue reading » · Written on: 07-31-08 · No Comments »

Microsoft Cloud Services

http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/stevecla01/WindowsLiveWriter/TheCloudsAreClearing_AA/fam081_2.jpg

The Microsoft Cloud Offering- a slide from Steve Balmer's presentation. This begins to paint a good picture of where Microsoft see themselves in the new Cloud/*aaS market.

More on this later.

see also: Steve Clayton's blog here.

also here as well.

Continue reading » · Written on: 07-31-08 · 1 Comment »

Blog on the move

I really wish wordpress would support proper microblogging. Not like twitter or it's clones.

Continue reading » · Written on: 07-24-08 · No Comments »

blogging from the desktop

Just started using Windows Live Writer, and I must say it's a pretty awesome tool. Probably the best blogging tool out there, especially if you are not on a mac.

Here is the pop-shot of it loading...

image

It does: WYSIWYG Authoring, Photo Publishing, Map Publishing and you can publish to: Typepad, Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal and more... Pretty cool stuff.

You can get yours here.

Continue reading » · Written on: 07-11-08 · No Comments »

LONDON CLOUDCAMP

I recently signed up to be at the cloudcamp this year, it looks like it's going to be an enjoyable open-style conference (bar-camp style).

The confirmed sessions are:

  • "I'm a bank, why should I run my grid in the cloud?" - Adam Vile, Excelian (http://www.excelian.com)
  • "Gang up now before the *aaS cloud gets you" - Simon Wardley, Gardeviance (http://www.gardeviance.org)
  • "Portability beats interoperability - how to be on two clouds at once" - Alexis Richardson, CohesiveFT (http://www.cohesiveft.com)
  • "The missing link in on-demand scaling in the cloud" - Dekel Tankel, Gigaspaces (http://www.gigaspaces.com)
  • "How clouds can and will differ" - Richard Davies, ElasticHosts (http://www.elastichosts.com)
  • "Partly Cloudy" - William Fellows, The 451 Group (http://www.the451group.com)
  • "Start-ups in the cloud" - Adil Mohammed, EnTrip.com (http://www.entrip.com/)
  • "Pick'n'Mix: Bridging the clouds" - Alan Williamson (http://alan.blog-city.com/about.htm), MediaFed

(c) - cloudcamp

For your calendar:

July 16th, 6.30pm to 8.00pm (Party afterward)
The Crypt on the Green
St James Clerkenwell
Clerkenwell Close
London
EC1R 0EA

The webpage is at: london.cloudcamp.com

Continue reading » · Written on: 07-10-08 · No Comments »

First Post

So, I ran away from all my former blogs and have Unified all my houses. I intend to put up content in the different sections, so you can follow each section instead of haveing 3 different blogs.

Thanks for stopping by.

Lawrence.

Continue reading » · Written on: 07-09-08 · 1 Comment »