My Own Pirate Radio

Hi all, I have some exciting news to share.

Some of you know that Katrin and I have been collaborating on putting together a web startup. We are extending the core idea she’s been blogging about on Mukodu: namely, discovering local “good stuff” by tapping into the knowledge of your friends and neighours. So… [drum roll]… moving forward, we will both be blogging about our brand new startup — Mukodu, Inc. — and the projects we’re working on together under that umbrella.

Don’t worry, I promise to keep on writing obscure, geeky, niche stuff here on MyOwnPirateRadio, just like I always have. I don’t want the readership numbers to dip into single digits, after all. But from time to time I will also post on the Mukodu Blog, especially when it’s a topic of general interest regarding our startup work.

The first project we’re working on is called “5 Blocks Out”. The web site is currently under development, and all going well, we’ll begin opening it up for public trial later this summer. If you’d like an invitation to participate in the Beta release, visit www.5BlocksOut.com, drop us your email via the signup form, and we’ll let you know when we’re ready for you to kick the tires.

In the meantime, stay tuned to Mukodu for more!

Osh

If you’re working at home, I strongly encourage you to think about a shared or "co-working" arrangement for at least part of your week.

I am bumping into a lot more people these days who are working at home or considering it. Perhaps it’s just coincidence, or maybe the people I hang out with are hitting some magic age where career change is necessary. Perhaps more of us will begin work-shifting, in addition to time-shifting?

Personally, I’ve worked from home for the last few years, with about half of that time spent jointly on a project with Katrin. It’s been fun: we get to structure our work space and work day just the way we like it, and there is a subtle luxury in the freedom to opt into "weekend activities" on weekdays. But it can also be challenging: you can get stir-crazy, lonely, burnt out due to lack of working schedule boundaries, or unproductive due to distractions. After experiencing a taste of all these things, we recently decided to rent out some part-time office space at the Centre for Social Innovation, and have begun splitting time between the two office spaces. So far, so good.

Toronto is lacking coworking options right now. Indoor Playground ran for about a year and a half and closed up shop around the end of 2007 when their landlord hiked the rents. Centre for Social Innovation offers workspace rentable by the hour or by the month, with shared access to networking, printing, a kitchen, and so on. But as their name suggests and David Crow points out, CSI’s focus is on social innovation, and they require all tenants to have that as part of their agenda.

Wayne Lee posted on TorCamp this morning about organizing a meeting to gauge interest in creating a new Toronto coworking space. Check it out:

We’re trying to gauge interest in developing a permanent dedicated coworking space in downtown Toronto. This might include shared office
space, some anchor offices, meeting and training space, and a private cafe. It could be any or all of those. Let’s have a discussion with a brief presentation to explore what it might be and why you might want to be a part of this.

Where: Epicure Cafe, 2nd fl, 502 Queen St W, between Spadina and Bathurst

When: Tue May 27, 7:00-8:30pm

Please register at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/116040079

On the more casual end of the spectrum, there are lots of cafes that tolerate laptop customers for a while, but I haven’t yet found any other than the Linux Caffe on Harbord street in Little Italy that actively encourage mobile workers. It’s an odd contrast to Seattle and San Francisco, where mobile working is de rigeur, and it’s easy to find hangout spots where you can be productive and — shock! — welcome for a few hours.

Here’s hoping the coworking trend will tick upwards in Toronto too.

A friend asked me the other day, what does "Beta" mean in the software industry?

I wasn’t really sure what to answer at first. "Beta" used to mean an interim test phase on the way to a "final" and "supported" product release. But over the last five years or so, as we’ve shifted from the boxed-product software world to the online service software world, the term has taken on a very different meaning.

Here’s what Google CEO Eric Schmidt had to say about it in a recent Business Week interview:

How do you make sure all these Google engineering projects actually turn into useful services?

The No. 1 thing we do require is: You can do whatever you want as long as you track it. We have very sophisticated measurement systems at every stage of launch. We have what is called trusted testers. Then beta test, which is forever. We do these 1% launches where we float something out and measure that. We can dice and slice in any way you can possibly fathom.

No real support guarantee, although I doubt . He should know. Pretty much every Google offering has a Beta label on it, with the notable exception of Web search.

So… the new "Beta" means continuous testing, measurement, and improvement. The product is never really "finished", per se… it just evolves. As for support and product quality expectations, it’s much harder these days to get explicit statements or promises from vendors on that sort of thing. Thus "Beta" is also a convenient marketing label to hide behind –  just like it always has been — except that now you can hide forever. (That said, if a so-called Beta service like Gmail went down, you can bet the support would be fast and furious.)

The last point in Schmidt’s answer is also interesting, and to the point on how Google decides whether a service is actually successful:

What’s more important than the absolute number is the relative growth rate. High growth solves virtually all problems. If the growth rate is low, or negative, you’ve got a serious problem.

Test, measure, improve.

Rogers announced this morning that they finally struck a deal with Apple to support the iPhone in Canada.

We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year. We can’t tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned.

So the big questions now are (1) when?, (2) how much?, and (3) which versions of the phone will be supported first (Apple is releasing a new one soon, and many people have brought hacked v1 iPhones from the US to Canada over the last year).

Should be an interesting iPhone vs Blackberry showdown.

Mike Zintel just published a great blog post on Mesh, the project he’s been working on at Microsoft the last few years with Dave Treadwell. Now I know why they couldn’t tell me anything about work, other than cryptic stuff like, "It’s going to be cool," and, "it’s pretty hectic", and "I’ll buy you lunch".

I’ve only read a little on it. I like what I see so far. Pub/sub is great, and anything that makes synch better is good. The key will be to make it truly cross-platform and not too exclusively tied to the cruddy stuff that old-guard Microsoft loves to push: Live IDs (remember Passport, anyone?), Windows, and .NET. Lip service to cross-platform won’t cut it.

In any case, this is going to stir up some much-needed excitement in the MS development community. The PDC this year will surely rock.

I wonder how long until we see the first Mesh iPhone app?

Congratulations to the Mesh team.

P.S. I’d like to take it for a spin, but I decided it’ll have to wait. I lost interest and ran out of time somewhere around 10 minutes into the registration process. Let me guess: nobody on the team has actually tried public signup? It’s a nightmare. To begin with you need a Live ID, which means signing up to MSN, which no developer in their right mind wants to do. (And when will "Live" replace MSN? Sigh.) Then you get hit with the "Please join our waiting list" Mesh page. Then you get dumped on the Microsoft Connection Directory page, whatever the heck that is. No thanks. I need a nap.

Guess I’ll wait for the open beta.

Funny little moment #1: About an hour ago, Katrin and I walked over to the subway station together, and we saw the usual trickle of people returning home from downtown, chatting on their phones, wearing spiffy-looking office duds, and generally looking rather frayed and frazzled. It’s gorgeous spring weather now, with the trees all budding and blooming. Definitely not suit weather, whatever that might be. And I said to Katrin, "Just imagine all these millions of people, putting on their suits every morning and heading in to the office, and all of it just to impress… well, each other." And she smiled.

Funny little moment #2: This morning, we met with an accountant. The moment we sat down, he apologized for not wearing a tie with his suit, to which we said, "errrm… well, we don’t really care about that. We are just hoping you can help us with our taxes.". To which he responded, in a relieved tone, "Oh, good. Because that’s not really how I impress people anymore, anyway." And he smiled.

Do work that you love, and do it well.

All the other stuff will eventually fall into place.

Even if you have to wear a suit.

The US has operated a Do-Not-Call registry to prevent unwanted phone calls since June 2003. When I wrote about this two years ago, the list had 110 million registrants. The latest stats I found, in an October 2007 PDF, says the number now stands at 145 million. Meanwhile, Canada is still waiting. The Canadian registry is due to launch — finally — in summer 2008.

Snail’s pace aside, the Canadian do-not-call registry will also have exemptions that allow many different kinds of organizations to continue contacting you.  Charities, political parties, polling companies, newspapers, and companies with a prior business relationship are free to continue calling until you explicitly tell them to stop.

Great. I can hardly wait.

In response to this, Michael Geist, a law professor at University of Ottawa, has built his own solution: he has just launched a site called iOptOut.ca that helps plug the loopholes. Once you’ve registered on iOptOut it will send your contact info to all the organizations you don’t want to hear from. Just like our do-not-call registry should have done… err, should be doing… in the first place. Better yet, it’s free, very easy to use (it took me two minutes to register), and privacy-clean.

Once this is up and running I’d love to see iOptOut extended to provide a do-not-mail service, including admail. We could feed that list to Canada Post, and to companies that deliver direct like YellowPages.ca. 

Bravo, Michael!