Projects &the net &work 19 Mar 2008 04:02 pm

A website is like a baby. It needs love, care and feeding

A friend asked if I would help with setting up of a new website. My first response: Does your organisation have the commitment and resource available to follow the process through? Can you or someone here look after this new child of yours? One that needs love, care and feeding? If not, then it’s best not to bother at all. A site that is not fresh, active or healthy is a waste of time and is doing far worse to your reputation than the good you think setting up the webiste might initially do. Think hard about it. If you can follow through and support its potential growth to the full then let’s go ahead, otherwise forget it.

Social Nets 17 Mar 2008 10:19 am

Facebook seems to be getting it

FW I think I’m getting a lot less facebook spam. Seems those little ‘thumbs down’ icons I’ve been clicking are working. It’s kind of scary to think that facebook data is really a relationship map. Take a look at ‘friend wheel’ see how everyone you know links to eachother, really good app.

General &Projects &Technology I use 17 Feb 2008 11:38 am

72 billion consuming

“The population of the world, currently six and a a half billion, is due to rise to nine billion by the middle of the century.

The developing world, by definition, aspires to western standards of living. Some economists suggest that nine billion people all consuming resources at peak developed world rates would be equivalent to a population of 72 billion consuming resources at current rates: this is not economically, environmentally or politically feasible.” from the residence sustainable development seminar to be held on 29 Feb 08. Follow proceedings during Live! coverage on the day via the website and U-Stream.

Eco 26 Jan 2008 06:37 am

Open Eco Energy Camp 2008

Webcast powered by Ustream.TV

the net 18 Dec 2007 01:44 am

Facebook- Cool and Not so Cool

Facebook has brought me back in touch with many high school buddies I had long lost touch with but it can be such a damn waste of time. Take a look at the video below, really true, really funny.

the net 06 Dec 2007 12:33 am

I wish !! Mesh Networks – Cell phones and Cars

When are our cellphones going to have mesh network capability? Imagine thousands of cellphones connecting to eachother, sharing connections, perhaps bridging to a home aDSL / cable / Wireless connection and sharing it on. It will kill the ISP’s. Cell phones should be relay devices. Check out these links along similar lines Brad Templeton’s entry on SMS mesh network and also this article from CNET SMS Relay – An Idea For Fault Tolerant Communications and also this article on Mesh-Networking Cellphones
Autonet produces a wifi/GPRS-3G device that turns you car into a wireless hotspot. Nice but I don’t think the traffic police would take too kindly to me browsing the net while driving. It’s great for receiving podcasts though.

life 10 Sep 2007 08:31 pm

Great Quotes #303 – On Freedom

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

Eugene McCarthy, Time magazine, Feb. 12, 1979
US politician (1916 – 2005)

shameful 28 Aug 2007 09:39 pm

Wednesday August 29, 19:00, Syntagma square

Why

Protest demonstration, Wednesday August 29, 19:00, Syntagma square, and on every central square all over the country. Wearing black.

Συγκέντρωση διαμαρτυρίας, Τετάρτη 29 Αυγούστου, στις 7 το απόγευμα, στην πλατεία Συντάγματος και σε κάθε κεντρική πλατεία, σε ολόκληρη τη χώρα. Φορώντας μαύρα.

shameful 28 Aug 2007 08:55 pm

Burning greek “Bushes” and dirty politics

naassa
Fires rage across southern Greece, klling 60+ and we find ourselves consuming the ultimate reality show, a gory game show where the score is measured in lives lost and acres burnt. Three days later and not much besides the mercy of the winds have changed. Cries of terrorism, Greece’s Sept11, Greek flags on TV screen top left corners. Then, more Bushisms, PM Karamanlis , standing in front of a Canadair firefighting plane, borrows some tactics from Bush, speaking to troops and firefighters, “the coalition of the willing”, Firefighters coming from across the EU, Russia and others. One thing missing : The “mission accomplished” sign abve his head. I ask myself what the mission is, helping those poor people or getting re-elected. I’m confused but will not allow myself to be terrorised. Not again.
16 days to Elections: Watch the circus.

Books &the net 13 Aug 2007 05:42 pm

Flattening the Amazon

In this flat world we live in, you would think that Amazon.com would get it.

What I mean is that if Amazon knows where I live (and they do), they can keep all my profile info and credit card details across all sites (and they do), why can’t they  put my orders via the  closest  location  geographically?  I buy a lot of books based on recommendations from other sites who earn  commissions via Amazon Associates. These sites are mainly in the US. It makes no sense for me to buy from the US site because shipping is really high so I prefer to buy via Amazon.co.uk. It would probably make even more sense to buy from the French or German sites. What I’d love to see is when I place an order for a book or other item from Amazon.com, they process my order via the closest geographic location, thereby charging me less shipping but still giving the poor devil that recommended the book to me his commission.

Heres an interesting comparison:

Purchasing The World is Flat by Thomas Freidman from Amazon.de will cost €6.00 in shipping while buying the same book from Amazon.co.uk will cost €7.36 in shipping (£4.98 @ 1 GBP = 1.47764 EUR)

Makes sense since Germany is a little closer to Greece so why can’t Amazon ship from Germany when I order from the English or American site?

Technology I use 31 Jul 2007 10:08 pm

Window shut for 30 days, now for some pain

One full month into my Linux@Home adventure, the experience has been generally positive. While there have been quite significant problems over the last week with browsing, today I attempted a reinstall of the whole OS. Being an old hat at this, I’ve had no data loss since I’ve long made a distinct separation between data and OS files. The re-install confirms there was something going wrong on Ubuntu. Pinning down exactly what was wrong is difficult but it may be an Azureus install I did a week or two ago which might have screwed things up. Anyway, Linux@Home is back up and the speed is up. This thing has become usable once again.

Books 07 Jul 2007 09:53 am

Beasty Computers vs Lazy Programmers

I’m currently reading “Beginning Python” and there’s a great paragraph right at the front that I wanted to share.

PytPg 31. “The trend in personal computers has been away from reliability and toward software being built
on top of other, unreliable, software. The results that you live with might have you believing that
computers are malicious and arbitrary beasts, existing to taunt you with unbearable amounts of
extra work and various harassments while you’re already trying to accomplish something. If you
do feel this way, you already know that you’re not alone. However, after you’ve learned how to
program, you gain an understanding of how this situation has come to pass, and perhaps you’ll
find that you can do better than some of the programmers whose software you’ve used.”

work 07 Jul 2007 09:32 am

10 Will Do’s – #3 of 10

I Will Find focus. I can work on whatever I want, whenever I want to. I have a boss but I must also be my own boss. She has her own job to concentrate on. I will concentrate on my current task or project, and eliminate all distractions so that I can focus on the task at hand. I’ll never get it done unless I get everything else out of the way, and really focus.

Technology I use 06 Jul 2007 09:58 pm

Window closed for a week. No longer Draughty in here. Linux @ Home is Brilliant !!

logo

I am doing everything I used to do through the window. I miss nothing. My Ipod XPerience is better. My PC boots faster. My Skype phone works. I am developing. I love it.

I should have done it ages ago.

Go ahead – Just do it.

Technology I use 06 Jul 2007 09:43 pm

VivoDivorced – Free at Last

divDissolution of our marriage as of yesterday.

You displayed continuous neglect for me. Total disinterest for my happiness or wellbeing, my basic human rights (internet and email) and most of all my self respect and patience.

It could have been beautiful. Yet, it will never be so.

GOODBYE and GOOD RIDDANCE

I am now a recently divorced single subscriber, I carry no baggage – hey there all you sexy ISP’s come and woo me.

Projects &work 06 Jul 2007 09:27 pm

10 Will Do’s – #2 of 10

I Will Set and Meet Deadlines. Recently, I’ve been the recipient of many empty promises. It’s such a waste of time and trust (read reputation) when someone doesn’t deliver when they say they will. I’ll probably not use these providers again. Now as far as I’m concerned, deadlines are important. They pressure us providers to get the work done. When there’s a deadline to be met nothing else should matter even if it means staying up all night to finish the project.I will.

Constantly missing deadlines is just so very unprofessional. If I start to miss deadlines, I should check my workload, and I should make sure I check that the time I’ve estimated that each task will take is actually so. If I see I’m slipping on my timeframes and I’m going to miss the deadline I must communicate with my customer regularly, letting them know that that I’m running late.

Full of Myself &work 03 Jul 2007 09:57 pm

10 Will Do’s – #1 of 10

1. I am a brand. I will constantly Market myself. Few people know me, fewer than I’d like. I can hang a sign on my door, or on my blog advertising who I am and what I do well but I expect that people won’t come knocking down my door on the first day. I need to constantly market myself. Constant self promotion can be pretty distasteful to many but it’s the only way to survive and thrive. I will use tools like email (I won’t spam), I’ll call potential clients and attend events where I might meet potential clients. This is a regular part of my day or week. If a client is supporting a charity or sponsoring a ticketed event, I will attend. I will give something back to my client. My client will appreciate this and introduce new business to me.

shameful 14 Jun 2007 12:23 am

OTE – HOL – VIVODI : I am the customer, So you owe me big !!!

I am the customer. I have chosen you as my preffered supplier or partner so now you owe me, you owe me big. It is your job to give me what I need and keep me coming back for more.
You now have the  responsibility to provide me with the best possible solution in the fastest possible time at the best possible price. You now owe me this commitment and if you are, as you claim to be, the best provider of this service, you will pay me what you owe me. I will owe you after you satisfy my need. I will pay you when I owe you.
I do not care for your internal problems, your miscommunications or your personal intrigues, your little competition. I do not care.

I do not want to be told about what cannot be done. Everything is possible given enough time and money. Take more time and you’ll get less money.
Satisfy me. Now.

Technology 13 Jun 2007 11:17 pm

Virus yet again – Im closing the Window and Switching to Linux @ home

Got hit yet again. I can’t be bothered with windows anymore. Thankfully my data and projects folders are held in multiple copies on another internal drive and an external drive so nothing important is getting killed.

I’m switching to Ubuntu Linux for my home PC. So far it’s working great. The only things I’ll miss are my podcasts via Itunes and my home VB development but I’ll do these through a virtual windows machine via VMWare so all will not be  lost.

Full of Myself 09 Jun 2007 03:07 pm

Everyone Needs a Mission Statement

mission accToo often, we see people who are living life in a spin with no direction whatsoever. This affects almost everything they do and almost everyone around them. Sometimes I myself get in a spin and lose all sense of what is right and wrong. A roadmap for life would be a cool idea but with so many variables to consider it is an impossible task. Impossible is nothing they say, so there must be a way to define at least a general course for things we do or things that matter to us :

Whatever we do, like professional and personal goal setting, we all need a mission statement for our respective professional and personal lives. These should encompass our objectives, our core values and ethics and should be the lighthouse or beacon for everything we do. Doing this helps us define what is important and also gives us a picture of what we define as success.


Do you have a mission statement in either your personal or professional life?

Projects &work 07 Jun 2007 01:13 am

The Weather in the Server Room

Weather1.JPGA couple of weeks ago I had an airconditioner failure in the server room. The consequences could have been catastrophic had I not realised in time. This got me thinking that I should really have a system installed that could give me a warning when the temperature or humidity was not right in there. A quick search on the web brought up quite a few really good products for few hundred dollars at a time. This should be a worthy investment. Then, for a brief moment, I put my hardware hacker hat on and thought that it can’t be that difficult to build something that would provide a similar result for a fraction of the cost. Another search brought up a neat little sensor, the Sensirion SHT11 Humidity/Temperature sensor. This coupled with a Parallax Basic Stamp2 Microcontrollerbs2-ic.gif would definitely do the trick. I should even be able to hook it up to a cellphone to SMS me whenever it gets hot or humid in there, or I can even hook it up to MSN and it can IM me. The Sensiron people were kind enough to send me a sample sensor and tonight I put it all together and it works a like treat. Here’s a screenshot of a little VB app I put together that reports temperature and humidity at regular intervals. Geeky !!

SHT11.jpg S
HT11 Sensor (enlarged 5x)

the net 31 May 2007 09:48 pm

Mahalo is all the rage

Jason launched the Mahalo search engine today – it looks really great. The front page looks like it’s a zeitgeist of sorts and it’s kindof funny to note what’s on peoples minds (seems like it’s showing more US minds though, the results would be starkly different if more International users were visiting and poking around) – take a look – for example under food, people seem to be searching for (in order of importance it seems)

FOOD
Coffee, Cake, Pizza, Beer, Cheesesteaks, Organic Food
(you guys need to eat better)
and under HEALTH (at least one STD listed)
Yoga, Asthma, Colorectal Cancer, HPV, Depression
(no comment)

The front page really makes interesting reading. Love the interface, the whole thing is a neat new concept on search and is bound to catch on quickly (if the quality of results they promise materializes) or at least be a fad for a while.
Good luck Jason, it’s great work.

Full of Myself &life 25 May 2007 06:39 pm

A Quick Sketch Biography of Stavros Messinis

Chris Brogan had a great idea about letting readers of our blogs know more about who they’re reading. Here’s my attempt at a personal Quick Sketch Biography

  • The thing most people know me for is…My passion for technology and innovation, I’m always looking for a quicker, easier, cheaper way to do something. Sometimes I do it successfully, sometimes not
  • The people I associate the most with are…My family and those who inspire me
  • People who have influenced my life are…My parents, my brother, Mr Claasens in std 9, Michael Dertouzos, PaulW
  • One challenge I took on and overcame was…Swimming an open water long distance race without training, fueled by 12 dishes of spaghetti, 32 sachets of corn syrup and a bit of courage.
  • My early years, before you probably got to know me were…well protected from all foreign influences – I escaped to Europe at age 24 where my eyes were opened suddenly.
  • You might not know this, but …I was once a budding artist, photographer and electronics hobbyist.
  • I’m passionate about…Maria, Panos and George Jr II, Technology and my workplace
  • In the next year or two, I hope to…Run the Athens Classic Marathon and Buy a house

life &Technology &work 20 May 2007 07:47 am

Mouse to the Left

wrist painRSI (repetitive strain injury) is playing up really bad this week. I’m changing hands for mousing and switching mouse buttons to give my right hand a little rest. Rest is the only way to recover. Some really good software for helping a recovery of RSI by reminding you to take frequent rests and do stretching exercises is WorkRave but you need to be disciplined enough to use it.

I wish I was.

General &life 17 May 2007 02:23 pm

Measure Everything

speedMeasure everything Important – you’ll never know how fast or slow you are going without a speedometer. If you need to speedup to overtake or slow down to keep from crashing you need to know about it so remember metrics are everything. You need to be able to prove the value of something you are doing compared to something else someone might impose on you. Metrics are everything. Whether it’s time or cost or even a ratio of both. Measure it, date it and measure it again. Put these values in a matrix and use these matrices as your tools to sell your ideas.

shameful &the net 17 May 2007 01:32 pm

Shameful – Vivodi is a Joke – Don’t go there

selfishI applied for CableTV on the 15th of March – given current rumors I can expect to be connected around 4 months from now. Any complaints are futile. The irony is that I’m posting from a shared wireless connection I’m on through Vivodi. Am I being selfish? Perhaps.

Let me counter with this. Vivodi charge me over Eu1/min when I call their customer support line. This is provided by a third party company. It may be Teleperformance but I stand corrected. They have absolutely no idea or intention to help me with any query. I foolishly wait over 15min on hold each time I call them only to be told the same thing time and time again: that they have no idea what the hold up is and when they expect to deliver the product I bought.
Rumor has it they are making a huge profit from their Customer Support lines at over Eu1/minute.

Now who is selfish.

[update 24 May 2007] Received a call from CS this evening informing me of a “slight delay” in my application and that Vivodi are doing everything in their power to resolve the problem. I replied with “Are you kidding me, it’s 60days or so since I applied – what do I need to do to cancel, Enough with you.”

life &work 15 May 2007 12:42 pm

Faster Meetings

boring meetingsWhat if, at our next meeting, everyone around the table actually was ready and had anticipated everything that might come up? Wouldn’t it go faster? Or better? What if we tried something completely new and had the meeting standing up. That might make it go faster.

Meeting participants should only have 3 things to say.

1) What progress do I have to report since the last meeting

2) What do I plan to do before the next meeting

3) What potential problems do I foresee arising before the next meeting that I may need help with

Projects &Technology &Technology I use 15 May 2007 07:33 am

So I’m a Geek Reminiscing about MaBot

I had forgotten I had done this, A bot, My Bot –

she did some important work at the time when I needed to remote into a customers PC and asking them to do an IPConfig to get the IP was rocket science for them. MSN messenger to the rescue, a little VB app that reports back various things such as IP, UPtime and who is king and master of the universe. AppName was SSNMSNIP

mabot

Projects &Technology &the net 11 May 2007 03:51 pm

Everyone in Customer Support should do a stint in a ladies shoe shop at one time or another

Today I read Lior Arussy’s little book called The Experience!: How to Wow Your Customers and Create a Passionate Workplace It’s a fun short read that everyone in customer support should read. I found it quite entertaining. A colleague, seeing me with the book asked what it was about so I answered “Customer Relationships.” Her immediate reaction was “Hmm, Everyone in Customer Support should do a stint in a ladies shoe shop at one time or another” A great quote Anne, thanks for letting me use it here although it’s not only about difficult customers on the whole, nor is it about customers who expect the unrealistic. When a paying customer calls Customer Support the chances are that there is a genuine grievance that needs to be addressed and someone needs to own that problem in order to solve it effectively. My rant here really is about the atrocious customer support the Greek ISP’s have been giving their customers of late, passing a caller from one agent to another, not providing a satisfactory solution in a timely manner and generally passing the buck.

you suck

You guys suck and until you start taking ownership of the problems you will continue to suck.

What is ironic here is that you’re all the same so we the consumers can’t leave you and go to your competition, they suck just as bad.

[Update] Just this afternoon I had a call from a CS rep from HOL about an aDSL line I’m assisting someone put in. Apparently the customer can’t have aDSL “because his telephone line is on an optic fiber” !!!

Stavros : “What !?! did you just say”

HOL CSR: “Did you not hear me? His phone line is on an optic cable”

At this point Stavros engages in educating the HOL CSR about the final mile.
Her response : “Phone lines are not my problem – OTE obviously can’t provide you with aDSL”

I reply :”Two months ago you told me that aDSL was available on this line and that your company could provide”

HOL: “It’s not my problem I have done all I can”

Stav: “Here is the problem, you sell to me on top of OTE’s lines, you and OTE have a communication problem and you both need to take ownership of that problem and stop transferring it to the consumer, or, you can just say from the outset that you have small tiny text in the contract that you can hide behind and that you might not be able to provide after all”

The conversation continues without a solution. I will revert tomorrow.

Bottom line – YOU SUCK

shameful 25 Apr 2007 03:00 pm

Abusive pricing is a function of what the market will bear.

Joseph writes:Abusive pricing is a function of what the market will bear. Take a look at pricing of 3G or GPRS access from mobile providers. Their pricing model has nothing to do with marking up the cost of the service. Traditional bandwidth has become a commodity, like it or not, it has. Cellular bandwidth has the mobility factor of course but the premium they charge for that mobility it is just outrageous. In this case it’s squarely a case of what the market will bear or what the perceived value is. Is it fair to expect a customer to pay more than 100 times the price per kilobyte because of mobility? I think not. Personally I try and use mobile internet access as damn little as possible. Not because I’m cheap but because it’s abusive.

« Previous PageNext Page »