TelecomOne un-conference day 1

Today is day 1 of the first TelecomOne unconference event and it was full of interesting - and surprisingly open sessions.

For me the day started with an interesting session led by Brenda, who guided us through discussions on open source mobile platforms. At some point an interesting idea came from the participants: why not create a non-prod enviroment for people that are interested in playing with new mobile technologies to do it safely on a sandbox?

The idea is not as crazy as it sounds - and got lots of support from the audience.

I led one of the following sessions, talking about community feedback - how does Telecom capture feedback, and how does the company respond to it. This include public and internal processes, on-line community participation.

The third session was a very interesting discussion about the missing bits on the network - what people think should be there to better serve the community, developers - and ultimately their customers. And the first thing was "love". All you need is love!... Seriously though the discussion touched on lots of technical topics, processes and ideas.

I then attended the "Listen to me" session - all about Telecom employees participating in social media: what to do, what to expect, how to behave, who does it, all things related to establishing a successful employee presence on the Internet.

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Running a little behind schedule, Microsoft have in the last few hours made Silverlight 2 RC0 available for developers to download. Originally the final release of Silverlight 2 was slated by end of the U.S. Summer which has now been and gone. Indica... (more in the full post)

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SaaS, Software plus Services, Cloud Computing... You (or your organisation) are looking for more information on these ideas - either to validate directions, learn more or simply have some common topic for tonight's dinner with your geek friends.

Then I suggest you visit CloudAve, a new blog edited by Ben Kepes and Zoli Erdos.

I am actually attending the TelecomcomOne un-conference with New Zealander Ben Kepes (Ben's Twitter is here) this weekend.

CloudAve is initially sponsored by all things cloud company Zoho but committed to an independent, vendor-neutral position in its coverage of the vendors, products, services, and trends in the online business application market. There is even a CloudAve Sponsor Statement affirming this editorial independence.

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Today I had my weekly lunch with Microsoft's Darryl Burling and we talked about kids' computing. He tells me his oldest daughter just got a laptop - and her own e-mail account as well as a Live Messenger account.

We then moved the conversation to the dangers of having kids on-line without proper supervision.

TelstraClear provides an interesting website with information about cybverbulying and tips on how to prevent your kids being victims on-line.

One of the tips is to have a family computer, in a shared location so you can be aware of what's going on. But since you can't be there all the time, and most of these new computers are highly mobile, what can you do?

Enters Windows Live OneCare Family Safety. Add this to the Windows Vista Parental Controls and you have a solution to manage your kids' activities on-line.

It is actually really cool. You can filter the web sites they visit, provide safer e-mail, IM, and blogging with contact management - including built-in contact approval so you know who your kids are talking to on IM, e-mail, or their blogs. You can even approve or reject each new contact for their Windows Live Messenger,

The best thing? Windows Live OneCare Family Safety is free and works on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista.

And yes, this came up today, and soon after I found out the Apple New Zealand newsletter touches exactly this subject. It looks like Mac OS X implements some Parental Control, but it's not as extensive as the OneCare Family Safety package.

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Busy week, lots happening, lets get on with it..

News / Web Happenings:

First shots of IE Mobile 6 - looks promising, but I can't help think Microsoft are still missing the mark on this one when compared to other mobile browser offerings already available. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now seeing as it's not even finished :)
Chinese TV channel joins Freeview|HD - Having just got my Satellite TV card up and running (which I won at the Geekzone Pizza evening in Hawkes Bay) I can happily say "the more the merrier".
YouTube and TVNZ to bring New Zealand election debate on-line - welcome to the digital age.
SpaceX successfully launches Falcon 1 to orbit - the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit the Earth.
Xero now available in Australia - Go you good thing!
Paymex is back, but why would you trust them? - Great commentary here from Lance Wiggs on the return of Paymex this week. He's asked all the right questions - and to their credit the new (and previous) owners of the Paymex service have responded (read the comments).
Microsoft to launch 'Cloud Computing' platform - Steve Ballmer has announced Microsoft's new cloud computing initiative, most likely to be unveiled soon at PDC in LA. More commentary here and here as well.
Skype 4.0 beta take 2: Full screen mode now optional - Anyone using it? what do you think? Several people are commenting that the user experience falls apart as soon as you want to chat with more than one person.
Slingshot's misfire cuts off phones - Very, very poor form on Slingshots behalf to allow such an important domain name to expire - regardless of the reason.
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 released - Microsoft's terrific new Virtualisation platform is available right now!
Telecom slashes broadband tariffs - Telecom updates pricing and bandwidth allowances on it's plans.
Coming Soon: Amazon EC2 With Windows - A good move from Amazon, more options for on-demand servers. (One wonders if this announcement shortly after Microsoft's 'cloud computing' platform announcement is pure co-incidence?)
GIMP 2.6 Adds 32-Bit Support, GUI Improvements - for all you GIMPers out there (you know who you are).
Skype surveillance: You can't trust closed-source software - News today that Skype is helping Chinese authorities monitor the Internet. An official response from Skype's CEO came through this morning also.

General:

Vista - curb those annoyances - Kirk Jackson with a good rundown of some common Vista issues and how to remedy them.
Windows Server 2008 Workstation Converter - a neat tool that automatically tweaks Windows Server 2008 and sets it up ready to use as a day-to-day workstation.

Development:

jQuery and Microsoft - Microsoft will be shipping jQuery as part of Visual Studio going forward, this is terrific news as jQuery is one of the best javascript libraries out there and more developers should be looking at it.
Microsoft unveils next version of Visual Studio and .NET Framework 4.0
Apple Drops iPhone Developer NDA On Released Software - It's about bloody time. This rediculous farse was doing nothing but stifling iPhone development.
Flash for the iPhone confirmed - Again, it's about time. Apple have said all along it's the 'real internet' in your pocket - which doesn't really ring true without the abundance of video content etc. served by flash.

Neat Stuff:

24 Hour, Air traffic visualisation - Incredible representation of the daily movements are aircraft across the globe. [video]
Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: October 2008 - Pimp your desktop!

FAIL of the week:

Incident Action Plan - Epic FAIL

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