Opinions, Expertise, Passion.

The 2009 MySQL Conference has closed it’s submissions for papers. This year the motto is “Innovation Everywhere”.

Last weekend’s Open SQL Camp in Charlottesville, Virginia, we had the chance to talk about the movements in the MySQL ecosystem. I was impressed to get the details of the Percona MySQL Patches, but focus is still in 5.0. (Welcome to the Percona team Tom Basil) Our Delta is attempting now to integrate patches into various MySQL branches. There was an opening keynote by Brian Aker from Drizzle, and Drizzle team Jay Pipes and Stewart Smith on hand. It was also announced that MySQL 5.1.30 will be GA, available in early December.

But these are not innovations that are ground breaking. Last year, it was the announcement of KickFire that I found most intriguing regarding innovation.

What is there this year?. The most interesting thing I read last week was Memcached as a L2 Cache for Innodb - The Waffle Grid Project. This is my kind of innovation. It’s sufficiently MySQL, but just adds another dimension with another companion technology. The patch seems relatively simple in concept and code size, and I’m almost prepared to fire up a few EC2’s to take this one for a spin. I’m doubly impressed because the creators are two friends and colleagues that are not hard core kernel hackers, but professionals on the front line dealing with clients daily. Will it be successful, or viable? That is the question about innovation.

Unfortunately I spend more time these days not seeing innovation in MySQL, but in other alternative database solutions in general. Projects like Clustrix, Inc., LucidDB, and Mongo in the 10gen stack.

Combined with my old favorites of Dynamic Drive, DHTML Goodies and Brain Jar, I’ve added the following to my list of Javascript sources.

• Mochikit
• JQuery

The current US financial situation has claimed a victim in the Web 2.0 world — Uber. I’m not sure if this is the first significant name, but it will not be the last site running MySQL where investors will be quick to cut losses and move on.

Choosing a domain name for your brand identity is the start. Protecting your domain name by registering for example .net, .org, and the many more extensions is one step in brand identity.

However a recent very unpleasant experience in New York, resulted in realizing some companies also register undesirable domain names. I was one of many unhappy people, mainly tourists as I was showing an Australian friend the sights of New York. We had chosen to use the City Sights NY bus line, but we caught with some 100+ people in a clear “screw the paying customers” experience.

I was really annoyed that my friend, only in New York for 2 days both had to experience this, and missed out on a night tour. I commented, I’m going to register citysightsnysucks.com, and share the full story of our experience, directing people to use Gray Line New York, which clearly by observation were providing the service we clearly did not get.

To my surprise, the domain name was already taken. To my utter surprise, the owner of the domain is the same as citysightsny.com. Did they do this by choice, or did another unhappy person (at least in 2006) register this, only to be perhaps threatened legally to give up the domain.

I would generally recommend in brand identity this approach, especially when select common misspellings and hyphenated versions if applicable can easily lead to a lot of domain names for your brand identity.

$ whois citysightsny.com

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

   Domain Name: CITYSIGHTSNY.COM
   Registrar: INTERCOSMOS MEDIA GROUP, INC. D/B/A DIRECTNIC.COM
   Whois Server: whois.directnic.com
   Referral URL: http://www.directnic.com
   Name Server: NS0.DIRECTNIC.COM
   Name Server: NS1.DIRECTNIC.COM
   Status: clientDeleteProhibited
   Status: clientTransferProhibited
   Status: clientUpdateProhibited
   Updated Date: 31-dec-2006
   Creation Date: 28-nov-2004
   Expiration Date: 28-nov-2011

Registrant:
 CitySights New York LLC
 15 Second Ave
 Brooklyn, NY 11215
 US
 718-875-8200x103
Fax:718-875-7056

Domain Name: CITYSIGHTSNY.COM

$ whois citysightsnysucks.com

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

   Domain Name: CITYSIGHTSNYSUCKS.COM
   Registrar: INTERCOSMOS MEDIA GROUP, INC. D/B/A DIRECTNIC.COM
   Whois Server: whois.directnic.com
   Referral URL: http://www.directnic.com
   Name Server: NS.PUSHONLINE.NET
   Name Server: NS2.PUSHONLINE.NET
   Status: clientDeleteProhibited
   Status: clientTransferProhibited
   Status: clientUpdateProhibited
   Updated Date: 26-jun-2007
   Creation Date: 11-aug-2006
   Expiration Date: 11-aug-

Registrant:
 CitySights New York LLC
 15 Second Ave
 Brooklyn, NY 11215
 US
 718-875-8200x103
Fax:718-875-7056

Domain Name: CITYSIGHTSNYSUCKS.COM

Domain names historically have been www.example.com, written also with the protocol prefix http://www.example.com, but in reality www. is optional, only example.com is actually needed.

www. is technically a sub-domain and sub-domains incur a small penalty in search engine optimization.

There is no right or wrong. What is important is that you choose one, and the other needs to be a 301 Permanent Redirect to the one you have chosen.

You also need to know that creating a server alias in your web server configuration, for example Apache or Tomcat is not a permanent redirect, in-fact it is technically duplicate content, with two web sites the same also incurring a penalty for search engine rating.

So what do the big players do. Here are a few.

Use www

• www.google.com
• www.facebook.com
• www.cnn.com
• www.yahoo.com
• www.myspace.com
• www.ebay.com
• www.plurk.com
• www.amazon.com
• www.fotolog.com
• www.linkedin.com

Do not use www

• digg.com
• wordpress.com
• identi.ca

Show duplicate content

• flickr.com
• chi.mp
• corkd.com
• vimeo.com
• garysguide.org
• engineyard.com

Curiously youtube.com uses a 303 redirect, microsoft.com, stumbleupon.com and craigslist.org a 302 redirect.

How do you check? Use a CLI tool such as wget.

$ wget www.google.com
--2008-09-22 19:56:48--  http://www.google.com/
Resolving www.google.com... 72.14.205.99, 72.14.205.103, 72.14.205.104, ...
Connecting to www.google.com|72.14.205.99|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK

$ wget google.com
--2008-09-22 19:57:56--  http://google.com/
Resolving google.com... 64.233.167.99, 64.233.187.99, 72.14.207.99
Connecting to google.com|64.233.167.99|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.google.com/ [following]

$ wget www.facebook.com
–2008-09-22 20:07:59–  http://www.facebook.com/
Resolving www.facebook.com… 69.63.178.12
Connecting to www.facebook.com|69.63.178.12|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text/html]

$ wget facebook.com
–2008-09-22 19:59:43–  http://facebook.com/
Resolving facebook.com… 69.63.176.140, 69.63.178.11
Connecting to facebook.com|69.63.176.140|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.facebook.com/ [following]

$ wget digg.com
–2008-09-22 20:10:47–  http://digg.com/
Resolving digg.com… 64.191.203.30
Connecting to digg.com|64.191.203.30|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 15322 (15K) [text/html]

$ wget www.digg.com
–2008-09-22 20:14:06–  http://www.digg.com/
Resolving www.digg.com… 64.191.203.30
Connecting to www.digg.com|64.191.203.30|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://digg.com/ [following]

$ wget twitter.com
–2008-09-22 20:26:18–  http://twitter.com/
Resolving twitter.com… 128.121.146.100
Connecting to twitter.com|128.121.146.100|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 2655 (2.6K) [text/html]

$ wget www.twitter.com
–2008-09-22 20:26:41–  http://www.twitter.com/
Resolving www.twitter.com… 128.121.146.100
Connecting to www.twitter.com|128.121.146.100|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://twitter.com/ [following]

Professionally, I prefer shorter and simpler without www.

References:

• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http)
• HTTP Status Codes (e.g. 301)

Web 2.0 Expo NY keynotes are happening today. Technology in use included CrowdVine which I’d not heard of, and plenty of Twitter feeds such as w2e_NY08.

The opening keynote was Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures with his presentation New York’s Web Industry From 1995 to 2008: From Nascent to Ascendent .

Some stats, Seed and early stage deals.

• 1995 230 SF Bay area, 30 in NY
• 2008 360 SF Bay area, 116 in NY

Fred first asked “New York is not an alley. Call it Broadway, or just New York.”

Here is a summary of his history of New York Web Industry.

• 1991 - ZDNet
• 1993 - New York Online Dialup services
• 1993 - Jupiter Communications online conference
• 1993 - Prodigy
• 1994 - Startups such as Pseudo, Total New york, Razorfish.
• 1994 - Time Warner Pathfinder
• 1995 -NYIC 55 Broad St. - Technology oriented building
• 1995 - Seth Godin - Yoyodyne - Permission Marketing
• 1995 - itraffic, agency.com, NY Times online
• 1995 - Softbank, Double Click, 24×7, Real Media
• 1996 - Silicon Alley Reporter
• 1996 - ivillage, the knot
• 1996 - Flatiron Partners - good sued for that
• 1997 - The Silicon Alley Report Radio Show
• 1997 - mining co.
• 1997 - Total NY sold to AOL
• 1997 - Agency rollups razorfish buying 4 companies
• 1997 - DoubleClick IPO
• 1998 - Seth Godin moves to Yahoo
• 1998 - Burn Rate
• 1998 - Kozmo - We’ll be right over
• 1998 - was the last year of sanity in the Internet wave
• 1999 - The start of the boom
• 1999 the big players came online , all hell breaks loose. 200 startups were funded in 1999, 300 in 2000.
• 2000 - The Crash & Burn
• 2000 - f**kedcompany
• 2000 - Google came to New York. - 86th St Starbucks
• 2001 - Layoffs, Landlords and bankruptcies
• 2002 - Rock bottom
• 2003 - Renewal
• 2003 - Blogging started gizmodo
• 2003 - Web 2.0 coined
• 2003 - del.icio.us was launched from a computer in an apartment
• 2004 - NY Tech Meetup
• 2004 - Union Square Ventures $120million raised
• 2005 - about.com acquired by NY Times
• 2005 - Etsy
• 2006 - Google took over port authority building, now with 750 engineers in NY
• 2008 - Web 2.0 comes to New York City

New York is now 1/3 of Silicon valley, compared to 1/8 of funded Internet companies.

One thing mentioned is a documentary called “We live in Public”. Some of the footage from 1999, is so early Big Brother.

It started with del.icio.us/ (which now ironically redirects to http://delicious.com), and now it’s becoming more the trend to create a domain name with the extension included for effect.

With unique .com domains harder to come by, and dropping vowels like flickr.com so last generation, some countries must be trying to cash in on the success such as Tuvalu which has something like 10% of GDP from domain name sales of .tv.

Some recent names I’ve noticed are http://identi.ca, http://chi.mp and http://cyclo.ps.

I have even considered some recent projects using this new trend, but the combination of either the 2 letter extension not existing (For example .ld) or it’s not possible to get domains from a registrar (For example .er) it will take some time.

I often come across new websites, quite often by accident, or by indirection in links from looking at other details. The Internet is an amazing place, and one could spend all day reading such a variety information and only touch on just a few specific topics.

I think it’s important to share interesting and new sites, often it’s a referral from others that provide for enjoyable and useful reading. Here are mine in return. Sites which I bookmarked and intended to review again.

99 Designs — www.99designs.com

Need something designed? 99designs connects clients needing design work such as logo designs, business cards or web sites to a thriving community of 17,781 talented designers.

Wufoo — www.wufoo.com

Wufoo strives to be the easiest way to collect information over the Internet.

Our HTML form builder helps you create contact forms, online surveys, and invitations so you can collect the data, registrations and online payments you need without writing a single line of code.

Mako Templates — www.makotemplates.org

Mako is a template library written in Python. It provides a familiar, non-XML syntax which compiles into Python modules for maximum performance. Mako’s syntax and API borrows from the best ideas of many others, including Django templates, Cheetah, Myghty, and Genshi. Conceptually, Mako is an embedded Python (i.e. Python Server Page) language, which refines the familiar ideas of componentized layout and inheritance to produce one of the most straightforward and flexible models available, while also maintaining close ties to Python calling and scoping semantics.

Venture Beat — www.venturebeat.com

I came across this site when reading Developer Analytics: Facebook game Mob Wars making $22,000 a day.

VentureBeat’s mission is to provide news and information about private companies and the venture capital that fuels them. Founder Matt Marshall covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News until he left in Sept. 2006 to launch VentureBeat as an independent company. VentureBeat will focus initially on Silicon Valley, and gradually expand to cover innovation hubs around the globe. Its mission in each region will be the same: to provide insider news and data about the entrepreneurial and venture community that is useful to decision makers.

Developer Analytics — www.developeranalytics.com

The previous article referenced this site, with the tagline “the world’s first social media ratings and reporting services.” I like the categories used in reports.

• Reach - Unique traffic.
• Audience Profile - Demographics and sociographics breakdown. Interest clouds.
• Engagement -Impressions. Average page views per user. Return users.
• Growth -New Users. Churn Rates. Viral Factors.
• Monetization - CPM and CPA revenue potential.

SXSW Interactive — www.sxsw.com/interactive

I’ve heard of South By South West Conference before, and this is it. SXSW Interactive: March 13-17, 2009 -The Brightest Minds in Emerging Technology

SXSW Interactive The SXSW Interactive Festival features five days of exciting panel content and amazing parties. Attracting digital creatives as well as visionary technology entrepreneurs, the event celebrates the best minds and the brightest personalities of emerging technology. Whether you are a hard-core geek, a dedicated content creator, a new media entrepreneur, or just someone who likes being around an extremely creative community, SXSW Interactive is for you!

Actually sounds rather interesting, and different.

Pulse 2.0 — www.pulse2.com

Pulse 2.0 is a company that is driven by our passion of technology and entrepreneurship. We use Pulse 2.0 to share our thoughts on Web 2.0.

TwitHire - For those employers that both have Twitter accounts and time to advertise a job in 140 characters or less.

There should be a website that is devoted to everything based on Twitter.

I came across www.problogger.net by accident. Like many sites and information these days, you simply don’t find via search engines because your normally searching for something specific. I did find it via several levels of hyperlinks. I really wish there was firefox plugin that would track every site you visited, often I’d like to plot how I got to where I am, but that’s another story.

Considering the author is Australian, a top Plurker and Photographer got me intrigued enough to delve for a few moments. What I found is some good information, such as 10 Ways to Optimize a Popular Post on Your Blog and Is Your Blog a Networking Tool?.

Some more reading, Five Ways That Strategic Bullet Points Make You a Stronger Blogger, which leads to a site that includes articles such as Seal the Deal: 10 Tips for Writing the Ultimate Landing Page, which is exactly what I’m looking for with an upcoming Ad Words campaign, but wasn’t searching at the time.

You never know sometimes where good information comes from.

I was one of the invited panel speakers to A panel on Cloud Computing this week in New York. As one of 2 non vendor presenters, it was a great experience to be invited and be involved with vendors.

While I never got to use my slides available here, I did get to both present certain content, and indeed questions and discussions on the night were on other points of my content.

Cloud computing is here, it’s early days and new players will continue to emerge. For example, from the panel there was AppNexus, reviewed favorably at Info World in comparison with EC2 and Google App Engine, 10gen, an open source stack solution and Kaavo which from an initial 60 seconds of playing provide a management service on top of AWS similar to what ElasticFox provides. I need to investigate further how much the feature set extends and would compete with others like RightScale for example.

The greatest mystery came from Hank Williams and his stealth Kloudshare. He did elaborate more on where they aim to provide services. A new term discussed was “Tools as a service”, akin to moving use metaphorically from writing in Assembly language to the advanced frameworks of today’s generation of languages such as Java and Ruby.

Thanks to Murat Aktihanoglu of Unype who chaired the event.

It seems that of late a number of successful community web sites have been experiencing problems in scalability and performance. Today it’s Facebook.

Initially I got a “Problem loading page” browser message. No big deal, you get those. A few refreshes and I’m in. I was trying to send a message, I got the following popup error message.

No Network
Transport error (#1001) while retrieving data from endpoint `/inbox/ajax/ajax.php’: A network error occurred. Check that you are connected to the internet.

Well yes, I’m connected to the Internet, every other site is fine. A more technical look gives the lovely connection aborted message.

lynx http://facebook.com

Looking up facebook.com
Making HTTP connection to facebook.com
Sending HTTP request.
HTTP request sent; waiting for response.
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Data transfer complete
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Using http://www.facebook.com/common/browser.php
Looking up www.facebook.com
Making HTTP connection to www.facebook.com
Sending HTTP request.
HTTP request sent; waiting for response.
Retrying as HTTP0 request.
Looking up www.facebook.com
Making HTTP connection to www.facebook.com
Sending HTTP request.
HTTP request sent; waiting for response.
Alert!: Unexpected network read error; connection aborted.
Can't Access `http://www.facebook.com/common/browser.php'
Alert!: Unable to access document.

lynx: Can't access startfile

I’ve been Plurking more lately rather then Twittering. I’d like to offer to help out at Twitter if I could find the right person to talk to.

I’m no English major, but I do like to ensure my spelling is correct (at least for the bulk of the audience). You see grammar problems on sites, due to the nature of English not being the first language of many people, but one should always check your spelling as per this popup message I got today.

I posted on my Plurk I wished for an easier way to update my status on social sites such as Facebook , Twitter and Plurk . The answer I got was Ping.fm. It is a closed beta, but the code is pingyoulater to get it.

It’s wicked cool, easy and just works. It also interfaces to 17 different sites, I only use 4 of them.

I came across a wicked cool tool at wondle.net. I wanted to create a word cloud for the back of a business card, now I know how.