First look at Microsoft’s Azure: Epic fail!

I was very excited coz I finally got my account approved for Azure but after logging in I never felt confused like this in my entire life! What the fuck is this?!!

The management page and the documentation page seem got stuck together then totally explodes into series of links from one domain to another as authentication tokens get passed over the URL. Currently I have access to 4 services which has 4 different management page with 4 different documentation page for a total of 8 different sites.

As far as i can remember I created 2 projects but after re-login in I'm am totally lost how to access them again.

So… Azure… are you really fucking sure what you’re doing?

Anyway Azure mostly supports .Net with a couple of Java and Ruby libraries to boast its support for open standards but a quick check on its web services schema says otherwise with whole new sets of conventions.

Oh well if MS is throwing this for free, then why not – good enough for some hobby site but I wouldn’t bet a dime on this service!

Predictions for 2007 and beyond: Revisited

It's a new year again and just like i promised on my Year 2007 predictions post, lets recap which came true and which didn't.

Last year I predicted:

1. Banking 2.0 - 60% came true.
There were a lot of new stuff in banking on 2007 such as Western Union Debt card, the Union Bank Eon card with Paypal support and banks have been heavily investing on EPS as well.

2. Content is King - 90% came true.
Tv-links.co.uk was shutdown for allegations of distributing pirated contents which is totally untrue since most of its contents were from video hosting sites such as YouTube, Tudou, and Dailymotion. Although Tv-links do not host them, they were the number 1 destination of users looking for the newest movies and TV-series episodes because they we categorized properly and very accessible. It simply shows being king in content also mean people can access them easily.

3. The rise of the mashables - 100% true.
Facebook and OpenSocial two names that moved and proved this predictions. Do I need to say more?

4. The Gaming Word: "Massive" - 80% true.
Halo 3 and Wii is the best example for this category, Halo has not just enticed a lot of gamers to MMOG but spurred a lot of entrepreneurs such as providers of Halo gaming tutorials. Wii has brought MMOG from virtual to the real world, now friends can meet and play together which in gatherings called a Wii-party. Some MMORG has also initiated virtual advertising billboards like in RAN.

5. Philippine BPO Boom - 70% true.
More BPOs are now shifting to SEO since Pinoys are very good with word play and the adoption of blogging has been booming. Companies are now outsourcing bloggers to blog about their products.

Well in summary, 80% of my predictions in average have came true in some form which means there is still a lot of potential left to be explored for those who are looking for the next big thing.

Anyway be sure to visit back and check out my Predictions for 2008 and beyond which will be released soon!

PLDT Sucked Again

myDSL Plan 999? I don't think so, I'm using a Jr Biz Account with a CBR of 128kbps -- yes it;s fast but it doesn't mean its useful. The connection is intermittent especially when connecting to US based server's like Google.


For an average user, this may be acceptable for we're power users -- multiple VPN connections and Remote Desktop Access is a must. We just wasn't what we're paying for. Don't you?

How not to apply for a job -- ever!

I found this story is from Digg, about an applicant who thinks he's better than the rest of the world. May this serves as a warning to all; be respectful and you will be respected, if you go on bashing other people and you will never get a job :P

[Excerpts]

From: Amir Saffar
Sent: 02 December 2006 01:22
To: Amir Saffar
Subject: multimediator/web designer position
Amir Saffar
889 Bathurst Road
Toronto, Canada


To Whom It May Concern:
I am a web developer/designer with experience in designing corporate, commercial, retail, and business web systems. With more than 6 years experience designing Internet/multimedia systems professionally in a production environment, I could be a valuable asset to your web design and multimedia team.
Managing projects, task delegation, and client relations have been necessary skills at my previous employment positions. These have always been tasks that I excel at and enjoy.
My experience in web site consultation critiquing usability, functionality, aesthetics, and search engine placement can help clients with their existing web content by introducing them to innovative and cost-effective solutions.

My enthusiasm, creativity, communication skills and ability to work without supervision are my strong points. I have extensive design experience using Flash, Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS, VB, C#, SQL, Photoshop, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, 3dsMax, and other programs. I would be able to create a dynamic company presence for you on the Internet.

I am currently on vacation for two months in the region. Since I have a Canadian passport, traveling to the UAE would not be an issue for me at all. I also have to mention that since I have lived in a multicultural country and because of my background, I have been trained to work with people who have different cultures and backgrounds. Therefore I hope my experience in this field could be a valuable asset to your company.
I would welcome an opportunity to discuss my qualifications and experience in greater detail. I am available for an interview at your convenience.

——————————————–

Mike Platts wrote:
Hi Amir
Thanks for sending us your CV - we’d certainly be interested in speaking with you. Just to clarify, are you planning to visit Dubai during your vacation? If not, perhaps we can arrange to speak over the phone.
Regards,
Mike Platts
Creative Partner, North55 Dubai

——————————————–

From: Amir Saffar
Sent: 11 December 2006 00:18
To: Mike Platts
Subject: RE: hi again
Hi again,
I guess people work for free in Dubai. Am I correct!??

take care
Amir

——————————————–

Mike Platts wrote:

Sorry, you’veveompletely lost me there…how did I imply that people ‘work for free’ in Dubai?
Mike.

——————————————–

From: Amir Saffar
To: Mike Platts
Sent: Friday, December 15, 2006 9:11 PM
Subject: RE: hi again

it’s very simple Mike. You are interested in my profile and i wanted to know how much you were able to pay. no response means: you either can’t pay that much,
or you only hire indians and pakistanis who don’t ask for a good salary.
but dude, i am neither indian or paki and i have never worked for less than
2000 usd/month. You got it now!?

Amir

——————————————–

Mike Platts wrote:

Jesus, that’s some chip you’ve gve on your shoulder there pal. Before the email I received on 11th December, I’d only gotten one from you - the first, which included your CV. As far as I can see, it didn’tdidntion money. If you sent another after that, then sorry, but I didn’t gdidnt, which is why I didn’t repdidnAnyway, it’s all worked out well. I wowouldn want a bigobigottedearseholee you working with us, and I’m sure that the Indians and Pakis Pakisork at North55 - most of whom earn more than US$2,000 a month, some by a factor of three - are glad that they won’t have to put up with your small-minded bullshit either. The Brits, South Africans and Canadians will probably be pretty cock-a-hoop too.
Best of luck finding a job in Dubai - I’m sure you’ll get exactly the kind of position you deserve.
Cheers,
Mike

——————————————–

From: Amir Saffar
To: Mike Platts
Sent: Saturday, December 16, 2006 10:39 PM
Subject: got it?

i’m sending this e-mail twice. i wanna make sure you get it this time!!

2000 USD/month is a joke bro. I got paid that much when I graduated from College/without any exp.
I’m pretty sure most of you guys work at coffee shops when you finish your work at the studio.
What doesn’t make sense to me is, why would a guy from N America or Europe want to work for that amount. Perhaps you’ve hve a low paid job back home and you are satisfied with 2000 USD!USDrewerenou a cleaner/or a security guard…Mike!?

——————————————–

From: Mike Platts
To: Amir Saffar
Sent: Sunday, December 17, 2006 1:41 AM
Subject: Fw: got it?
You really are an irritating little troll aren’t you? You can barely write English, and you seem to have a problem reading it too. So I’ll break it down for you: not. wanted. here.
Now fuck off.
All the best,
Mike.
PS - I’veveaking the liberty of copying some of my colleagues in the industry here, just in case they too should have the misfortune of hearing from you. I’m sure they’d be kind enough to forward it on to their pals, too, and with any luck you’ll be back fucking moose in time for Christmas. (Oh, and by the way, if you’re such hot shit, why the reluctance to include a link to any of your work in your CV? So you’ve got six yvers’ experience - big deal. You don’t seem to have been able to hold down a job for too long - or were they short-term cleaner/security guard contracts?)

[End excerpts]

Read the rest at The Dubai Life Blog

Now on to my personal reflections to this story.

Its January again and in a few months time it will be Job hunting season again especially for the fresh graduates. I remember the advice of my mentor well and I will dispense it to you also:

"to be successful, talent is only half of it.. the rest is about dealing with people".

That's why whenever there's an arguments, I try to be sensitive and respect other people's opinion. During discussions, there are times it seems you have an upper hand because you know more about the topic compared to others but it's not an excuse to belittle them in anyway. You may be a expert in one field but others will always be better than you in other areas.

Always remember when dispute persists, do not force your ideas unto others or think of them as inferior in anyway. They may lack the understanding but you also lack the means to communicate your ideas, this basically causes the failure in any discussions.

Predictions for 2007 and beyond

This is the first time I'm going to do this prediction gig basically because I'm a fan of the Uncertainty Principle and making predictions doesn't actually means predetermining the future, rather it gives us insight on the current what has come to pass. Predictions are built on present facts and data gathered from history and the possibility of history repeating itself or it totally changes making a 180 degree turn around.

1. Banking 2.0
We already have Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0, I think this year other industries will jump into the 2.0 band wagon especially banking. Why? Because in order to develop things we need to finance it and most banks don't have the capability yet to offer smooth transaction between Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 enabled products. Imagine having your daily Adsense income going directly to your bank account or if your an advertisers, being able to pay for search placement in daily terms -- something like subscribed indefinitely until canceled.

Of course the world already have PayPal but its not a bank, its not even a credit card. PayPal is a broker that you authorized to conduct credit card and bank transactions in your behalf. But wait, why banks don't do it themselves? why doesn't Visa or MasterCard provide the payment gateway? IMHO cutting the middle man saves every a lot of money for online buyers or sellers; its a potential a cash cow for every banks. Finally PayPal isn't servicing some countries because they are prone to fraud, which IMHO is a huge portion of untapped markets. These are cases where banks are more suitable to offer payment gateways since they know how local ecommerce per region works and can easily adapt their payment systems to curb fraud.

2. Content is King
If you have read my previous post about Media's role in shaping Mobile 2.0 then this is the follow up. So far local telcos has been relying on contents custom made for mobile. However they have overlooked the fact that there are tons of contents already available out there; If you're a fan of YouTube, DailyMotion, Current.TV, Blogger and the likes then I think you already know what I'm talking about. These are community produced contents with Creative Commons Licenses, which basically means a bulk of them are almost free to redistribute or rebroadcast provided it has proper attribution. Telcos position is very unique, they can be publishers of content thus they can buy licensed contents to be republished for mobile or they can be passive communication providers; meaning any content with licenses they do not own can still be transmitted via the network and get a quick buck. It's just like why your ISP doesn't have to pay a dime to publishers for licensed content being transmitted through their network while they earn more when people download contents more; because the demand to use faster connections that cost more goes up too. However for telcos to survive 2007 and beyond, they must must evolve from being just network providers but be communications and entertainment providers. This means they have to provide all means of communications including tools and solutions to communicate as well as provide the reason why to communicate. The success of TV is primarily because its the primary medium for entertainment, it used to be the carrier of information too but that has been long taken away by the Internet and it won't be long enough when all of us will be watching TV via Internet thus signaling the end of broadcast stations. This will eventually force stations to downgrade into content providers type entities where they can easily merge with telcos to provide perpetual supply mobile and Internet TV entertainment contents.

3. The Rise of The Mashables
I have noticed more and more of the new sites are either a mash-up of services offered by other Web 2.0 sites or a complete clone of another. They call then widgets, embeddable piece of contents that can easily be integrated into any existing site (for example see the embedded map showing the site's recent visitors). So far Google and Yahoo are the biggest providers of these widgets which includes contributed ones from the developer network; all that just to promote their portal and hoping to build a big base community that will follow and use every product they released. However Google and Yahoo... OK lets add MSN, are still search engines at their core, their other products such are mail, eGroups, shopping and etc are just there to act as outlets to distribute their ad littered search results. Now there's an idea, why not build a company exclusively providing mashable widgets with ads; weather widgets that links to travel site when its sunny and flood insurance sites when there's storm; map widgets that tell you from what country other site visitors are, as well as links on cheap hotels and travel agencies; this list can go on. IMHO that company is just out there and its ready on 2007.

4. The Gaming Word: 'Massive'
IMHO game titles that will totally run away as winners for 2007 belongs to the genre of Massive Multi-player Online Games. We'll thats not new since the newest trend in online games is play for free but exclusive add-ons and game items are for sale. But wait , here is what's missing: Wii like accessories for PC + MMOG. Yes, in 2007 we may finally see Wii like PC games in WCG or maybe even Special Olympics where all Wii sports type games are played. Locally, I believe there will more and more MMOGs tapping the advertisement industry thus giving game providers more freedom to provide free games (Horay, play free forever). Its a fact that more games are developed to promote a brands rather than traditionally starting out as a pure game concepts; eventually MMOGs will be physically tied to the products they promote; e.g: you can have you online character order a pizza and in physical world the pizza will be delivered to your doorstep! Now that's not just Massive Gaming, it's Massive Marketing as well.

5. Philippine BPO Boom
There will be more BPO companies starting 2007. Why? Just with the 4 predictions above, a company will require lots of resources to pull one off and that's why BPO is crucial to extend one's capability but without sacrificing specialization and quality. In technology based companies, BPO isn't just a simple outsourcing of business process but as means of skill and technology transfer as well. It's actually recommended for a start-up company to have portion of their business be outsourced, this gives the company the chance to upgrade its current skills, competency and technology first without sacrificing its market opportunity. However one must be careful on choosing a BPO partners, some may don't want to share skills and technology thus they will device various interoperability systems. loose connectivity and APIs instead to solid frameworks you can use. I'm not saying this is wrong, but for start-up company its wise to find a BPO partner that provides the entire framework since use of Mid-tier systems should be reserved for large companies who has established frameworks and not willing to change it but still augment its capabilities. In 2006, India as well as Vietnam became the most prominent destination for companies to find BPO partners, however they soon found that most are not willing to share the frameworks thus putting them on a product type lock-in using the Mid-Tier applications. That's where Philippines comes in, having more and more companies outsource their costumer center operation in the country, they have found it wiser to move their technology/production outsourcing here as well rather than having costumer centers contact their outsourced production facility only to find its still closed because its 4-5 timezones away.

I hope you liked my predictions, I personally believe 2007 is a very good year for all and I'm very excited since early signs of my predictions are already there. Let's keep our fingers crossed and on 2008 we will look back on these predictions and see how well we scored.

P.S: I intentionally left out the usual topics like Google, Microsoft, VOIP, Firefox, OpenSource (sorry to guys at PLUG) and Politics (eew!). IMHO these are done deals and its clear enough where they are going on 2007.

TV is Personal, TV is Mobile 2.0

As early as August 2006, Nokia has announced the availability of pilot services for Mobile TV. Recently the site Modeo.com has announced it will be providing commercial mobile TV broadcast to New York city. Mobile TV broadcast is the latest service addition to 3G enabled telcos but unlike downloaded contents like 3GP videos (pull on demand) or streamed videos. Mobile TV is broadcasted just like normal TV using the open DVB-H specification for broadcasting to battery-powered handheld devices, and a related set of specifications for IP datacast (DVB-IPDC), which are the key enabling technologies for mobile television. The Nokia N92 is the first mobile phone to support Mobile TV which was announced during Nokia's Mobility Conference 2005 at Barcelona Spain however Modeo has taken it further by releasing Modeo enabled Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 DVB-H Smartphone, manufactured by HTC.

Recently Inquirer (news paper publication) and GMA 7 (TV station) has unofficially announced a breakup and rumors has it that GMA 7 will built its own portal like YouTube. With Web 2.0 hammering TV stations market, Mobile TV and Mobile 2.0 is the future that local Philippine TV stations may not be ready to face yet.

Firefox 3 Microformats will brings us to Web 2.5

If you think you're Web 2.0 savvy then think again.

Mozilla designer Alex Faaborg published some introductory posts on his blog about where Mozilla Microformats which on his own words, he describes them as "adding semantics to markup to take it from being machine readable to being machine understandable."

Basically it means you can now use your browser to automatically aggregate data/data sources and publish them to any Web 2.0 application. Example, when ever you digg a news it will also automatically post the URL to your del.icio.us or whenever you subscribe to a blog feed the blog's URL will also be added to your blog roll. This functionality is so powerful it will definitely give birth to another genre of Web 2.5 (or we ready for Web 3.0?) applications; just like how RSS gave rise to Web 2.0

Now here is the fun part, imagine doing this on mobile, add a friend on myspace then it will also add your friend's mobile number to your contact list or subscribe to his mobile service. Now that's Mobile 2.0, its simply amazing!

Taiwan Quake Cripples Philippine Internet

December 27, 2006: Taiwan was hit by an earthquake which killed and injured a lot of people and destroyed billions worth of infrastructure including the underwater fiber optics cables that serves as the Internet backbone for Asia. This only reminds us that even if we struggle to design a secure computer systems, its still based on the flawed physical systems which makes it forever vulnerable.

Here's a snapshot of the chaos the earthquake caused in the cyberworld: