port7 – co – uk

If anyone is getting mail bounced, they might want to check that the mail server is not configured to use ordb.org as I found out today.

I seems if your mail server is set to check ordb.org for spam purposes, it will blacklist everything, as of 26 March 2008.

See this article for info.

Just thought I would add my 2p to the world of comments regarding the announcement that Phillip Rosedale is stepping aside as CEO of Linden Lab, creators of the Second Life virtual world.

I think this is a good thing, Second Life and Linden Lab has seen phenomenal growth over the past few years, and few could disagree that SL has become the leading Virtual World and the one that all others are measured against. As Virtual Worlds are in their infancy SL has been at the leading edge regards the technology, and whilst there is still some way to go, it is now of a size and popularity that stability and service delivery are more important than implementing new features.

The reason I think it’s a good thing is that whilst Phillip has done a fantastic job of building this ship and getting it out of the dock, it needs someone with a different skillset to keep the ship steady in the stormy ocean that is delivering a stable service.

This does not mean that Phillip is leaving Linden Lab, just moving to be Chairman and focus on strategy and vision rather than CEO. I expect he will still be the man to be the spokesperson and do the rounds of conferences and speaking assignments too.

Just booked for a weekend in London, thought it would be a nice break.

I tried to get in at the County Hall Premier Inn, but alas that is fully booked up. But I managed to get somewhere just a bit further down the river. And it so happens that the new place is right next to Borough Market, the famous central London foodie haunt.

So having never been there before, can anyone offer any recommendations, of must-do’s?

Interesting post here on the Capgemini CTO blog, contemplating a future (if I read the post correctly) where licenced software products are a thing of the past.

It’s interesting in the fact that this has come from Capgemini, one of the big consultancies beloved of big business, are they ‘getting it’? This is where Open Source comes into it’s own, in value added services and support costs.

I am reminded by a statement from Mark Shuttleworth a few years back where he claimed that he saw the day some years in the future where the Open Source model would be the dominant model of software development and also delivery.

Just want to echo PerfDave’s post on the Hacienda exhibition at the Urbis. I have been a few times and always found it really interesting.

Loots of interesting stuff there, and like PerfDave says, you could spend hours there. So I would encourage you to get down there and check it out before it goes.

I see Microsoft are making a bid for Yahoo, they are obviously looking to respond to the growing power that is Google, and so Yahoo seems like a good buy.

What is just as interesting and not good news, is that Yahoo recently bought Zimbra, the most promising of the Exchange alternatives out there. So by acquiring Yahoo, Microsoft will also get Zimbra and promptly bury it, in favour of the 500-Pound Gorilla that is Exchange.

My request to the board of Yahoo, don’t do it, but if you do, ensure that Zimbra stay’s open!

Just setting off for a meeting at Microsoft HQ, should be interesting. As I am there on a professional basis I am going to avoid pointed questions about closed standards, document formats and anti-competetive practices.

Then again, maybe not…

Not sure how this works in practice, but it seems there is a Second Life Ballet company. I stumbled across it at the IBM island(s) in SL, while I was looking for the lowdown on IBM Retail announcements about Linux.

Anyway here is a pic..

They are currently working on a version of the Nutcraker, and are looking for people to help out as ‘dancers’, animators, musicians, etc. They have already done a number of productions apparently, and so this is not a new venture. The previous ones were both original productions, ‘Olmannhen’ and ‘Windows’.

Some links:

slballet.org
slurl

Anyway, off to look for Retail Linux news…

Was pointed in the direction of this today, an interesting concept. There is also a website at cleverzebra.com for those that like that sort of thing.

So after unsubscribing from Linux Journal about a year ago and getting a subscription to Linux User and Developer I am thinking about going back.

It seems that LU&D have a bit of a distribution problem, I have not had a magazine for a few months now, and I also have not been paid for a couple of articles I wrote. With Linux Journal, the magazine always arrived on time and although there was a slight American bias to the magazine it was a good read with great articles.