MIH SWAT

Want to see the (real) face of SWAT Brazil ? John and I went on a trip to Brazil very recently, and joined the team for a paintball battle and an excellent post-war dinner at Braz – arguably the best chain of pizzerias on the planet. (more…)

We have just launched a new version of Feedalizr and what is SO special about this version is that we now provide users with the ability to update their facebook status (and also read their friends updates – sort of like facebook twitter).

Feedalizr is becoming a way for you to “re-mix” the web and we notice that lots of our users are using the product in the discovery of serendipitous content. Not so much reporting to each other about what they had for breakfast… This is largely a function of  how twitter/friendfeed are evolving. I think the facebook status update makes feedalizr the must have web 2.0 killer app (if I may say so myself – and you guys can flame me cause I am wearing kevlar !).

Enjoy!

In a previous post we met object orientation’s worst enemy (i.e. strong, unplanned dependencies among classes). It is now time to have a closer look at Dependency Inversion, which is one of the most efficient OOP techniques available with which to fight our adversary. (more…)

I am sure we have all heard the old chestnut “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration” (Thomas Edison) and while it might be tired that does not mean it is any less relevant, particularly today, with everybody chasing that elusive startup success. (more…)

I love Linux. Really, I do. As an operating system it’s compact, powerful, and secure. As a principle it’s free and community oriented. Its position in the server market, particularly in the industry I find myself in, the Web, is the de facto standard. Mature distributions (distros) such as Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu have made installation and configuration a breeze, and certainly simpler than in the Windows domain that I inhabited until a year or so ago. (more…)

As a business unit, we are constantly on the lookout for highly talented, enthusiastic, web obsessed developers, in all the countries where we operate. Highly skilled people who live, breathe and swim in the data stream that is the web. We are having a very hard time finding these people in South Africa. (more…)

Strong dependencies among classes (or components) are definitely the villains within a software architecture. The opposite of strong dependencies, ie completely decoupled architectures, do not exist however, because such a utopian schema would actually result in no messages being exchanged among objects at all. Architects should focus on minimizing strong dependencies, designing only well-planned ones. I refer to the latter as healthy dependencies, and they undoubtedly bring a lot of benefits to a system. (more…)

My email inbox is the most valued piece of “virtual real estate” in my life – and I am not alone in using the “act on it or archive it” approach to email. Every email that remains in my inbox is a survivor – a call-to-action item, in the best GTD style. And it works: a near-empty inbox makes me more focused, productive and relaxed. (more…)

Does it appear redundant to say that the web is a knowledge repository? Apparently yes – we all know that the web is the fount of knowledge, if not wisdom. But this statement bears closer examination. (more…)

USSD or Unstructured Supplementary Service Data is a capability of all GSM phones. It is a technology that is built into the signalling layer of the GSM specification, and is therefore already present in all GSM phones and networks. It is session oriented, unlike SMS which is a store-and-forward, transaction-oriented technology. Using an Internet analogy: If SMS is email, USSD is Telnet. (more…)