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In the spirit of my last post, I thought I would also tell my loyal readers about how to really speed up their Firefox web-browser. So much so in fact, that you will be amazed at how much faster your web-pages actually load. This little trick is really designed for website users who have broadband connections – but those of you that do not – you are probably able to adjust the settings to a slightly lower level and it will still increase your page load time. This works best on any version of Firefox 3+ :)

A little unknown fact about Firefox is the HTTP application-layer protocol that most web-pages are transferred with and the “safe” limits that Firefox developers put into the config to ensure maximum stability. The problem is that these settings are really really conservative – and while sure thing this improves stability – it slows the whole process down. To really increase your web-page speed and make your browsing experience better – and more importantly faster – with 99% stability – we need to tweak the HTTP application-layer protocol. The logic behind this is much the same as the logic behind tweaking the maximum number of connections when using Peer-to-Peer systems. The more HTTP connections the application can make on a broadband connection the better – so use the settings below to make your web-pages load at least 4-5 times faster (and indeed make Firefox load faster when you open it):

1. Type in the Firefox address bar about:config
2. Accept the Warning notification and continue
3. At the top of the page will be a filter – search for, and adjust, the following settings:

network.http.pipelining: true
network.http.proxy.pipelining: true
network.http.max-connections: 50
network.http.max-connections-per-server: 40
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy: 20
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server: 10
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: 20

4. Then right-click anywhere in a blank space and select New –> Integer
5. Name this integer “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to 0.
6. Right-click again anywhere in a blank space and select New –> Boolean
7. Name this boolean “config.trim_on_minimize” and set its value to True.
8. Now in the Icon Tray, right-click on the Mozilla Firefox Icon and select Properties
9. Under “Target”, you will see the line “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”
10. Change this line to “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” /Prefetch:1″
11. Ensure that there is a space i.e. \firefox”(space)/Prefetch:1″

Enjoy your new found Firefox load time and speed!

Being in web development – nothing irks me more than slow web browsers. I typically use Google Chrome (because of its rendering speed and the javascript engine which is written into the browser) but during any web development the “IE Clan” of browsers still accounts for some 70% of the market and therefore development and testing on it is a must. When I upgraded my browser sometime ago to the latest IE8 – I was astounded by the sheer lag of the browser on Vista Ultimate when loading pages, new tabs and even just in starting. Because I don’t really use the browser regularly – it has never really bothered me – but more recently I have been doing some testing on it, and the slow response time is just so painful.

Luckily, I have discovered a solution that improves IE8 Speeds hugely on my PC – regsvr32 actxprxy.dll - from the command prompt. This command re-registers the ActiveX Interface Marshaling Library – which controls ActiveX/COM object interfaces – or in normal English translation – allows your PC  to load IE faster. This results in seriously increased performance and therefore with some other minor tweaks – allows you to have a smoother IE8 experience. To get it all happening simply follow these steps in Vista:

1. Press the Start Button and type into the Search Bar – cmd.

2. It will appear under the Programs list, and you can right click on it and Run as Administrator.

3. A new black window will appear with the command line window on c:\Windows\system32>.

4. Type into this window regsvr32 actxprxy.dll

5. A prompt should appear with DllRegisterServer in actxprxy.dll succeeded. Click OK & Restart your PC.

6. You can stop here – but if you don’t notice any improvements continue.

7. Once restarted open IE8, go to Tools –> Internet Options –> Advanced –> Reset (this will reset browser to default settings)

8. Close & Restart the Browser and you will go through the Welcome to IE8 screens again – here is where you need to adjust things:

• Select Suggested Sites – No
• Select Custom Settings
• Set your Default Search Engine (Google, Yahoo or Bing)
• Select Yes to Updates
• Select Turn Off Accelerators
• Select Smart Screen On
• Select Compatibility View Off

9. Once this is done, you should see some serious improvements in your browsing and rendering experience :)

Drop a note in the comments if this has worked for you!

If you are into Social Media and the Internet – the Facebook.com/Vanity-URL experience is – or speaking in past-tense was - a must  for you. On the 13th June 2009 at approximately 2PM Melbourne, Australia (GMT+10) – Facebook opened their service to include Vanity Urls – that is, instead of the old “facebook.com/profile.php?id=123456789” – you could now have “facebook.com/YourName“. If you still haven’t done this, you need to goto www.facebook.com/username/.

The response was unbelievable – more than 500,000 names were registered within the first 10 minutes. Lucky for me, I was able to secure the exact name I wanted – which makes things much easier now to tell everyone where to find me on Facebook. Unfortunately, for the millions of users who did not login when the process began – most, if not all, of the common English name associations would be taken inferring – much like emails – that you will have to have a combination of letters and numbers and wont be able to secure the name you want.

My name is common with more more than 1000 other people around the world – so having to be quick off the mark was pretty essential. Luckily – the exact name I wanted was not one of the “suggested” names or combinations – so I had to select more “Choose your Own Name”. My trick was that I had previously setup “Copy/Paste” for my name, so I was able to quickly hit Ctrl+V on this field and then select the “Set Username” – meaning that I was luckily enough to get in immediately – while more than likely, another Tim Davis around the world was typing the exact name. I was in all likelihood – only milliseconds ahead.

Now you may be reading this post thinking “you are such a nerd” – but for me – having an easy-to-remember facebook URL makes life so much simplier. I can tell friends, family, colleagues and business associates where they can find me on Facebook without forcing them to remember combinations of letters and numbers – which often get lost, can’t be remembered and could result in lost opportunities. Considering that once a name is set – it can never be changed - I don’t necessarily think it was such a bad thing to be online for and secure a little piece of Facebook real-estate.

If you secured the name you wanted, drop a note in the comments :)

It has been absolutely fascinating to watch the technological developments unfold as the world judges the probability of a Swine Flu pandemic. The current primary information repositories seem to be entirely based on information being released from the World Health Organisation (WHO) Swine Flu site located here, and the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States located here. Google has released an interesting tool to plot the spread of the disease from their website which you can check out here which maps the latest information from a number of sites in a RSS feed. Interestingly, if you check out the Google News site you can also see the sheer number of stories being published around this disease, and more than 10,000 Tweets on Twitter are being posted every hour in relation to the latest news and information showing that real-time information surrounding the disease is quickly accessible.

The sheer number of searches being conducted online is clearly illustrated on the Google Trends search feature, which highlights a sharp rise in “swine flu, swine, flu, influenza” searches compared to the normal number of searches at the beginning of April.

What is most surprising, is the media’s massive exposure of the disease and the unprecedented global response to prevent the disease from entering nation States borders. To be frank, the sheer amount of coverage of the virus shows the power of new social media and most importantly – the gravity of the disease and perhaps the hype surrounding it. At the very least, the Internet is allowing people to stay so informed around the latest outbreaks that it is almost impossible to decipher all the relevant information. Perhaps more importantly, is the effect of the disease in our already fragile economy. Some news stories have stated that the economic impact of even a ‘mild’ dose of the disease would be around $330 Billion USD  in lost output as the world shudders and people remains indoors. Of course, on the absolute end of the scale the damage would total around 142.2 million lives and cost more than $4.4 Trillion to the world’s economies – something that we could ill afford considering the current financial crisis.

Thermal imaging scanning to detect body heat in airports, surgical face masks, commercial airline pilots being required to report the health of passengers, doctors and nurses at airports, quarantining ill people in their homes and even an increase in the sale of gas masks are the responses taken thus far to prevent the spread of the disease. If Mexico is anything to go off, increases in food shortages and clean water could also be a problem. Of course, this is all very much an ‘alarmist’ view and is not balanced in perspective to the number of people who die each year from influenza through a standard winter. At the moment, very few people have been affected by Swine Flu as a proportion of the standard number of people affected by influenza each year. But as is standard in this day and age – the sensationalist attitude of the media prepares everyone for the worst and an ill informed populace over compensates as a result.

Of course, whenever there global fear surrounding the disease – someone always seems to come out on top financially. The makers of the two most effective anti-virals against the disease are Biota Holdings Ltd and Roche Holdings AG who each produce Relenza and Tamiflu respectively – both the most effective influenza drugs on the market, and both seem to have an solid impact on Swine Flu. Smartly – Google have always denied advertising on drugs as part of their Adwords program and all searches related to Swine Flu – are advertising free. But of course, if the media continues to hype the disease and not report the truth of the spread accurately – then more and more people will begin to become alarmed about the disease – leading to the natural probable cause of panic.

So in writing this article, and doing some basic research online – it seems the most prudent course of action to take at this stage is simply standard smart and healthy personal care. This would include, both from common sense and from the CDC FAQ and Swine Flu and You pages, the following:

1. Cover your mouth when coughing
2. Sneeze into a handkerchief or tissue
3. Keep your hands clean at all times – my recommendation are the hand cleaners that don’t require water.
4. Avoid touching public surfaces and then touching mucous membranes (nose, eyes, ears, mouth etc)
5. Stay away from sick people
6. If you’re feeling ill – don’t go to work – go to your Doctor and take their advice.

Realistically, this is advice that is common to all genus of diseases and viruses – not categorically ‘just’ for Swine Flu. Most importantly, stay informed about the relevant outbreaks of the virus – but don’t start necessarily digging your outside nuclear bunker or moving to the country just yet. While the age old axiom – ‘better to be safe, than sorry’ – does ring true – I think that keeping healthy, fit and taking the proper precautions should ensure that the world contains and eradicates Swine Flu.

Stay Safe & Healthy! :)

While we have been busily preparing Fluc for launch, some of the team wanted to spend “their 10% time” on producing a little side project. Of course, I agreed and so we have been playing around with a new product that we have been producing “on-the-side”. Today, we are launching – in alpha – that product and it’s called CrowdSend.

CrowdSend is a really easy and simple customisable widget tab that you can stick your website, blog or myspace pages which allows you to share your content. We have made some real customisations to the service to ensure that we never ask for your password and you are always in control of your information. The best thing about CrowdSend, I think – is that we are building the service entirely on the feedback from our users. A few users wanted us to integrate bookmarks (when we launched we only had our secure email solution) and within a few days, bookmarks were done and the site was updated. We have had a tonne of feedback from “alpha” testers who are keen to see items such as statistics and the like – all of which we are getting together.

At the moment, the service is basically streamlined to make it as easy as possible to share your content and all your data is being gathered regarding statistical impressions etc for integration at a later date – we ourselves are statistics junkies :) You can customise the tab in just about every way in terms of colour, and writing and style and position and the like. It’s never really possible to get all bugs, on all browsers (you could test forever and never launch) – so there are bound to be one or two bugs in the widget. If you find any, we would love you to just shoot us an email and we will resolve them immediately.

In the coming weeks, we will be adding more features to CrowdSend such as registration, multiple widget management and the like – in addition, to a whole lot of other stuff that we think is going to be really useful. Of course, we want all of your feedback to make the service as useful as possible. You are free to send me feedback to this page – or you can simply shoot us feedback on the CrowdSend site itself.

Go on and try it out – its free and is a really fantastic, customisable widget solution which sits – we think – beautifully on your page and allows you to get your content out into the world. It’s integrated on my site now on the right so go ahead and try it!

I see many interesting on projects on the web everyday – tonnes of new technology mediums which are launching or adding new features, or startups that are getting their product ready for launch. There are also countless other projects which are just impossible to see – merely because I have just never heard of them, the almighty Google hasn’t indexed them, they are not in English or simply because they remain undiscovered and not as yet “popular” by the masses. That changed today when I found a really cool project while just surfing around the web looking for peoples experiences in user interface design. I would say that I effectively just stumbled onto this site in my search (and no, not using stumbleupon).

The site I found is called we feel fine and it is a fascinating journey into the world of human expressionism. What is so unique about this project is that it deeply explores the web and the countless number of human emotions which are posted every single second online. Currently, the site just explores weblogs and extracts huge amounts of metadata from these sites which it then compiles into feelings in a structured manner. To quote from the site

We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling”. When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the “feeling” expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). 

The site has a database of several million human feelings and it increases by around 15K to 20K of feelings per day. The interface of the applet requires Java to run (I am assuming because of the sheer size of the database) and the graphical interface is organised into a particle system which allows for a ’scattered data layer’ approach to viewing and searching feelings from around the world. Each particle on the applet can be clicked and the feeling – including text and photos, or a combination of both – is displayed on the screen.

It really is an amazing use of technology and a great insight into how people are feeling at any one time. People often regard Twitter as one of the greatest sources of human expressionism in that it allows everyday people to communicate their thoughts in small passages of text commonly known as ’status updates’. Thousands of other websites have since incorporated this small feature in someway or another (although I really think that the 140 restriction helps to keep status posts on point). Of course, feelings may be harder to decipher in the twitter system because people often just post status updates merely because they are bored or want to let people know what they are doing. While it’s possible to argue that real human emotions probably don’t feed into a twitter stream because people don’t want to let others really know how they are feeling (and because many followers on the twitter system are friends or business colleagues) – I would still contend that across the entire site feelings could be extracted.

In some respects this is what makes the twitter a fantastic, open and asynchronous system and on the other – what makes it really stop true human emotions from being published in a stream. My issue is that there is no way to select only a small group of people to see your posts without closing off the interface entirely – and this means that most people will limit posts relating to human feelings and focus on other points of interest in their lives such as interesting articles, reviews or opinion. Of course, you may be thinking at this very moment that if you want to publish your emotions on twitter you can easily – and you would be completely correct in thinking this – but I doubt you would actually post them to strangers you don’t know (or work mates that you do). Although it’s fair to say that the we feel fine system indexes blog posts and this is no better than twitter – I would argue that there is more text, you don’t have to compact your feelings with SMS style punctuation and you can publish it so just your friends can see. 

But I digress, this is not a post on the twitter system (well, it sort of is :D) and rather a look into the we feel fine website. Check it out and you will begin to see what is in peoples blogs, hearts and minds around the world and perhaps understand that the feelings you have can often are felt by other people too.

It’s big picture stuff . Enjoy :)

A satirical poem I wrote about law, meant to amuse those in the industry who understand the funnier narcissistic side of law.

The Art of Law

The market creaks, the money awakes – so long it’s been in slumber,
The M&A teams get prepped; a world is ready for plunder.
The Investment Banker hits the phone, a new deal is to be done,
And so the market is alive again and law is on the run.

New suit, new pants, new shirt and tie – a handshake and smile,
‘What deal can I assist you with today kind sir? – i’ll walk a country mile,
Funds management, restructuring, IP or project finance?
The more I can provide you with, the more that we can dance.’

The money flows, the deals get done,
A toast, a cheers, a bravo!
A new house, a new car, another holiday –
It’s all part of the show.

The regulators twist and turn, the boom is in full swing,
The cash is flowing, companies are so pleased – surely not a time to step in?
‘Free market, free rein, self management – no policies defeated,
Why bother the legislator, when no regulation is needed!’

The margin hits, the bankers bust – they no longer meet the call,
The phone calls start, something’s amiss – don’t tell me of a fall!
It’s now insolvencies turn to shine, the pessimists fine show,
Bankruptcy, debt and receivership – the world does not yet know.

The newspapers hit the streets – the populous roars with anger,
‘It’s the bankers and their god-dam risks – their salaries and their squander!’
The Government screams ‘it’s no time for blame, let’s try and fix the problem’,
They make promises of transformations only to deepen our debt for longer.

The law firm shifts, the parties stop – the champagne fountains halter,
‘It would be unruly of us to continue in this light’ – says one truly pompous partner.
‘As while times get tough around the world, and the deal flow stream dries up,
The insolvency practice is our new success, our knight in shining armour.’

The market slows, production halts and companies shut for good,
The cycle has hit the bottom again, time for a recessionary hood.
And quietly in the background, against all the market changes,
The law firm is engaged again – this time for spades and aces.

The work pours in, the candle burns – insolvency stares down the hours,
While the entire M&A Team sleeps soundly, without so much as even a cower.
The billing rate does not stop, it counts against the clock,
The firm a presence recessionary proof – the law clearly is not.

– by Tim Davis (Feb, 2009)

Update: This data has now been provided freely – mainly because I am a great bloke (and also because I had so many requests from people wanting too use it for good causes.)

I have been sitting on some data for a while now that took me a considerable time to put together simply because there were no sources I could find on the Internet which provided it. This data is being released under a commercial licence share alike license solely because of the *pain in the ass* it was to compile and put together – not to mention the time involved. It is a list of 202 ISO Countries and their relevant States and Territories from all over the web since I couldn’t find one source that had the data aggregated easily.

I’ve tried to keep it relatively cheap in cost and the only reason a price is attached is because of the manual effort involved in getting this together – pretty much meaning it’s done and you don’t have to do anything. I am sure someone out there is going to find this data useful. Feel free to Contact Me at any time about this data if you have questions or queries.

Includes 202 Countries and total Unique States of 3697. Microsoft *.XLSX or *.XLS is downloadable.

• ISO Alpha-2
• ISO Alpha-3
• ISO 3166 Country Name
• Individual Country States

To find out more or visit the Data page above.

You know, it’s amazing – the slogan “The Wonderful World of Disney” no longer makes me think about Disney. I have since destroyed this one fantastic childhood slogan that was instilled in me from the age of about 3 and replaced it with “The Wonderful World of Free”. Yes, it’s perhaps a little sad but working on a technology startup tends to do that too you when you are trying to establish viable revenue streams for your business.

You see the world of “Free” has really taken over the Internet. Content is now consumed on the Internet at a rate that has never been witnessed around the world before, and people who access the Internet expect this content to be free. The predominant reason for this is that people pay for their access to the Internet and believe that this is the ceiling point for their use of products and services on it. Take content for example, I read an article on the NY Times website from a fantastic author regarding the state of the Internet. If this author intended on charging me to read the article – I am presented with two options:

1. I can simply pay for the article because the authors writing, style, opinion and experience on the topic supersedes any other content available and the value equation of his writing exceeds any other content available (or that I can find).
2. I can simply scour the Internet looking for similar articles which comment on adjacent subject matter that is relevant to the thought process I am attempting to collate in my head. If the end justifies the means and I discover relevant content which is free – no need to pay and my value equation is satisfied.

You see Internet users now expect content on the Internet to remain free. The age of “charging” for content – or any products or services for that matter – is only valid when the consumer cannot get that particular content, or that particular product or service anywhere else. The value equation for the user has to reach the climatic point where attempting to search for similar content can, and simply does not, satisfy the users needs. It’s at this point, and I believe only at this point, that a user will cough up some hard earnt dollars in order to satisfy their desire to pay for products and services on the Internet.

If we take another example that is more prevalent in this day and age – Facebook. People use and consume content on Facebook everyday and just expect the services to work. The mere fact that it costs Facebook millions of dollars per month to provide these users with this service is irrelevant to those whom consume such said content and use it daily. After all, the service started out as free and users expect it to remain that way – right?

Of course, that’s right – it’s Facebook duty to monetize their business and ensure that they keep providing their services to their users otherwise they will simply change to another service. It’s important to recognise that Internet users are fickle and perhaps they have every right to be – the Internet has an abundance of information and hands the power back to consumers to find the best offering at the lowest value – whether this be in real economic terms or in ‘free’ terms.

So we come to the question that exceedingly enroaches on my mind daily – how can a service such as Facebook “remain free” ad-infinitum? Surely, an apex point will some day arrive where the cost of running the company entirely exceeds the value equation relating to revenue generation? Or perhaps more probably, the product that Facebook is offering no longer fulfills the desire of the millions of users who connect and use Facebook everyday. It is somewhat happening to Myspace, and it is possible that it will happen to Facebook. Facebook was inherently designed for a specific purpose – to share and communicate with friends – yet such a statement does have its idiosyncarcies. The world we are moving into is one where this statement is no longer simply enough – Internet users now, more than ever, demand real-time and up-to-date information in a format that Facebook might not be able to provide moving into the future. Even the design change on Facebook took months, if not a full year, to implement and users are still unhappy about it. But I digress from the purpose of this post (and perhaps this topic deserves another seperate post in itself)

They key question I am really trying to answer is what about all the other products and services out there who simply do not have 1/10000th of the financial capacity of a company like Facebook?

Well, it’s clear that such companies offering these free products and services will simply not cut the cheese in a rescissionary climate where advertising revenue no longer pays for development, hosting, marketing and the like. The days of offering a free product – no strings attached – are long gone in my opinion. The Internet is ruled by a fickle generation of users who demand – no – expect content and services to be free, and if they aren’t – they simply move on. For every paid product on the Internet, 5 more are competing with it that are free. For every service that is launched and becomes popular – another 10 spring up which offer the same service for free. 

So how is it ever possible to beat this seemingly caustic like trend?

The answer is simple – continually innovate. 

There is no other solution to the free problem that to continually innovate and offer features, products, services and content that no one else does, can or has the expertise to provide. Consumers will only pay for products when no other solution exists that meets their value equation. More poignantly, consumers will only pay when for products when no other solution exists that meets their value equation, and the solution that does exist exactly satisfies their needs. There is just no point in producing a great product that no one else has which simply sucks – you wouldn’t pay for it and neither would anyone else (me included). The ideology that needs to be entrenched in all companies (startup and Fortune 500 alike) is effectively this - why pay Peter when Paul is standing around offering everything  for free? Well, I contend that if Peter has something that Paul can simply not offer then Peter gets a new revenue source. If the converse holds true, Paul rears his ugly opportunistic head and takes Peters earnings. 

I believe this really is the unfortunate – nay, perhaps the realistic and capitalist minded truth. Innovation is the key to a great product or service, and a great service is the key to profitability. I believe it’s true to contend that the three are symbiotic in nature – that is, the correlation between innovation, great products and services and profitability is extrodinarily high. The dominance is, however, in my opinion innovation – loose that, and the other elements wilt. The consequence?

Darwinian theory tell us that something else will take it’s place.