coffee.geek.nz

Twitter falls over -- i'm not sure how often as i'm not a daily user (anymore) but it's alot.

It's crazy everyone using twitter's service - it's like the whole world using one email provider. A healthy ecosystem needs diversity.

So, checkout Open Microblogging (OMB). It's the same thing but distributed.

That means you (or a tame geek friend) can set up your own twitter -- *AND* communicate / subscribe and publish to the timeline of other users on completely different servers.

I'm the only user of my server - yet i see all the people i've subscribed to on dozens of other OMB servers

check it out here: http://micro.br3nda.com/br3nda/all

If you want to move on from the central point of failure, then try out http://identi.ca, a free omb platform powered by StatusNet (an open source project).

exhibit A: the twitter fail whale image

I've been a fan of the Decemberists for ages - they were an indie band and i could easily buy their music from dozens of online music stores.

Photo by Alicia J. Rose

Then they signed to Capitol - their last album was only available on itunes or on archaic optical media. I bought the optical media, becuase i didn't have access to itunes (they weren't in NZ yet, they still had DRM, and i would need to buy windows or mac operating systems to run itunes)..

and now, a second album this week - now the number 1 album on itunes. They've hit big time.

What conclusion do i reach? That there's a huge amount of fame to be found in signing up with a major record label. Is there a huge amount of money? I don't know.

Photo by Jared Zimmerman

Today i had coffee with a staff member from New Zealand's women in technology. My goals were to talk on girl geek dinners, see if she could help me find contacts and perhaps share some advice on the movement.

Early on she blindsided me, when I asked if she would mention Girl Geek Dinners to her members, the answer was a flat "No", because we are competing against their "Behind the Lipstick" events so they cannot tell their members.

This both suprised and dismayed me. I had interpreted their goals as helping women working in technology. "Our goals are the same" was my rebutal. But as the conversation progressed I come to the conclusion that they're not the same at all.

womenintechnology.co.nz's Vision statement is To be the premiere organisation empowering technology workers to achieve unimagined possibilities. This leaves me to perhaps conclude they wish to the the only group helping women into technology. Highlander syndrome. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!