Our Web2Thing

As you know if you read a bit here, Richard Giles of Clique Communications and I are working on a Web2ish startup web application. We’ve been very secretive until now, but now we are beginning to open up a tiny bit about what we are going to do to rock your web2 world.

Curious? Come and have a look at the new Web2Thing blog. We’ll be writing about the development of our idea, tools, techniques, ideas and all manner of stuff.

Web2Thing? Yes, it is meant as a bit of a joke. We’ll unveil the real name sometime later on. That is if Web2Thing doesn’t stick in all our minds :-)

[Update: 19 Nov 2006:  The real name is Scouta.  See the scouta blog. ]

Net Neutrality is Important

The Internet as we know it, a delicious, creative free-for-all, is under threat. ISPs and Telcos want to start having a say in what traffic is carried on their networks and how much they can charge for it.

Watch Tim Berners-Lee on Net Neutrality and why it is important

BarCamp London coming in June or July

Something else to do in London on a summer day…

Bar Camp London.

No date set yet, but promised sometime in June/July.  I’m looking forward to this one.

Geek day/night/dinner in London

I’m going to head into London next Saturday June 17th for the @media Social and then stay on the for the Geek Dinner. Om Malik is also talking about doing something in London that day. So, will have to try and fit it all into the one afternoon.

[Update Fri 16/6:  Just planning my day tomorrow; it looks like the Geek Dinner and Om Malik event are indeed separate and both on tomorrow evening.  The Om event, codenamed Londom, is happening at at the Princess Louise (Holborn) from 7pm onwards, while the Geek dinner is scheduled for 6pm onwards at The Livery, 130 Wood Street, in the City of London, EC2V 6DL. Maybe the plan is to @media social first, catch the Geek dinner then head over to the Princess Louise later.  i'm sure the plan will evolve...]

What is happening down at the Labs?

It has been a bit quiet here on the blog. What’s been happening down at Presence Labs? Well here’s the list that makes up for a month of blog entries:

• We’ve almost completed moving to the UK, with most things firmly nailed down. We’ve set up in Brighton (new contact details here) and apart from another cubic yard of required paperwork and a 20ft container full of furniture, we are, as they say, sorted.
• We are working in partnership with Richard Giles’ Clique Communications developing a very exciting, new (and thus currently secret) web and media application that we hope to bring fully to life this year. More on that as we can talk about it, probably when we get to a public beta or something. The concept is exciting and as we develop and test more of the components of the whole, it gets more and more exciting.
• There’s a bit of action emerging here in the UK for us to help with architecture and development for new web applications. It’ll be interesting to see just what happens here.
• Given the interest in new web applications, I’m putting a bit of thought into a methodology specific to the creation and development of new web applications from the innovation at the beginning to the operation at the end. Philosophically I’m fairly close to the 37 Signals Getting Real way of thinking, but I do like development to be a bit more controlled, at least based around a strong and up to date roadmap. Anyway, I’ll post that when I get it slightly more organised and hopefully can develop with others.
• I’m working with a group doing interesting things for business in Second Life. The part of this I’m really interested in is forging links between Second Life and the rest of the internet, to make Second Life connected rather than a somewhat-disconnected island application.

That sounds like a lot, but there’s room for more. We are looking for like minded people to work with on new web applications. So, if you have an idea and some funding, come and have a chat, let’s see if we can make your dream real.