Copacetic

I met Debbie Landa at the excellent drinks reception organised by Enterprise Ireland (big shout out to John, Hilary and Fergus for organising it).

I was somewhat casually pitching her the PutPlace idea when she totally blew me away by announcing that this would be a good candidate for Under The Radar.

One thing led to another and bingo, there we are presenting at Under The Radar on 3-Jun-08.

Looking forward to it!

I registered for HP’s Upline backup service last week. Turns out its for US residents only. I got this email today,

Dear HP Upline Service subscriber,

On Thursday, April 17th, HP suspended operation of the HP Upline Service.  We fully anticipate that suspension of the Upline Service will be temporary and short in duration, and will notify you when the Upline Service is operational again.

Please accept our sincere apology for this unanticipated interruption of your access to the Upline Service.  We appreciate your patience as we launch this new service, and are working hard to minimize inconvenience caused by this service interruption.

If you are a resident of the United States, your subscription will remain in effect and you will be able to continue using the Upline Service for the duration of your subscription period once the Upline Service is operational again.  Thank you for your patience, and we look forward to providing you with the HP Upline Service.

If you are not a resident of the United States, we regretfully must inform you that the initial launch of the HP Upline Service was intended for United States residents only.  Unfortunately, our filtering tools did not adequately screen for subscribers residing outside of the United States.  We thank you for your early adoption of the Upline Service, and look forward to being able to provide the HP Upline Service to you when we launch it in your country of residence.  Since the HP Upline Service is presently offered for use within the United States only, we will be discontinuing your current subscription.   After we notify you that the Upline Service is operational again, you will have a limited period of time to access and download files that you have uploaded onto the HP Upline Service servers.  After that time period, you will no longer have access to your present HP Upline Service account.  If you would like to be contacted by us when the HP Upline Service is made available in your country of residence, please send us an email at help@upline.com.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,

The HP Upline Team

I note that there is still nothing on front page of their website to indicate this restriction. Doubtless like all geographically challenged US websites, they will wait until you have filled in four forms worth of personal information before dealing the US only coup de grace.

Dear Dave,

I hope you might catch this post before I head over to Web 2 Expo next week in San Fran. Would love to buy you a beer and shoot the breeze about just about anything you want (I’m a big fan by the way in case you haven’t guessed by now).

No big deal, no pack drill, just a few beers. no offence taken if I never hear from you, but you can catch me at Joe at joedrumgoole.com if you fancy the idea of teaching a new guy some old dog tricks.

yours sincerely,

Joe

A bully in a playground approaches three kids. He hits the first child, who does nothing. He then hits the second child who runs away crying. He then hits the third child who hits him back.

Question : Which child won’t get hit tomorrow?

I joined the executive board of the Irish Software Association yesterday. Why? Because I think it is a worthwhile effort to devote some of my time to making the ISA more relevant to the Irish Software startup community.

Historically the ISA has done a very bad job of engaging with young startups, and I hope to improve that situation over the next few months, but I need your help.

I have the following two things on my agenda,

• Reducing/eliminating the fee for all startup companies younger than 3 years
• Getting information out using a better mechanism than email and and RSS free websites

What else are people looking for?