Well we did it. This morning I sent out the first batch of private beta invitations for PutPlace. We expect to roll out invitations each Monday for the next few weeks and hopefully we should have sent out an invitation to everybody who registered to date within the next month or so.Big shout out to John, Darren and Gearoid for their trojan efforts in getting the beta to this point over the last month or so.  Also thanks to our valiant first run testers, Matt, Ivan and Sean.

This first version does backup (Windows only, Mac to follow shortly) as we reckon getting your stuff safe is a priority for most people. We have most of the heavy lifting done to allow publishing to places like Flickr and YouTube as we expect that to emerge in the next month or so.

Please register for the beta if you haven’t done so already…

Joe Drumgoole

CEO

PutPlace.com is launching real soon now and of course like everybody else on the planet we rolled our own user account management (UAM) system (you know, registration, login, logout, forgot password, change username etc. etc.). Needless to say we used a Framework (in our case Django) but why do I need to reinvent this wheel?

We get our storage from Amazon (and soon our Grid). Our O/S is a flavour of Linux,  our Database is Postgres, we use surveymonkey for surveys and mailchimp (what is it with the simian metaphor?) for mail campaigns, why can’t I pay somebody on a per user basis to manage my user accounts?

What would this service look like? Well pretty much like a credit card payment interface looks like on the web today but with the following features.

•  a bunch of REST endpoints for all the standard UAM functions
  • Register
  • Login
  • Logout
  • Enable User
  • Disable User
  • Set Session Timeout
  • etc.
• Support for session management
• Standard reporting (who, when, from where, how long)
• Support for OpenID
• Java, Python, Ruby and .NET APIs (Rails and Django integration for extra points)
• Global deployment with appropriate SLAs
• Deployment pages with a proper branding kit so people can get up and running quickly
• Ability to extract all my users in .csv format or via an API

I would pay for this service in chunks of hundreds to 1000s of users with all the usual discounting policy for prepayment or purchasing in bulk and the first 50 users are free.

One more pain point on the road to release removed.

I don’t want a free one with strings attached (e.g. LiveID) and I don’t want some non-profit consortium (e.g. the Liberty Alliance). I want to pay  for it and own my data.

Basically a Web 2.0 oriented OnDemand business.

I see Microsoft has taken the gloves off in the Open Source/Closed Source battle. Surprise, Surprise they found the infringing patents in the three areas where Microsoft makes most of its revenue, operating systems, Office and the Windows user interface.

But he does break down the total number allegedly violated – 235 – into categories. He says that the Linux kernel – the deepest layer of the free operating system, which interacts most directly with the computer hardware – violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces – essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up – run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted FOSS programs allegedly transgress 68.

Watching this from the sidelines is gonna be a hoot.

Addendum: Of course the real reason for this may to head off the new version of the GPL at the pass.

We got crushed, 5 points in total. John Waters, hang your head in shame 🙂

Serbia won.

Microsoft’s partner site crashes IE 7

Originally uploaded by Joe Drumgoole.

I’ve crashed IE 7 three times in a row now. Does anybody know what telephone syntax the Microsoft partner program will accept?

But I just discovered today if you select text on the page before tagging with the new Del.icio.us firefox plugin, it adds the selected text as the note field.

Very Nice.

 

Review of Loudervoice

Rated as 4/5 on May 03 2007 by Joe Drumgoole

Just registered with http://loudervoice.com. Nice slick simple registration. Automatically recognised my blog and allowed me to enter login details. Minutes later here I am writing a review.

Minor niggle, the rest of world allows spaces as a tag separator. Why be different?

No help or help files required. Well done Conor, I like it!

LouderVoice Review Tags: argolon, copacetic, loudervoice, startups

Rate this review at LouderVoice

Excellent collection of presentations on web scaling via Simon.

Sean suggests that politicians stick there stump speeches and anything else they think is relevant on mysay.com.

I like it!

Did a quick slot this morning with Ben Gavin, the WLR business presenter. I think it airs tonight on WLR (95.1/97.5 FM).

Its actually on tomorrow night  (2-May-2007) at 7.00pm. Doh!