Listening to: Broadcast - Strawpeople

It’s great to see that the VortexDNA guys are finally getting some coverage:

At a home nestled in the heart of Christchurch surburbia five men have mapped the structure of the human consciousness.

It allows predictions to be made about people and who they are, which could have huge ramifications for the insurance and advertising industries, says VortexDNA director Branton Kenton-Dau.

Listening to: Yellow Ledbetter - Pearl Jam

Listening to: So Far Away - Dire Straits

The Mindscape guys kicked off just as I was leaving Provoke (happy birthday guys) and as it has turned out they are doing some seriously cool work in the .Net world. Check out the feature highlights for their 2.0 release:

1. LINQ everywhere – LINQ to LightSpeed means .Net 3.5 users can leverage the power of LINQ when writing their queries but still use the performance features that we are known for (like Named Aggregates)

2. Designer support – Full modeling support for your domain models directly from Visual Studio 2008. Drag and drop your tables onto the design surface, have associations automatically set up, easily setup validation attributes on model properties and much more.

3. Database support – SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite are all supported. This means that LightSpeed 2.0 will be one of the first data access frameworks that provides LINQ to Oracle, LINQ to PostgreSQL, LINQ to MySQL and LINQ to SQLite!

4. Command line tools – Some folks prefer using command line tools to generate simple model classes so we have included this as well as the Visual Studio integrated designer support.

5. The simplest, fastest and most lightweight O/RM for .NET – The right balance of power vs. complexity has always been our focus with LightSpeed and this hasn’t changed for version 2.0. There has been considerable work done to tweak, optimize and enhance much of LightSpeed

As I was waving au revoir to the Microsoft world LINQ emerged - a seriously cool concept. The Mindscape team is onto a real winner by providing that facility over the leading open source database systems. Nice work!

Listening to: Never Give Up On Love (featuring Tiki) - Concord Dawn

…well you could do a lot worse than following Rod’s 6 part series on this topic. It’s good to have one of the experienced serial entrepreneurs share their experiences in an NZ context. Trust me, context matters - I have the grey hair distinguished look to prove it.

UPDATE: A link to the whole series.

Listening to: Miracle Sun - Don McGlashan

I popped my NYC cherry on Wednesday. The first 30 mins was pretty scary. I had taken the train from Boston and was unceremoniously spat out into the humid and teeming Penn Station. It was very disorientating. After some time I saw these in the window of a furniture store and it felt a little like home.

David Trubridge Lamps

They are lamps by David Trubridge and that little connection to home transformed my perspective of the city.

Listening to: Lovin U (Bonus Track) - Alicia Keys

For the first week I was here I was lucky enough to have the moral support of three groups of Kiwis. The first were the Ponoko team that joined me at TC40, the second was Flight of the Conchords (*) and the third was Tim Norton. Tim has presented his work at DEMOfall and is getting much deserved love. Nice work Tim and the rest of the PlanHQ team.

(*) No, Jemaine and Brett weren’t there holding my hand, but I am amazed at how much of a presence they to have amongst the crowd I was mixing with. I bumped into the CEO of a company here - he opened his jacket and his t-shirt had “That’s why they call them business socks” written on it. That sort of thing has happened a couple of times. Initially, it felt odd, but as a friend highlighted - it’s better than being known for Hobbits.

Listening to: Better Than Change - Dallas

Ever since kicking Ponoko off I have started to discover a whole range of great rapid manufacturing projects here in NZ. Wellington, especially, is a hot bed for this work. I had a really amazing experience today … I was able to walk down to the VUW Design School to check out the 3D printers created by the students … I can’t tell you how exciting it is to see this sort of thing literally down the street from my home!

Listening to: Move On Up - Curtis Mayfield

HBO have posted the whole first episode online … the scene in the New Zealand “Consulate” is hysterically funny (and almost a perfect piss take).

Listening to: Twilight Zone - Lupe Fiasco

As I have mentioned I have been advising VortexDNA. The Vortex guys are getting some great results (there will be more about that in the near future) with their technology and they’re looking at testing some interesting ideas.

Given that they have nailed the issue of relevance they are now pushing out and have started investigating the idea of the ‘My Web Hypothesis’:

Technology start-up VortexDNA is asking for volunteers to test the hypothesis that there is not just one Web.

Embedded within cyberspace, the organisation claims, there could be hundreds or even thousands of different web-worlds, each relevant to a group of people who share a similar outlook on life.

“This could lead to a profound change in the way we think about cyberspace and create a better web experience for everyone, “comments VortexDNA director Branton Kenton-Dau.

Called the ‘MyWeb’ hypothesis, the idea of thousands of web-worlds embedded in cyberspace is now being tested.

“Just as Newton passed sunlight through a prism to discover the entire spectrum of colour, VortexDNA wants to pass Google search results through a prism of your ‘DNA’ to see if your purpose, values and life focus provide you with a better search result,” explains Kenton-Dau.

When you think about it this is a very powerful concept … it’s the idea that amorphous mass of data that is the web can be tuned to match you, your needs and your goals. The Vortex guys are offering on of the key benefits of a walled garden app but on the public web … yeah, that’s pretty big

To test this idea on a larger group of users they are looking for people to start using their Firefox plugin.

Listening to: The Paradigm Shift - Rhian Sheehan

I attended the Aquaflow Bionomic test drive this afternoon - a world first running of a vehicle on bio-diesel derived from wild algae. The car was running on a standard B5 blend.

Oh yes! Work it does!

UPDATE: World first wild algae bio-diesel test drive

The world’s first wild algae bio-diesel, produced in New Zealand by Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation, was successfully test driven in Wellington today by the Minister for Energy and Climate Change Issues, David Parker.