Blyk - Free calls for adverts

Something came to my attention earlier this week, a new virtual cell-co, Blyk. Blyk's angle here is that it's giving away over 200 free SMS and 47 minutes of free phone calls. All this is in exchange for being advertisted at.

There seems to be two schools of thought about advertising, the Cluetrainthought (number 74) against the Google/Facebook "look at us we're made of millions yet we don't take a penny" thought. Blyk seems to be taking the second side.

Get them while they're young!

Let's consider for a while, as the Guardian points out, teenagers are going to love this, free stuff rocks! But the Register points out a more serious side with the consequences.

Blyk will not only have your profile data for getting the sim (age and sex etc), but by using the handset it will also have call and location data about the caller as well. This data is invaluable, your location (although generally restricted by hundreads of meters at best through Cell Mast postitioning) can be used for targeted advertising and can also use call and SMS history to target ads as well. Will they go as far as reading your texts for key words?

People expect stuff for free now! Most are willing to be advertised at for free stuff, but some are still cautious about this.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this all yet. Anyway, check them out and Blyk in the news:

http://about.blyk.com/home/
http://www.blyk.co.uk/
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/nov2006/gb20061103_894708.htm
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/24/blyk-launches-ad-based-mobile-network/

Becoming a Software Engineer

I was recently asked by a former disertation tutor to do a talk at my old university on being a software engineer at an open day for prospective university students. I was happy to oblige, and I've put up the slides on slideshare.net. However, in true Downey form there's not much in terms in written text, but there's more pictures and hopefully, engagement with the audience by the presenter.

This led to some interesting debates on my return to work, with some questioning the need to do a computer science degree at all. It seems there are plenty of people with other technical degrees that move into the software field, and seem to do rather well for themselves.

My take is that my degree was very vocational, and the things I learn't at university I apply directly to my job today. Also that I picked up a lot of theory and hopefully have a more rounded and thorough understanding of the technical problems we face. Hopefully. I have to say though that probably for each useful module I had, I had one useless module. Go figure, I could have tried harder at university, I could have learn't more, but I came out with a good degree and have a good job so no massive loss.

On reflection, a lot of the books I bought at uni are either sitting on my shelf largely unread or have been sold on eBay. But now adays I tend to read a lot of technical and 'business' books, so what would I recomend to prospective students?

'Technical books'

Agile web development with Rails - an excellent introduction to web programming in a cool language, though it leaves testing a little late.


'Business books'

Mavericks at work - a look at innovative solutions to common business problems.
Cluetrain Manifesto - how the web has changed business and made us communicate again.
Getting Real - 37 Signals answer to bloatware.

'Methodology books'

Practices of an agile developer - excellent practices to follow for an agile developer
Lean Software Development - lean and trim software development.

There's probably a whole bunch more I can't think/remember of and a bunch I'd like to read.

What would you recomend?

Anonymity, Freedom of speech and privacy on the web

Is it everyones right to be anonymous online?

I was pointed to a discussion going on at getsatisfaction.com about Facebook users not being able to sign up with 'fake names'. Really, who is Facebook to judge such things? I have friends who sign up to most things with a fake name and email address specifically to not give away personal information. Who cares?

In my previous post I discussed the use of inner dialogs spilling out onto the web giving everyone a voice. Though the volume of randomness is extremely high (my RSS reader constantly tells me I've got more then a 1000 items to read, yikes!) everyone deserves a voice. We may choose to not listen, but that's another matter.

Like an employee kept behind a firewall during their 9-5, do they have a right to discuss their opinions openly on the web and do that in an anonymous way?

Others are framing what I think is the same scenario differently, JP talks about openness rather then anonymity while David Weinberger goes more into depth on the Facebook ad platform regarding privacy.

An interesting comeback, as I'm reading Cluetrain Manifesto at the moment (finally), and Chris Locke is talking about his struggles to get his voice heard while at IMB. Being locked down by the corporation, Chris resorted to anonymous mailing list/early blogs to get his views across.

Certainly, when I started using the web, I used psudeo names when I posted on message boards and even when I started blogging here. I'm not so anonymous anymore, but that's my choose and my decision to make, not any one application or business.