Mark Zuckerberg “Likes” Something That’s Awesome: Baby Foxes # FB Foxes make Gawker headlines

Somebody assign me a task for the ‘Love’ button…

These outrageously adorable baby foxes were born on the grounds of Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park. They like to hang out in the Zen Garden. And they’re the stars of a Facebook page called “FB Foxes.” Do you like them?

Of course you like them. They are baby foxes. Facebook needs a “Love” button. Mark Zuckerberg was an early fan of the page, which now has more than 8,000 followers.

via Mark Zuckerberg “Likes” Something That’s Awesome: Baby Foxes.

This story confuses me; are Google soon to to drop XMPP (and/or GTalk) entirely?

…if – IF – so, then it will be very very bad for the future of private communication:

Talk, for example, was built to help enterprise users communicate better, Singhal says. “The notion of creating something that’s social and that’s always available wasn’t the same charter as we set out with when we created Talk.” With Hangouts, Singhal says Google had to make the difficult decision to drop the very “open” XMPP standard that it helped pioneer.

via Exclusive: Inside Hangouts, Google’s big fix for its messaging mess | The Verge.

Hackers prepare for first “national holiday” in their honor – Boing Boing

Hackers often encounter public uncertainty at their craft’s virtue. With the forthcoming National Day of Civic Hacking, however, their celebration of creativity, collaboration and technical innovation sees its first “national holiday.”Groups leading the June 1-2 event include Random Hacks of Kindness, Code for America and the investment firm Innovation Endeavors. They’re working with government agencies such as the U.S. Census Bureau, NASA and the U.S. Dept. of Labor to host activities which invite everyone to join the “civic hacker” community.The weekend’s events will include block parties, meetups and hackathons, where participants will gather to prototype solutions to community-specific problems. “Challenges” will be identified, and made available to the public shortly before the event in each town, with invitations issued to so-called citizen hackers.

via Hackers prepare for first “national holiday” in their honor – Boing Boing.

MUST READ: What’s wrong with “Good, clean wi-fi”?

David Cameron says he backs “good, clean wi-fi” plans to filter public wireless networks from inappropriate content. Apart from this being a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist (hoards of toddlers plaguing cafes with porn watching), the potential problems are obvious.

Most public wifi networks already have content filters in place, however, and as an example of the sort of things they block, let’s look at the “UK’s largest public-access WiFi hotspot network”, The Cloud:

…continues with examples at #yeahitsabithipster • What’s wrong with “Good, clean wi-fi”?.

Aw, how sweet… #IBM

Dear Alec,

I recognise that this is an unorthodox approach, so I will be brief and hope you find time to respond.

IBM’s acquisition of Green Hat has given us a leadership position in the service virtualisation and integration testing market. IBM’s service virtualisation solution enables our customers to simulate and model the services that share dependencies with the new solutions they are developing. With IBM Green Hat you are able to work with systems which are:

• Not yet operational, or still under active development.
• Only available for testing in limited capacity or at inconvenient times.
• Owned by a third party or partner, who may charge significant fees for access.
• Difficult or expensive to provision or configure in a test environment.
• Required for simultaneous testing by teams with different requirements.

Through the adoption of IBM’s solution, a major financial institution has saved £30 million in the last 3 years, whilst being able to increase the projects delivered by over 100%. 

If this is an area of current consideration I would like to book some time in your diary to identify areas where IBM would be able to help you to meet your business needs more effectively. 

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

[Name Elided]
Rational Account Manager – IBM