For reasons far too complex for mere mortal readers to understand, I have moved over to my own wordpress instance.

Please move along to blog.martinjwells.com. Nothing to see here.

It’s a sad day, but you heard it right… I’m giving up blogging.

Sort of…

I’ve switched to Tangler as a blogging platform. Crazy I know.

There’s some reasons why Tangler isn’t the best thing to use for blogging, but hey, neither is twitter. The reason I switched (and I know this is pretty biased) is it’s lightweight. I’ve been using twitter and noticed that the ease of posting really made a difference to whether I’d blog. WordPress posting is clunky clunky clunky. Twitter shows that’s real.

I also found the structure made it hard to just throw up random thoughts. I wanted something lighter; I thought of twitter, but it was just a little too lite – I want conversation, I want to share pictures and video, and I want to make complete sentences without running out of characters.

This isn’t really about wordpress being bad, or twitter being… well… twitter. It’s about something that works better for a particular use case. I want to talk about stuff with people. I’m no sage. I’m not the expert. Blogging seems tuned towards a master-slave relationship between poster and reader. <booming echo on>”Hello down there inferior minions restricted to comment scraps I allow you.”

Tangler is incredibly easy to post. Comments become discussion. And the real-time nature makes it an online community, not a newspaper. And anybody can create a new topic; yep, that’s right, you can come in and create a post on my blog tangle. Got an issue with me. A question you think other readers might want to discuss. Go for it. Me casa, you casa.

So thus Marty’s Tangle was born.

http://www.tangler.com/group/5750

(Tangler is now in public beta, so you don’t need a login to view)

This is the first case (I think) of someone switching to Tangler for blogging, so I don’t expect things to be smooth (like there being no RSS feeds or trackbacks just yet). Keep giving me feedback as we go along. It’s not Tangler’s primary use case, but damned if tha’s gonna stop me.
(Photo by seawallrunne)

Web 2.0 entrepreneurs emerged from their rabbit holes last night to attend STIRR Sydney 2 in strength, and it went off with a bang.

Another great crowd, great atmosphere and above all, great fun.

Mick has posted all the details over at the Tangler blog, so I wont go into it here. But a big thanks to everyone who attended.

Thanks again to our sponsors: Omnidrive, TVP, Atlassian and Tangler. And a big thanks to Microsoft for pitching in with some great prizes.

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One week to go (as of yesterday) till we once again experience the chaotic simplicity that is the STIRR Sydney mixer.

Don’t forget to RSVP before the list closes.

All the presentation positions have been locked in:

Omnidrive – WebFS
Rave About It
dLook
3eep
Booking Angel

See you all on the night!

I was recently speaking at BarCamp Sydney (with Mike) about start-up lessons. Whilst it was pretty ad hoc (in the true BarCamp spirit) there were a few points I thought would be worthwhile covering here.

Since I’m as busy as Mick though, I’ll just cover them one at a time.

First one: In all the start-ups I see there seems to be a continuing unhealthy belief in two things that are best corrected right out of the gate:

1. Yes, somebody else has thought of your idea.
2. No, your idea is not special.

Trust me. Get over it.

Whilst it’s a bad idea to shout about your idea too early (I’ll talk about this more soon), you should have no fear that someone will steal it. The people who can help you are too busy doing something else, and the people who can’t really help you will try and steal it and fail miserably.

Trust me. Get over it.

The risk of actually losing something is far outweighed by the value you will get by just talking to people about your concept and pushing really hard for feedback.  And here’s the rub: the people who talk honestly and realistically about their products are the ones who succeed with it. The ones who keep it a secret whilst beavering away in the dark are almost certain to fail.

Trust me. Get over it.

Here’s an excellent quote which I saw posted in the Tangler Entrepreneurs group.

“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”

-Howard Aiken

I’m speaking on an AIMIA panel on Tuesday night (20/3) at the Shelbourne Hotel about  the future of TV. If you want to hear about the coming media war come along. You can register here.

When & Where
Tuesday, 20th March, 2007
The Shelbourne Hotel, Altitude Level, 200 Sussex Street, Sydney.

6.30pm for 7.00pm start.
7.30pm Your chance to ask Qs and then back to mingling
10:30pm bar is closed.

Others: Ian Gardiner, Tom Kendall, Phil Morle, Mark Pesce

Moderator: Scott Bradley-Pearce.

The last STIRR Sydney was so crazily fun, we thought we’d have to do it all over again, so I’m proud to announce:

STIRR Sydney 2

All the details are up on the wiki. Places are limited, so please be sure to RSVP.

And feel free to check in on the Tangler group to talk and meet everybody else who’s going. Email me for a Tangler invite if you don’t already have one.

We also have 2 spots left for companies wanting to demo there products. If you want your 15 megabytes of fame drop me a line.

In a desperate (might one say, sad) attempt at personal fame. Mick “take me I’m yours” Liubinskas has started his very own meme – What are you wearing? As soon as you get tagged you have to blog about what you’re wearing, so here goes:

I’m wearing a wool blend knitted black polo neck, a pair of loose fit black pants, black Italian leather shoes, an eye-patch and am stroking a fluffy white cat… ok ok, not really. I’m wearing boxers, jeans, a polo shirt, black leather shoes (no laces) a mercier watch, no jewelry — gosh I’m simple.

Your turn at being silly Craig, GI, Mike and Nik.

I did the math and based on current ratios and projected growth I can’t see why we won’t see Google at $1000 per share by the end the year (or latest early next year). It’s $440 now (after today’s correction). [I wonder when they'll split it]

That’s the hypey bit, and now for some perspective. Exxon makes as much profit ($19b) that Google does in revenue. And revenue wise Exxon does ~$400b. Exxon market cap $370b, Google market cap, $130b. Interesting ratio there.

Chris has tagged me in the media consumption meme, so here’s the rundown on my relationship with modern media:

Web: I rely on RSS predominently for news, around 400 feeds last count. I use Omea (just the reader version, I found Pro to be overkill). Omea is a desktop client, so it’s blindingly fast and lets me read news offline. Feeds are organised into folders based on priority for me “Tech News”, “Competitors Watch”, etc. The non-priority feeds like “Advice” are tagged so I can browse those during slow periods. The really really cool thing about Omea is the rules system. I tag feeds on whether they’re important or casual and then auto-expire them.

The key thing for RSS is Serph (which I’m beta testing, thanks Hiten) and Technorati both of which let me get a dynamic feed of blog entries matching keywords (Serph consistently finds more than Technorati).

Radio: I listen to ABC newsradio in the car on the way to work once or twice a week. It makes me feel like I still have a connection with the rest of the real world. That’s about it really. Edge FM sometimes if I’m bored.

TV: Huh? Oh, I remember that now. They had it when I was a kid. But seriously, I watch TV maybe once a month specifically for sport.

Movies: Love love love ‘em. Unfortunately only have time for 1 maybe 2 per week. Mostly DVDs.

Communications: Email, Tangler (now almost as much as email), SMS, Skype. I get email pushed to a KJAM, so I’m pretty much always on it. Used Twitter for about 2 weeks before I took it out the back and shot it. The phone only when I’m forced to.

Magazines: I get suckered in to subscribe to stuff every once in a while, but generally it’s too much work for too little information. Some that are (maybe) worth it (sometimes): Economist, Anthill, Red Herring

Music: Tons of MP3’s on my notebook, synced with my KJAM and media centre.

That’s it really… let’s hear it Tara, Mick, Chris, Craig and Mike.