South By Deep South
If you're new here, grab my feed so that you don't miss out on all the cool stuff that I dish out here >> RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Another World Camp venue has been announced and it came as a complete surprise to me, albeit a pleasant one. If somebody is asked to venture a guess for a tech event venue/seminar, most of us would automatically wager on either the Bay area or New York. If nudged to go beyond that and think of some southern venue, most of us wouldn’t bet on anything beyond Atlanta, Georgia.
But guess what?! It’s Birmingham, Alabama. Having lived there on and off, ( place is kind of like home to me now), seems like I was totally clueless about the city’s tech leanings.
According to the official SXDS website, the inaugural event would be held on 26-28 September of this year. The events are still being finalized but would consist of -
* Social Media/PR/Marketing
* Web development
* A full-blown WordCamp
In fact this happens to be a first, definitely a good sign to see such unconfrences spreading beyond the regular cities on West coast and East coast.
Heard all this from here. Going by the comments on that site, the event sure seems to be kicking some dust.
Blog Hacks - Why You Need To Upgrade
There’s a flurry of reports on the internet about potential Wordpress threats and attacks if you haven’t yet upgraded to the latest release of Wordpress 2.5.
If you are still running Wordpress 2.3.2 and below then your website is at grave risk. From what I could make out after a couple of minutes of browsing various security websites, all the experts are saying this thing in unison - Upgrade ASAP.
What kind of vulnerabilities are we looking at here and how do you know you are a victim of this security breach.
How Does An Indian Company Innovate?
…By opening tech centers in US and hiring US talent.
Traditionally, Indian companies have focused more on either importing cheap labor from India using the skilled worker visa (a lot of them even come on Business visa and do billing but thats another story) as the statistics have shown or by totally off-shoring the job to low cost development centers back home.
In a changing trend, TCS, the largest technology services company from India plans to open a development center in a former paper plant in Cincinnati, Ohio. To staff the site, the company additionally announced it has plans to recruit about 1000 people. Talent would be primarily scouted from the mid-west. This would make it one of the largest U.S based development centers by an Indian company.
Perhaps more such examples of local hirings would help deflect some of the criticism the Indian companies have been gathering lately about ridding America of high paying tech jobs, which consequentially also resulted in less number CS major seats getting filled up in colleges.
In related news, Bill Gates recently proffered his views to a senate committee hearing about skilled worker visa reforms. Affirming his traditional position of supporting an increase in the number of such visas, Bill Gates thinks there is dire shortage of skilled manpower in America and if the country is to maintain its numero uno position, needs to act fast on this.
Read more about reverse outsourcing from an Economics Times article from here.
==
My comment about Indian companies innovating is in humor. Hoping nobody takes offense.
So You Want To Build A Startup
Any start up that you greatly admire? Makes you wish you had gotten that idea earlier, could have easily turned you into a millionaire?
Say long before Youtube came into the lime light and became a big hit, you had gotten the idea of letting users upload and watch streaming videos. Do you think you would have been able to similarly build it into a billion dollar business?
Adding Twitter To Your Wordpress Driven Website
Twitter is a micro blogging app which allows you to broadcast tiny SMS-ish messages to your friends and contacts. I had a first hand experience of this technology when Google integrated Twitter with Google Maps during the current election primaries. I was totally awed by it’s power and concept.
China Outsurfs US - What It Means For American Startups
(Pic: A Chinese Web Cafe)
Blame it on population but China’s Internet users have overtaken the United States’ to become the world’s biggest with about 220 million web surfers according to BDA China, a Beijing based technology consulting and research firm.
Popular Website Designers
Although I am not a website designer but I have two favorite sites which I occasionally check to see the latest in web site designing or simply to read what’s keeping some of the best designers occupied on any given day.
Elliot Jay Stocks
Future Of Web Apps: Thoughts And Ideas
(Pic: Matt M of Wordpress)
Sometime back we had informed through our site about the Future of Web Apps conference that was taking place in Miami at the end of Feb, 08. Since I couldn’t make it, we’ll have to rely on others about what went on there. Apparently besides beer and beach volleyball, the web gurus did manage to brain storm on that latest killer app.
Got $500,000 To Spare?
An Orlando based web development company called Web2 Corp is selling an Indian internet search and social networking site on eBay.
ByIndia.com has been put up for grabs by the company whose executives have said they were forced to do it when a deal for expected funding fell through.
Wikileaks - Combating Corruption Web 2.0 Way
Wikileaks gets knocked down, but gets up again, and to its same old domain. The site got itself in hot water after documents showing a Swiss bank indulging in not-so-legal-activities were published on the website. The bank filed an injunction against Wikileaks in a Californian court which was sustained by the judge. Wikileaks alleges that the documents in question show the bank supporting “ultrarich’s offshore tax avoidance, tax evasion, asset hiding, and money laundering.”
According to the info available on the Wiki site,