Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

MetaCert is looking for a LAMP Developer to be based in Thessaloniki, Greece. We need someone to start as soon as possible. If you live in the area, or willing to relocate, please email david@metacert.com with your CV and availability.

By the way, it’s an awesome company to work for. It’s fun and you will have massive potential to grow with the company.

We issued our first press release today. I’ve made small edits so it reads a little more like a blog post.

ICM Registry, which plans to start selling .xxx domain names later this year, has entered in to a multi-million dollar deal with MetaCert, to label every website issued under .xxx.

Consumers expect to find out more information about products in a supermarket by looking at the label on the back. In the same way, when consumers search the Web, they want to find out more information about content and its suitability before visiting a website. MetaCert makes this possible using a pioneering cloud-based labeling technology and certification products. MetaCert will offer products that help businesses display information about their malware scanning practices, how they treat consumers’ privacy, whether they offer free or paid-for content and more. Consumers can then decide which sites to visit based on this extra information inside search results.

More on the MetaCert blog.

Last night, I sent a message to my LinkedIn contacts to inform them of my decision to leave the social network. It was a move inspired by a conversation I had with Paul Birch at my home yesterday. He told me he was thinking of leaving it, which got me thinking…

I encouraged my contacts to connect with me via my new twitter account if they wanted to stay in touch online. If you’re one of them, thanks – it’s great to reconnect.

I’ve written this post to answer those who have asked why I decided to follow this path. So, as always, I’ll be very honest.

1. I wanted to bring attention to the fact that my team and I launching a new startup called MetaCert after 5 years of R&D and industry standards contributions. I did this by inserting a link to our website in my message. It worked. And guess what? I’ve just did it again.
2. I don’t use LinkedIn anymore. But rather than delete my account as I did with twitter (as Google would end up with lots of broken links), I decided to remove almost everything. I didn’t have the heart to remove the recommendations either, as one of them belongs to a dear friend who passed away a few weeks ago. God bless Dermot. You were an awesome character and friend who said it as it is. Respect.
3. I wanted to get a few people talking about the fact I was back on twitter in the hope that some of my old twitter network would re-connect. They did. If you’re one of them, welcome back. Nothing has changed. I’m still a CEO who likes to speak his mind and is therefore, likely to inspire some and upset others. That doesn’t mean I go out of my way to upset people. I don’t. I continuously try to learn from others, how to better communicate and how to be more humble.
4. I wanted to reconnect with some of the people with whom I worked with in the past. It worked. I’ve been lucky enough to reconnect with people across at least 4 countries – some I haven’t spoken to in about 7 years!

If you’re interested, here’s my new twitter account. I’ll rename it to something less egotistical in the coming days.

In my next post I’ll explain why I decided to shelve Wubud, a mobile social networking application that secured angel funding, but never saw daylight beyond the developer’s bedroom. I’ll also explain why I didn’t bother to tell anyone before now even though it was featured on TechCrunch and lots of other blogs.

My wife Sheetal is speaking at TEDx about “Microfinance in developing and developed countries”. What more is there to say - she’s awesome and definately the best speaker I have ever seen - about a million times better than me!

Check out her Microfinance organization Shanti Microfinance - one of the few that is truely non-profit and transparent about fees and expenses. Most microfinance organizations are either for-profit (which is ok as long as they don’t over charge with high interest rates!), whilst others pass on currency fluctuations onto the poor entrepreneurs (hidden fees).

Sheetal is also a member of the Board at MetaCert - what an asset!

This is a worthwhile update: ICM Registry has seen a massive hockey curve in .xxx domains being pre-ordered. It’s now over half a million! They won’t go on sale to the general public for another 4 or 5 months.

How about trying to estimate how many will actually sell within the first week. I’m guessing 1million. What do you think?

Check out the number of registrations