Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Was watching The Fixer tonight and loved this clip.

A good friend of mine, Paul Carr, is spending the next couple of weeks in SF (as of tonight). If you’re in town why not leave a comment or send me/him an email to connect. Paul has taken a few months off to write another book, so help him ‘create’ new material. His latest publication is imminent so watch out for it!

Sub to his blog too, it’s hilarious. He knows I won’t forgive him for making fun of iJusine though

paul at alljustwords dot com

At the expense of loosing a mate, Steve Clayton, this is for you. I normally do a Monday Humour post but felt like being early for once.

The Ferrari Formula 1 Team sacked its entire pit crew yesterday. The announcement followed Ferrari’s decision to take advantage of the UK Government’s Youth Opportunity Scheme and employ people from Liverpool.

The decision to hire them was brought on by a recent documentary on how unemployed youths from Liverpool area were able to remove a set of wheels in less than 6 seconds without proper equipment, whereas Ferrari’s existing crew can only do it in 8 seconds, even with millions of Euros worth of high tech equipment.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown went on record as saying this was a bold move by the Ferrari management, which demonstrated the international recognition of the UK under New Labour.

As most races are won and lost in the pits, Ferrari now have the advantage over every team.

However, Ferrari may have got more than they bargained for.

At the crew’s first practice session, the Liverpool pit crew successfully changed the tyres in under 6 seconds.

But, within 12 seconds they had re-sprayed, re-badged, and sold the vehicle to the McLaren Team for a dozen bottles of Stella, a kilo of cannabis and some photos of Coulthard’s bird in the shower.

I asked the question on Twitter this morning, “Why can’t people who are nasty or sarcastic have to be anonymous on my blog?!”

Jemima Kiss’ response was so funny I felt it deserved a permanent placeholder.

Posts that mention me on TechCrunch seem to attract anonymous comments so bad that the type of people leaving them, are formally known as ‘trolls’. I don’t mind anonymous comments per say, mainly because we get them from companies such as Google and Microsoft on the Segala blog - they leave their real names and judging by the conversations I know their identities.

In general, I hate anonymous comments. If you don’t feel you can associate your name with a comment, don’t comment. Should we ban anonymous comments altogether? Should professional blogs such as TechCrunch ban them?

By the way, if we’re not yet connected on Twitter, feel free to follow my feed.

I’ve decided to blog more often about the things I discuss on Twitter. I’ll continue to use Twitter in the same way I do now, but I feel that I’m not communicating enough with most of my social network.

What’s my social network?

In short, it’s you and the other people with whom I’m connected. We are connected by the very fact that you’re interested in what I have to say. By the same token, I’m interested in what you have to say, hence why I converse with everyone who’s kind enough to spend time to leave a comment.

My social network is made up of people. Within that network I have multiple communities, each community representing something unique. The three blogs I author for example, represent entirely different communities, each with some overlap.

• Personal blog = entrepreneurial stuff, connecting, networking, social media…
• Segala blog = trust on the Web, standards, search, semantic web…
• BIMA blog = mainly Industry, creativity…
• Twitter = all of the above

You’ll notice that Twitter represents all of my communities. But it only represents a very small percentage of each one and hence, a small percentage of my social network. That’s because only a small handful of each community is represented by the early adopters in each one.

As I said, I won’t stop twittering. It’s a fantastic way to get to know more people whilst strengthening relationships. Twitter is also the world’s most comprehensive news feed and periodic replacement for a search engine when searching for stuff such as contact details or recommendations.

Think about it for a minute, do you sometimes Twitter messages that warrant a blog post? Does laziness encourage you to opt for the more accessible Twitter?