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Slim's pickins about the internet, life in general et al....

Sonal Shah Appointed as Key Obama AdviserNovember 10

Wow - when it rains it pours. After eight years of Bush drought we finally get a big relief - first Obama runs away with the election and now I just heard that he’s appointed Sonal Shah to his inner circle.

I first met Sonal in 2003 at the awards gala where she was appointed India Abroad’s Person of the Year for founding Indicorps. Then she then came out to California to run a big chunk of Google.org and we were housemates for most of last year, during which we became very good friends. I haven’t seen her much recently as she’s been heavily involved helping with the campaign, so was taken quite unawares with this fabulous news.

I am, however, not at all surprised. Sonal is an extraordinary choice. She’s dedicated her life to social causes and philanthropy and is one of the wisest, brightest, most energetic people I know.

Certainly if I were President I’d have her in my inner circle :))

Go Sonal!! The full story is here.

Obama Wins - Thank The Lord…November 10

It’s Obama - by a landslide…

Originally uploaded by Nicki’s Knickers™

Readers of this blog (all three of them) will know that I don’t often comment on politics. And though my twitter feed has leaned towards the democrats, I’m more of a libertarian. Given the soaring heights of this occasion, though, I feel I must break my non-blogging policy and put down a few thoughts.

First, the Republicans:
- how can you call yourselves conservative after the insanity of the spending increases? What happened to fiscal prudence?
- McCain, what in the name of all that is holy possessed you to put Palin on the ticket?
- Dubya, there are better ways of handling unresolved paternal issues than lying, invading one country and bankrupting your own
- Americans, how could you re-elect Bush in 2004? I mean, really…

And to the Democrats:
- what have you been doing in the last six years??
- please please don’t go too crazy with the spending
- whatever you do, please fix the healthcare system

And to Obama:
- many

Maxroam Totally Rocks (a review)June 19

On my second last trip to Ireland, Pat Phelan, one of my favorite bloggers, bounced into the speaker’s dinner, handed me a SIM card and bounced right out again. Pat runs MaxRoam, a disruptive new telecoms play. On my recent trip, I put it through its paces.

WHAT IT DOES
MaxRoam helps avoid international roaming charges. Simple.

HOW
They put multiple numbers (all land lines) on the same SIM card. For instance, I have numbers for the U.S, Ireland, UK and Germany. If any of those numbers is called, my phone rings, wherever I am. I pay the local 25 cents (or whatever) charged by the local carrier. It costs 3 euros per month per number and you prepay the service. The SIM costs 25 euros. (Disclosure: because I’m an honorary Cork man, Pat gave me the SIM for free with a bit of credit to play with).

THE PROS
- being landlines, it’s cheap for people to call you
- you can get a new number right from the website and it works instantly (amazing)
- you can forward (for free) any of your numbers to a local landline OR a local mobile and nobody pays. Outside North America, this is monstrously cost-saving as the caller usually pays (a fortune). Here, Maxroam swallows the costs.
- 5 cent SMS worldwide (I didn’t test this)

THE CONS
- you can’t put your current number onto it (but you can forward your number to it)
- forwardi

Europe trip logJune 16

Tom HC Bday card

Wow, how bad a blogger am I (ok, I never really had the moniker anyway). But it’s way long since I updated the ole papyrus. I’ve been back from Europe for 2-3 weeks and it’s been non-stop meetings since. Let’s first start by recapping that trip.

First stop was London - a few meetings and some quality time with my god-daughters (little Irish identical twin girls). Next was Dublin for more meetings - I’m on the advisory board of PutPlace, so met with Joe Drumgoole and then lunch with Joe and Niall Larkin. Joe, after paying for lunch, also organized a very nice little meetup and some interesting folks showed up, including Paul Campbell, Marcus MacInnes, Eoghan McCabe and Dennis Deery. Oh yes, and I said hi to Bill de hÓra

Igniting Web 2.0 ExpoApril 15

A proposal for an Ignite talk I submitted has been accepted for next weeks Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. It’s going to be about the metaphysics of growth, something I’ve been thinking, reading & writing about for about 15 years.

I touched on this topic very briefly at Brad Templeton’s Nanotechnology Conference which we hosted at the Yahoo HQ.

This’ll be the first time I’ve ever talked about some of this stuff publicly, so the response should be interesting. The basic question is: “How does growth happen”? I’ll be talking about the basics of it and then applying the principles to the rapid growth environment of Silicon Valley.

Now all I have to do is write it…