http://www.yongfook.com/post/view/522/the-blog-is-dead

After the great success of the last MiniBar and of course the monumental moment the official mini-bar community was launched on Webjam, it seems only natural I should wax lyrical on the future of web start-ups in the big smoke. After hearing the presentations (and the bantering background noise at the bar) it is clear that the enthusiasm for the future of our young industry is not waning.

I am sure that you enjoyed the presentation of ‘Web-Yam’ (aka Webjam) by the indomitable Spaniard Alberto Barreiro, co-founder and Creative Director as much as I did. During which, - I am sure like me, the concept of Webjam lit flames of ingenuity in your mind like a match to a petroleum canister. Quite seriously though, the mini-bar event presents us with a real vat of talent and product that can be integrated with our oh-so flexible platform.

After the launch of our Strawberry platform and the encouraging reviews we received, it became very clear to us we had struck a real chord in the industry – and internally with a now-stable platform (not for a minute suggesting that the initial beta version was not!), it set our eyes, ears and minds to the task of how we can take Webjam to the uber-mainstream and how we can use the talent around us in our fair city to take us there. Understanding if not anticipating the needs of the (novice) internet user with a purpose through a powerful and nonetheless easy-to-use service remains the goal which drives us. Thankfully the growing flow of testimonials we now receive every day shows that we are heading in the right direction by making it easy to answer the basic question : what do I want to share with whom, how and why.

Now deep into 2008 we keep building Webjam thinking that the social networking market is going to evolve into a more mature social publishing market, something we are proving ourselves with the recent online launch of a London magazine on Webjam, which publishes the user-generated content from its community (www.theothersidemag.co.uk).   

The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term exam.

 Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law  (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave.  Therefore, no souls are leaving.   As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different Religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell.  Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.   With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

 This gives two possibilities:

 1.        If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

 2.        If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

 So which is it?   If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.  The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct, leaving only Heaven thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa Kept shouting "Oh my God."

Well - it was always going to step on a lot of toes, what is interesting is - the way people react, and the visibility it gives world issues: A week ago Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg told us how his website is bringing peace to the Middle East by giving young people in Lebanon a wider view of the world.

But now it's caught up in a row with Israeli settlers on the West Bank. Jewish settlers reacted angrily when the auto-complete function on Facebook finished their addresses on the West Bank as being in "Palestine".

Another group - admittedly, one with only 43 members so far - has formed on the social networking site to demand that Facebook remove any reference to Palestine because it is not a country. There are networks for both Israel and Palestine on Facebook with 400,220 and 34,419 members respectively.

It is easy to see social networks as bonding, homogenising forces, but indeed what they can be are micro-magnifying glasses on very real problems.

Derek Conway really dropped them in it didn't he? The institution of the local MP which through scandals and recession survived has now because of the quite ludicrous false employment of the Conway kids - is now treated with suspicion, mis-trust and an underlying contempt. What seems to be forgotten is that many of the Commons population are among the most over-worked and underpaid (proportionate to their workload and responsibility) in the entire country. There are countless dedicated souls - who far from the David Cameron's and Tony Blair's of Government, are professional MP's, that is what they do, and they serve tirelessly.

An MP is paid £60 000 a year out of public coffers - ok, granted - there are benefits, but - when supporting a household and family this is still cutting it pretty tight! Certainly NOT a life of luxury. The BBC, that fantastic and well-regarded sponge of public funds, pays Huw Edwards a reported £250 000 a year for presenting the news, is this a proportionate use of public money? My answer would be NO it is not.

The public, with the help of the hypocritical and fickle handed media are in serious danger of making the MP a dirty profession, forcing out the good and preventing anyone of worth from giving it a go.

As a final note - perhaps we could consider combining the roles of news reader and MP? Their profiles are not so different - Ann Widdecombe could take over from Natasha Kaplinski and maybe Gordon Brown could do the Weather?

Hmmm - Maybe not!

Skiing through the pain barrier