Sharepoint 2007 is proof positive that Microsoft doesn’t get the community thing

Clay Newton commenting on Scobleizer.

Artur Bergman over at the O'Reilly Radar has had a chance to look at the new Virgin America planes. The inflight entertainment system sounds amazing!

Developed internally at Virgin America, the system is named Red and provides live satellite tv, movies, mp3s, games and plane-wide chatting. Yes, chatting. There is a general chatroom, a private invite channel for your friends, and direct user-to-user messaging. When watching television, you have the option to chat with everyone who is watching the same event.

There are also some other smart touches like USB sockets for charging of peripherals, and being able to order food via the system which keeps track of what's been ordered so ground crews know how much to restock…

…oh, and it has Doom on it…

…yes, that's right, Doom.

Update (9th August): Xeni Jardin from BoingBoing writes about the experience on the Virgin America Inaugural, and Artur Bergman blogs about the flight on the O'Reilly Radar, including a screenshot of Doom on the IFE. Cool stuff.

From BBC technology news.

Social music site Last.fm has been bought by US media giant CBS Corporation for $280m (£140m), the largest-ever UK Web 2.0 acquisition.

...

As part of the deal, Last.fm's managing team will remain in place and the site will maintain its own separate identity.

Sorry things have been so quiet round here recently, but Heather and myself have been busting ourselves stupid trying to get the new version of Scarleteen finished (more on that when it launches). We're not quite done yet but at least the end is in site.

Anyhow, the reason for this post (apart from the apology) is to point out a fantastic article on Matt Haughey's new site, Fortuitous, Some Community Tips for 2007 - Seven tips on how to run a successful community.

Every year or so I write a long post or do a presentation at a conference on the subject of community. Each time I approach the subject, I take what I've already written and add to it with recent things I've learned or learned long before and only recently realized. To prepare for an upcoming presentation, I decided to write down stuff I've learned/realized in the last 12 months. I suspect I'll be revisiting this topic many times on this blog but I wanted to kick off this first foray into community with a list of stuff I've been thinking about recently, but haven't written much about yet.

Matt is the founder of Metafilter (amongst other things) so when he offers up tips about running an online community, you'd better make sure you're taking notes.

I've been meaning to post this since I got back from the Oxford Geek Night on Wednesday but I was struck down by a dose of man-flu (more commonly known as “a cold”). Apologies.

So, Wednesday 7th February 2007 was the inaugural Oxford Geek night event, at the Jericho Tavern. I was asked to give a talk as part of the first 'microslot' session, where 6 individuals talk for 5 minutes on a topic of their choosing, and I chose Drupal, seen as I spend the bulk of my development time hacking on it in one form or another.

The presentation started with a quick introduction to Drupal Core with a focus on the Taxonomy module. Then I walked people through the modules that I use the most: Pathauto, Views and the Content Construction Kit. Finally a whirlwind tour of some Drupal sites out in the wild including MTV UK, The Onion and Ask A Ninja.

Trying to give an overview of a system as large as Drupal in 5 minutes is a pretty hairy proposition, but I think I at least managed to pique peoples interest enough for them to want to find out more.

Overall the night was a great success. There were some really interesting talks, Simon Willison's OpenID presentation and James Wheare's Oxford bus times mash-up being two highlights for me personally. I also got to meet some cool new faces in the Oxfordshire development scene, and there was beer. Top night all round really.

Natalie will be putting up the slides and podcasts of each talk at some point, at which time I'll update this entry. In the meantime there are the obligatory pictures on flickr.

Update: Links to the slides and podcasts are now up on the Oxford Geek Nights site.