November 10, 2008

Ultra Light Startups - The Hackathon approach

Filed under: open source, ultra light startups — admin @ 1:19 pm

What does it take to get an idea off and running and successful in this Internet and economic climate?

Ultra Light Startups (ULS) is a group of entrepreneurs who explore these perpetually evolving factors and refine techniques to launch technology ventures - minimizing cost and time associated with testing ideas in the marketplace.

In contribution to ULS we have commenced an investigation and a working group The Ultra Light Startup Hackathon. The purpose is to take a group of like minded professionals and in one day, move and idea from paper to deployment. The goal is to have fun, to be Ultra Light, and to produce a working and usable web application in one day.

To make this possible, will take a known design from the ULS Spec Review Group and then implement and produce a result. We also want this approach to be open for people to come and watch, learn and do a post-analysis critique.

The first announcement as made on 6th November at Ultra Light SEO/SEM. Stay tuned for updates.

October 13, 2008

Bootstrapping an Internet project

Filed under: open source, ultra light startups — admin @ 5:33 pm

As part of our involvement with Ultra Light Startups 42SQL provided some free technical input to a new project Real Women Respond to Palin.

As a checklist, the following online resources were used to get started, and create an initial web presence. This provides a good summary of how to get started with just $20.

  • Google Mail email account (initial registration communications).
  • Domain Registrar for registration of the domain name (~ $10). Our recommendation is GoDaddy.
  • Shared Hosting Provider for initial website hosting (~ $10).
  • Google Apps the free edition, for email hosting.
  • Google Analytics for website tracking.
  • WordPress Blogging framework for Content delivery.

The following are more optional but were used in this instance.

  • FeedBurner for a public RSS feed and statistics.
  • Magnify for a public video community library.
  • Ustream for live video streaming.
  • PayPal for sponsor donations.

Some of these options are not ideal for the longer term, but for Day 1, a presence can be achieved for little work.

Disclaimer: 42SQL does not have any political associations, bias or opinions to the current US Presidential Election.

September 9, 2008

Monetization through Online Advertising

42SQL Principal Ronald Bradford was the moderator at the Ultra Light Startups September 2008 Entrepreneurs Forum for a panel discussion on “Monetization through Online Advertising”. With a great turnout of 44 attendees there was plenty of active discussion before, during and after the presentation.

A large number of publishers were present, keen to hear input from our 4 expert panelists. Topics covered include understanding the different models such as CPM, CPA, CPS etc, which models are best aligned for the advertiser, dealing with Ad agencies, brand identity, successful metrics, social networks, contextual based advertising, relevance ad placement and leveraging current news cycles.

Fully 1/3 of attendees indicated presently using or intending to use video on their respective sites, highlighting conversation around user generated content and the different approaches for video advertising and user retention.

There was also a short presentation about InSite NY by Vinay Jain, providing an entrepreneurial mentorship bringing Columbia and NYU Business and Law students and New York entrepreneurs together pursuiting venture capital and angel investments.

Thanks to the panel speakers Max Ramirez from Blinkx, Alex Baydin fromPerformLine, Derek Lee from SocialDough and Noah Robinson of MERCENARY International and to the organizer of Ultra Light Startups, Graham Lawlor.

You can get a detailed log of the events proceedings as well as photos at RedRussak’s Online Marketing Blog.

August 16, 2008

PCI Compliance partnership

42SQL has partnered with Packet General Networks for the delivery of PCI Compliant MySQL solutions.

With a number of product offerings, Packet General is a turn key solution for your database security and encryption requirements. With an ability to be deployed without any application code changes and satisfy the strictest of PCI DSS requirements, companies such as MasterCard use Packet General solutions.

Two MySQL encrypted solutions are available:

  • PCI-GENERAL for MySQL - A secure MySQL server appliance that encrypts data and enables PCI compliance.
  • Encryption-GENERAL for MySQL - A secure MySQL server appliance with encryption.

For more information on how to Defend Your Data®, check out PCI General for MySQL or Contact 42SQL.

August 13, 2008

NY Presentation to MySQL Community

Filed under: Scale 2 Success (tm), mysql — admin @ 9:11 am

Ronald Bradford from the 42SQL team presented in New York an introduction to the “Scale 2 Success” [tm] approach we use for building successful scalable enterprise solutions. Our approach is built the principles of Architecture, Availability, Scalability and Accountability.

For more information, please Contact 42SQL to see how we can assist in your business needs.

The slides from the presentation can also be found on SlideShare.

August 8, 2008

42SQL a MySQL Enterprise Ready Partner

Filed under: mysql, open source — Tags: , , , , — admin @ 11:45 am


42SQL has joined the MySQL Partner Program as an Enterprise Ready Partner providing consulting and reseller options.

Two of our consulting packages are listed within the MySQL Product Directory, our Business Assurance Package and Health Check. For more information on all 42SQL services, see our Consulting options.

July 30, 2008

NY Panel on cloud computing

Ronald Bradford of 42SQL was one of the panel speakers at A Panel on Cloud Computing chaired by Murat Aktihanoglu of Unype held July 29th in New York. Other panelists included Mike Nolet - AppNexus, Jamal Mazhar - Kaavo, Hans Zaunere - New York PHP, Hank Williams - KloudShare (stealth - see Hank’s excellent blog) and Geir Magnusson - 10gen.

With four providers of varying services in the cloud space, and two independent industry experts and observers, the questions and discussions provided for a great amount of useful information.

Keywords that met with active communication included Infrastructure as a Services, Tools as a Service, Platform as a Service, Data Security, Data Consistency, Standards - creation and adoption, Open Source - is it important, Latency, Economics of Scale. Even Microsoft, Assembly Language and Cobol didn’t escape the evening.

One memorable quote was “When your tools change, what solutions can you now provide?”

July 28, 2008

Supporting the Drizzle project

Filed under: drizzle, mysql, open source — Tags: , , , , — admin @ 5:53 pm

Drizzle is a new lightweight SQL database for the Web and Cloud that comes from a fork of the MySQL database.

With an active community and contribution list from several companies and individuals, 42SQL is proud to host and support the Drizzle Master BuildBot.

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