史蒂文 :: Release 2.0

The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything

This looks like it is exactly what i need to know what I should be doing to get my start-up company off the ground.

The Wisdom of Crowds

I believe in communities so this one was essential. My belief is that Internet crowds are going to drive much of the future evolution of online technology. In everything we do i expect crowds to have some kind of effect, even if it is invisible to the end user.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Simply meaning to read this for about 3 years. Will get the chance now and i hope it's as good as the hype!

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I subscribed to GetAbstract() today. In short :

getAbstract summarizes business books, making our subscribers the best read, most expert players on the business scene today. Our mission is to provide executives worldwide with the best in business knowledge. We deliver this knowledge in concise summaries of the latest, sharpest and most relevant books. Our summaries come in three languages, English,
German and Spanish.

I hope it comes in useful. It has already helped me shorten my reading time and have a better knowledge about what i should be looking at in more detail.

Now i'm reading The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki.
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The more i work with Web 2.0 and the increasinly common concept of simple, loosely coupled services working together the more excited I get about where all these things are heading.

The latest very , very cool thing is what Chris Goad at Map Bureau has been doing with Google Maps and EVDB and was blogged at evdb called EVMapper. You choose a location, it uses EVDB's open API and displays the events on Google. If i wanted to ask for more, then i'd like to be able to pass my evdb username and see my events within a given location - most of mine are in Scotland, so the geographical dispersity wouldn't make this too tricky.

My next question is whether he can do this with Google Earth. Also, can he pull in images from Flickr and show them on the maps - "see pictures of this place, things in this place and so on".
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I bought a Business 2.0 earlier this week and read an article about Xerox and how Anne Mulcahy has pretty much turned things around.

What was very interesting to me was that the famous Xerox PARC research lab is now accessible to non-competitive companies world wide. Basically you can buy research. Not just the report from Gartner, Forrester, FT and so on, but real practical research.

Now, i have the domain name ventureiq.com and for a while been wondering just what to do with it. I wonder whether we could pull together some top quality folks and run a virtual research lab. Not just tech, but other areas too. A practical research lab built out of a network of expert individuals that may have day jobs, but are excited by the thought of research and can even get some return for their time.

The point wouldn't be that we would do the research ourselves, but rather our network would allow small, medium and even larger enterprises to get access to expert researchers who could perform lab type research for them.

What's even cooler is that we could even link into companies with available space and people who may wish to fill in their time by doing some background research for a company. Everybody wins.

Here's what i've got so far. Send me a mail to connect AT stevenR2.com if this sounds interesting.

VentureIQ connects small to medium-sized business and larger enterprises with experts who can perform high quality online as well as practical research on your behalf at low cost. Think of us as a step between the universities doing the longer term theoretical research and your real world business ventures. We can help you develop and prove the concept of your venture before significant investment in time or money.

Through our network of research experts, we offer solutions such as:

• Initial online and offline research into specific topics, locations, products and so on
  
• Prototype development to test theories and ideas
  
• Qualified expert opinion and ideas on your venture
  
• Links into networks of individuals who may be able to help

We do research such as:

• Will my software idea really work?
  
• How could we use Xml and Web Services?
  
• Is there a better search algorithm we could use on out site?
  
• Is there a market for your product in Chile?
  
• What kind of music works best with your film?
  
• What could be the total cost of patenting my idea?
  
• Could my business be extended into a new area

Xerox have the Palo Alto Research Centre, IBM have Almedan, Microsoft have Microsoft Research, Google have Google Labs. Such research facilities are great when you have them, however often the cost and/or recruitment of individuals may not be right for your business.

When we say research we don't just offer services of experienced researchers who can find and collate information from the web for you or find research and reports you may find useful. We go beyond this and also offer practical solutions, such as software research where actual prototypes are built, algorithmic research where you can see the measured results, market research where you get the output of the surveys.

At VentureIQ we put you in touch with vetted researchers who can perform research tasks on an individual or on-going basis. You can have your own research labs.

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I noticed Ross Mayfield's photo of a Real Madrid game last night. For my sins i have never head of LA Galaxy, so went to check our their site.

The site's pretty cool and you can check out some highlights of the game.

Now i'm intruiged. I'm a big football fan (soccer) so i'd love to hear more about what it's like in the US. Seems to be coming on now ...
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I recently read Scott White's (et al) discussions on Open Data and the Implications of Data Disownership and although I may not have caught the entire jist, it came to my attention yesterday during some discussions with a company i was talk with.

You see the positive thing (in this case) is that it is a government body. They don't make money opening the system via web services, but it helps third parties integrate and use their services. I suddenly started to see not only the open services that could be made available, but the data resuse that makes no sense to be duplicated everywhere.

We have NI numbers, company addresses, people addresses, qualifications and so on that are really just sematic data on top of the core functions of the system (they are each managed by a separate larger body), which is really about payments. So i think - why do we store and manage all of this stuff. I can say that most of the effort is around managing stuff they only need to know about and shouldn't really have to maintain. A company registration number can be used to tell us everything we need to know about a company, so why manage and store the entire company details. This extends to the other attributes. Opening the services would be great, but there is a snag.

You see they all want to open their systems, but charge to get to the data. Not only that, but the drive of services will see others use your service within their services - this is exactly a case we have just now. We provide an address lookup facility which is managed by a third party. However, the data itself is owned by the post office and the third party license that from them! So if we serve this data out of our own service then although the software people may be happy to open the API, the Post Office aren't going to be happy their data is floating around the web with a single license paying for it!!

The net result is duplication. And this extends to the other attributes and no doubt around the web there are many cases of this. So you get to a point where services can only DO things and the things you get become hazy. Or rather, what you can DO with what you get back is hazy - "Yep, I found 6 matches which may be the address they are looking for based on their query, but the license tells me i can't send it back to them."

In the enteprise I don't see an easy way out of this short term. However, if profiles were available direclty from the source (e.g. the person, the company and so on - ignore verification of that for just now), then maybe certain links in the chain could be ignored and we would be in a position where Open Data could be a reality.
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As you may have noticed, Google have a link to the Moon on their front page now in honour of the landing in July 20, 1969. Actually it is a link to a resource about the moon to get my proper RDF right. What URI do we use to represent the moon? Tangent.

However, many Chileans question whether it actually ever happened. You see, there's Atacama desert which is very similar to the surface of the moon. There are areas where no rain has ever been recorded. The diametric opposite of areas in Scotland where rain has ever not been recorded.

I recently watched a documentary that took the arguments that it never happened and showed scientific arguments against these arguments. The counter-arguments were also very convincing.

It reminds my of my Physics classes where you had to prove that something worked, and when something didn't work you had to prove which that was also the case. In my case the two often merged. I think they called it Quantum Physics.
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Snap has raised $10 Million for developing a search engine that will use a cost per action (ie you get paid when the purchase is made) rather than the cost-per-click model we are all used to.

Read more on my linkblog ...
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By the great power of JotSpot, I have now created a Wiki for taghop and taghop.ORG. You can now go to http://stevenr2.jot.com and submit your ideas and opinions on the site as well as participate in a collaborative Requirements Specification for each idea.

This is a new concept for me. I previously kept my cards close to my chest, but as taghop depends on the community and its collaboration i'd like to give this a go and see where it leads us.

Look forward to hearing from you.
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During some research was interesting to note that SocialText and JotSpot and considered to be fairly major competitors. SocialText was founded by Ross Mayfield and JotSpot was co-founded by Joe Kraus formerly founder of Excite.

Oddly enough one of the investors of JotSpot is Mayfield Funds. I've never heard of any other Mayfield so found it all very odd. But after looking into it, there is indeed no relation - one of the companies investing in JotSpot does indeed have the same name as the founder of the competitor!

Nevertheless, check out both. It's an area i was in at the end of last year. I just happen to think there are some other things that have to be dealt with first, hence taghop.
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I like Google earth. When i first saw it the first this that occurred to me was pretty much that i had a floating sensation. Once again I was surprised at what I was looking at and it was impressive.

The second thing was that they should talk with Flickr. A while back I had been thinking about the next thing on from Flickr. You take pictures of places when you are travelling and associate them with a place on Google Earth. Then you can get a truly live version of Google earth.

People can ask for pictures of places they are going (or would want to go) and they can get a far quicker uptake than they ever will by doing it all themselves.

Will be interesting to see where this one goes.
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A trick i have used for a long time now is to use the Google cache feature to access things that are either archived or taken offline. Even though they disabled the Google download of http://earth.google.com i was able to find the proposed download Url, paste it into Google search and get to their disabled search via their own search engine.

Today however, i wanted to read an article about Jim Clark - the same who founded Netscape. My only frustration was that the Baltimore Sun archives its articles after two weeks and you need to register and often pay for the article text.

Along comes Google cache which takes either the Url or name of the article you are after and returns you a cache link which gives you the article you are after. I even pointed to this in taghop.

You do have to wonder however if a smaller start-up would get away with this. I remember a few years back a lot of issues around caching on proxy servers. I wonder how many of these companies know Google does this? Most people i speak with don't know you can do this.
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There are a number of features I think were missed from Internet 1.0 - often just to get the product to market the cool things were done quickly, but the core basic things got missed on the way.

One that has always frustrated me has been session timeouts in webmail. In fact this even caused me to almost crack my head open about 30 minutes ago when i threw my head back in frustration when I lost my entire email and I hit my head off a temporary "house" we have erected for our 2 year old to play in (long story unless you've got kids)!!

I spent around 15 minutes thinking and typing an email only to click submit and to be told the session has timed out, with no way of getting the text i had typed. So i had to spend another 15 minutes thinking again and trying to remember what i had said. This is around the same amount of time it takes to write a reasonable blog, yet i have never lost even my largest of posts!

So the first feature for WebMail 2.0 has to be some way of storing an authentication token with the client that can be posted back and even if the session times out, you still get a draft stored you can get to and so don't lose the entire message!

Simple fix - unlike my head.
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Release 2.0 is for me a combination of two factors.

1. We are into Internet 2.0. For many years I said that we were previously in the research stage of the web and i believe this lasted even up to 1994. I think it relatively recent that the web is starting to make things simple, although there is the tendency to try and make things difficult again. The success of Google (which was a fairly obvious choice for being simple) and Flickr (more complex, yet simple) highlights this. In addition, I thing services are going to have to start VERY simple to get a reasaonable number of users on board before they start adding the additional services that tend to make things more complicated. Internet 1.0 started off simple, but by 1999 is was heading towards everything being complex and the user being less and less in control of what was going on. We can't afford to let this happen again in this second stage of the web.

2. I feel ready to release a version 2.0 of myself. I also started off fairly simple (some argue this hasn't changed), but things got gradaually more and more complicated over the year until the technology I was creating assumed far too much about my customers. As an example I created a service syndication system that assumed people wanted to buy professional services across the web. I still think they do, but they first need to get to a point where they have some very basic trust! I could go on, but hopefully my work over the next 6 months and beyond will start to highlight some of the problems I have encountered. I patched myself up too many times. This is the new release and it promises to do what the customer wants and not what the technology can do!
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Release 2.0 starts from August 2005 and will see me look at future ventures and projects in a completely different manner. Over the last 2 years I have moved more and more to simplicity - i feel this is important for two reasons:

1. As a small entrepreneur it is much easier to get to the "end" of the release of a product by making it small. This way you can find out much quicker whether there are things that can be done with your product and whether it will actuallty work.

2. Users actually want simple things. If it's simple they know exactly where to go when they want to do something. They also know what to expect. It is my firm belief that the next few years will see users hop between simple connected sites far more than the traditional portal experience that we are all used to. "Headlines" will be syndicated by technologies such as RSS which will help with the connectedness, but ultimately many end-point sites will provide the imlementation and make reasonable levels of revenue and be "closer" to the customer in the features they provide.

In view of this here are the ventures I am currently working on:

taghop.org

" taghop.org allows you to relate tags and categories on the web to
enable you and those who follow you to easily hop the web according to you! "

taghop.com

" Add your latest links and thoughts; read, rate & comment on others. Choose your friends, know what they are seeing - let them know what you find cool. Join communties with similar interests. Collaborate. "

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# posted by weblivz @ 2:38:00 pm

Internet 1.0.

Release 1.0 of the web.

Features:

• Tech geeks with no business knowledge.
• Business gurus with no tech knowledge.
• B2C, B2B, B2G, ABC, DEF
• Amazing Burn Rates
• Complexity
• Overambitious ideas

To late for this release:

• Simplicity, Connectedness
• Privacy, Security
• Usefulness for everyday people
• Understanding both the business & technology
• Fluid partnerships and relationships

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Between 1992 and July 2005 i had several attempts at creating start-ups with various levels of success. I call this period Release 1.0 - a time when i spent most of my time being educated about a better way of executing the potential of the web.

Here are some of the start-up projects I founded:

2004/2005 - TESARAC
TESARAC is to some extent an ongoing project. There is one major enterprise using this technology (as a free beta test) that brings weblog facilities into the Enterprise. I did learn a LOT from this project however in both technology and the business of technology. I now feel i understand the Internet in a new way and the next 6 months will be an attempt at making something of this understanding.

2000/2003 - VentureTogether
I took significant time away from work to create what I hoped to be a big step into the social networking and service arena. The software platform was developed to a stage where I would say it was more advanced than any platform available at that time. It was very difficult however to get investment in the UK for such technologies and hence i started to think differently about how I could create the "next big thing".

2000/2002 - SightKeys
This was one that got away. It is still fundamentally a good idea, but investors see too many ways for others to write the same technology that taking it to the next level is difficult just now. I can't go into detail just now in case it moves on at some point, but if you remember RealNames and know about Google AdWords, then we're somewhere along those lines, but adding siginicant value.

1999/2000 - VentureTogether.org
This was an experiment more than anything that attempted to bring together experience business people with inexperienced entrepreneurs (like myself) and allow ideas to be challenged and feedback to be sent. It was my first step into communities and social networking.

Towards where the point where investment would have been sought, the "boom" collapsed and ultimately there was little interest at that time.

1997/1999 - Enterprise Information Portal
At the tail end of my degree I created an Enterprise Information Portal based mainly on emerging Xml and Xsl technologies. I have the source code to this day, but ultimately my lack of business experience showed in me failing to clinch a deal for capital. We did have the opportunity of £100,000 of investment, but found that many of the people we were to be working with took huge advantage of us and personal conflict was inevitable.

1992/1996 : Soliton Computing
Creating a virtual web presence for businesses online. This was great for working my way through university, but ultimately there became far too many companies in this space and it was of little interest to me.
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I am currently a member of too many social networks to remember from Zero Degrees and Linked-In to Ecademy and Orkut.

However, the two I use most are below. Click the link and view my connections.

Zero Degrees
Linked In

Please connect with me if we can help each other out!
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Overview
I am an Xml and .Net consultant with over 11 years experience working with Internet technologies. I have experience with most Web Services and Xml technologies from Xslt to the Xml Schema Language, RDF and Xml Topic Maps. I have been heavily working with Xml, Xslt and schemas in Xml in commercial projects since 1998.

I am also a Microsoft architect, with many years experience in working with DNA and .Net including C#, VB.Net, SQL Server (including TSql) and a number of other Microsoft products. I also work closely with Microsoft and I am also a member of XmlInsiders, a group of industry experts invited and sponsored by the Microsoft Xml Team.

I am author of “Beginning C# XML”, “Beginning VB.Net Xml”, “Application Development with MSXML 4.0”, “Professional Xml” and “Professional Xml 2nd Edition” which have sold over 100,000 copies in several languages. I am also author of many more books and articles on Xml, Web Services, DNA and .Net. I continue to be involved in reviewing and editing established technical titles, although I have taken a step back from writing such titles. I have worked for IBM Global Services in Canada, Scottish Enterprise, Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest creating and innovating in web environments.

I have worked for companies such as Scottish Office, IBM, Scottish Enterprise, Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest as well as a number of smaller businesses in consultancy positions.
My personal web site is at http://www.stevenR2.com/ and contains more information about my work as well as pointers to Urls. I am also father of a 2 year old son, Xavier.

Technical Skills & Knowledge
I have extensive commercial knowledge of the Microsoft Development platform, including:

• all versions of Visual Studio (including 2005 beta)
• .Net development framework and languages (C#, VB.Net, ADO)
• DNA Enterprise Architecture and Development
• UML and practial project lifecycle experience
• Web Services, SOAP and Xml technologies (e.g. XSLT, Xml Schema, RSS, OPML and so on)
• all Microsoft Operating Systems
• many Unix flavours as well as some Linux knowledge
• SQL server databases, Ingres, Oracle, Access
• Client Scripting with JavaScript, VB Script
  

I have exposure to range of additional technologies and skills. If such a skill is not listed, please ask and I will advise of my experience.


Business Experience Overview

With Scottish Enterprise and IBM Global Services, I was responsible for leading small teams (as part of much larger teams) and full lifecycle project development, from interfacing with the business to capture requirements to development, testing and production. I was also involved in evaluation, recommendation and purchasing decisions of key products, including Search Engines, CMS Systems and Portal Systems. With both positions I had to maintain relationships with a number of key consultancies and product providers.

As a consultant I have also been heavily involved in full lifecycle project development through to project maintenance and enhancements. This has also given me experience of full responsibility of projects as well as creating working relationships with a number of partners (e.g. marketing).
Additionally over the last 12 months I have created a community framework, working with individuals from around the globe to form “virtual teams” as well as networking at a high level with a number of companies across the globe.

Writing & Publications
Details of the books and articles i have had published can be found here.

Experience
July 02 – Ongoing NTAL Glasgow, Scotland
Entrepreneur & Consultant
During this time I have combined the creation of a new community portal framework development with external consultancy and development.

Specifically I decided to concentrate full time on continuing the development of a .Net community portal framework I had been working on. Now in beta testing, this framework allows live interaction, searching and more between registered users providing products and services to the community. It was build using both VB.Net and C#, runs off an SQL Server 2000 database and stores much of the data in Xml format using a number of Xml technologies (such as Xslt). It also offers syndication features using RSS as well as an increasing number of web service enhancements to enable direct integration.

During this time I have also been involved as a consultant on a number of .Net projects. Specifically, I:-

Completed the writing of http://www.venturetogether.org using ASP.Net, C#, Xml and ADO.Net. It also supports a number of languages and provides Web Services interfaces. SightKeys at http://www.sightkeys.com was developed using ASP.Net, C#, SQL Server and Xml. Additionally ADO.Net was used to interface with SQL Server 2000. Developing a .Net based system for a Scottish recruitment agency. Completed the development of the site at http://www.bidecom.com to use ASP.Net and C# architecture, a reverse auction business with which I maintain a relationship. Developed a unique personalization system based on .Net architecture. Developed a web site for a client at http://www.team-scotland.co.uk which is an ongoing development. This was ported from Perl to ASP.Net. Completion of a .Net recruitment portal.

Jul 03 – Oct 03 Scottish Executive Glasgow, Scotland
.Net Developer and Architect
Edina software contracted me as a developer and architect on a project being worked on for the Scottish Executive, gathering statistical data from all the schools in Scotland and providing a simple means for uploading, cleaning and analysing a very large volume of data.

The system used an ASP.Net front end providing full uploading, data view and manipulation capabilities supporting Xml files of over 100MB. The backend was a SQL Server 2000 database engine and SQLXML was used to bulk upload Xml data using annotated mapping schema. ADO.Net Types datasets provided the data view with t-sql stored procedures and the Microsoft application blocks being a primary method of data retrieval.

My specific duties where as follows:-

The creation and development of Annotated Xml Mapping Schemas and Xml Bulk Upload using both the unmanaged (COM) version via Interop as well as the managed (.Net classes). Full development of the ASP.Net front end using C#, involving file uploading, data wizards, data viewing, data management with C#, DHTML and HTML. Transactional Business and Data layer development using C#. Data grids to support display and manipulation of the information and multi-tier ADO.Net used to access the SQL Server backend and retrieve the data. The data was managed using types datasets. Windows Service development to provide real-time Xml Schema file validation. Xml Schema and Xslt development to provide transform and validation of 3rd party Xml files for inclusion within the system.
The parting email from my project manager read (reference available on request):

“It's been a real pleasure working with you.
It's not too often that you get someone with tremendous technical
ability who also has the vision to understand the whole development
picture, and the ability to relate well with customers.
If you ever need a reference, I'd be more than happy to supply one.”

Jan02 – July02 Scottish Enterprise Glasgow, Scotland
IT Architect
Scottish Enterprise is a government agency and working on a portal to provide the country with a single accessible area to access information online. The budget is tens of millions of pounds and involving over 300 people in the project.

Created a meta-data directory and rendering framework to contain details on content that internal and external staff wished to publish and have personalized towards internal and external users. The directory was Xml based and the rendering used Xslt to transform and present the content. The Xml was retrieved from a SQL Server 2000 database using SQLXML 3.0 and the SQL .Net managed classes as the data format.

Also acted as systems architect and development lead of technical operations, including gathering requirements, writing up requirements, creating functional specifications and following project through full lifecycle. As an example, I was involved in requirements gathering, systems design and some development work with Exchange 2000 and Instant Messaging.

Nov01 – Jan02 Writing Chile, South America
Wrote “Application development with MSXML 4.0”.

Feb01 – Nov01 IBM Global Services Winnipeg, Canada
IT Architect
Working as the primary Microsoft and Xml consultant in the Winnipeg area within IBM Canada. Longer term focus of implementation of Microsoft web technologies with IBM technologies, such as WebSphere etc…

Was involved in creating an presentation architecture, using Xml and Xslt for the governments “Better Systems Initiative”, a multi-million dollar initiative to put the city on the Internet – had global coverage at its launch as one of the worlds most unique Internet to business process integration. Involved dealing with processes such as company registration, business start up and other processes. I specifically create the overall technical architecture specification and processes document involving best practices, preferences and technology introduction. Was involved at a high level in one of IBM’s top portal development frameworks using in businesses such as the DOW Jones and large global financial institutions.

Also presented an executive level Microsoft .NET technical and business presentation, to help IBM Canada advance their corporate strategy.

Other work involved creating business proposals and financial and resource estimates for projects over $100,000.

Mar 99 – Jan01 Scottish Enterprise Glasgow, Scotland
Developer/Architect

Developer for various projects. Initial work was based on web based transactional applications with Visual Basic 6, XML, Xslt, Site Server, DHTML, SQL Server and most Microsoft web technologies etc…responsible for the adoption of Xml technologies.

Over the last year I have been heavily involved in a very large government business portal. Here I have taken an overall project position, involving product evaluations and recommendation, integration and basic management of sourced components of the portal. Beyond this, I have been working on security and infrastructure decisions as well as development using technologies such as XML, Visual Basic and other MS technologies.

I have been involved in working with some major consulting and product companies, such as Cedalion (a top XML solution provider company in Europe), MCS, Sequoia, Semio, Escaliber and Verity to name but a few. These are all major players in the corporate enterprise markets.

I was a developer and architectural lead in a team of around 15 developers between the company I was contracting in (Scottish Enterprise) and the consultancy company. I was the technical lead for SE, while also being very much involved in feeding in business concerns to the development processes. I have worked in very much a leadership position in the project. Furthermore, technical documentation and specifications has also been within my remit.

Mar 98 – Mar 99 Royal Bank of Scotland Edinburgh, Scotland
Developer
Microsoft Technologies Developer in large WAN based online training project for one of the worlds largest banks. Using Windows Media technologies programmed to work though Web Browsers to allow satellite based live training with full question and answer sessions via the browser and Voice over IP.

Project was based on MS technologies such as Visual Basic, Windows Media (Netmeeting), XML, ASP etc… Involved all areas of the development lifecycle through to live production and consulting with MCS UK.

Aug 97 – Mar 98 NatWest Birmingham, England
Developer
IntranetCreated and evolved the NatWest Mortgage Services intranet and was involved in steering committees for entire NatWest group intranet and internet developments. This involved evaluating and developing with the latest web technologies as well as leading and training others in these technologies.

This involved promoting technologies such as ActiveX, IIS, ASP etc… and creating many applets to promote the Intranet, such as a communications directory.

Sept 92 – Aug 97 Soliton Computing Glasgow, ScotlandConsultant Web TechnologiesWorked with small businesses throughout Glasgow to advise on web technologies and development, utilising CGI, Perl, HTML and early web technologies (and yes, even some Java!). Had a portfolio of 50 small businesses by 1995.

Jun 94 – Sept 94 European Commission Milan, Italy
Client Development
Contract project to develop an application to measure and project solar cell efficiency based on a combined software/hardware project using Visual Basic and Office.
EducationSept 96 – Jun 97 Stathclyde University Glasgow, ScotlandDiploma in Information Technology SystemsWorked on various areas of computing science, from C programming to project analysis and design.

Sept 92 – Sept 96 Strathclyde University Glasgow, Scotland
BSc Honours in Applied Physics
Degree was based on combined Physics, Computing and Italian subjects.

Skills
I speak some Italian and I am learning Spanish and speak a little French. I also enjoy travel, am married and have a 2 year old son.
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2003
Jan 2003 - End to End Web Services with UDDI 2.0 and XML Web Services
ASP today
“…this is one of the best articles I’ve read for ASPToday, and quite possible the best explanation for UDDI and .NET integration I’ve seen yet. I’m not too deep into the UDDI yet, but I’ll be starting tomorrow, you can bet – this article would get anyone on the right track. Excellent. There really aren’t enough of these articles – should be more.”
Brady Gaster - http://www.asp-help.com"

Content Management Systems with Xml, Rss and .Net
ASP Pro Magazine

2002
Review of "Programming GDI+"
Addisson-Wesley

Beginning VB.NET XML:Essential XML Skills for VB.NET Programmers
Wrox Press

"A Superb Introduction to These Great Technologies I am very impressed with this book....I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who is taking their first steps in using XML with VB.NET and wants to take their skills to the intermediate level."

Mike Poole – Director, 2F3 Internet

Beginning C# XML:Essential XML Skills for C# Programmers
Wrox Press



"If you C# programmer and you don't know anything about XML then this is your first and almost what all you need about XML, The book is great as all wrox's C# books"
Michael Saad – Egypt, CA

"MSXML Schema and .NET Schema - A practical comparison of working with the XML Schema in MSXML 4.0 and C#.NET"
ASP Today

"Overview of MSXML 4.0"
xml.com

"MSXML DOM and .NET DOM - A practical comparison of working with the DOM in MSXML 4.0 and C#.NET"
ASP Today

"XML Application Development with MSXML 4.0"
Wrox Press


"MSXML4 is the fastest XML parser in the world and this book gives you needed details to take advantage of it. Some of these chapters are a gold mine. "
Mark Bosley, Amazon.com

"The book is very readable; I read half the book in one sitting and found that the flow from one topic to the next was very natural."
Daniel Bodart, Amazon.com

2001
Contributer to Beginning XML 2nd Edition
Wrox Press

Web Services and the Future of Web Services with .NET
ASP Today

Professional XML Second Edition
Wrox Press

"This is the ONLY book you will need to learn XML effectively on your own."
Ted, CA USA

"This book includes just about everything a programmer would need to get started with XML, and to start developing XML-enabled applications. There's the obligatory introduction to XML, covering all of the basics such as DTDs and namespaces so you'll understand what XML is all about. The introductions are clear and concise, so if you already know about XML you don't need to feel the pages have been wasted."
Michael Mason, XMLScript.org

Professional Commerce Server 2000
Wrox Press

2000
Professional XML Databases
Wrox Press

XML and Java
Prentice Hall

1999
Beginners XML
Wrox Press

ASP and XML
Wrox Press

Professional XML
Wrox Press

Remote Scripting
ActiveWeb Magazine

1998

Pro Site Server Commerce
Wrox Press

Pro Site Server
Wrox Press

"It is: * highly readable; * well-organized; * includes topics that are missing in the Site Server Documentation; * Suffiently thorough on topics like security - discusses concepts and their proper implementation in a Site Server Environment."
Marshall Ruskin Winnipeg, Canada.

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# posted by weblivz @ 10:59:00 am

My full name is Steven Livingstone-Perez. I am 31, from Scotland (currently living in Glasgow), I am married and have a 2 and 1/2 year old son, Xavier. My core interests are:

• Semantic Web, Metadata and Distributed approaches to the web
• Social Networking and Online Communities
• Registration, Identity and Profile
• Trust and Privacy
• Mobile Communities
• Cognitive and persuasive approaches to technology
• Distributed Conferencing and Workshops
• Partnerships and Distributed Teams

I went to Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland where i read Physics, obtaining a BSc honours degree in Physics. As most physicists want to improve the world in all areas except Physics itself, I had used and programmed on the web for several years before i graduated which led me to complete a Postgraduate diploma on Information Technology Systems - cut short from the MSc as I got offered a job by NatWest Bank which later turned out to be a great decision!

I was on the first Intranet and Internet Steering Commitees at NatWest group which had over 50,000 employees. I also started the NatWest Mortgages Intranet Site and my first app was an online telephone directory. I have moved around Royal Bank of Scotland, Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Executive and IBM Global Services in Winnipeg, Canada. IBM was a very enjoyable company to be part of and i was sorry it was cut short when I moved with my wife back to Chile.

I wrote a bunch of books with Wrox Press who later got purchased by A-Press and Wiley. I enjoyed writing, but got zero time to run my own ideas so i stopped writing in 2003 - it was a hard decision as i enjoyed it and the money was fairly steady. But I want to start my own business.

I was invited my Microsoft to be part of their .Net advisory commitee which was cool. I was also invited to some other groups and have been on their Alpha and Beta programmes.

In my personal life, I have been married to Loreto for 3 years and we met on MSN (very true). I flew to Canada to meet her and ended up staying. We moved to Chile and now back to Scotland, althoug our final destination will likely somewhere else.

Loreto is Chilean and speaks both Spanish and English fluently. We have a son Xavier Esteban who is two years and some months old. I live out of Glasgow, Scotland, although we have a "second home" near Vina Del Mar in Chile.
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Go to My taghop.org Web
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Go to evdb events
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Go to delicious links
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Go to Flickr Photos
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Go to taghop linkblogs
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Name : Release 2.0.
Author : Steven Livingstone.

Starting ....

Archiving Release 1.0 ...... success.

Building ......... success.
Compiling ...... success.
Deploying ...... success.

Release Successful.

You may now start using Release 2.0!
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Go to Odeo
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Go to My Things
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