A Day in Paradise

HedgeCo is the company I’ve worked with for the last 3 and a half years! We passed a milestone this month!

Read the full press release here.

New York, NY (PRWEB) April 30, 2008 — HedgeCo Networks LLC has received its first major outside investment from Inter-Atlantic Group, a private equity firm specializing in the financial services sector. The capital will be used by HedgeCo to expand business operations in both their New York City and West Palm Beach locations, as well as to break out into new verticals of the hedge fund industry.

“We are extremely excited that Inter-Atlantic has taken an interest in us, and are eager to take HedgeCo to the next level,” says Evan Rapoport, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of HedgeCo Networks. “The vote of confidence that they’ve instilled in us further fuels our existing drive to be the leading name in the hedge fund service industry.”

Inter-Atlantic currently invests in a handful of small to mid-size companies. The companies are chosen after a careful evaluation and determination of potential growth and market reach.

“Inter-Atlantic believes the hedge fund industry is a high growth sector with tremendous potential,” says Inter-Atlantic Managing Partner Andrew Lerner. “Rather than investing in a hedge fund itself, Inter-Atlantic chose to invest in one of the premier service providers to hedge funds. We like HedgeCo’s international reach, position as a top tier portal and recurring fee revenue model.”

About HedgeCo Networks
HedgeCo Networks manages HedgeCo.Net, the premier Hedge Fund Database and Information Portal, along with nine other websites devoted to alternative investments. With over 25,000 active members, HedgeCo.Net provides a platform for hedge fund managers, investors and service providers. HedgeCo also offers a vast array of services, including hedge fund website design, consultation, third party marketing and seeding. The company has consulted or helped to launch over 500 new hedge funds, both onshore and offshore. HedgeCo Networks was founded in 2001 by Evan Rapoport and Andrew Schneider. For more information, visit HedgeCoNetworks.com.

About Inter-Atlantic Group
Inter-Atlantic Group seeks to identify and create private equity investment opportunities throughout the broad financial services industry, one of the largest segments of the US economy. Specific sectors include financial technology, banking, insurance, asset management and service providers to the financial services industry. Typical investments range from $3 million - $10 million. Inter-Atlantic is principally focused on US and Bermuda opportunities but considers investment opportunities worldwide. For more information, visit InterAtlanticGroup.com.

http://www.broobles.com/imapsize/download.php

Imapsize rocks. Saved me a ton of time. Now I just need something that turns .pst files into something usable.

Posted by mobile phone:
Old people who do 33 in a 35 zone, drift across lanes and randomly touch theur breaks deserve to be pulled over and shot.

Posted by mobile phone:
So unfortunately I was not able to take on Gil Maynor myself due to being knocked out by Surej in the first round.

The finals were played by Surej and Gil. Surej won in straight games, Surej was on top of his game, gnd it seemed that Gil never found his speed serve.

The event was a lot of fun, props to everyone who was involved with setting it up.

I have several suggestions of “official rules” for wii tournaments.
1. A match consists of 3 sets. Best of 2 wins.
2. A new set of batteries must be used for every match. Additional batteries must be on hand if a contestant requests.
3. Each contestant must have equal time to practice before the game. No contestants can have used the controllers before the games.

Having said that, the games were a lot of fun and I look forward to competing again.

Posted by mobile phone:
Just met gil mayron, nice set up. Looking forward to kicking some ass.

Sponsored by prince.

Will keep you updated.

It’s been a while since I have been in a blogging mood, but I want to discuss the bruhaha which “Anonymous” has made about the CoS and how they are using Digg as their HQ to get the word out.

Firstly, the Church of Scientology has been under fire for decades, a couple kids protesting outside the office does about as much good as a fart in a hurricane. Ffs, Scientology is banned in Germany that tells you something about the opposition that this group gets. This wannabe shit-storm that a couple of kids are starting will not do ANYTHING except piss of the rest of DIGG users.

Secondly, NOTHING that “Anonymous” has “dugg up” and placed on digg (pardon the pun) has been original. It has all been researched and published by people who really do have reasons to be angry at the Church of Scientology.

Anonymous, this is not your battle. If you want to be useful help the people who do have a reason to be angry and CoS and help promote their cause using them as the Spokespeople, not using them to promote your silly little group. Once you’ve lost interest and move on to other antics the real issues will still remain.

Digg, if you want to retain the attention of anyone who has a intelligence level higher than a bored 7-year-old, I would suggest you section this crap somewhere where we don’t have to be bothered with it.

So Gil Mayron is doing a bit of trash-talking in the article in the Sun Sentinal as well as Youtube.

So he spends “8 hours in his office”, I hadn’t touched the wii for weeks before I got into the “Finals” (which, lets be honest here Gil, involved beating 2 people and a 5-year-old), and haven’t played since. Wii tennis isn’t rocket science.

I know people who are substantially better than me, so for Gil’s sake I hope he beats me.

Posted by mobile phone:
Not a whole since I have blogged. My two new ipods have given way to a renewed interest in podcasts and new music.

John says that there is a type of metal for everyone, and took it on himself to find my type. He introduced me to Power Metal which I enjoy greatly. I think it is fair to say that I have never heard anything like Dragon Force. Awesome.

Nocturnal is also running, for the uninformed that is scott siglers new podcast novel which is very interestinh (if you like that sort of thing).

At the office. Laterz.

Posted by mobile phone:
After disqualifying myself from the 95.5 wii tennis tournament at roxys I had another chance at clematis by night. I signed up with 14 adults and 2 kids. I specifically said I didn’t want to play against the kids and was assured that I would be kicked out before I had to face the 5 and 8 year olds.

The first few games were a breeze and then I found myself in the semifinals against a 5-year-old. In perfect honesty he was the toughest opponent and took a game. After winning I was in the finals with the the 7-year-old I took off with my ipod before the parents of the crying kids could hunt me down.

I did feel bad afterwards. But thet played better than any of the adults and were competing with adults so what could I say?

Posted by mobile phone:
Well it seems like I am one of the three percent of floridian republicans who voted for dr. Paul in FL.

You would think that the massive interweb ron paul army would have been able to drum up more than 23k and change people to vote now when it matters most.

Not that I have lost the faith. Just possibly doupting the competance of the campaigners.

Posted by mobile phone:
My weeks are getting too short. Too much to do too little time. Now my weekends are shrinking too.

Saturday we spent 10 hours at the Florida state fair. And then Sunday was all morning at a kids event around the corner. Both were lots of fun. Both were extremely exhausting.

You may notice that my writing style has developed to totally exclude the comma this is because there isn’t an easy way to type a comma on the bb keyboard.

One of these days I need to try composing a blog entry on my ipod touch. I doubt it is as easy as the blacberry.

So I got the scrumm book on bjorn schottes advice and it is VERY interesting. The concepts are simpe and it can be applied to software projectsd of any size. Will have my first meeting with my guys and go over all the points in the book and how it can be applied to our work.

in his apartment - did he own AAPL???

Posted by mobile phone:
It is totally awesome. Totally crippled but still totally awesome.

The hardware is amazing the screen is great. However whenever I am playing with a cool piece of technology the geek within always thinks of cool things the gadget should be able to do.

Does it have an offline rss aggregator or podcatcher? No. Well then can you at least download files and music and add them to your library? No.

The ipod touch is such an awesome piece of hardware. I can’t wait till I can hack it.

Oh yeah, google docs was a dissapointment as well. Read only. At least gmail and youtube rock.

I am setting up a PBX in our office, we are having a 3 mbit Integrated PRI coming in with a cisco QoS switch at the end of it. I don’t understand why I can’t just take any box and install Asterisk in it and then plug that into the switch.
does plugging into a switch through a T1 card give you better reliability
isn’t that what the QoS switch is for?
the PRI card in the PBX means another $1200 on the price
* awormus apologises if this is the wrong channel to ask :
awormus: Is the Cisco terminating the PRI?
eric_hill, yes
awormus: At 3MB, it’s probably two mft-t1 cards, right?
awormus: Next, does the Cisco have DSP modules?
alrs, not sure - it is probably the 2 t1s, as I know the switch has the 2 cards
awormus: Lastly, you need the IOS-VOICE software bundle (which you probably have) on the Cisco
eric_hill, not sure about the DSP modules, we haven’t settled on the actual hardware that we will use. They want to put an IAD on the end, but I don’t think that is nessesary since we’re not goign to do any analogue
awormus: You’ll need to set up VoIP targets for outbound SIP calls, and VoIP peers for inbound calls.
awormus: *if* you’re not using the Cisco for anything else, just pick up a dual port Digium T1 PRI card.
eric_hill, the cisco will deliver our internet as well and it will allocate the internet based on the number of phone lines in use
* awormus is a bit of a n00b
awormus: The Cisco is good and all, but just adds complexity to the situation.
awormus: Ah - that’s a different story.
awormus: Using a bonded PRI link with drop and insert… yes, you want a Cisco
eric_hill, OK - most of that went over my head but I will digest can you recommend a good book which will get me up to speed on Asterisk / VoIP and general concepts?
hardware etc.
awormus: I haven’t found a good book… Just realize that the Cisco is simply going to be a SIP target for placing calls out to the CO
awormus: The Cisco will accept an incoming call and direct it over to the Asterisk box as an inbound SIP call.
eric_hill, so (and excuse my ignorance) if I have a PBX that runs asterisk and I use an online SIP based service - the service will basically play the same role as the cisco
awormus: Correct. A online SIP service is simply playing the role of a SIP->Telco gateway, just as the Cisco will do.

A post on slashdot reminded me of the lack of business sense in many open source programmers.

“I’ve been working on a financial application which I’ve decided to release to the public. I want to make some money from the application, though I certainly don’t expect to become a millionaire. The problem is that I’d like nothing better than to open-source it. There are many aspects of the application that I don’t have time to refine, and other developers could definitely improve upon my work. However, I don’t know how I earn money from something once I’ve made it open source. How have you dealt with trying to turn a reasonable profit on your work while remaining open-sourced?”

Number 1: Why don’t you expect to become a millionaire? Did you sit down and decide that there was no way that your application has can sell 50,000 copies (at $20 a pop)? Do you think the financial professionals can’t afford your product? Did you think about residuals, service plans, program upgrades, additional features. When you have a good piece of software and a business plan, it’s not difficult to make a million dollars from it (especially when the dollar is as weak as it is now). If you don’t want to make a million dollars from a program, you might as well not bother.

Number 2: If you want to make money on a piece of software, you’re going to have to start building features which your clients want/need. Regardless of whether or not you enjoy programming that specific feature. Making your application open source so that someone else might come in and do all the stuff that you think is too boring is not a business plan. To make money you’re also going to need to create a website, write a manual, create marketing material, and a lot of other boring stuff.

To sum it up, with your software development attitude you aren’t going to make any money off your product, regardless of its open source nature. You might as well open source it and then put up a donations button which gets you a Latte a day (if you’re lucky).

So, is it possible to make money from open source software? Absolutely. But because I have to run in to work telling you how will have to wait