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.

A friend of mine is looking for someone to help him with a personal project of his

I’m finding it a frustration that whilst we refer to Australians and News Zealanders as ‘westerners’ our printed maps always show both countries in the far south-east.

I’ve tried using Photoshop to move both countries to the west of the map however this is very much a short-term and localized fix.

I’d ideally like to find somebody able to physically move both countries a few thousand miles towards Hawaii.

I appreciate that this would not be a suitable project for an individual but would require a team effort so please be aware of this when bidding.

I also would prefer that you read the project specs entirely before bidding as I get a little peeved when people just bid without really understanding the nature of the work.

A sample of similar completed projects will be greatly appreciated and will increase the chances of your bid being accepted.

As Scriptlance is somewhat limited in it’s project categories I’ve listed it under graphic design work, rather than in a unique “geographical relocation of continental mass” category.

I look forward to your bidding.

Best wishes,

Martin

He already has 2 people bidding at $100 for the job… excellent opportunity for anyone looking to change the world (literally instead of figuratively)

Now I can’t tell you what Project X is, because the NDA that you have to sign before being part of the initial wave of Project X beta testers includes a clause that says that you can’t disclose that the beta testing program exists.

However, it is awesome! Incredibly disruptive… blows huge holes in my youTube dvr conspiracy theory. Actually, I should say that if Google was planning to create a DVR for youTube they will certainly be up shit creek when this thing launches. And coming from guys who have consistently pissed off traditional media, I’m sure they aren’t too happy about this either.

In the footsteps of a couple good friends I’ve decided to make the first blog entry of the new year yet another year in review round-up for the year 2006.

It’s hard to believe that we’re already done with 2006, this one went by fast. A lot happened, and due to the overflow of work, I missed a lot of what I did last year (specifically LinuxWorld Expo and LinuxTag).

One of the big work-related events is a new venture that I’ve been working on this year. <project-pimping>HedgeCo Hedge Fund Website Creation was officially launched on December 1st, however about 18 months worth of work had gone into the product and building a client list before the site launch. The sprang out of my work with HedgeCo Networks which involved a the development of a high-end statistics/graphing package which generated quantitative statistics for Hedge Funds. After deploying the product on their flagship product, they started receiving request to license the package on various other website platforms, so the package was reworked into a slimmed down edition which can be deployed in smaller sites.

As we started deploying the product we realized the potential, and reallocated some of the design talent that we had been working on other project into creating entire websites and Hedge Fund start-up consulting/compliance packages. Since our Dec. 1 launch we have had a fantastically profitable month (to keep up-to-date with what we’re doing check out the Hedge Fund Websites blog)</project-pimping>

All of the above required me to reallocate my own time away from other projects, until the point that for the last year I have done little else. So as of Jan 1, 2007 I am officially working full time for HedgeCo Hedge Fund Websites… Freelancer no longer! This year I’m also moving my family up to West Palm Beach, Florida and will be working in the brand new HedgeCo offices (will post pics of when we move in later this month).

OK, so now that I’ve spent all my time pimping my current project I’ll skim through the news.

January: Slow month, Sid officially joined our family as “brother”. I weighed in on the PHP Security debate du jour wondering when good security verges on paranoia and the side effects.

February: Traveled to UK for PHPLondon conference. This was a fantastic event (looking forward to next year), as far as I remembered there were about 250 geeks attending the 1-day event. Got a cool new LCD. In defense of PHPNuke (and other applications of low repute whose name starts with PHP*) I responded to Marco’s post reminiscing about how great PHPNuke was back in the day.

March: Slow month… google releases finance portal, barra stops reporting S&P numbers and screws up my webservice. Tom Fox is Executed.

April: Gearing up for the world cup 32Cards PHP-based card game is released. I start using backpackit to organize my life (note to reader, I stop using it in a couple months, when it stops scaling with my needs). I spent 10 days in Florida, unfortunately missing PHPTek by 10 days.

May: I question open-source for highly specific niche applications (more specifically my statistic package). I enjoy Scott Sigler’s “Infection” which is in full swing. I start watching theshow with ze frank.

June: DSL CRASH!!! I try to “upgrade” my connection by switching providers which turns into 3 weeks on dial-up. During this time I camp at friends houses during all night product launches, and drive everyone around me insane. I finally return. World cup is in full swing, and Germany is World Cup CRAZY! I take pictures.
I travel to Norway for the eZpublish conference & PHPVikinger. Ammar Ibrahim comes to Frankfurt, we watch some football!

July: A slow month… I try Fedora Core, only to get frustrated when I can’t mount my ntfs external drive with the correct permissions (worked fine in root, was able to find no usable explanation). Infection ends. Put out a notice for css code monkeys get more response than I can handle. Macs Rock? During one of the hottest months on record the kids have chickenpox and we are confined indoors.

August: I subscribe to Gail Orenstein’s Flickr feed during her trip to Israel. cool pictures (quite possibly NSFW) with political commentary. Two talks are accepted for ZendCon. I manage to squeeze into the PHPConference schedule at the last minute. We take the kids on a mini-vacation to Legoland and then visit some friends in Switzerland.

September: Catch Mark Nemcoff on in a 5-minute-review. I deploy a site using eZpublish, blog about lessons learned. RIP Lilo. Do some myspace defending.

October: The Pear book is out!. I speculate about google world domination, and yahoo opens up the login api. Spend a week in WPB Florida, then fly to LA and drive down to San Jose for Zendcon.

November: Conference season. Meet Scott Sigler!!! Give talks at Zendcon, fly back home and give tutorial at IPC2k6. After seeing that the Zend Framework is more than hype I take a look at it and start my Zend Framework Hidden Gems article series. I dump backpackit for google docs (which I am still happily using). When is it a good time to rewrite your platform?

December: HedgeCo Hedge Fund Website launch. Fantastic month on the work front, however not a whole lot of time for anything else. David (CPUNerd) on the other hand has way too much time on his hands, and immortalizes me in kilt.

And that’s about it… probably the longest blog entry ever! I’m looking forward to this year as being the craziest yet. I’ll be flying to WPB next week, and for this first quarter will probably spend more time on that side of the pond.

A big THANK YOU to my readers (let’s make that anyone who made it this far into the blog entry). And most of all thanks to Stella, Annie and Mia for putting up with me during this hectic time.

I’ve been waiting to reveal my conspiracy theory about the Google acquisition of YouTube, but then I saw this post about Sun’s Project Blackbox, and decided it was time to let the cat out of the bag.

Project Blackbox, is a mobile datacenter from Sun. About this time last year Cringley reported that Google was working on exactly this.

From Cringley’s article:

Two years ago Google had one data center. Today they are reported to have 64. Two years from now, they will have 300-plus. The advantage to having so many data centers goes beyond simple redundancy and fault tolerance. They get Google closer to users, reducing latency. They offer inter-datacenter communication and load-balancing using that no-longer-dark fiber Google owns. But most especially, they offer super-high bandwidth connections at all peering ISPs at little or no incremental cost to Google.

Where some other outfit might put a router, Google is putting an entire data center, and the results are profound. Take Internet TV as an example. Replicating that Victoria’s Secret lingerie show that took down Broadcast.com years ago would be a non-event for Google. The video feed would be multicast over the private fiber network to 300+ data centers, where it would be injected at gigabit speeds into each peering ISP. Viewers watching later would be reading from a locally cached copy. Yeah, but would it be Windows Media, Real, or QuickTime? It doesn’t matter. To Google’s local data center, bits are bits and the system is immune to protocols or codecs. For the first time, Internet TV will scale to the same level as broadcast and cable TV, yet still offer soemthing different for every viewer if they want it.

Sounds a lot like YouTube doesn’t it? One of Sun’s new Blackboxes will hold 1.5 petabytes of data, this is probably sufficient to hold most of YouTubes / google videos popular videos. Drop a couple hundred of these at the peering ISPs and you will have the latency and speed to pipe HD video into any home in the US.

The next step is obviously the YouTube DVR, which you just plug into your network cable and your TV screen, Google will then make deals with the major networks (like we’ve seen following the YouTube acquisition) and you can forget about terrestrial and cable TV.

The last thing I want to mention is the concept that google has to monetize YouTube, and the fear that google will start splicing the videos with commercials. This is not true, and if implemented would take away what everyone loves about youtube. There is no way that Google could monetize YouTube through advertisements to create an acceptable ROI for their stockholders. Google bought YouTube as a stepping stone to grab the largest market share of internet video, which will be monetized once we all sit down in the living room to watch the latest movie releases from YouTube on our big screen TVs. Some people have also mentioned that the stock jump in GOOG prices on the day of the acquisition paid for the purchase.

The move to video is the only way that Google can continue it’s growth as an advertising giant. They have saturated the Web space and need to provide other ways to provide advertising inventory to their clients. This was discussed by Garret Rogers last year.

Whether or not “Project Blackbox” was a surprise to Google, or if Sun even got the idea from Google, I doubt that it will have much effect on the final outcome of what Google’s larger plan.

So here’s to hoping that when Google owns the internet, we don’t wish we had Bill back!

Anyone who has taken pictures of a group of kids will see the usefulness of this cool application. You take several shots shot in sequence, and then you can create a composite image which uses elements from both pictures.

Just choose the best faces from any of the pictures you’ve taken and then add them to the composite image and let the program take care of the rest.

Thanks UB

Don’t know how long they are going to last… but you can view them all online here and here. Also got Family Guy, South Park and American Dad.

I’ve blogged about Shadow Falls a before, it’s an audio-drama which centers around an epic power struggle between good and evil which takes place in the mysterious town of Shadow Falls. Shadow Falls was created by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff and a large crew of actors and producers. The show has ramped up, and we’re now gearing up for the 6th and last episode of the first season.

Alongside the drama, Mark is doing a “companion” podcast where he talks about various issues (think directors commentary on a DVD). In the first episode he solicited interview requests, so I decided to put together a couple questions and Mark responded immediately.

Thanks Mark for taking the time, and for being the first interview in my 5-question-interview section So without further ado, on with the interview.

(more…)

I was banging around Jonathan Coulton’s site and came on some must see zombie related stuff on Flickr and these two songs YouTube.

Go JC!

Oh, and like zefrank, I feel sorry for pluto as well.

http://www.rayninfo.co.uk/vimtips.html

this has already come in handy to help me solve this one:

:%s/\n”\@!/ — /g

I wake up this morning, and like all mornings read my utterlyboring newsletter.

I click on the link to the story about The Bored Leg Cult (click 1). I follow the link to the Bored Leg Cult Photo Pool (click 2). I click on the Pool Members Link (click 3). I view the profile of Barry Price, which was on the first page of group members (click 4). Scroll down a bit to look at his Thailand 2005 Group (click 5). Then scroll down a bit more to find a picture of my good friend martin playing with some lizards (click 6).

Martin is selling a 130kg c-3PO on ebay, c-3PO was played by Anthony Daniels who acted in Star Wars with Garrick Hagon who was a voice actor in Balto with Kevin Bacon.

Now I’ve forgotten what this blog entry was initially about… oh well, it’s a small interweb!

Dvorak Uncensored

While waiting for Kewney the cab driver was asked something and he said Kewney or indicated he was there for Kewney not fully understanding the question. He was rushed into the office and given a badge that said Kewney. He obviously thought this meant he was there to get Kewney and this badge was somehow part of the system. When they needed Kewney on the set someone saw him with the Kewney badge and said, “Kewney?” He said yes thinking he was being asked if he was there for Kewney. Next thing you know he is on the air. Fabulous.

Just wanted to post a note to praise Godaddy for their great service. When I say great service, I mean that every other domain registrar I have worked with I have had major problems with, Godaddy just works. What more can you ask for?

I’ve talked to them twice in the last 2 weeks, each time it’s just been 5 minutes on hold before I got someone who could actually give good advice regarding some trouble I was having with getting a domain transferred from Network Solutions.

Note: Just as I was about to click on the Publish button, my good friend Stefan N. from Speedpartner sent me a IM. I haven’t tried out their domain registration service yet, but when I finally get around to registering my .eu domain name, it will certainly be with them

type:google engEDU – Google Video

I’m saving this for when I have a couple of days free

Flash Video Player

I was just listening to TWiT and heard that YouTube go through (are you sitting down) 1 MILLION Dollars worth of bandwidth a month! Pretty awesome!

They just got $8 million of venture capital, so they’ll be needing to get a bit more of that pretty soon