Category Archives: blog

Lester Dent’s Master Plot Formula: A Guide for Structuring Compelling Narratives

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This article outlines Lester Dent’s Master Plot Formula, a systematic approach designed to help writers craft engaging and tightly structured stories. Originating from the pulp fiction era, Dent’s formula divides a story into four equal parts, each with specific goals and challenges for the protagonist, culminating in a resolution that ties up the narrative threads. It offers a practical framework for narrative development, emphasizing pacing, character predicaments, and a satisfying conclusion.

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Securing Success: Strategic Questions for Cyber Startups Seeking Growth in the West Midlands and UK

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This article outlines critical questions that cyber security startups, particularly those like Cyber Tzar after completing the NCSC’s “NCSC for Startups” Accelerator programme, should consider when seeking support from regional organizations such as the West Midlands Growth Company or Invest West Midlands. It emphasizes prioritising inquiries around funding and marketing to harness regional opportunities for development and expansion.

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Secure Your Site: A Comprehensive Guide to WordPress Backup and Restoration

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Backing up and restoring a WordPress website is a critical task for website administrators, ensuring that website data is not lost due to unforeseen circumstances such as server crashes, hacking, or accidental deletions. This article will guide you through the processes involved in backing up and restoring your WordPress website, an overview of popular backup and restore plugins, help you to choose the appropriate backup and restore approach, and hopefully help you recover your site quickly and efficiently when needed.

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BCS Birmingham Branch Committee Summer Barbecue

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Last Sunday I hosted a barbecue for the Committee of the BCS Birmingham Branch and thought I’d share a few of the photo’s that we took with you.

After the Branch Committee’s request for new Committee member applicants I’m very pleased to say we had five people come along and take up new positions on the Committee. We’re fortunate to be joined by Martin Froggatt, Rob Gilliam, Steve Harris, Dawn Peers and Hugo Russell, and most welcome they are too!

This bring the size of the Committee back up to a healthy twelve members, which is excellent, however we on the Committee thought that it would be good idea to hold a small event to help everyone get to know each other, and hopefully build a sense of camaraderie, outside of the usual Committee meetings and BCS Birmingham Branch events (one of which is on Tuesday the 15th evening). I was happy to host and for my part I wanted to say ‘thank you’ to the long serving members of the Committee for all of their dedication (as well as a couple of long serving ex-Committee members too).

We’ve also recently started to reboot the Branches approach to social networking technologies and will be refreshing the BCS Birmingham Branch facebook page, please consider joining if your a BCS member and either associated with or interested in the Birmingham Branch.

And here’s those photos I mentioned, as you can see we all had an excellent time, and as Peter Crouch had to say “Thanks also for posting Donna’s photos on the Web, now everyone can see what the Birmingham Committee does on a Sunday afternoon!”.

www.flickr.com

September 2009 blog catch up

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Apologies to all my blog readers I’ve been lax of late and haven’t posted a great deal recently, and I’m afraid that in an attempt to clear down all the draft blog entries I have prior to the transition and acquisition (of Sun by Oracle, of course) I’ll be posting a number of blog entries in quick succession, some of which I expect may need expanding upon in the future.

Topics I have to complete include part three of my provisioning article series, a number of posts on Google and the Google architecture, a number of posts on UK Government messaging systems, specifically DIS, a number of posts on the continuing issues with the economy and innovation and science spending in the UK, as well as a few others.

On the economy side, I was hoping to follow up my articles “DBERR’s views on the future growth of the UK economy ‘New Industry, New Jobs’” and “Industry contributions to the UK economy and investment in R&D; by industry” with pieces which might include looking at:

  1. ‘innovation’ investment in the UK versus the UK’s place in the World Wide league tables
  2. UK versus US stimulation packages
  3. Services Sciences and Web Sciences
  4. the state of UK Manufacturing and “Robot”isation in the UK
  5. a review of the recent ‘Digital Britain’ report
  6. possibly a comparison of R&D; spending and focus in the UK versus other nations (European comparison might be the most pointed)

But for now I’ll see how I get on!

Disqus and Twitter integration to get even more improvements

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You’d imagine Twitter integration in Disqus couldn’t get any better, however speaking with Daniel Ha at Disqus I hear even more improvements are on the way.

If you haven’t seen how Disqus integrates with Twitter (and incidentally what Disqus integration looks like with blogs.sun.com, or any other Apache Roller Weblogger based blog system) have a look at this blog entry which has generated a few traditional comments, but quite a few tweets, and see how Disqus displays them all as part of that conversation too:

https://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/entry/reasons_projects_and_programmes_fail

You’ll need to scroll down to the bottom of the page, but as you can see Disqus has captured a lot of the tweets and retweets about the article, which I think is pretty cool. Disqus also does the same for Facebook and a host of other social networking platforms as well.

Talking to Daniel he said that tweet and social networking metrics and “count” was on the way as well as other advancements, so I am firmly looking forward to those when they arrive.

The great thing about Disqus is that it is firmly becoming a conversation catcher and conversation engine, which is really what I want, to capture disparate conversations about what I write in an aggregate manner.

If you are interested in integrating Disqus with your Sun blog or any other Apache Roller Weblogger based blog, I have a tutorial and overview over here, along with the code and code examples you need to use:

https://horkan.com/2008/09/09/disqus-integration-bsc-roller-weblogger

Web analytics used here at the eclectic blog

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Thought you might be interested in the the web analytics used on this blog; in total there are five pieces of technology collecting data and then used for performing web analysis here. They are:

  1. SiteCatalyst / Omniture – https://www.omniture.com/ – Sun standard, embedded in blogs.sun.com (and monitors all Sun websites), produces the page hits total
  2. SiteMeter – https://www.sitemeter.com/ – you can access my results yourself by simply clicking on the SiteMeter logo on this page and here’s the link: https://www.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s38horkan
  3. StatCounter https://www.statcounter.com/
  4. Google Analytics https://www.google.com/analytics/
  5. ClustrMaps – https://www2.clustrmaps.com/ – simple location counter displayed as a informative graphic here’s the link to my hit counter: https://www2.clustrmaps.com/counter/maps.php?url=https://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/

Why use more than one? Frankly web analytics is more than a shaky area, none of them ever seem to catch all hits just as I’d like, nor measure them in a similar fashion, so I use differing web analytic software to ‘triangulate’ the best view possible (for instance one will count some spiders traffic as hits, whilst another won’t, frankly I want to know the difference between humans and the web crawlers, etc.). Furthermore some have functionality which the others don’t and some produce quick to see ‘snapshots’ whilst others produce detailed ‘drill-downs’.

For instance Sun’s web analytics is the same as the corporate one, so it’s enterprise grade and highly flexible, sadly this means it’s extremely large scale and quite hard to manipulate because the amount of configuration you have to do is just horrendous (but it can give you the most detail).

So SiteCatalyst / Omniture is too much hassle to produce quick updates and ClustrMaps is really eye candy for users, therefore I only really use SiteMeter for quick updates without logging in, and StatCounter and Google Analytics for more detailed, but quickly available, reports on what constitutes readers favourite articles and pages.

For 2 to 5 above you’ll need to sign up for online accounts and add the tracking code yourself, this isn’t too hard, it just takes a little time.

For 1 it’s already there on all the Sun websites and blogs, however you need to request access to the corporate Omniture / SiteCatalyst web analytics system to get access if you are a Sun blogger, then you have to learn how to use it, then you need to use something else as well (see problems I describe above, because you might prefer a quick info ‘fix’).

Most of all this is about personal preference, and what works for you; for about two years after starting blogging I was a data demon, wanting to understand and interpret the stats, and now, well I’m a little more relaxed.

Is syndication and responses a measure of blogging success?

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Given that today marks the 5th year of https://blogs.sun.com (or just “bsc” to us Sun bloggers), and that it was this month two years ago that I published my first blog article (entitled “And finally“, an opinion piece on Gartner’s top ten predictions from 2007), I thought it would be nice to explore what “success” was in terms of blogging.

The most obvious indicator is large and regular readership, but I can’t imagine that that is all there is to it. The next most obvious criteria might be opinion setting, but measuring this seems troublesome and unscientific at that moment (until at least further semantic web infrastructure is in place to better relate meme flow across the Internet, although saying that Autonomy have an excellent visual analysis tool which is an early leading example in this field, the problem with this current non-semantic web model is that you have to generate meta-data by supposition, some of which is irregular at best).

Inward and outbound links are a major contributing factor in the calculation of Google’s “PageRank” algorithm, but I expect this to change significantly in the next few years as two things occur, increasingly effective “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) techniques which will require modification to Google’s rating criteria, and the rise of the semantic web as increasing amounts of meta-data is included with unstructured data across the Internet, driving up implicit relationships between information.

And that leaves me with syndication and pieces written in response to your articles. Frankly I’m not sure that you can qualify syndication as a measure of success of your blog, but I do think it’s a good indicator of how far your message is being spread. I’m still uncomfortable with this, as I would prefer something more Empirical, however I think it may be about the best ‘soft’ indicator we have at the moment.

So using syndication of, and responses to, my articles, as a potential leading indicator, I correlated the following list. Historically I would have used Technorati to generate this information, but Technorati is suffering from some real issues lately, it’s page layout has become befuddled, and worst of all it’s not capturing (even remotely) the responses to my articles, subsequently I used Google Analytics’ “Referring Sites” breakdown instead (the list below isn’t remotely exhaustive, so if there is anything missing you’d like me to add let me know).

Make Google notice your Blog

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Posted this in response to an internal email titled “What makes Google notice a blog?”, it’s pretty universal and applicable to most search engines so I thought I’d share it as a blog article.

Here’s a few suggestions, hope they help. Wayne.

1) You may want to write your blog in a manner which is spider, as well as human, friendly.

Include meta-data and micro-format information, such as tags; don’t forget that key words in headers will increase the ‘value’ of that key word (for many search engines); always make sure that “SCRIPT” HTML segments are followed by “NOSCRIPT” segments (most spiders don’t “do” JavaScript, specifically Google’s; lean web page code that is easy for spiders to ‘consume’.

Re: Tags / Meta-Data / Micro-Formats – I use the Operator plug in / add on for Firefox, this informs the user about semantic data embedded in a viewed web page.

Re: Keyword Analysis – I use the SeoQuake plug in / add on for Firefox, which allows me to do dynamic keyword (and related key word) analysis.

Here’s an article I wrote on Tag format standardization, I recommend that you standardize on a Tag format that is Search engine friendly: ‘Tic, Tag, Toe‘. Don’t over tag nor under tag, but try and match your articles tags with other similar articles, try and join in with the subject matter’s folksonomy if at all possible (i.e. the tags people are using when talking about that subject matter, technorati and delicious are both good examples).

As well as embedding all the tags for all of the articles on the front page (have a look in Operator if you decide to use it or another semantic data ‘explorer’) I also embed tags to major blog directories and social bookmarking sites on the individual page for each entry, here’s an article which demonstrates this: ‘Roller Weblogger blog post tag link code for blogs.sun.com, technorati and del.icio.us‘. I’ve superseded this code now, with a nicer layout and having added more blog directories / social bookmarking sites, you can see the example at the end of the page for any given blog article I’ve written, give me a shout if you’d like the newer code.

2) Google’s PageRank algorithms work on links, inbound, outbound, number, and the PageRank of those inbound and outbound links.

Link to sources, get inbound links from sources / reciprocal links if possible.

Don’t forget to trackback articles that you reference, if the trackback fails try leaving a comment with a link to the article that references it.

3) Make sure you let sites such as Google know you’ve updated your site and that you’d like it re-“spider”ed, indexed and advertised.

This is done by “blog pinging” search engines and blog directories so that they are informed that your site has been updated and to send over there spiders when they get chance (most search engines / blog directories want to do this quite quickly as they want to be first with any potentially newsworthy content that draws traffic).

Personally I wanted a more granular level of control over this than offered with the standard blog ping functionality embedded in roller and so I wrote my own stand alone version: ‘Free XML-RPC blog ping site submitter: “Blog Ping”‘.

4) Other things to consider…

PageRank of your site and individual pages; how well does your article compete with articles of a similar nature.

Have pages been bookmarked in del.ici.ous, technorati, etc., i.e. are they being shared.

P.S. This article doesn’t mention quality of written articles, cadence of posts, timeliness of posts to current events, etc., as it focuses purely on the current electronic mechanisms for getting noticed by a search engine like Google and not the related, but extremely important, human and social element that gains you readership.

Apologies to Alec Muffett

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I’ve wanted to apologise to Alec Muffett for some time about a blog post I wrote back in January ’08. Called “Links for DD-MM-YYYY Not Likely” it questioned the effectiveness of “Links for” type posts to connect with your readership in a meaningful way; as well as being a response to Alec’s post “A disappointed (occasional) reader…“.

This has become especially ironic as eight months later I followed up with “Setting up del.icio.us blog posting on blogs.sun.com“, a post showing in detail how to configure delicious, the online bookmark system, to post entries to Roller Weblogger (and specifically the implementation powering the Sun blog server). To top it all I’ve become a regular provider of “Links for” posts since then too.

Furthermore I’ve found the “Links for” type post a useful way to communicate in a conversational manner with my readers. It allows me to post short opinion based entries to my blog, giving me a chance to have my say when circumstances wouldn’t or shouldn’t allow a longer blog post, as well as improving the overall cadence of updates, which has suffered when I’ve been time constrained.

I actually gave Alec a call a couple of months ago and apologised in person; I wrote this blog post after being reminded by Carolyn’s comment that I had a responsibility to put things straight online too.

Thanks to Tim Caynes

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Thanks to Tim Caynes I have a brand new look and feel on the blog; thankfully this is much more minimalist and I’m hoping easier to navigate for you. …..

Setting up del.icio.us blog posting on blogs.sun.com

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Recently I have received a number of emails about del.icio.us blog posting “links for” working with blogs.sun.com (BSC) or rather not as the case may be, as they have all vented frustration about it not working (either well or at all).

Dave Johnson, the man behind Roller Weblogger itself (the platform BSC runs over), suggests alternative approaches to achieving the same result, most notably using a standalone tool described in “delicious.com Blog Posting tool“.

I was similarly frustrated having just configured the delicious blog posting tool (and getting it to work), however I have since found that the issues I faced were due to not reconfiguring my XML-RPC password after the recent upgrade to the external Identity authentication and authorisation security mechanism used to access BSC.

To get it to work again I had to reconfigure both my BSC and del.icio.us accounts.

Setting up your BSC account for del.icio.us blog posting

First off I had to go into the “Your Profile” page in my BSC account.

Then I had to configure a “Web Client API Password”, as in the screen grab below.

Setting up your del.icio.us account for del.icio.us blog posting

After reconfiguring my BSC account I had to change the user name and password combination in the del.icio.us blog posting settings page.

The user name now needs to be set-up as your email address (and not the old style BSC user name, which matched your blog ‘handle’), whilst the password needs to be configured as the same as the “Web Client API Password” above, see the following graphic for more detail.

Another item to note is that “blog_out_id” needs to be set as your BSC ‘handle’, whilst I’ve found “out_cat_id” has little effect (as the posts default to whatever “Category for posts received via clients” is set to in your BSC blog preferences).

Remember to set “Enable weblog client support?” in your BSC blog preferences to get any of this this to work in the first place.

¨C11C

Since reconfiguring the two accounts above it’s been working consistantly and I feel safe enough to blog about it as a way forward.

I originally found out about setting up del.icio.us blog posting from the blog post “Posting from del.icio.us to Roller” from Lars Trieloff’s Collaboration Weblog. This worked fine until the change to access was implemented at BSC, and would presume it’s advice still holds for the majority of cases (outside of BSC).

¨C12C ¨C13C¨C14C

Links for this article:

Integrating Disqus and Roller Weblogger on blogs.sun.com

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I’ve recently updated my site to use Disqus the blog comment hosting and conversation site.

Done this for two reasons:

  1. Firstly my usually frustration with any status quo means I want more functionality delivered yesterday, and although I’d started to have a look at the functionality I wanted and how I might add it as a Roller macro / velocity code I didn’t want to spend a huge amount of time coding it out (the functionality I specifically wanted was the separation of comments and trackbacks, as well as comment ‘threads’).
  2. Secondly to gain readership and comments from the sizeable blog comment audience that Disqus have built up (Disqus is estimated to be running on over 30,000+ servers).

I’ve already had a couple of comments from Disqus members, and I’ll have to see how it goes before I start heralding it as an unprecedented success, but I’m very pleased with the results (both aesthetic and functional).

Sadly the Disqus comment import function was initially provided for WordPress and Blogger, but apparently wasn’t fully functional; subsequently an update is due out soon that will hopefully include Roller Weblogger. See this Disqus forum entry, and it’s threads for more info: How do I import comments?

Given this was the case I wanted to make sure my blog supported my new Disqus commenting system, but would still show my old comments if there where any for an entry. Here are a few examples:

The code I developed, which has to be separated into two components (number of comments associated with a blog entry, and comment entry form and comment display), is below, but if you use or copy it please note that you need to replace the Disqus supplied JavaScript for my site with your Disqus comments hosted sites JavaScript code. ¨C18C

Combined Roller Weblogger and Disqus Number of Comments code

For comment numbers I’ve broken it down into displaying “n Comments” for Disqus on it’s own, whilst “x Comments (new, via Disqus) and y Comments (legacy, via Roller)” for comments hosted on both systems.

This replaces the code in the Roller Weblogger “_day” template which displays the number of comments per blog entry.

Don’t forget to replace occurrences of ‘eclectic’, my blog handle, with yours (just one, about the fifth line from the end).

## Number of Comments

<a href="$url.entry($entry.anchor)#disqus_thread">View Comments</a>

#set($commentCount = $entry.commentCount)
#if ($commentCount &gt; 0)
    (new, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/https://www.disqus.com/" target="_blank">Disqus</a>) and 
    #if ($commentCount == 1)
        <a href="$url.comments($entry.anchor)">$commentCount Comment</a> (old, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/https://rollerweblogger.org/" target="_blank">Roller</a>) 
    #else
        <a href="$url.comments($entry.anchor)">$commentCount Comments</a> (old, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/https://rollerweblogger.org/" target="_blank">Roller</a>) 
    #end
#end

<script type="text/javascript">
//<[CDATA[
(function() {
		var links = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
		var query = '?';
		for(var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {
			if(links[i].href.indexOf('#disqus_thread') >= 0) {
				query += 'url' + i + '=' + encodeURIComponent(links[i].href) + '&';
			}
		}
		document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/https://disqus.com/forums/eclectic/get_num_replies.js' + query + '"></' + 'script>');
	})();
//]]>
</script>

Combined Roller Weblogger and Disqus Comment entry and Comments display code

This basically displays the Disqus commenting system, along with any Disqus hosted comments, however if any ‘legacy’ Roller Weblogger hosted comments are found it displays those too.

It replaces the code in the Roller Weblogger “permalink” template which displays comments themselves (the same changes may need to be made to the “weblog” and “searchresults” templates too).

## Comments

<h2>Comments (new, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/https://www.disqus.com/" target="_blank">Disqus</a>)</h2>

<div id="disqus_thread"></div><script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824js_/https://disqus.com/forums/eclectic/embed.js"></script><noscript><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/https://eclectic.disqus.com/?url=ref">View the forum thread.</a></noscript><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/https://disqus.com/" class="dsq-brlink">blog comments powered by <span class="logo-disqus">Disqus</span></a>

##showWeblogEntryComments($model.weblogEntry)
##showWeblogEntryCommentForm($model.weblogEntry)

<br></br>

#set($commentCount = $entry.commentCount)
#if ($commentCount &gt; 0)
    <h2>Comments (old, via <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090830081824/https://rollerweblogger.org/" target="_blank">Roller</a>)</h2>
    #showWeblogEntryComments($model.weblogEntry)
    <br></br>
#end

Additional benefits that I’ve picked up by implementing Disqus include:

  • Following commentators.
  • Having my, and my sites, comments followed.
  • Being able to easily ‘reblog’ my comments and make blog entries out of them (looking forward to trying this, although I haven’t yet).

Finally here’s my Disqus profile for you to have a look at: https://www.disqus.com/people/wayne_horkan/

Links for this article:

What do Facebook, del.icio.us, and last.fm, all have in common this month?

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Yes, that’s right; they are all suffering from functionality issues due to design flaws introduced in their last look and feel upgrades.

Looks like this is the month for it, because in rapid succession we’ve seen changes at all three of these web2.0 stalwarts.

So how have these changes effected functionality, and what’s the real problem at hand ?

  1. Facebook
    If your a Facebook user then you will have noticed the option to use ‘new’ facebook, which, although keeps the quite fixed layout (and color theme), moves applications onto a seperate ‘page’ (or tab rather, although it behaves as a page).
    The major problem with this is settings between the new and old Facebook layouts don’t appear to be compatible, which points to access control being about the UI and not about the data itself.
  2. del.icio.us
    So del.icio.us have introduced a ‘richer’ look and feel, but appear to have lost some of their elegant simplicity. A shame, because for a service like del.icio.us I’d rather have function over form.
  3. last.fm
    Similar to the issue with del.icio.us, but in this case their is a huge user community hankering for backwards compatibility with the old look and feel, who want a similar ability to the recent Facebook refresh in being able to ‘swap’ between the two UI designs.
    Perhaps this isn’t such a good idea, because like the current Facebook issues, who’s to know what settings and access controls are locked into the UI and not the user data.

Along with the recent problems at Twitter around “outbound SMS messages” it’s turning out to be quite the month…

Microsoft’s very public “Blue Screen of Death” crash out at the Beijing Olympics

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First reported by RiverCoolCool on his blog: https://rivercoolcool.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!D6F05428A2B8CB48!1570.entry

Then by Gizmondo: https://gizmodo.com/5035456/blue-screen-of-death-strikes-birds-nest-during-opening-ceremonies-torch-lighting

Now it’s at the Register: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/13/olympics_blue_screen_death/

But what’s genuinely amusing about this is the comments that are coming up, they range from the obvious to the really quite odd.

There are the standard comments lambasting Microsoft, but I think these should be disregarded; basically because they are boring in the extreme and especially given how interesting some of the other comments are.

Comments at the Register can be found here: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/13/olympics_blue_screen_death/comments/

The comments seem to be breaking down into a number of camps:

  1. The “Are they genuine?” camp
    There’s the camp that are questioning if the images themselves are real, or if they’ve been “photoshop”ed.
  2. The “Is it a hooky copy of MS Windows?” camp
    Plenty of people seem to be questioning if these are valid versions of Windows. Now this is just disingenuous; by implication (and directly, sadly, such as “it is in China after all”) it is being insinuated that this is what should be expected of China. I think this is pretty base, and hope it receives the contempt it deserves.
  3. The “Is it a Hardware error?” camp
    This group state that it’s a hard ware error that no OS could have responded to. Many add that at least you get this specific H/W error message with Windows.
  4. The “Have Microsoft done this on purpose ?” camp
    Now really this is like coming home to find that the life has turned into Bizarro World. Some of these conspiracy theorists note that one of the blogs in question is “supported” by Microsoft, others suggest that it is a ploy to get people to upgrade and move from XP to Vista.

Frankly what’s so very wrong with the idea that the pictures are genuine, that it is a valid copy of Windows, that there hasn’t been a hardware error, and that, just perhaps, software goes wrong occasionally?

It just takes a little application of Ockham’s Razor to see the truth here.

Follow me on Twitter, you know you want to…

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Seeing as I’ve been blogging about Twitter and it’s new lack of support for outbound SMS for Europe, the UK and the rest of the World (well, apart from the US, Canada and India, that is)…

And seeing as it’s generated a ton of page hits…

I thought I’d take this opportunity to invite you all to follow me.

Twitterfollow Wayne on twitter

You never know I might even follow you back.

Here’s what I’ve been Twittering (or is that Twitting, lol) about.

    No outbound Twitter SMS for Europe, the UK and, frankly, most of the World

    6 Replies

    I received the following email this morning, apparently they’ll be no more outbound Twitter SMS for Europe, the UK and most of the rest of the World. The only countries to be keeping the outbound SMS service are Canada, India, and the US. Apparently it’s all down to the charges that our mobile network operators charge us for SMS delivery, which initially Twitter had been subsidising, however they can’t afford to do that any more and have begun to “rein in the cost” by disabling the service. I can’t blame them, however I think it’s a shame that they set a precedent by enabling this functionality, only to take it away.

    Oh, and good luck to them as they “negotiate with mobile operators in Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas” but I can’t see this service coming back any time soon. And I wonder how long it will be before people are trying to find a way round this decision, potentially by spoofing a US, Indian or Canadian address, given that each of the solutions they have suggested have a cost to the user (either to deliver the SMS itself or to contribute to the datalink to the WAP service).

    Changes To Twitter SMS

    Hi,

    I’m sending you this note because you registered a mobile device

    to work with Twitter over our UK number. I wanted to let you

    know that we are making some changes to the way SMS works on

    Twitter. There is some good news and some bad news.

    I’ll start with the bad news. Beginning today, Twitter is no

    longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you enjoy

    receiving updates from Twitter via +44 762 480 1423, we are

    recommending that you explore some suggested alternatives.

    Note: You will still be able to UPDATE over our UK number.

    Before I go into more detail, here’s a bit of good news: Twitter

    will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries

    throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. These new

    numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you’ve

    been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.

    Why are we making these changes?

    Mobile operators in most of the world charge users to send

    updates. When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to

    ten followers, you aren’t charged ten times–that’s because we’ve

    been footing the bill. When we launched our free SMS service to

    the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in

    popularity, so too would the price.

    Our challenge during this window of time was to establish

    relationships with mobile operators around the world such that

    our SMS services could become sustainable from a cost perspective.

    We achieved this goal in Canada, India, and the United States.

    We can provide full incoming and outgoing SMS service without

    passing along operator fees in these countries.

    We took a risk hoping to bring more nations onboard and more

    mobile operators around to our way of thinking but we’ve arrived

    at a point where the responsible thing to do is slow our costs

    and take a different approach. Since you probably don’t live in

    Canada, India, or the US, we recommend receiving your Twitter

    updates via one of the following methods.

    m.twitter.com works on browser-enabled phones

    m.slandr.net works on browser-enabled phones

    TwitterMail.com works on email-enabled phones

    Cellity [https://bit.ly/12bw4R] works on java-enabled phones

    TwitterBerry [https://bit.ly/MFAfJ] works on BlackBerry phones

    Twitterific [https://bit.ly/1WxjwQ] works on iPhones

    Twitter SMS by The Numbers

    It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid

    placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a

    limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter

    about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada,

    India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair

    billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass

    these high fees on to our users.

    Twitter will continue to negotiate with mobile operators in

    Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas to forge relationships

    that benefit all our users. Our goal is to provide full, two-way

    service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is

    sustainable from a cost perspective. Talks with mobile companies

    around the world continue. In the meantime, more local numbers

    for updating via SMS are on the way. We’ll keep you posted.

    Thank you for your attention,

    Biz Stone, Co-founder

    Twitter, Inc.

    https://twitter.com/biz