A new social network startup has been getting a lot of attention. It is called Path – the Personal Network. Hmm, personal? Does this not translate to anti-social?

Path is a San Francisco-based startup with some high profile employees from the tech industry. Dave Morin, who helped build Facebook Connect and the Facebook Platform, left the company this year to start his own venture and be the company’s CEO. Shawn Fanning, the co-founder of Napster, is also heavily involved in the project. Kevin Rose, of Digg fame, is an investor.

The Path Blog issued a statement conceptualising their network,

“Path is the personal network.  A place to be yourself and share life with close friends and family. The personal network doesn’t replace your existing social networks – it augments them.

Path allows you to capture your life’s most personal moments and share them with the 50 closest friends and family in your life who matter most.

Because your personal network is limited to your 50 closest friends and family, you can always trust that you can post any moment, no matter how personal. Path is a place where you can be yourself.”

A concept that makes it unique: You're limited to 50 friends.  Yes, 50 (and no more than 50) of your closest friends.

This magical number of 50 was based on the research of Robin Dunbar, an Oxford professor of evolutionary psychology, claims that the average human can only maintain about 150 stable relationships. For some reason, Dave Morin decided we can have no more than 50.

Apparently, there is such a thing as having too many friends and I think this is the problem Path team is trying to solve. When you follow hundreds and hundreds of people on Twitter, or have more “friends” on Facebook than you could actually know, you lose the closeness that those networks intend you to have with the people that you care about.

And what else is new on path: Path lets you know who's seen your photos. That's not possible with Facebook, but another social media service, LinkedIn, lets you know who's seen your profile, so it's not entirely new.

And now I’m wondering if Path will catch on. Aren’t there too many social networks already? Isn't any newcomer going to have trouble competing against that 500-million-user Facebook? And Path's 50-friend limit... It is their differetiator, but is it their advantage? Time will tell.

Is the Google and Facebook war heating up?

A new addition has been made to the Terms of Service for the Google Contacts API:

5.8. Google supports data portability. By accessing Content through the Contacts Data API or Portable Contacts API for use in your service or application, you are agreeing to enable your users to export their contacts data to other services or applications of their choice in a way that’s substantially as fast and easy as exporting such data from Google Contacts, subject to applicable laws.

What does this mean?

The change means that users will no longer be able to import Gmail contacts directly to sites like Facebook until they let their users export their contacts.

Consider these points:

1.    At the start of your sign up onto Facebook, you’re run through a series of prompts asking you to enter your Google account information so that Facebook can import the email addresses of your contacts. This is a very powerful feature because it helps new users instantly connect with dozens of their friends. And Google is turning it off.

“We hope that reciprocity will be an important step towards creating a world of true data liberation  - and that this move will encourage other websites to allow users to automate the export of their contacts, as well,” said the Google spokesperson.

2.    Facebook has claimed in the past that there are sensitive issues around exporting contact information. Facebook has never allowed users to export the contact information of their friends. Yes, you can get the list of their names but not their contact details such as emails or phone numbers.

Google made one small change to its Terms of Service that will have a big impact on the world’s biggest social network.

And despite a change to the company’s Contacts API terms of use, Facebook is continuing to allow users to import their Google Contacts.

Do we sense a war heating up between Facebook and Google, who are big competitors in the online arena?

Let us all wait and see how the social networking giant Facebook responds to this search giant Google’s move.

An AIM user can now access his/her Facebook updates using AIM without opening a web browser.

You can see online friends, friends profile updates, user notifications regarding his/her account in Facebook and chat with them in AIM whether they are AIM users or not by signing your Facebook account into AIM.



AIM is compatible with Mac, iPhone, Android, iPad, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Windows.

It is always nice to relax for a while and not think of codes and logic.

Sometimes even the most efficient machine needs to rest. One good work ethic is to spend one day a week to relax and do things that is directly opposite to what your work is. (e.g. if you're always in the office, get out and move a lot, doing something like play soccer).

Again, the trick here is balance. As for us here at KAYWEB Manila, we like the outdoors so the carnival atmosphere of the theme park was much appreciated.


The theme park we went to was Enchanted Kingdom. Situated outside Manila, getting to the location involves an hour drive from the office.


We had an awesome time and took our families along. Definitely enough play to ease even the most overworked mind.

I’ll be jumping on a Qantas jet (hopefully not an Airbus!) bound for New York City on Sunday 7 November, to represent the KAYWEB family at New York Entrepreneur Week and surrounding events.

I have had the pleasure of holidaying in New York on three occasions with my lovely wife – first as a university couple in 2004, then to propose to her on New Year’s Eve 2006/07, and finally as husband and wife on our first wedding anniversary early 2010.



On each occasion, we have found the city intoxicating.

Intoxicating in its culture and architecture. Intoxicating in its history and people. And intoxicating in its unique ability to bring together so many people with grand plans to simply “achieve”. People with an intoxicating sense of ambition.

On our visits, I have often turned to my wife and said (like Frank Sinatra with a significantly inferior voice and hardly any swing): “I want to be a part of it.”

Over the last six years, KAYWEB has built a solid reputation as a full service web and mobile solutions company in Australia, with our offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Manila servicing clients in all Australian states and a scattering overseas.

This visit is as much about New York Entrepreneur Week as about investigating business expansion opportunities for KAYWEB in the United States, as well as opportunities in the United States for our over-100 clients; many of whom are entrepreneurs.

At New York Entrepreneur Week, I will very personally share an audience with web entrepreneurs who have built multi-billion dollar empires. I have personal meetings with some, will be sharing a stage with others, and dinner and drinks with many more.

In my marathon 17 meetings in 7 days, I will discuss with “been there, done that” experts the projects past and present within the KAYWEB family. I will invite them to provide their input, so I can share with the concerned parties. I will invite them to be part of some very exciting current projects we are building for our entrepreneur clients in Australia.

Australia is a wonderful country of businesses and businesspeople. But the restrictions placed on our entrepreneurs by our relatively small population means representation of some grand ideas on a global scale – especially in the United States – will add several zeroes to their bank balance when all is said and done.

This visit is to complete my vision for KAYWEB; to turn the business that started in my parents’ Belrose (NSW Australia) living room into a full service web and mobile solutions provider, which has a presence in not only Australia (Sydney and Melbourne) and Asia (Manila), but also in the United States through an ever-burgeoning network.

This will ensure KAYWEB is the number one choice for Australian web entrepreneurs wanting to make it big on a global scale. This will ensure KAYWEB can foster the growth of the next Australian-inspired Google; the next Australian-inspired Facebook; the next Australian-inspired Amazon.

Stay tuned for some major announcements upon my return mid-November.

Google has created another way your web surfers can find your business, and it requires a few worthwhile minutes from you.

Google Places is another way interested individuals can pull up all important information about your business; including address, website, services provided, coupons, etc.

All you need to do is click here and enter your business data to get started.

Watch the video below to see the full potential.

The Facebook News Feed option will display a list of activity nearly identical to what you would see if you were on Facebook, except below each status update there are two noticeable Skype buttons: SMS or Call.

The Skype 5.0 release also includes improved 10-way group video calling, much more enhanced contact lists, more emphasis on profiles, and a completely enhanced user experience.

With these changes, I am certain a lot more people would be excited to try Skype.

And this paves the way for Skype to become the primary connector between friends, family and social contacts.

Download Skype 5.0 by clicking here.

But all is not lost. There is a work around to handle that problem and that is to use $argc and $argv variables.

$argc is the number of parameters passed in the command line while $argv holds the actual parameters stored in a zero based index array.

Example:
[ian@mycomputer]$ /usr/bin/php myscript.php hello world

$argc value will be 3. $argv will be an array of 3 strings containing "myscript.php", "hello" and "world."

Now back to our problem. To solve it, we will be using $argc and $argv to fill up the $_GET or $_POST variable. How?

Using a browser, to fill up the $_GET variable, you add the data by appending text to the URL.

Example:
http://test.com/myscript.php?name=ian&age=16

$_GET variable will contain the index 'name' with value 'ian' and index 'age' with value '16'.

To get the same thing using CLI, we use the following code:

function ArgsToGet($argv)
{
$gets = explode('&', $argv[1]);
foreach($gets as $g)
{
$g = explode('=', $g);
$_GET[$g[0]] = $g[1];
}
}

var_dump($argv);
ArgsToGet($argv);
var_dump($_GET);

?>

Example:
[ian@mycomputer]$ /usr/bin/php myscript.php 'name=ian&age=16'

Using the code above, the command will output will be
array(2) {
[0]=>
string(8) "test.php"
[1]=>
string(15) "name=ian&age=16"
}
array(2) {
["name"]=>
string(3) "ian"
["age"]=>
string(2) "16"
}

The variable $_GET will have the values same as it was when using a browser.

My colleague Narek Karapetyan blogged recently about Google's Android mobile operating system, suggesting the business model and development platform was more inviting to developers wanting to build mobile applications.

I remember reading it thinking "anything with such widespread developer, or geek, following, is bound to succeed in our industry".

This week, Nielsen has released data revealing that Google Android-powered mobile phones have outsold iPhones and Blackberrys in the United States of America over the last 6 months.

Importantly, the period in which this data was collected included a full month of Apple's release of its latest iPhone offering - iPhone 4.

The Nielsen report says:

Among all smartphone owners, Blackberry still holds the dominant share with 31 percent of the market, though its lead over Apple is declining. Twenty-eight percent of smartphone owners have Apple iPhones, compared to 19 percent who have Android devices.

I would like to come back to my point earlier and tie it in to Google's business model with the Android operating system.

If you win over the developer, or geek, community with your tech product, you are onto a winner.

Google made Android open to developers to build apps and easily make them available to potential or paying users. Critically, this came at a time when iPhone was taking record periods to approve iPhone applications as developers hung around for their good work to go live.

Blackberry owner RIM (Research In Motion) has even further restrictions on developers, and as a result, its app collection is the smallest of the Smartphone operating system giants.

Other than pleasing the geeks, Android does have other commercial benefits that iPhone and Blackberry do not.

Its 'open' policy extends to phone manufacturers to make phones with its intelligent operating system, with more apps than these hardware companies would ever imagine offering their consumers with their minimalist operating systems.

Motorola, HTC and Samsung are among the major phone manufacturers to adopt Android and as a result.

This 'open' model has Google on an upward trend with Android. It knows it is on a winner.

After a several years of Apple's iPhone apps domination, Google with Android is now establishing itself in the market with better offerings and freedom of usage.

The advantages of Google Android apps over iPhone apps are quite apparent as the app writer and the end user are not bound to technical or software limitations, as Apple did when it bound its hardware with iTunes.

Android is a Java-enabled platform which basically means it ensures easy access to phone features using fairly simpler coding and procedures.

XML- and Java-based coding processes allow for the creation and deployment of mobile apps into supported handheld platforms easier for humble starters.

With its more recent entrance, Android is already making dramatic changes and moves up the mobile market ladder, and the number of apps is growing fast as a result.

Keeping with this trend, I assume Android will eventually become a standard platform of choice for those serious about taking their businesses mobile.