Last Sunday I was heading out to a party when I overheard the conversation of "You shouldn't buy an iPod, they have a horrible interface". Now this always holds my interest since I do believe that the interface to my iPod could be a lot better. I stepped into the conversation and heard similar complaints as mine as to why the iPod was the wrong interface, and I also got an earfull on the "Geek Interface".

What is the "Geek Interface"? It is the interface that all geeks want.

It has a thousand buttons.
It will fetch RSS for you.
It reads your email.
It will control your remote vacuum cleaner/indestructible fighting robot.
It probably has an interface to a database (or this could be just because I work for MySQL).

Every geek wants one of these. They want it to be wearable, they want it to look cool.

The "geek …

So here are a few photos from me that I've taken at the Conference and around. So let's start with my hotel.

      

It was quite a cheap hotel and to be honest - not the very cleanest one. But I didn't spend much time there anyway, so why bother. But what's that against the litter that I could find on the streets and sidewalks (to not be misunderstood I'd like to add that none of the litter is from me ;-)).

       …

I often wonder if commercial open source applications, things like MySQL, EnterpriseDB, SugarCRM are underpriced. Open source companies tend to start out as low-cost then as they mature that low-cost remains while the features and quality grow which then (in theory) moves to a differentiation strategy.

But would the market bear a higher price? It seems like the answer is starting to be yes...but how much higher still remains to be seen.

HBS suggests low prices aren't always the best strategy in this article Low Prices = More Customers? Not Always

You should not overindulge your customer. Instead, make sure that you extract fair value for what you deliver. Aggressive and acquiescent actions hinder your own efforts to pursue higher profits. [C]ustomer giveaways, value attacks, and aggressive price cuts represent a huge …

After looking through my raw files, the audio for the Database Normalization session at the MySQL UC2006 was missing. In addition I never managed a recording of the Sakila session due to the laptop crash.

All is not lost, interested viewers can see the Normalization session from PHP Quebec 2005 and my Rough Version of the Sakila session as subsitiutes.

I have finished the rendering on the Managing Hierarchical Data With MySQL session:

http://www.openwin.org/mike/video/hierarchy2006/

Requires Flash

Pardon the pun. This is not about how to install MySQL for an open source ERP application. If that's what you're looking for, please read our Using opentaps ERP + CRM with MySQL installation guide instead.

This is about some further thoughts on the future of open source ERP and CRM applications. We were at MySQL Users' Conference last week in Santa Clara, CA and had the opportunity to speak with many different people about our open source ERP and CRM project. During those conversations and during my presentation about open source ERP, I had talked about the open source ERP proposition being the following:

1. Lower cost - commercial ERP software is …

There's an interesting discussion going on over at DBAZine and SSWUG.org about building a code of ethics for DBAs. Of course they are looking for folks to participate in the formation of such a document. If you haven't been over to either of those places they tend to focus on Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2 but are expanding to include open source databases. The SSWUG about page even mentions MySQL.

I first caught sight of this movement in a post by Craig Mullins a few months back. Just last week Craig posted an update on the happenings with a call to get involved. …

At the MySQL Users Conference, I mentioned that I had a stored function for computing distance in miles/kilometers/etc. from latitude and longitude. Some people have asked me for it, so here you go.

First, a general function for computing great circle distance from the radius of the great circle, and latitude/longitude for each point:

DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS gc_dist;
CREATE FUNCTION gc_dist (
  radius DOUBLE,
  A_lat DOUBLE,
  A_lon DOUBLE,
  B_lat DOUBLE,
  B_lon DOUBLE
) RETURNS DOUBLE
RETURN (2 * radius * ATAN2(SQRT(@x := (POW(SIN((RADIANS(A_lat)-RADIANS(B_lat)) /
 2), 2) + COS(RADIANS(B_lat)) * COS(RADIANS(A_lat)) * POW(SIN((RADIANS(A_lon) -
RADIANS(B_lon)) / 2), 2))), SQRT(1 - @x)));

Next, we can use gc_dist() to compute the distance in miles—on Earth—by passing in the radius of …

On top of everything else I saw at the MySQL UC, I saw enough snazzy digital SLRs to make me green with envy (curse you Stewart, Mike, George, Colin, Jeremy and Julian!)

So, I decided to whip up a way out-there camera wishlist to rule them all! I may not actually have any of this, but when some generous millionaire buys it all for me I shall have the mightiest setup of all at the next uc!

Ok so it is just an excuse to play with the wishlist plugin for wordpress.