Alex Pooley's Blog

On my way home from walking Oscar I noticed a lot of cars passing full of party goers. As we look ahead to 2007 I can’t help but reflect on the year that has been 2006.

2006 was a pretty darn big year for me. Within a span of two weeks in March I left my job, married Allison, spent a week trekking around New Zealand’s south island, and then got stuck in to starting my own business. The rest of the year is in all honesty, quite a blur. Most of my time was spent scrawling notes on bits of paper, my white board, or withdrawing in to intense thinking sessions attempting to solve technical problems. I look back over the year with a sense of accomplishment and contentment.

Taking the plunge and going it alone was a decision I don’t regret. I am certainly worse off financially, but the life and business experience, and knowledge that I’ve accumulated is priceless. I have learned some critically important things so far, and that never would have happened so soon if I continued down the road I was on.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for reading my blog. I only get to see most of you as numbers in my statistic packages but I always keep in mind that each of you are individuals with families, and life experiences.

So what are my plans for 2007? Well, there has been some interest in integrating my Msgpad chat platform with other systems which I will continue to pursue. I also want to write more. I am finding writing an enjoyable and liberating experience. Specifically, I have plans for sharing the Entrepreneurial stuff I have learned in an e-book. Unlike most of those crappy business books that are just inspiration books in disguise, I hope to publish some juicy content that will no doubt save many people the pain that I’ve had to endure many times over. Lastly, I signed a partnership agreement with a company a couple of months ago that I’ve not had the time to make progress on. Hopefully early 2007 I will get something out the door with those guys, most likely directed at the Forex market and with a twist of live chat.

Thank you again for reading my blog. 2007 is looking like an exciting year and I hope to share every interesting moment, as raw as possible, right here on my blog.

This post is about the terrifying chaos occurring in Iraq right now despite Saddam’s execution, and the fantastic work of a guy called Michael Ware who is an Australian on the ground in Iraq reporting for CNN. I don’t want to turn this blog political, but I had to get this out of my system. It’s easy to forget the crap that other human beings have to go through while we cut roasted food, drink beer, and open presents.

Iraq is fighting a civil war:

Baghdad death squads:

Watered down news:

A disconnected White House:

Sites of note:

Iraq civilian deaths
Iraq coalition casualties

Ware reminds me of another Australian reporter called John Martinkus who is best known for being kidnapped by insurgents for almost a day before being set free. People like Ware and Martinkus are heroes. Unfortunately their voices, and others like them, are continuously drowned out by the sensationalized, regurgitated, and hollow press that is made to fill time slots.

The “edge” of the Internet is a vast area where most of us visit, yet it’s so sparsely populated that we rarely cross paths. If Google, eBay and other massive companies were cities, then the edge would be the thousands of surrounding Country towns. ScribbleHere is a chat system that bridges the geographical divide between the towns at the edge.

The special ingredient of ScribbleHere is the automatic pingback feature. If someone mentions a blog post to chatters, ScribbleHere will request that the blog link back to the conversation so that readers of the blog post can find other people who are also interested in the post.

Web pages mentioned often by different chat groups will bubble up to appear on the popular links section of ScribbleHere currently visible on the front page.

The edge is a rich and diverse crowd that defies categorization. It is hoped that ScribbleHere provides an organic and fertile foundation where social connections can naturally flourish across and beyond cultures, passions, and status quo.

Chat in ScribbleHere now.