The Blog




The site maintenance over the last weekend went smoothly and I hope you're enjoying the much increased speed of the Ecademy website. We have two problems as a result.

Some people have been receiving email from the site that is dated December 2007. It seems we had a large queue of email that had been held. When that was copied across, the new email server finally delivered it. If you receive email notifications, particularly about subscription problems, that you weren't expecting then check the date. If the Sent date is very old, then simply discard it.

The main Contacts Search seems to have got out of step and some searches are not returning the data they should. This is currently being dealt with and should improve over the next day or so.

Julian Bond
CTO Ecademy [from: JB Ecademy]




We've now got Yahoo OpenID fully working to log into Ecademy.

1. Go to My Settings, Manage OpenIDs

2. Type in "yahoo.com" into the "Add a new OpenID" field and hit "Sign In"

3. After a moment and perhaps an intermediate screen, you'll be presented with a Yahoo screen asking if you want to log in to Ecademy.com. Click on the "Let Me In" button.

4. You're returned to Ecademy and your Yahoo OpenID is associated with your Ecademy account.

Now when you need to log in to Ecademy, the process is very similar.

1. Go to the login screen at Ecademy. Scroll down to the "Login with OpenID"

2. Type in Yahoo.com and click Sign in.

3. You're redirected to Yahoo asking if it's ok. Click "Let Me In"

4. You're back on the Ecademy home page and logged in. [from: JB Ecademy]

Over the last couple of days and again this evening we've had some problems with our database server.

It looks as though a request for an RSS feed was being made very frequently and this particular request was launching a database query that was inefficient and slow. The combination was overloading the database and leading to the site being extremely slow or unavailable.

This particular problem has now been dealt with and should not arise again.

Please accept our apologies for the outage.

Julian Bond
Chief Technology Officer
Ecademy [from: JB Ecademy]

A second virus email has appeared with text about Ecademy, Subject: "ECADEMY will close work in April 2008". It appears to be from info@ecademy.com . Again it has a Yahoo Message-ID although it hasn't been anywhere near Yahoo's servers. The email has an attachment Ecademy_Instructions5164.zip which contains document.exe which may be a Trojan or Virus.

One copy we've seen was sent from a Korean home broadband PC using Outlook Express. This makes it look as though it's being sent by a botnet of infected PCs round the world.

Needless to say this is not from Ecademy, and is in no way connected with Ecademy servers, systems or people.

Ecademy never sends emails with attachments.


Ignore it. Don't open it. Delete it.

Julian Bond
Chief Technology Officer
Ecademy



ps. Here's the text of the email

Hello!
Dear postmaster@ecademy.com members, clients and guests of our portal,
Over the last few years our portal has helped you to organize your business, find new partners and increase sales.
However, all good things end. Many of you know that we have experienced legal problems over the last year. Our competitors from other social
networks are trying to take over our client base.
Our website has been hacked and our database was stolen. After that we were taken to court because of identity theft.
Unfortunately, legal expenses and unfavorable court verdict with following closure of our bank accounts will lead to closure of our website. All
paying members will receive refund starting from March 14th.
Please check attached file for legal information in regards to your account.

Best regards,
The Ecademy Team

Ecademy - The Social Network for Business People

Company Registration:7382702 VAT:718 0377 36
[from: JB Ecademy]

We will again be SkypeCasting the Ecademy Event tonight at 7:30. Details here.

To listen to the Skypecast, go to the page for this skypecast at 7:30pm UK time and follow the instructions. If you can't connect, try calling +99001110006940486

Skype Beta 2.6 has a Skypecasting directory built into the client. Recommended. [from: JB Ecademy]

We will be doing some engineering work this evening (Friday 22nd September) and expect some downtime. We plan this to start at about 6:30pm UK Time and last for about half an hour.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused. [from: JB Ecademy]

We're going to be running the Skypecast of the Ecademy event again tonight.

Details here. Starting at 7:30pm UK time.

Go to that page after 7:30 and follow the instructions to listen in. You'll need your Skype password to join.
[from: JB Ecademy]

Apologies to those of you who have received large numbers of emails from Ecademy containing an "EAP Report".

This report went live at the weekend and should have sent one report each week. A glitch in the code meant that the servers resent a copy every half hour or so. This has now been stopped.

Unfortunately this coincided with a problem with the mail server which meant there was a large backlog of email waiting to go out which included these multiple copies. Consequently we didn't catch the problem quickly enough. Sorting out the mail server and clearing the backlog then released the waiting copies.

The mail server is now delivering mail correctly. There may still be some mail from the backlog going out where remote mail servers were temporarily unavailable.

We're working on finding out why multiple copies of the report were sent to avoid this happening again in the future.

Apologies again for the inconvenience. [from: JB Ecademy]

We had an outage on Friday evening. This was caused by a loss of power to the database server. It took some time to bring the server back up and it's clock was then set back to 2002. All of that has now been sorted. No data has been lost but there may be some records with invalid timestamps which we will attempt to rectify.

While the clock was out a number of background tasks will have sent out emails incorrectly.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused. [from: JB Ecademy]

We had a hardware problem early this morning and again this afternoon around 4 to 5pm that meant that the Ecademy site was running very slowly. We're temporarily sorted this out and are currently investigating the cause to prevent it happening again.

Although this coincided with the new functions and changes going live, it was not actually related.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused. [from: JB Ecademy]

Key websites
- Twitterfeed Entries in an RSS feed copied to a Twitter account
- Twitter4Skype Twitter account updates copied to a Skype chat
- OpenID This page has a list of OpenID providers where you can get an OpenID
- RSS for your Ecademy status http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=status&op=feed&uid=YourEcademyIDNumber
- RSS for your Ecademy contact's status http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=status&op=feed&all=1&uid=YourEcademyIDNumber

Preparation. Get yourself an OpenID.

1. Copy your Ecademy status updates to your Twitter account
- Go to Twitterfeed.
- Log in with an OpenID
- Create a feed entry using your Ecademy status RSS
- Send it to your main Twitter account.
Every update on Ecademy also updates your Twitter

2. Copy your Ecademy Contact's status to a Twitter friend
- Create a dummy Twitter account (eg JBFeeds)
- Add this dummy account as a friend on your main Twitter account
- Go to Twitterfeed.
- Log in with an OpenID
- Create a feed entry using your Ecademy Contact's status RSS
- Send it to your dummy Twitter account. Prefix each tweet with: EC

Now you can see all your Twitter and Ecademy Friend's updates in one place.

3. Display your Ecademy Status on your Facebook profile
- Go to your Facebook profile.
- Add the Facebook Feeds RSS application http://apps.facebook.com/rssbook/
- Add the RSS for your Ecademy status as a feed

Your Ecademy status is now on your Facebook profile.

4. Add feeds from Facebook, Jaiku, Plazes, Ecademy to a Twitter Friend
- Follow on from 2. Seek out the RSS for all the other Status feeds for other services like Facebook, Jaiku, Plazes and add entries in Twitterfeed for them routed to your dummy Twitter user created in 2.
- Add a two letter prefix for each one like FB, EC, JK, PL

Now all your friend's on all your services can update their status and you'll see them all in one place.

5. Route all your Twitter updates to a Skype chat.
- Go here for a tutorial about Twitter to Skype.
1. Add twitter4skype as a contact.
2. Type the following as a single chat message to twitter4skype:

/account (alt+return)
yourtwitteraccountname (alt+return)
yourtwitteraccountpassword (alt+return)
3. The system should return: twitter4skype Registration complete!

All the status updates you've gathered together in 4. appear in this Skype chat. Set Notifications to off for this chat so it doesn't popup every 5 minutes. [from: JB Ecademy]

Here's a challenge.

You're in Thailand.

You have your UK passport.

You have a UK bank account with internet banking and money in the account . You don't have your cheque book with you.

You can get to an Internet cafe.

The ATM has just swallowed your Bank card.

How do you get cash in your hand? [from: JB Ecademy]

I'm going to try to Skypecast the London Event tonight with Don Tapscott for people who cannot attend.

At around 7:30pm (UK time), go to this web address and follow the instructions. You will need your Skype ID and Password. [from: JB Ecademy]

This is a little tricky so pay attention!

Go and get yourself the following:-
- A Twitter Account
- A Facebook account
- An OpenID
- The URL for the RSS from your Ecademy status. This will be something like
http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=status&op=feed&uid=9999
Where 9999 is your Ecademy #ID number.

1) Sign in to Twitterfeed with your OpenID.

2) Create an entry in Twitterfeed for your Ecademy Status RSS. Route it to your Twitter account.

3) Add the Twitter application to your Facebook profile.

4) Click on the button at the top of the Twitter application setup where it says "Want Twitter to update your Facebook status? Click here!"

Now when you update your Ecademy status, it will flow though to Twitter and then on to Facebook automatically. [from: JB Ecademy]

Some of you may have noticed that the Skype icons on Ecademy have changed and a lot of them now show a gray question mark. We made a change to the way Skype presence was displayed and these icons are now served direct by Skype's servers. This means that display of whether you're online should be more or less instant rather than delayed by an hour or not at all.

If you want your presence and status to be displayed, then you need to enable it in Skype. Within the Skype program the switch can be found in Tools, Options, Privacy, Privacy settings, and then check the box "Allow my status to be shown on the web". If you can't see the checkbox, click on "Advanced". The default is off, so if your Skype icon shows the gray question mark. you need to change it. [from: JB Ecademy]

There's a virus email doing the rounds that appears to be a message from Ecademy support. It's a Virus or Trojan. At least one copy that we've seen appears to have come from an ADSL broadband line in Chile. The headers are forged and made to look as though it's from a fake Yahoo email address with a fake Yahoo message ID.

Needless to say this is not from Ecademy, and is in no way connected with Ecademy servers, systems or people.

At first glance the message could be taken to be designed to be a malicious attack on Ecademy but I'm inclined to think that it's actually just an example of clever social engineering. It wouldn't surprise me if there are or will be very similar emails apparently about other social networks just as there are already about all the banks.

Ignore it. Don't open it. Delete it.

Julian Bond
Chief Technology Officer
Ecademy [from: JB Ecademy]

Skype 3 Public chats ...
Skype 3 Public chats [from: del.icio.us]

Another cool music mapping tool ...
Another cool music mapping tool [from: del.icio.us]

semantic mashups ...
semantic mashups [from: del.icio.us]

makes it easy to post your location to Twitter ...
makes it easy to post your location to Twitter [from: del.icio.us]

1 to 20 of 3860