Her problem is that when she’s on Twitter using Mixero, her preferred Twitter client, she keeps getting messages like “API limit exceeded 10 mins to refresh”. So she wanted to know why this was happening and how she could get around it for uninterrupted twittering.

So I had another go at explaining the concept this morning in a 140 character Q&A session, but I’d like to go into more depth here, it seems to be a common cause for confusion.

First, a little background: Twitter is a young company, only 3 years old. Although they’ve had a lot of success in a very short time, it’s founders are wary of growing too fast too soon. Evan Williams and Biz Stone have decided to hire new staff gradually to preserve the unique company culture that makes Twitter a great place to work.

This also puts limits on the number of servers and infrastructure they can manage. Twitter is listening to thousands of tweets every second, storing them in a searchable database and serving them up, hundreds at a time to avid followers all over the world. The application and database servers that handle this data all need to be installed, monitored and maintained by people. So as twitter grows slowly, so does the infrastructure (I’m over simplifying a bit here for brevity).

O'Reilly Media

But one of the cleverest things Twitter has done is give 3rd party programmers direct access to the database through a technology called API (Application Programming Interface). The twitter API makes the plethora of twitter clients and twitter utility sites possible. The downside is that as these apps and services become more popular the load on twitter’s infrastructure increases. So to prevent the servers becoming a victim of their own success an API limit was imposed.

The API limit is currently 150 calls per hour for each user or IP address, this means that if you open TweetDeck and hit refresh another 149 times in 40 mins you’ll be locked out by twitter for the remaining 20 mins until you get a fresh allotment.

In theory posting a new tweet dosen’t get charged from your limit, but most Apps like to show you the tweet you just posted. In order to be user friendly they send an API request for all new tweets in your timeline (including your own), right after your tweet has been sent, and this reduces your hourly allotment by 1 call.

If you want to reduce the number of API call you use, try changing the preferences in your client to send fewer requests, or reduce the number of search columns you use at once.

HootSuite Screenshot

You could also try switching to HootSuite (I’m a user of HootSuite) which is a web based twitter client that has been white-listed by twitter. HootSuite gets an hourly allowance of 20,000 API requests!Obviously this allowance is shared among the many users of the site.

I’ve never had a problem with API limits on HootSuite, so I assume it’s able to intelligently throttle it’s requests. If it find it’s getting close to it’s 20,000 limit, the web app just refreshes your columns a little less often or puts users to sleep a little sooner to make it’s allotment last till the top of the hour. And if it’s not, it should be!

Photography by Calvin Cropley

I can’t remember when I first learned about the danger that we are in of permanently altering the biosphere of our planet. At primary school I was taught to pick up litter and later the importance of recycling and renewable energy sources. Even now, when I watch films like Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” and read articles like this one from National Geographic, I’m shocked by how our actions are changing our world.

It’s depressing sometimes, to contemplate the magnitude of the problem, but you have to remember that it was only small actions that caused it, and it will be the small actions we take every day that solve it.

Things like buying a cheap plastic toy or watering a field seem like harmless every-day activities until we become aware of their environmental cost. When we start to ask, how was it made, where did it come from. It’s through this awareness that we discover the hidden truth behind the calming super-market musak.

Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t hate super-markets. I don’t even begrudge the consumer economy that supports them, hell I’m a part of that economy! That’s where my dilemma begins, I accept that this rat-race is a necessary stage in our evolution, but I’m eager to move on to a greener, more sustainable future.

So I take small, thoughtful actions. I continue to pick up litter, recycle my paper, plastic and glass. I use some hyper-miling techniques to reduce my fuel consumption and monitor the results with a great little iPhone app called AccuFuel. And I dream of the day I’ll be able to take big actions, like buying a hybrid car, putting up solar panels on my roof, travelling to my holiday by sailing yacht or building a wireless Internet infrastructure in Africa and Asia to promote a knowledge economy.

This post is in honour of Blog Action Day 2009 and this years topic: Climate Change.

My expectations were exceeded by far, we were given a rich insight into the growth of high-tech start-up companies. Through case studies of real companies they’ve helped to build, and actual sales forecasts, Bill and
Ken enthralled us with stories from the front-line of entrepreneurship and they lessons they have learned in the process.

Enlightened Europe

On the first day of the two day seminar, between lectures, we were given the chance to practice our “elevator pitches” a 55 second introduction to our prospective client with the objective of getting a follow up meeting. The exercise was in the format of a competition were a group of Seville’s business leaders was invited to play the role of our “dream customers” and judge our performance.

My “dream client” was Amancio Ortega the reclusive owner of the Zara clothing chain. I didn’t win any awards but it was an enlightening exercise for me.

On the second day after a shorter round of fascinating lectures, each attendee gave a 5 minute presentation that they had prepared beforehand, to the critique of his/her peers. The firms represented were 35 of the regions most innovative companies, in sectors from biotech to manufacturing. It was hugely exciting for me, a solo-preneur, to listen and take part in the discussion over coffee and lunch each day.

After giving my presentation (which  was easily the worst) Bill Aulet was kind enough to call me a geek! “Don’t be offended” he said “that’s the highest form of life at MIT”. I came away with confirmation of what I suspected to be true before the event; that for my venture to be truly successful I’m going to need a business partner  who can complement my skill set and fill the role of super-sales-person.

In the short term, the most valuable asset we took away from the seminar (apart from focusing on a vertical market) was the “Facebook” of all the other attendees’ application forms and contact details. In the days following the event I contacted María Goretti of ioFusiontv to help me set up a mailing list of all the attendees. This discussion list (where each member can send an e-mail to everyone on the list) has enjoyed a slew of enthusiastic messages as people expressed their appreciation for the the event, commitment to attend the follow up in October and a desire to keep in touch.

The venue for the event, the Sala Leonardo Da Vinci in Pabellon de Italia (Isla de la Cartuja), was comfortable and very well equipped for vision and sound. What was lacking in the standard of service initially was quickly corrected by the enthusiastic staff.

If you’re a CEO or manager of a business in Andalucia, or just starting a new technology venture, and would like to attend the next seminar to be held (October 14-15) in Málaga, then send me an e-mail or ask about it at your local CADE office.

The whole ethos of Web 2.0; inclusion, peer-to-peer, user generated content, open disscussion, the “Long Tail” were all highlighted and applauded by the speakers but oddly ignored in the structure of the event.

I had been hoping for an un-conference type feel where the audience is included in an open discussion, many minds contributing and learning together. What I got was the standard format, one-to-many, presentation of information with a few audience questions at the end. And to my further disappointment most of the questions asked seemed to revolve around project funding and how to find it.

It seems there is excitement around launching new ideas onto the web but the motivation is more about ‘how can I make money?’ than ‘how can I serve users?’. It’s like the old Cluetrain saying: “If you need to ask ‘How can I make money by bloging?’ then you’ll never understand”.

In spite of all this there was good content in the talks;

The organiser Óscar Fernández, director of CADE Marbella (where I have my office) was eloquent and knowledgeable in his introduction. He seems to have grasped the importance of these concepts in a way that few in public administration have demonstrated.

Miguel Ángel Expósito, director of Campus Party España gave an interesting overview of the early days and the evolution of  his organisation. Although some in the audience were left in doubt as to what exactly Campus Party is.

Icaro Moyano communications director at Tuenti used slides from various Google statistical tools to illustrate the growing relevance of his social network and some amazing insight into the impact of Tuenti in the lives of it’s users.

For me the best presentation was saved for last: Richard Hebert, director of CP Labs (the R&D branch of Campus Party) delivered an inspiring talk hi-lighting some of the Web 2.0 successes from outside Silicone Valley. For example Panoramio, a website that I’ve been a user of for some time without ever realising that it originated here in Spain!

In the end I was more than a little inspired to follow through on a couple of my own Internet ideas, unfortunately I wasn’t able to chat with the speakers again over the nibbles and drinks afterwards. However, in this connected new world I’m sure our avatars will bump into one another in the cloud.

The event was titled, rather verbosely: “I Encuentro Empresarial en Andalucia en clave 2.0″. And was set in the excellent conference facilities of the Hotel Fuerte Miramar Spa, Plaza José Luque Manzano s/n, Marbella. Would have been nice to have free WiFi though.

Land Rover UK are bundling a Customer CO2 Offset into the on-the-road price of all year 2007 models. This means that anyone in the UK who buys a new Land Rover in 2008, will also be paying towards environmental projects (through Climate Care) that reduce CO2 emissions globaly by roughly the same amount that manufacturing and driving the 4×4, for the first 45,000 miles (72,400 Km), will produce.

I think this is a great initiative and hope that Ford expands the program to all their cars globally as soon as possible. I’d also like to see top up credits available for owners after the car clocks over the 72,400 Km cut-off.

I’ve just joined kiva and contributed $25 towards a $750 loan for Tsèvi Bedzra a 29 year old barber in Togo in Africa. He’s applied for the loan to buy electric clippers and other equipment for his barber shop, he feels this will enable him to be more profitable and better support his son.

All of the entrepreneurs on KIVA are vetted and approved by loan officers from micro-finance organisations on the ground. When Tzevi’s load application was approved his picture was taken and posted to the site with his details, where I found him.

You can go to Kiva’s website and lend to someone in the developing world who needs a loan for their business – like raising goats, selling vegetables at market or making bricks. Each loan has a picture of the entrepreneur, a description of their business and how they plan to use the loan so you know exactly how your money is being spent – and you get updates letting you know how the business is going. The best part is, when the entrepreneur pays back their loan you get your money back – and Kiva’s loans are managed by microfinance institutions on the ground who have a lot of experience doing this, so you can trust that your money is being handled responsibly.

Our business aims to bring the same winning formula to Spain, we already have several tournament nights running in local bars from Duquesa to Marbella and we plan to expand as far as La Linea and Fuengirola before the first regional finals event.

Basically pub goers turn up on a tournament night, register with the tournament director or on-line to become a league member (for free currently) and play Texas Hold’em at purpose built poker tables with casino grade cards and chips. At the end of the night, the player with all the chips earns 1,000 point in the league (the player who came second – 750, etc.). If you’ve not player tournament poker before, there will be instruction before the games start.

My role is to develop the website. When it’s complete you’ll be able to view the Overall, Regional and Venue based league tables as well as quickly look up your own, or another players ranking. We’re also including a poker store for members to purchase the same equipment used in tournament nights, for their own home games.

I’m under a little pressure at the moment to get some of this functionality working as tournaments are already being held and score sheets and membership applications are piling up. At the same time it’s a balancing act between getting the functions to work smoothly and the site to look good, but I feel with some time and patience it’ll get there.

Now, here we are about 5Km from the coast and all we can get is a 56Kb/s modem connection. This means the phone line is constantly engaged during the day and all my Internet activity is reduced to a snails pace. You can forget about downloading Podcasts in iTunes or Internet video on Democracy Viewer.

We’ve tried petitioning our incumbent telco ‘Telefonica’ to install a DSLAM, along with around 40 other residents. We’ve also tried signing up to a new WiMax based Wireless ISP Avired but our terrain puts us out of their signal footprint.

As a last resort we’ve signed up to skyDSL, a satellite broadband service based in Germany. The system cuts cost by only downloading information through a normal digital satellite TV dish connected to a DBV receiver in your PC. All your uploads are sent through your modem line. So we now get 16Mb/s downstream and 56Kb/s upstream.

Sounds good doesn’t it? Twice the speed of the fastest available ADSL. Fixed monthly fees for unlimited traffic: 45€ for the skyDSL and 20€ for unlimited dial-up, works out expensive but when your business in web development, broadband is indispensable. We can now download large Podcast files at break neck speed. A 100MB file will come down the pipe in under a minute (depending on the web server).

The downside is the upstream bandwidth. When surfing the web you first have to request the page you want for example: www.apple.com, that request is sent up to the net via a proxy server on your PC which redirects it to a skyDSL server in Germany. skyDSL then resolve the DNS name into a web server address and download the actual page (or find it through their own proxy server). The data containing the Apple home page is tagged with my skyDSL subscriber number and waits for an uplink slot to be transmitted to a satellite (Eurobird 3), that bounces the data back down to the whole of south western Europe. My dish channels the signal into my PC, which recognises the tag and text an images begin appearing on my screen. If that sounds complicated, it’s because it is! Check out this visual.

The latency introduced by all this bouncing around and waiting for satellite time, means there’s a delay of up to 5 seconds between my requesting a page and the page actually beginning to download. This delay makes it impossible for us to use any Internet application that requires low latency (like Skype for making VoIP calls).

Another complication: I use a Mac, the skyDSL service is set up on a PC server connected to my LAN. I’m not sure if it’s just me but there doesn’t seem to be any way to tell MacOSX to use a proxy server for e-mail. That means all my e-mailing has to be done through web-mail services. The same with FTP. I have to disconnect the skyDSL and connect my Mac via the built-in modem to upload any changes to a website.

The upside to all this is that I’m seriously thinking about becoming a Wireless ISP for my area. I’ll let you know how that goes when it happens.

I have now moved the router to my ‘in-laws, who have a standard, always on ADSL connection which is much better suited to a Fon hotspot. Of course I entered the new location details into my account in the Fon database. Unfortunately the location appears at maps.fon.com in the middle of the countryside about 5Km from my parents-in-laws house! It seems to be sitting right on top of another Fon hotspot which, according to it’s address is supposed to be situated about 4Km south in a nearby town. I can only assume that Fon’s systems are having a little trouble resolving our addresses and resorting to placing markers in the middle of the postcode area.

To help Foneros out with finding hotspots I’ve started a Frappr map where we can position our markers more precisely. It’s also become popular with Foneros outside Spain and the US who are not yet catered for on maps.fon.com. So far we number 99 members