Or do you have any recommendations for alternatives to Dreamhost? My specifications are as follows (in case you need a little more info):

• They don’t have to have the one-click installs; I’m just about capable of handling WordPress, MySQL, and even Rails deployments now.
• They don’t need to be UK-based (most UK outfits seem to be pretty sub-par; I had quite a bad experience with Fashosts/UK Reg, and that was without even having a live site running on their servers!).
• A good customer service track record, and compatibility with the latest versions of PHP, MySQL, Django, Rails etc (I appreciate Rails can be tricky with shared hosts). I think these two go hand-in-hand; your ability to launch a site on a new web development framework can seriously suffer through less-than-optimal customer service!
• Decent scalability through their pricing structure, i.e. their cheaper services are as good as their high-bandwidth services.

Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

There’s one question that’s really been at the forefront of my mind ever since Facebook joined the Data Portability group; where will customers go if their data is truly portable?

Well, for starters, I think they’ll stay in exactly the same place. They won’t move an inch until budged. And, in my world, that means Facebook (social side), LinkedIn (business side), and Twitter (twitterings/random musings/thoughts - yes, it’s in a world of it’s own) will continue to hold the top spots.

However, times will change, and people will leave today’s top social networking sites due to boredom, spam, and post-acquisition development wind-down time. The services that will win, in the long run, are those that articulate your data in the most precise, useful, and well-presented way. Quite simply, if people can take their data wherever they wish, they’ll definitely take it to the service with the best interface.

As a (UK-based) Web start-up, every social Web app that comes out of Web Appropriate will need a strategy for data portability. So, ours will be to strive for the cleanest, well-interpreted interfaces out there. Being closed probably won’t be a strategy for much longer; offering well designed products will always be a good business proposition, no matter how much widgetisation occurs on the Web.

Even though mobile SIM cards have always contained important data, the groups that appear in my Facebook newsfeed categorically prove that people have never, probably will never, put great importance on backing-up their SIM cards; just look at the group that popped-up whilst I was writing this post (no, I’m not making this up!);

But doesn’t the same go for every type of data? iTunes, essays, presentations, pitches, photos, USB sticks, DVDs; you name the data and the format, and there’s people out there who don’t back it up. I think there’s a simple reason for this; we all know that the time and effort required to backup data is far more tedious than simply moseying along, dealing with the ’small’ chance that we will suffer a catastrophic loss of all our data. Besides, the services, devices, and interfaces which allow us to CRUD this data generally keep us happy by doing exactly what they say on the tin.

Popular web services (like Facebook) are collecting and aggregating our personal data, including contact details (friends, family, and colleagues etc), and pulling it in to their lucrative, perspective-valuation-fueled, walled gardens. But, generally speaking, very little of this data being allowed to come back out again. However, there’s several initiatives that may change this to some degree, the leaders of whom are are fantastic Web industry contributors, have the right motives, and hope to create standards that will aid in free transportation of this data. The Data Portability group is making the latest waves in the blogosphere.

OpenID and Data Portability want you to be able to do whatever you want with your personal data, as long as it’s socially acceptable. That includes exporting it, which your average “Mark Zuckerberg production” doesn’t consider to be socially acceptable at this moment in time. We’re not just talking about contact email addresses (they are the trickiest part - someone gives you their email address, but does that mean you ‘own’ it and have the right export it to another service?); how about all the data that is produced during the process of defining your relationship with another person in a social Web app, i.e. ‘I went to school with this person’, ‘I hooked-up with this person’, ‘we dated’, etc. That kind of data unequivocally belongs to both people in the relationship, at least when publicly accepted by both people (as it often is in Facebook). The process of defining relationships is a phenomenon that makes the exporting process far more interesting.

OpenID and DataPortability are targeting the technical standardisations and specifications that will be need to be set in stone in order for you to be able to extract your data from a network. However, what no one has really touched on so far is that the interfaces (and the number of button clicks) are just as important as the standards. People need slick interfaces through which they can export and manipulate their data in a ‘mainstream-user-friendly’ manner. A user will only ever take their data out of a service, and import it into another, if it is easy to do so, and they’ve been aggravated enough, or teased enough, in to using another service.

Look at this mock-up screenshot I produced (click to enlarge);

People would, without a shadow of a doubt, export/backup their Facebook contacts if this screenshot was real. But if I was to show a mainstream web user the existing interfaces to OpenID, or if I asked them to explain why the Data Portability workgroup is so important, most would just look a little baffled.

However, If I was to show them my Facebook screenshot, I doubt they’d find it difficult to understand exactly what is being trumpeted by the open standards promoters. Very few people currently think about the implications of having their contacts stored in Facebook and not having the ability to export them. Why? Because Facebook just works. The question is, what kind of a social network CEO, whose user base is growing by hundreds of thousands of happy users every day, is going to give users a super-slick interface for exporting contacts, and even prompt them to do so?

Until the big players provide these kind of interfaces, and a few new big players arise, bringing with them a ‘need’ to export this kind of data (the tech folk niche and intrinsic early adopter habits don’t count for much in my opinion), these initiatives can’t fulfill everything their founders are hoping for (as much as I want them to!).

The last twenty-four hours in the blogosphere have thrown up three posts discussing what 2008 may hold for VCs and startups:

Mike Butcher, of TechCrunch UK (it’s great to have it back!), has a great post covering not only the European/London VC scene for 2008, but the tricky topic (and one that has previously raised heated discussions) of involving Silicon Valley in your European Web startup;

Quite obviously I think you can startup in the UK and Europe. But it is also smart thinking to put down feelers in Silicon Valley, that’s all I’m saying. I doubt anyone would disagree with that point.

Erick Schonfield, of the original TechCrunch, made a post covering the markets that VCs are most bullish about for the coming year. The Internet doesn’t seem to be doing too badly, but it’s no suprise that clean tech is leading the way (slide from TechCrunch);

Josh Catone, of the recently redesigned ReadWrite/Web, has a another post that confirms that VCs aren’t completely down on 2008, despite everything we’re hearing from Wall St right now;

Overall, VCs peg the entire venture capital market at $20 billion to $29 billion in 2008 — putting it on par with 2007 levels. The majority of those polled also see the IPO market strengthening as well, and mergers and acquisitions increasing, though they are split as to the value of those deals.

A single blog post is unlikely to change a budding founder’s aspirations, but Evan William’s post may make you view your idea from the viewpoint of a successful Web entrepreneur, and that’s got to be worth a few minutes of your time.

Although I don’t use it much due to the fact that I can see it becoming hugely time consuming, I think Evan Willam’s latest business, Twitter, is great product. It’s relatively simple in functionality, proposes some great new opportunities for social interaction (micro-blogging, followers etc), and I’ve been consistently returning to it for inspiration. I’m fascinated with the idea of taking a unique concept straight to the Web with the minimum of cash injection and proving it’s usefulness (if not profitability) right from the offset. Twitter is a great example of this approach (despite the necessary SMS integration it required).

Pretty much everyone you meet at OCC will be eager to talk about their businesses/ideas. However, I’m not sure if the whole OCC scene is only intended for Web startups, but most of the people I met were working on something completely Web-focused. Obviously, that wasn’t a problem from my perspective (and the same probably goes for anyone reading this blog), because it meant I could have some really in-depth conversations on Web business, design and development.

Most attendees will be interested in finding out about, and critiquing whatever you’ve been working on. If you take your laptop with a product demo ready, you’ll inevitably get some great feedback. There’s free Wi-fi too, so no excuses.

I should be attending the next OCC in Waterstones on Picadilly, so leave a comment if you’d like to meet-up. I intend to be in London from Wednesday (12th December) to Friday, so if you know of any other Web tech meet-ups, please let me know in the comments!

There were some good demos too; Songkick and Hypernumbers showed some really interesting upcoming features for their services - and you can tell they’ve both been through the startup camps (Y-Combinator & Seedcamp). It was a freestyle demo environment, so if you’re looking to show-off your Web app, this is the sort of audience you’ll want to demo to.

Ian from Songkick originally organised the event on the Y-Combinator Hacker News site, but around thirty-five people came from all over the UK to attend - which shows just how much events like this are needed for the UK Web startup scene. Fortunately, it looks like this was the first of a monthly fixture. If you’re a UK hacker/entrepreneur, make sure you join the new GroupSpaces group for this event, and hopefully we’ll see you at the next one in January;

Web Appropriate is the working title of a UK-based social Web application targeting the movement of a core social networking demographic (twenty-something Facebook users), and their transition in to the working environment. This isn’t an enterprise technology - we’ll be looking to consumer focused social Web services like Facebook, Twitter, and Jaiku, to create a service that people will find compelling.

The application is already being coded in XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript - but additional Web development expertise is required to get the service out there and to start getting some traction.

If social networking, Facebook platform, APIs, and addictive Web apps all make sense to you - and if you also believe there are still many upcoming opportunities on the Web, social network platforms, iPhone, and other channels - Web Appropriate is looking for more team members. Please check the team requirements page for more info!

The Blog

The blog will cover the usual startup activities, i.e. the service, problems, successes, favourite technologies, the Web industry, and a few posts on Web entrepreneurship and meetups, all with a focus on the UK. There’s life outside of SV, and we’ll be promoting that here!