This is a simple blog, designed to capture the various facets of my life, from expereinces in business and leisure, to my thoughts on culture, politics, religion and so on.

Sometimes, I will speak of events in my life - however, I promise to change any names used to protect the “innocent” (yeah right!!) - no really, I will not put anyone’s name that can be identified, these people will be identified by “Person A” or “Mr X” type phrases.

Now onto who I am.

I am a 3o something year old software developer. I currently consult for a couple of companies in the telecoms arena, specializing in the wholesale airtime business (primarily mobile minutes). My role within these companies is as an acting CTO.

I build software to enable these companies to function, from routing the minutes down the appropriate trunks (L(east) C(ost) R(outing) - LCR), to do thier billing, and to manage their traffic. That’s one of my more recent projects.

Along with a good friend of mine, also a consultant at these companies that I consult for currently, is David. Along with him, we have also built up various software projects, including our highly bespoke - but at the same time Open - mobile payment system - which while a work in progress (we’ve never really had the funding to do it properly and it happens in moments when we have time between projects that keep food on the table).

Historically, I’ve worked for some really awesome companies (the list below is in not real order because this page isn’t designed as my resume!):

1/ Elliot Pearce Limited (Acquired by Infobank International PLC)

2/ Infobank International PLC (sadly now defunct - even though it had manged to raise about £180 million on a round of funding and found it’s way onto the FTSE 500)

3/ Exodus Communications Inc. (Yes, the famous Exodus that hosted nearly everybody, but that for reasons beyond the EMEA group’s control was torn to bits by events in the Santa Clara operation - long story - perhaps I’ll give my side and opinions on it at some stage - only time will tell)

4/ Unisys PLC (have done consultancy for Unisys on various software projects

5/ Star Telecom (T) Limited (an ISP in Tanzania, East Africa - I went to assist with fixing a lot of internal problems with the company and building up a realistic solution for the to bill their customers)

6/ Computer Center (T) Limited (the largest distributer of HP / Compaq hardware and Microsoft Software in East Africa. I was brought into to assist on various consultancy projects to their customers - government agencies and high level corporates in Africa).

7/ OSIS (T) Limited (I set up this small company out in Tanzania, I will be uploading the entire business plan as a reference for anyone who wants to try and implement this elsewhere in the developing world - but to put it simply, this is a company that allows individuals and companies to have a contracted support organisation looking after all of their IT, not just computers and peripherals but also their internet access - I’ll put the biz plan online for anyone who may be interested - but if you do decide to go down the route of establishing such a company, please do let me know - I’d love to know.

My core expertise are in eCommerce systems - B2B as well as B2C and B2G - and the bulk of my work with EPL and Infobank was on these type of systems - in fact Infobank were actually a provider of Business to Business eCommerce Software - sadly for reasons that still give me sleepless nights they are no longer anything more than a distant memory. Sad but true.

Currently, between myself and a colleague of mine we have built up a mobile payment system, that will effectively allow you to use your mobile phone as your wallet - so is it an mWallet solution or an mPayment / mCommerce product - not quite sure where it fits in exactly, but somewhere along those lines. The product has been through it’s initial development hurdles, and is now in prototyping mode, we have a couple of test-bed solutions where it’ll be tried and if successfull deployed, and as more information can be given (remember while this is my blog, I still have to respect NDAs :)) it will be.

I’ll probably write more about the payment system at some stage, but I’m keeping it very hush hush at the moment - if there is a wealthy invester type reading this - feel free to get in touch - my email address is shabbir@hassanally.net.

That’s all for the about page for now, perhaps there will be more, perhaps there won’t be more, who knows what will happen, keep visiting and you’ll know.

Have fun reading my rantings about all manner of different things from issues related to people working from central locations (as in working from an office) to discussions on the weather and how we’re killing our planet, to discussions on modern day political issues that have parallels in history, to why people hate each other at times because they have differences in opinions or is there more to this than just that. I will also discuss various tech subjects, such as the new consoles and the software development tools that can be used to write games and other useful software applications for them, to writing widgets for Windows Vista’s lovely sidebar, to coding in both .NET as well as PHP, Web Services (aka SOAP) and much much more.

Technology for me is a passion, all types of technology, from things that I like, to things that I hate, to things that I am indifferent about but still feel that I need to present an opinion on. I have enabled comments on this blog, and would love to hear from others, agreeing disagreeing with, debating, tearing to pieces, etc anything that I’ve penned here in my personal blog, however, let us keep the language civilized and let us also remember that getting all nasty is not particularly useful, instead there is far more value in constructively debating and criticizing a scenario and providing solutions.

I wish you a wonderful time, a long, healthy and prosperous life.

If you’re interested in having a look at my resume; please see this post: http://shabbir.hassanally.net/blog/2007/09/24/my-updated-resume/  .

Warm Regards,

Shabbir