Shuttleworth is a South African philanthropist and internet entrepreneur who started the company Thawte in 1995 and went on to sell it to Verisign at the turn of the century in a US$575 million deal. He then became the second ever self-funded civilian astronaut traveling to the international space station as a member of the Soyuz TM-34/TM-33 missions. Upon his return to earth Mark formed the Shuttleworth Foundation and Canonical.

Simon Dingle recently authored a chapter on Mark Shuttleworth for the book South Africa’s Greatest Entrepreneurs. The publication will be available in September 2010.

Use the audio player above to stream the interview or click here to download the mp3 file.

In the Web 2.0 echo-chamber  bad ideas spread fast. This time nodal sparks came from web celebs like entrepreneur Jason Calacanis and online broadcasting demigod Leo Laporte – both of which I have the utmost respect for, and both of which are proponents of the anti-Facebook movement.

I also respectively believe they’re taking things too far.

Calacanis is known for jumping to conclusions and he’s been wrong before. A great example of this was his Twitter attack on the New York Times’ David Pogue for daring to publish books on products from companies he writes about in the ‘Times. He attacked Pogue’s integrity and my opinion that he was wrong in doing so isn’t just an assertion – but listen to Pogue defend himself in TWiT episode 213 and decide for yourself.

Calacanis is clearly a principled guy who feels strongly about things. I’m the same and have made bad calls on that basis before too, so it would be hypocrisy for me to criticise him too harshly. But I believe he’s wrong about Facebook.

That Zuckerberg is an awkward kid with a track record of doucheness is undoubtable. He has been presented as such from all quarters and even the movie about the birth and rise of Facebook apparently casts him as ruthless and untrustworthy, amongst other things.

But so what? I’ve met some hard hitters in the tech space, including CEOs of large companies, and I can assure you that being ruthless is a common trait amongst almost all of them. Being untrustworthy, on the other hand, is a common trait with young men in general and Zuckerberg was very young indeed when he allegedly knifed business partners in the back. Raise your hand if you went through your teens without doing anything stupid… I didn’t think so.

If you’re going to quit Facebook because its leader is an arrogant know-it-all with weird preoccupations and because the company isn’t in full adoption of the open approach to privacy and technology in general then I would tender that you should be selling all your Apple products, deleting Windows off your PC and getting rid of all your gaming consoles. No more Kindle books, and you should probably sift through Google’s user agreements too. And good luck finding a mobile phone and network to use it on.

The fact is that Facebook is a great and useful service irrespective of its CEO being a douchebag (which may or may not be true). The privacy thing also isn’t as big a deal as some will tell you.

I’ve always been very wary of online privacy and have implemented advanced controls on my Facebook account since it was possible to do so. I have groups of users and I control who can see what. For example, I don’t let anyone except really close friends and family see most of the pictures and videos of my kids. Those settings have persisted and Facebook hasn’t changed them. My account is still as secure as it was this time last year.

The problem Facebook has is that it does privacy too well. It allows for advanced control of your personal content and I’m yet to see another service come close in terms of the granularity it allows. As with any feature in technology, if you don’t apply these controls then it’s you that has the problem, not Facebook. The user is still in control of what the public gets and what stays private in terms of specified user groups and networks.

Because it does this better than most, people expect Facebook to shine at privacy. They don’t care that Twitter is completely open because it’s always been that way, unless you have a locked account.

I am not suggesting that Facebook is faultless, however. The company certainly has played hard and fast with the information of people who do not lock down their information and accept the default settings. It also clearly plans to leverage its situation to make money. But I’m not sure those are malicious actions. God forbid anyone makes a profit, right?

My suggestion is that everyone takes a deep breath and calms down. Facebook is no more or less evil than any other company trying to drive a profit. We could pick out individuals from any organisation and form opinions of the company as a whole based on that one person – but this is shortsighted and infantile as far as I’m concerned. Zuckerberg is the baby and Facebook is the bathwater. Let’s not throw them both out – even if Mark has been peeing in the bath.

There are way more people involved in the creation and running of the company than just the CEO.

I’m all for open software and networks. I believe the guys over at the Diaspora project are on the right track with their plans for a “privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network” and I can’t wait to see the fruits of their effort and funding. But for now Facebook is still a useful tool to me. I have no privacy concerns because I’ve taken the time to set things up properly. I don’t approve of everything the company does, but I could say the same for all the other providers whose products I use on a daily basis including Twitter, Sony, Apple, etcetera.

And, it bears repeating: if you accept the default settings then you can’t complain too loudly when they change. Lock it down like I did.

I had an enlightening discussion with science fiction author and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow in Croatia in 2008 where we discussed his abandonment of the Mac, amongst other things. Cory, who has a tattoo of a Mac on his right bicep, found himself at odds with Apple as a company in recent years and switched to Linux. I asked Cory how he was enjoying Ubuntu Linux, which he runs on a Lenovo laptop.

“I’m extremely impressed with Ubuntu,” he said. “But less impressed with Lenovo as a company.”

The problem? Lenovo’s user agreement for their laptops. The reality is that if you look at most technology companies closely enough you’ll find something to disapprove of. Sometimes you just need to consolidate that in terms of the advantages offered by the technology itself. Cory still uses Lenovo products. And I still use Facebook.

And no, I won’t be deleting my account today. Spare me the hype. I’d go so far as to say that most of the people who have been swept up in the anti-Facebook togetherness are ignorant as to exactly what it is they’re protesting.

But, if you do want to get rid of your Facebook account, check out Seppukoo – a service that aids you in your virtual suicide. And ra-ra for taking a stand.

Telecommunications group Vodacom has launched its Linkbook into the SA market – a super-low price netbook that will go for R199 per month on a two-year contract, including a monthly bandwidth bundle of 300MB.

The Linkbook is running a customised Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, and ships with OpenOffice, some games and other applications. It has 2 USB ports, WiFi, a 8.9″ screen, 16GB of embedded flash storage, integrated 3G modem, webcam and a microphone. I can’t tell what processor it is running, but I’d bet it’s an Intel Atom. There is also no indication of battery life.

Vodacom says that R40 of the R199 monthly subscription is attributable to the laptop, while the remaining R159 covers network access and the 300MB data bundle. The Linkbook is exclusive to Vodacom at this stage.

Mark Levy, co-founder of Linkbook (I’m not sure if this is the same Mark Levy from Blue Label Telecoms), says, ”Linkbook is an idea whose time has come. It’s compact and highly intuitive and will bring easy-to-use wireless internet to millions.”

Levy says that users shouldn’t be mislead by the low cost of the Linkbook; “Development doesn’t stop with the hardware. We are working with a number of partners to create exciting applications and dynamic content that will further enhance our customers’ experience of the web.”

Given the price, I’d say this is a breakthrough and I look forward to getting my hands on the Linkbook to try out. I certainly hope that the education sector is paying attention as this seems like a decent solution for schools and other institutions.

The Simmbook, which is currently available for pre-order, will go on sale in developing markets soon and is expected to cost as low as $190 (R1400) when it does.

Powered by Ubuntu Linux, the Simmbook has been designed with cloud computing in mind and, as such, is preloaded with IBM’s Client for Smart Work, which includes the IBM Lotus Symphony office suite, access to IBM LotusLive cloud collaboration services, and the choice of adding other IBM Lotus collaboration software like Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime.

Says Clifford Foster, CTO for IBM sub-Saharan Africa, ”As Africa makes economic strides during a time when new technologies like cloud computing are emerging, the Simmbook netbook … provides businesses with a complete solution at an affordable price.”

Founder of Canonical, Mark Shuttleworth adds, “It’s exciting to see how computing is changing the lives of people in Africa and the new Simmbook provides a real testament of how important it is to get low-cost computing into Africa’s economy.”

I suspect the Simmbook  will also be a hit with geeks looking for a cost-effective “side-arm”.

The Simmbook is powered by an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor with 1GB of DDR2 RAM. It has a 10.1″ screen that can handle resolutions up to 1024×600 with an Intel GFX Core graphics processor. SATA hard drives are available as options, starting at 160GB, and it has Bluetooth, WiFi, 3 USB ports, an ethernet port and a 3-cell battery with 6 cells available.

My guess would be that these two battery options would provide roughly 3 and 6 hours of use respectively, but I could be wrong. It’s also uncertain whether the $190 version of the Simmbook will sport the same bits and pieces as the model I referenced for this article.

In my column on Fin24.com this week I made the point that it was wrong to exclude lower-income markets from futures in technology and digital media. The Simmbook is yet another example of Moore’s Law at work, along with the power of open source technology and cloud computing to make powerful business applications available at a much reduced cost.