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December 23, 2003
Nothing to do while waiting for Santa?
Waiting for christmas can be really, really, really really boring. here is something fun to do.
Are you always this productive?
Pop some bubbles. Everybody loves to pop bubbles. Pop pop. I wish i had a wider mouse pointer!
December 20, 2003
Why bother to innovate?
Seth Godin has written an interesting piece on Fast Company about the scarcity shortage in today's society.
Lord knows, we're running out of a lot of important things - clean water, free time, breathable air, the ozone layer, and honest leadership, just to name a few. At the same time, we have to worry about something that is about to affect just about every business I can think of. We're running out of scarcity.
Focusing on doing ony one thing, what you are best at, is one of the all time important secrets to success. Today more than ever. What I find really sad about what Seth Godin is writing is the implication that there is no use in innovating. Why bother? Why spend lots of brain cycles and hard cash on innovative solutions, products and designs when your competitor can create an exact copy of what you have created in no time? How will you get your investment back?
I guess one way is to make sure that you have enough "time-based monopoly" to get your money back before your competitors catch up. Another way would be to build a good enough brand (yawn) that you become the de facto choice of consumers. Yet another way would be to deliver great service and customer care and make sure that your customers know that they get their money's worth.
Found this via Enkelriktat, Niklas Johansson's great blog.
December 19, 2003
December 10, 2003
The blogging process
I am not the only one looking for more structure to my blogging lifestyle it seems. Here is a great attempt on describing the blogging process.
I budget 75 minutes/day for reading (the steps in red), 60 minutes/day for writing (green), 15 minutes/day for promotion (blue), and, on the weekend, 60 minutes/week for blog community activities, focused on Salon Blogs, my chosen community. As an empty-nester and night-owl, I do most of this between 8-11pm, but I try to post during prime blog time (5am-5pm) so my posts show up in the 'recently updated' lists when most people are reading.
Great stuff. Must remember to go back and read this carefully later.
Blogs enter the advertising space
Blogging is becoming a household term? Just like "to google"...
HP runs a campaign using the word "blog". Does this mean that "blog" is becoming a common household word or that HP wants to make bloggers feel special?
Spotted in the Montgomery BART station last week, I finally snapped a photo of this ad on the way into the office today. It’s part of a large HP campaign that has ads plastered all over the walls and floors of the Muni / BART stations, promoting their computing products.
Anyways, I like it.
Another great RSS-explanation on major site
More, more, more RSS on major news sites. Great work by BBC.
Go to the section of the site (eg. World) with the headlines you are interested in. Click on the link that says 'RSS version' located in the red services strip at the bottom of the page.
December 09, 2003
Wonderful bookmark archiving service
This rocks. Del.icio.us is an archiving service for personal links. You can access your bookmarks from anywhere, and get to them through RSS and/or APIs!
I love it when I stumble over services that I have been thinking about building for my own purpose, but find them even better implemented than I could ever have accomplished myself. Last time it happened it was BlogLines, which has grown to become a necessity in my information scavenging life. Before that, shorl quickly conquered a permanent position among my browser shortcuts.
Without a doubt del.icio.us is a service that belongs there as well.
Delicious is a social bookmarks manager. This system is pre-pre-alpha; many features have yet to be added. Additionally, many, many bugs remain. Please be careful. The main page and inboxes now have RSS feeds. Many more bugs to be fixed and I'll start on the features.
This is so cool. Not to mention usable! I love the interface. Extremely fast and easy to use, allowing me to store bookmarks with descriptions and "tags" (which are used as categories) sorting all the bookmarks in neat groups.
More and more I move information to web based services. The browser becomes my all-purpose tool to get information, archive information, publish information, search for information, communicate and do business.
The more I can avoid storing stuff on a single computer that I have to bring with me in order to access the information I want, the happier I get.
All I wish for now is a better web interface to my email. Some sort of IMAP solution and a web based client. Even better would be to be able to access my email folders over the web in an ordinary fashion if I wanted to, but also subscribe to certain email-feeds (created using filters perhaps, like sorting in folders in Thunderbird) in Bloglines. Getting all my mailing list and newsletter subscriptions as RSS-feeds instead of email messages.
Add a web based calendar that could synchronise with my Nokia 7650 phone / PDA and I would be the happiest little bunny on the web.
December 06, 2003
Sem@code - navigating the web with a camera
A few years ago we had a client whose idea was to connect printed ads to web URLs using a small scanner that a user could connect to their computers. Now every camera enabled cell phone has that ability.
Recently, an advanced computing device came into millions of hands: the camera phone. Camera phones have powerful processors, substantial memory, internet connections, and run standard Java-based applications. This combines into a new platform for connecting the real world, with the virtual world. Many innovations will result from this development: one of them is the semacode.
Found this through picturephoging.com, more related links available in the article:
Picturephoning.com: Real world hyperlinks with a camera phone
CIO on RFID
Long but thorough article on the benefits and pitfalls of implementing RFID technology in a retail organization.
RFID technology is going to generate mountains of data about the location of pallets, cases, cartons, totes and individual products in the supply chain. It's going to produce oceans of information about when and where merchandise is manufactured, picked, packed and shipped. It's going to create rivers of numbers telling retailers about the expiration dates of their perishable items - numbers that will have to be stored, transmitted in real-time and shared with warehouse management, inventory management, financial and other enterprise systems. Applications of RFID technology are also going to need to rely on a new kind of computing architecture known as edge computing, in which vast amounts of processing will take place at the edges of the enterprise's network rather than in corporate data centers. RFID, experts agree, is a transformational technology.
The article contains links to related articles ("sidebars") discussing consumer privacy concerns and other topics.
The RFID Imperative - Retail - prepare systems for RFID technology - CIO Magazine Dec 1,2003
December 05, 2003
3-click rule wrong?
This company decided to put the long used 3-click rule of organizing web content to the test. They found it to be a myth.
The 3-click rule has been used for a long time and is generally not questioned. I have heard (and said...) it myself in several client meetings. Doesn't seem tot be so valid after all though:
According to the Three-Click Rule, most people give up after three clicks. However, in our study, users often kept going, some as many as 25 clicks. According to our data, the Three-Clicks Rule is just a myth.
December 03, 2003
Beautiful use of RSS feeds
CNET has a great collection of RSS feeds, all linked from a central page. I wish all news sites offered this kind of service.
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an XML-based format for content distribution (more). Below, CNET News.com offers several RSS feeds with headlines, descriptions and links back to CNET News.com for the full story. We encourage you to use these feeds, so long as you do not post our full-text stories, and so long as you provide proper attribution to CNET News.com.
Woohoo! Nemi in English!
There is a Norwegian comic called Nemi. About a goth girl and her everyday adventures. It rocks.
Whenever I have tried to explain the greatness of Nemi I have failed miserably. Now I can try to fail explaining to non-swedish talking people as well:
Welcome to the only English unofficial Nemi fansite! At this site, we will translate the Nemi comics from Norwegian, into English. The goal of this site is to get the word around about the best comic strip series ever created!
At least I can show them some sample strips, which makes it a whole lot easier:
Nemi in English: An Unofficial Fan Site
I have written about Nemi before. I get huge amounts of hits from Google on that article. That's how I found the English Nemi site. My previous Nemi-post:
Manne: Goth girl Nemi rocks your world!
The official Nemi site:
Voice over IP hits prime time
IP phones have been around since 1995 but never really hit off. During 2004 this will change.
I love this quote:
IP telephony also aims to collapse the proliferation of communications gadgets clogging the pockets and purses of our mobile work force into a single seamless stream of information. "Over the past 20 years, we've seen the emergence of discrete communication vehicles — like PDA, cell phones, personal computers and instant messaging," says Sue Spradley, president of the wire-line-networks group at Nortel. "The integration of these devices and media into one communication session will revolutionize the way we interact."
Most definitely. The only result I have seen so far of the "communication revolution" is that the remote control disease that my coffee table has suffered from for years has spread to my trousers, jacket and laptop-bag. Too many devices. If all of those devices finally converge interesting things will happen to the way we communicate.
I am positive that 2004 will see VOIP boom. As broadband finally reaches the home this will be one of the first killer apps.
December 02, 2003
What is RSS, and Why Should You Care?
Great post on why RSS is such an interesting concept.
Several readers have asked me by e-mail and via blog comments here, "Amy, what is this RSS stuff you keep talking about? What's so cool or important about it?" Here are the basics. RSS stands for Rich Site Summary (or Really Simple Syndication, take your pick). In a nutshell, RSS is a new way for people who publish content online to notify people interested in that content whenever fresh content is made available online. By notifying people interested in your content, as well as Web sites that collect and package content announcements (called aggregators), you are "feeding" them your content – hence the term RSS feed.
Pros and cons of corporate blogging
Mostly pros actually. This article collects links to information on why corporate blogging can be a good thing.
Interesting reading, all of them.
Then, after they're positively tuned in to the weblog concept from a corporate standpoint, show the bosses that they don't have to be afraid fo your personal weblog. Policies make bosses feel safe, so show them that there are intelligent ways to handle corporate policies about employees' personal blogs.
I especially like The Corporate Weblog Manifesto by Scobleizer.
December 01, 2003
What's so great about having email on the road?
Well, if you are deaf it is a real killer app.
I haven't given it much thought, but of course wireless pagers, SMS and email while on the road is a great advancement in technology for people who are hearing impaired.
Cell phone-size messaging gadgets like the Blackberry and the T-Mobile Sidekick have caught on quickly with the deaf since being introduced a few years ago, giving them freedom to move around and communicate like never before.
“I talk to my friends almost everyday with the pager. It is really great!” said Bryan Blaisdell, a deaf 15-year-old in Pascoag, R.I. He uses his Sidekick to message his parents for rides, and can stay in touch with them when he’s out, things that would have been hard or impossible a few years ago.
Freedom in a little box.
