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cloud storage: Google Drive and insynchq, Skydrive, Dropbox, SugarSync and my Synology… and Evernote

dani — Sat, 05 May 2012 14:11:24 +0000

Recently everyone is providing cloud storage in the same way Dropbox have been doing it for a while.

Last week Google started rolling out the long awaited Google Drive, with Mac and PC installers to accomplish sort of what Dropbox does, with the difference that they increased the free storage to 10Gb while Dropbox gives 2Gb.

I installed Google Drive. It is basically Google Docs renamed. Honestly I am a bit disappointed. In my Mac GDrive creates a folder with only links to Google Docs and yes, with the files that are not Google docs specifics. Insynchq does it much better… with Insynchq you use Google Drive but instead of having links it converts them to word, excel and powerpoint documents that are downloaded into your computers. Neat.

Also with Insynchq you can have multiple Google drive mapped at the same time. I use two, my norai and torres domains, now both upgraded to 5Gb each. I ended up removing the Google Drive Mac client as I prefer the Insynhq one.

What is cool about GDrive?

Well I am a heavy user of Google Docs, so is nice to have extra storage, plus to buy extra storage is pretty affordable. What Google does well is to be able to open most of the file within the browser, from PDF to DOC to even Photoshop. Also they have included OCR making it by far the best search. If you upload a photo or a pdf, and you search for something in it, you will find it. Like with Evernote.

The collaboration rocks with Google and I believe is one of the best for online editing.

Then we have Microsoft Skydrive. It has been there for a while, but is not that known, and not that loved. You might change your mind after reading this.

They also released an installer for Mac, PC and even apps for iPhone and iPad (while Google has none). So, again, like Dropbox, you will have a local folder synchronized with your cloud service.

So what is good and different about SkyDrive?

For starters, if you had it before you can claim 25Gb for free (which I did) and if you are new then you get 7Gb (which is still the best out there).

Second, it works perfectly fine on my Mac, PC, iPad and iPhone. Also if you use the web, and you have an Office document such a word, excel, powerpoint or Onenote you have access to Office 365 or online editor for word documents fully compatible, of course, with your traditional Word, and others.

For sharing is also pretty easy now. You can get a link that can be emailed or shared in social networks easily.

For collaboration Google is still stronger thought. I guess SkyDrive still works with the concept of checking in and out documents.

What about Dropbox and SugarSync?

For me they are pretty much dead. SugarSync gives you 5Gb for free and is the most feature rich one, but too complex for many.

Dropbox is still the simplest and that is why they might still survive, but for me is over, together with SugarSync. Storage space has no competitive prices.

The best?

Well I have a NAS, as Synology DS 1511+ with 15Tb. In the latest update they rolled out (DSM 4) they included Cloud Station which is again based on the same principle. A local folder with local files synchronized with the NAS via an installer.

So far they did not release a Mac version yet but I have it on my Windows machines.

So which is the best… well with my Synology I have raid 5, I own the data, and I have 15Tb available… plus fibre optics at home with 100Mb up and down…. so for personal use my NAS, for collaboration, Google Drive, for the best storage option now SkyDrive.

But… what I use the most is Evernote… anything I print I don’t send to the printer anymore, I just print it to Evernote. All my docs are tagged, OCR, emailed and stored there…

Now someone should create a service that uses all the cloud storage and puts them into one single volume… so 5Gb from your GDrive plus 25Gb from SkyDrive plus your 5Gb from SugarSync, the 2Gb from Dropbox…

Day 13: Last day. Back to LA and bye bye Harley’s

dani — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:45:28 +0000

Woke up early as usual. Jumped on our Harley’s and ride to a Starbucks on the main road in Santa Barbara.
After that we headed south on the 101 by the coast, stopping by often.
We stopped again for lunch in Santa Monica and then went to the motel where we stayed the last time we stayed in Los Angeles.
We just walked from Eagle Rider and here we are, reaching the end of our journey. I will compleat each of this entries once I’m back at home.

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Day 12: Fat Boys up and down

dani — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:13:40 +0000

Woke up at the motel 6 and took the Harley’s to go for breakfast at the Andersen’s restaurant.
After that headed north till Santa Maria, Arroyo Grande and then round turn to Santa Monica where we are now, at Hacienda inn.
After leaving our stuff at the motel we took the road till the end where Santa Barnara Pierre is.
We walked at the marina and had an ice cream in the main street.

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Day 11: Harley Davidson Fat Boy and California coastline

dani — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 02:55:58 +0000

As we managed to keep the car until the day after that made thing easier. We drove to eagle rider picked one of the bikes returned the car and went back to pick up the second bike.
Eagle rider was huge. They a lot of Harley’s.
Our two Fat Boys were brand new. 5 miles on the clock. One yellow for Sebas ( I like it more) and one blue for me. Having a Ducati myself I have to recognize that the Harley’s are a world apart. The noise the weight and the looks are unique.
We headed north by the coast, from Venice to Santa Monica, Malibu, Santa Barbara and finally stopping over at Buellton.
We had quite a shock. We arrived at Buellton with 10 miles left of gas in the tank. We really thought we would not make it.
For dinner we went to Andersen’s and fryer ordered what they claim is the famous pea soup. Nothing special.

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Day 10: Bye Vegas. Hi again Route 66 and Los Angeles

dani — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:40:46 +0000

Last day with the convertible. We have to give it back at LAX by 6pm.
We left Vegas early and left the Stratosphere behind and drove south west towards route 66 starting at Barlow where we visited the route 66 museum. In San Bernardino we visited the place where the first Mc Donald’s was located. Not anymore though. Then the rest of the day was basically driving towards Los Angles.
First thing in Los Angeles was to go to LAX suites that I booked on my iPhone using booking.com. It was
conveniently located close to eagle rider and the airport and National, where we went to ask if we could keep the car until the following day as we took it in a morning. The answer was yes. That made things easier. We went to Santa Monica 3rd promenade and pier. Then back to the motel.

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Day 9: Gran Canyon West & O Cirque Soleil

dani — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 19:30:13 +0000

We woke up early to check out, put all the stuff in the car and go to the north gate to wait at 7:30am for the van that would take us to the airport.
At the Vegas 500 offices we paid the rest and jumped into a 9 seater Cessna. The nice thing of this company is that there is always a window seat, the windows are big and the wings are over the plane so they don’t disturb the views.
After 30 min flying around Boulder city, Lake Mead we landed in the west rim of the canyon. We took a shuttle that took us to Eagle point and Hualapai Indian village and finally Guano point where we ate.
The views are amazing!!! We did not go to the skywalk because we thought it was not worth it.
We expected that the plane would take us inside the canyon but looks like only the helicopters do this. It was sort if a taxi only so if I have I recommend something is that you better come here in your own and then take an helicopter here.
Now we are waiting for the plane to go back to Vegas. I will continue tonight provided I find wifi to post this.

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Day 8: Las Vegas: New York New York

dani — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:20:43 +0000

4th April. Wednesday.
Today it was a walking day. From the hotel we are staying (New York new York) till the Wynn las Vegas.
Sunny as usual but perfect temperature, we visited most of the hotels in the strip. The incredible Venetian with gondolas on the third floor, to the design of the cosmopolitan, Wynn and Aria. Old ones like harrah’s and treasure island to the newest ones.
What can I say. It is incredible and you overestimate the distances and the amount of walking you do. We booked for the O du cirque du Soleil for the following day even if we were one of the first to cue everything was sold out for the day, therefore we decided to stay one more say in Vegas. We had booked only for two nights at the New York New York at a rate of 60$, but surprise, with taxes and fees we end up paying 87$ per night which is misleading when booking it via booking.com.
The hotel was great. All have free parking and thesis one free wifi.
Tomorrow we’ll be staying at the Stratosphere further down the strip. The price advertised was 39$. We’ll see. The positive thing is that to go up the tower costs 16$ per person while if you have a room it is included.
We also booked a tour for the next day to the west side of the grand canyon with a company called Vegas 500. We paid 245$ per person and it included the transfer to the airport, the flight to the canyon, shuttles around the Indian reserve and lunch.
At night we went to a strip club but we just have a quick beer as it was pretty much empty and not as we expected.
In our way back Sebas played the roulette for the first time. He first read how o play in Wikipedia but he end up loosing 20$.

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Day 7: Zion Park & Vegas

dani — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:10:36 +0000

We woke up early in Springdale. Had breakfast at this motel ran by an Indian couple and headed to the Zion’s park visiting center. We left the car there and grabbed a free shuttle to the end of the park: Zion lodge. We did some nice trekking from 8am until 1pm, visiting a couple of waterfalls, the emerald track, etc… Then we left and drove towards las Vegas.
We arrived to the New York hotel at around 5pm. We are at the empire tower room 3011.
I’ll continue later.

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Day 6: Antelope Canyon & horseshoe bend

dani — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 02:10:53 +0000

As usual we are a bit post with the local time. From California to New Mexico to Arizona and now in Utah the time zone keeps changing.
Today we had breakfast as usual at the motel and then went to the tour operator for the antelope canyon. We paid 70$ for the two of us. This includes a ride with a huge pick up car and 14 people on the back, the entry to this indian land and a tour inside the upper antelope canyon. 1:40 in total.
The canyon is incredible. All done by the water passing through.
After the visit we took the car and drove to the horseshoe bend of the glen canyon. The typical photo of the river in a u form in the canyon. We left the convertible parked and walked to the spot and then around. The views are breathtaking. You cannot notice it for the photos but the cliffs are incredible.
After that we visited the Powell damn at Page. At lunchtime we went to a local American Mexican drive in called RD drive in. After eating we hesitated to either go to the Bryce Canyon or to the Zion national park. We decided for the second, so we headed towards Kanab (the little hollywood) and then Springdale, that is where we are right now.
When we entered the Sion National park we paid sure 25$ and opened the top of car even with 7 degrees. The road was amazing. Nature incredible and the experience of driving Ina convertible was great.
Now we are at the terrace brooks lodge and tomorrow we will visit the park. After that we will head to las Vegas where we have booked the New York hotel for two nights.

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Day 5: Grand Canyon

dani — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 04:16:12 +0000

Woke up at 6 am by mistake. Sebas’ blackberry did not change the timeline when changing state to Arizona. We went down to have breakfast and I managed to have a Face Time with Nuria and Kai :-)
We jumped into the car, it was damn cold. 4 degrees. Flagstaff is at 2150 m. In the way to grand canyon the views are astonishing. The nature, trees and landscape is breathtaking.
We arrived pretty early, we paid the admission to the park 25$ per car, and parked in parking 2. There it was getting cloudy and very windy.
Grand Canyon has amazing views over the south rim of the canyon. The north rim is closed at this time of the year.
We took one of the free shuttles and went to different spots around the cliffs. We spent all day walking and going around with the bus.
Then we just drive to where we are now, Page. We just went to have dinner and tomorrow we are going to visit the antelope canyon and the typical bend…. But this is an entry for tomorrows blog.

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Day 4: Route 66 to Flagstaff

dani — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 14:09:48 +0000

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Day 3: LA to Albuquerque

dani — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 05:50:35 +0000

I woke up at 4am. Stayed in bed until 5:10 when I had a shower and went downstairs to be picked by the shuttle. In my printout it said we were departing from terminal 8 but the driver insisted that there was no terminal 8. Good start.
Finally our flight was operated by Skywest and the checkin was at terminal 7.
Now we are in a small crj200 regional plane. Like a bus.
I’ll continue when tonight and publish this as soon as we find wifi.
Alburquerque financial lunch Old town.
Sleep best American value Gallup

Day 2: Los Angeles tour

dani — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:15:02 +0000

We woke up early. Sure. Went out for breakfast to the corner at cafe collage. We had coffee and a muffin. Then we went back to the hotel to book a day tour around LA. They picked us up and spent all day visiting places. Before though we had a walk until Santa Monica. nicer than Venice I have to say. Posh and cool.
We started with the tour by… Venice Beach. A completely different place than the night before. Crowded with weird and eccentric people, tourists and homeless. Venice beach is the typical walk where nice girls roller skate and Arnold used to train at the beach gold gym club.
I found it old. Probably it was great in the 80s but now is just old. We also passed by the canals.
After that we visited Santa Monica. We have to go back there, specially to 3 av. We stopped and took some pictures of where the route 66 ends. Close to Santa Monica pier.
We then went to visit the famous houses in Beverly hills and Bel Air. We saw where Michael Jackson died, and houses from all the poor famous people. The cheapest house 2M$.
We went to rodeo drive and walked around the expensive shops with expensive cars (like a bugati le baron) and beautiful people.
After that we went for lunch to the farmers market. Very nice place we did not have the chance to explore as with just 45 min we had only time to eat a salad.
After lunch to a hill where we cold take a photo of the hollywood sign and see the city from above.
After that: Hollywood boulevard, Chinese theatre, Kodak theatre and just walk around taking pictures of the famous stars on the floor. 25000$ each!!
Finally we went to sunset boulevard and a guitar shop with the hands on the floor of famous musicians.
After that we we t back to the hotel.
The price was 79$ per person and the. The driver keeps begging for a good tip up to the point it was annoying. It was a nice tour. At the end the guy was driving like a crazy kamikaze. I guess he did not want to go too late home. We were dropped at 7:30. We went to have a drink to the side walk cafe were we ended asking for nachos and hot wings. In principle just starters but we could not eve finish them.
After that to bed. Early as we had a shuttle coming to pick us up at 5:45am.
I was awake at 4am though. I guess jet-lag.

Day 1: Geneva, Barcelona, Atlanta & Los Angeles

dani — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:25:06 +0000

This is the blog for the trip to US with my very best friend Sebas. Let’s start by the beginning:
In November 2011, when I went to Barcelona for the surprise 40th anniversary party for Sebas, we agree than being the year when we both turned 40, we should do something special: so here we are.
I am actually writing this on day 3 of our trip. We are now in a small plane for LA to Albuquerque.
Day 1 started at 4 am for me. It was a last minute chandler because on the day we were supposed to travel Spain was going to be on a general strike meaning that only 40% of international flights were going to departure. Sebas manages to change the day for one day earlier so we had to hurry and prepare the luggage a change my flight to Barcelona.
I took the Ducati to go to the airport. I hope it is still there by the time I’m back!
When I landed at terminal two in Barcelona I took the shuttle to the new terminal and I met Sebas there. To be on the safe side we agreed to carry hand luggage only and it was a good idea!
The delta flight to Atlanta was packed and on time. We were not very lucky with the seats, as the were in the middle of the middle row. But I guess that for 500€ for a return flight from Barcelona to Los Angeles we could not ask much ;-)
9 hours later we got to Atlanta. We had 2.5 hours for changing flight and we though that was plenty of time. We were wrong!
Atlanta customs was like a football field. I guess that around 40 booths and translators being call for all languages. Even the UN has not that many translators. We queued forever. After that police control. Queued again. Then take the train to change terminal and then arrive just when they started boarding. We would not have made it with checked in luggage.
The plane from Atlanta to LA was shinny new. A boing 777. 5 hours later we landed at LAX. Total for me: 24.5 hours of trip It was dark already so we grabbed a cab to Venice beach. 30$ with the tip.
The Venice Beach Cotel was a hostel. Good ratings from hostelwold but pretty crappy to My standards.
We has a room with private bathroom (room #2) which was on top of Venice walk and facing the sea. It was also by the hostel bar so very noisy. Fortunately at 10:30 they closed the bar.
We went walking when we arrived. Venice beach is a ghost town when the sun goes down, packed of homeless people. We did not get far. We saw how the they were shooting a film around the corner of the hostel and then we went to have dinner to the restaurant in front of of our hotel.
Sebas had a pizza of the day and I had a Caesar salad. We also tried 2 very strange beers. A Palomino ale ape and another one I don’t remember the name.
After that we went to bed.

Share the ride

dani — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 17:18:01 +0000

I wanted to share with you a website that will help you fill your car and get paid:

http://www.zimride.com/

This is why I am broke….

dani — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 07:26:34 +0000

If you’re a geek, like me, you can spend hours (and a fortune) on this site

http://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/

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Noa

dani — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:18:26 +0000

insync: it is ok to break up with dropbox

dani — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:14:41 +0000

I heard about insync on twitter not too long ago.

It caught my attention the fact they sell themselves as a Dropbox killer, I had to try.

Insync (http://insynchq.com) is, like Dropbox, a little program you can install in a mac or pc even if you are not an admin (which for my work laptop is a must) and that has for objective to sync a local folder among your computers, with a copy online… but with a huge difference from services such as Dropbox or SugarSync, or box.net…

First: it is free. But sure, Dropbox is free for a couple of Gigs too, and SugarSync free for 5Gb…

Second: it uses GDrive or Google Docs as storage and online sharing and versioning… so:

They don’t have to host anything, and you pay Google for storage.

The difference with Dropbox is that for instance a 50Gb with Dropbox costs $9.99 per month, and a 20Gb with Google costs $5…. a year!!! or 80Gb for $20 a year!!

For $200 per year Dropbox gives you 100Gb
For $100 per year Google gives you 200Gb

For me this is a no brainier. I was already using Google docs, so I switched to insync.

I can edit documents locally or online, I can set up sharing permissions on google docs… it works like charm.

Congratulation guys!! insync rocks.

Now, how is this Philippines based company going to survive?… we will see… maybe Google buys it…

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GTD: Todos, Task managers… PART 2

dani — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:55:46 +0000

I had promised for a while that I would write a second part to the GTD To Do review I did some time ago. Well, here it is.

It is not going to be so deep as the one I did back in September 2010, simply because I don’t have too much time to write on my blog.

Since Sept. 2010 the To Do solutions have increased exponentially. Now we can easily find solutions that are web based with apps for iOS and Android, and even more solutions that are focused for teams and they are web based.

I will focus on the way I do it while mentioning the ones I encounter in my way.

Objective:

I want a way to manage my To Dos, from my iPhone, iPad, Mac and web. I would like it to be offline.
I need to have access to shared To Dos with my wife.

List of To Dos and Project Management tools

For collaboration project managment and to dos, take a look to this sites.

Teamly

Teamly is a great tool for managing a team. It has private and group tasks.

http://teamly.com

Huddle

Huddle is more than a to do solution. Pretends to be a substitute to SharePoint.

Here you have a list of all the features: http://www.huddle.com/this-is-huddle/features/

http://www.huddle.com

Teambox

Teambox is more like teamly. Webbase app for teams. It integrates with Google docs and Dropbox, and they have iPhone app. 3 projects free.

http://teambox.com

Vitalist

Also based on David Allen’s GTD. Free to try. Take a look:

http://vitalist.com

My Favorites

Wunderlist

Wunderlist is awesomely designed. It has apps and web and for windows and mac. It is simple and nice. It is a todo program, and has collaboration features, which makes it a perfect candidate.

http://wunderlist.com

Doit.im

Doit.im is a todo that just released iphone and android apps. A bit buggy but looks very good. I like the fact that they have apps and programs for all platforms and web!!! and it is based on GTD (getting things done).

It is free. Give it a try!

http://doit.im

Manymoon

Manymoon is not nicer or has more stuff than others. What it has unique is that it is an app for Gmail or Google apps, giving it a clear advantage over integration with email, calendar and contacts. They have now the do.com domain too…

Take a look it is good that within your emails, if you are a Google person, you can say this is a task or it is assigned to this person, etc… Depends on what you are looking for.

What do I use?

Evernote

I am an Evernote lover. You can see it from my posts. I am a premium subscriber with 1000′s of notes, from all incoming mail, to my books, wine, receipts, to the todos.

Now the new iPhone an iPad app allow you to create checkboxes therefore in combinaison with Egretlist is an option to consider. The downside continues to be the due dates and repeting tasks….

2Do app + Toodledo

I reviewed the 2Do app in September. It is the one I use, with a Toodledo sync.

Why?

I love the app. It is one of the most complete, with location (on demand so no battery concern), tagging, etc.. it is fully syncronized with toodledo and:

I can feed it via emails. I can email a secret email address at toodledo and with some queries I can control where the to do goes, so a task could have in the subject of an email something like

Call Jim !! @phone #today
Finish the Report ! #next friday *ProjectA @work $Active ~1hour
Mow the lawn *Chores @home

Also I can syncronize my toodledo account with my iCal and see it in my mac.

Downside: No mac client (or PC…)

Reminders Mac.

With iOS5 Apple released Reminders. It is a very simple to do. I use it for shared lists with my wife. The shopping list and the shared list.

This is day to day list, perfectly integrated with mac (iCal) web (iCloud).

To share a list go to iCloud click on the icon.

Other

I bumped into a nice to do website… but not to manage your todos but to outsource them… take a look:

http://www.taskrabbit.com/

More….

ther you might consider:

Diddit – http://www.diddit.com
Doomi – http://doominow.com
niid.to – http://niid.to
Toodledo – http://www.toodledo.com
Remember the milk – http://www.rememberthemilk.com
HiveMinder – http://hiveminder.com
ToDoIst – http://todoist.com

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The World is Watching: Urban Intervention Goes Ocular

dani — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:25:38 +0000

How much more welcoming would a city environment seem if it were filled with friendly creatures? German artist Timm Schneider is filling Weisbaden with very strange beings that are not only unexpected, but also completely lovable.

(all images via: Timm Schneider)

Timm Schneider is a graphic designer who found that his job sometimes left him short on artistic fulfillment. To soothe his creative soul, he began creating street art. Graffiti was too limited for him, but he eventually stumbled onto the type of urban intervention that delighted him and his neighbors.

Schneider’s project is deceptively simple: he makes eyeballs out of styrofoam spheres and sticks them onto inanimate objects, making them look like creatures rather than things.

His art can be seen all throughout his city, adorning everything from public fixtures to products in shops to waste bins on the street. Once the little eyes are stuck onto something, that object is instantly transformed into something lovable and silly.

This type of urban intervention has helped to satisfy Schneider’s need for meaningful art, but it also helps viewers to shift their perceptions ever so slightly.

Instead of walking by an object and tuning it out like we do so often, Schneider’s interventions encourage people to slow down, take notice and see their surroundings in an entirely new light – even if it is only for a moment.

The newly-invented personalities taken on by these urban objects might cause a smile on the face of a city dweller, and for Schneider that is what matters. His interventions are all about pushing the world in the right direction…one pair of googly eyes at a time.

(via weburbanist)

The Books I read in 2011

dani — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:55:40 +0000

We are approaching 2012, and before that I wanted to make a list of the books I read throughout 2011.

I must say that most I listened to, some I read on the iPad or even on the iPhone and only a few were actual books.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t (Collins, Jim)
The White Lioness (Wallander #3) (Mankell, Henning)
The Man Who Smiled (Kurt Wallander Series #4) (Mankell, Henning)
Sidetracked (Wallander #5) (Mankell, Henning)
The Fifth Woman (Wallander, #6) (Mankell, Henning)
The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman (Ferriss, Timothy)
One Step Behind (Wallander, #7) (Mankell, Henning)
The Pillars of the Earth (The Pillars of the Earth, #1) (Follett, Ken)
Firewall (Wallander #8) (Mankell, Henning)
The Pyramid: And Four Other Kurt Wallander Mysteries (Mankell, Henning)
Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross, #1) (Patterson, James)
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High (Patterson, Kerry)
The Black Echo (Harry Bosch, #1) (Connelly, Michael)
The Black Ice (Harry Bosch, #2) (Connelly, Michael)
L’Oiseau de mauvais augure (Patrik Hedström, #4) (Läckberg, Camilla)
The Concrete Blonde (Harry Bosch, #3) (Connelly, Michael)
The Last Coyote (Harry Bosch, #4) (Conneally, Michael)
Trunk Music (Harry Bosch Series #5) (Connelly, Michael)
Angels Flight (Harry Bosch, #6) (Connelly, Michael)
A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch, #7) (Connelly, Michael)
City of Bones (Harry Bosch, #8) Connelly, Michael
Lost Light (Harry Bosch, #9) Connelly, Michael
Full Black (Scot Harvath, #10) Thor, Brad
The Narrows (Harry Bosch, #10) Connelly, Michael
The Closers (Harry Bosch, #11) Connelly, Michael
Echo Park (Harry Bosch, #12) Connelly, Michael
New York to Dallas (In Death, #33) Robb, J.D.
The Brass Verdict (Mickey Haller, #2) (Connelly, Michael)
9 Dragons (Harry Bosch, #15) (Connelly, Michael)
Steve Jobs (Isaacson, Walter)
Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age is Revolutionizing Life, Business, and Society (Jarvis, Jeff)
The Drop (Harry Bosch, #16) (Connelly, Michael)
11/22/63 (King, Stephen)

And Currently reading:

The Lincoln Lawyer (Mickey Haller, #1) (Connelly, Michael)
The Lost Science of Money: The Mythology of Money – The Story of Power (Zarlenga, Stephen A.)
Your Competent Child (Jesper, Juul)

So if I finish this ones, 36 books. Not bad.

2011 has been a Henning Mankell and Michael Connelly. I can say the former is my favorite.

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Inspirational Quotes

dani — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:06:00 +0000

Making Bread

dani — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:13:56 +0000

Teba and Toni were here for a week.

Teba baked some bread. Here you have the videos:

Quick poll results: the most useful intranet content types (world Internet Challenge)

dani — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:20:37 +0000

(this article is extracted from worldwide intranet challenge)

I ran a poll recently asking people to rate the usefulness of 9 intranet content types that add value to your organisation. 221 people (as at Sat Oct 15) responded to the poll and the results were surprising.

In comparison to the other content types, the usefulness of news/blogs was relatively well down the list. And yet many intranet home pages continue to be dominated by news (see tables below).

Implications for intranet home page design

If we look at the intranet home pages submitted to the My Beautiful Intranets competition of 2011, we can see that the majority of these are comprised of news, articles, latest news, internal news, external news, company news, announcements, etc.

Where is the space for these other, more useful content types?

Implications for top level intranet navigation

If we go further and also review the top level menu items for each of these pages, it is difficult to find top level menu items called ‘How to’ or ‘Procedures’. In fact from the 37 home pages submitted and the 13 top level navigation items identified in the article Intranet information architectures (50 in total), I counted the following:

26 organisations have News or News & Events as a top level item
16 have an About Us item
11 had Tools
5 had Policies
5 had Collaboration
4 had Forms
and a measily 4 had Procedures or a ‘How Do I’ heading

Graph

Yet if we look at the graph below showing the average response for each content type, we can see that ‘How to/procedures’ is considered to be the most useful type of intranet content closely followed by ‘Forms/tools/templates’ and then ‘Structured content’.

Surely, based on the above feedback, a good argument can be made that:

more space on the home page should be given to listing popular forms, tools, how to topics and popular lists (such as key phone numbers)
less space should be given to news
more top level menu items should point staff directly to these types of content, instead of putting them at hard to find lower levels such as Business Unit headings or user defined categories such as Survival Kit, Campus, Workplace, Laundry, Employee Central or Employee Resources.

Breakdown of responses by role

Numerical results for the above graph, shown by Job Role, are listed below.

Note: The 76 responses from the Other group are comprised of the following roles: Other 30, Content Development 19, Management 14, Marketing 5, Sales 4, Human Resources 3, Public Relations 1

Results are reasonably consistent for each content type between the job roles, with the exception being the usefulness of News/blogs. People with Communication roles rate the usefulness at 4.31, IT roles at 3.77 and Other roles at 3.89. This would seem natural as the people most likely responsible for managing the news would have a communications background.

If you want to view the raw data for the poll, click one of the following links:

View the results (Web page)
View the results (CSV file)

Measure the effectiveness of your intranet content types

If you would like to measure how effective your intranet is at delivering the above content types, why not participate in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC). There is no cost to participate.

If you would like to learn more about these content types and how to improve your intranet’s home page and top level navigation, consider attending aDesigning Successful Intranets workshop (USA & Canada only).

(this article is extracted from worldwide intranet challenge)

What does English sound like to a foreigner?

dani — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:19:27 +0000

Travel tips: who needs hotels anymore?

dani — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:42:17 +0000

Traditionally when we go on holidays, we used to go to a travel agency where they could either help us build a trip with their limited options, or sell us a package (something still interesting).

Now the biggest travel agency is Internet. We we create our custom trip, filter options like dates, type of travel and get listings of suitable options.

At the same time we can check for reviews of either the website we are using, the hotels they suggest or even the destinations.

The idea of the is post is to give you some of the tools I use and stress the idea that we don’t need to book expensive hotels anymore, that a new bree of websites where you can rent apartments wherever you are planning to, could threaten hotels in the future.

Flights

Kayak will let you search for the cheapest dates to go to your desired destination or suggest you cheap destinations for your selected dates. Kayak has an incredible iPhone app and a pretty good iPad app.

Alternatives to Kayak: airfarewatchdog, yapta, farecompare…

If you are looking for a set of flights around the world, then I have to recommend you the one we used: http://www.roundtheworldflights.com/

Hotels…

Kayak will give suggest you hotels, and it uses the most notable hotel booking sites such as expedia, booking.com, etc…

If you want Cheap Hostels and Bed and Breakfasts, the we use: HostelWorld, it is great for that.

A cool resource for knowing if the hotel you are about to book is OK with tons of reviews, is: tripadvisor (also for iPhone and iPad).

Another cool tool for hotels (specially for the US) is room77 a website where they show you the best rooms for a specific hotel, with the views and so.

but… who want hotels?

Who wants to book a hotel when you can find a great located and flat or a room shared at an incredible spot…

We went to Paris booking an apartment with hometown, luxury apartments for a fraction of what you pay for a hotel, located at the heart of Paris (highly recommended). I also used Isabel’s apartments in a couple of occasions, also great apartments, even if the website is not that nice.

Here is where I want to go: big websites covering apartments all around the globe.

The most notable:

Airbnb (my favorite): this one is the more professional website, the one with more investment in it. It is incredible the choice you can find there, apartments, rooms, everywhere!
Homelidays: this one is strong in Europe. You can find a nice house in the beach, with swiming pool for a fraction of what you would pay for a hotel…
Lofty: similar to airbnb but smaller.
and one focused more in france: abritel

Now if you want to sleep for free, then you have to use couchsurfing: a huge network of people all around the globe that will let you use their couch to sleep for free.

Extreme Sports

dani — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 08:27:46 +0000

US debt crisis explained

dani — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:03:46 +0000

101 Brilliant Examples of Forced Perspective Photography

dani — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:25:56 +0000

Creative Packages

dani — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 08:41:49 +0000

[Show as slideshow]

Move

dani — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 17:10:19 +0000

3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage… all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ….into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films…..

= a trip of a lifetime.

move, eat, learn

Rick Mereki : Director, producer, additional camera and editing
Tim White : DOP, producer, primary editing, sound
Andrew Lees : Actor, mover, groover

These films were commissioned by STA Travel Australia: youtube.com/watch?v=-BrDlrytgm8

Thanks heaps to Adam Fyfe, Brendan, Simon and Crissy at STA.

All Music composed and performed by Kelsey James (kelseyanne.james@gmail.com)
Soundtrack available here:
itunes.apple.com/au/album/play-on-move-soundtrack-single/id456257170

Music Recorded and mixed by Jake Phillips

Colour Grade : Edel Rafferty and Roslyn Di Sisto
Online Edit : Peter Mirecki

Assistance in titles and production design : Lee Gingold, Jason Milden, Rohan Newman

Big Ups to Michelle, Kiri, Renee, Hana, Andre, Ross, Bernie & Julie for your patience and support and awesomeness…..

Huge Thanks to :
Marco, Juliana and Julio at GAP Argentina and Peru
Ariana Cardenas, Toni Figuera and cooltra scooters in Barcelona,
Abete Zanetti Glass blowing school, Murano, Venice (abatezanetti.it)
Annabel, Rosario and Carolina (Pitu) in France
Juane and Andrea from the Princeca Insolenta hostel in Chile

Thank you all for your kind words and encouragement. The response has been phenomenal and overwhelming. We never thought this little project would reach out to so many people

iPhone augmented reality translator

dani — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 17:05:01 +0000

Word Lens — http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/word-lens/id383463868 download now on the App Store, and purchase language packs when you need them!

Languages currently available using in-app purchase:
- Spanish to English
- English to Spanish

Try the demo modes first to get a sense of the technology in action — reverse or erase Spanish and English words!

Check us out at: http://questvisual.com/
Now available for iPhone 4, iPhone 3gs, and iPod Touch 4.

Word Lens can instantly translates printed words from one language to another using the video camera on your iPhone. No network delay, no roaming fees, and no reception problems.

Word Lens is a dictionary — evolved. It looks up words for you, and shows them in context. You can use Word Lens on your vacations to translate restaurant menus, street signs, and other things that have clearly printed words.

Word Lens has its limits. Sometimes the translation will have mistakes, and may be hard to understand, but it usually gets the point across. If a translation fails, there is a way to manually look up words by typing them in. Word Lens does not read very stylized fonts, handwriting, or cursive. Try it, and tell us what you think!

Les Cépages

dani — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 15:44:58 +0000

Went to les Cepages with Luisa and Michael yesterday. 4 dish degustarion menu with wines, cheese and desert.

Posted from .

Time Lapse Video

dani — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 11:04:00 +0000

Terje Sorgjerd, the photographer behind the viral video The Aurora, has done it again. Here, Sogjerd captures the Milky Way over El Teide, Spain’s highest mountain. Click through to watch, and get details on how the video was made.

Filmed between April 4 and April 11, 2011, the individual frames were shot using a Canon 5D Mark II with a Canon 17mm TSE, Canon 16-35mm II, Canon 24/1.4II, and Sigma 12-24mm.

Just sit back and enjoy. It’s simply stunning.

The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

Sorgjerd writes, “The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide.”

I think the goal was accomplished!

Music is by Ludovico Einaudi, the song is called “Nuvole bianche”

(from http://shuttersalt.com/)

Mini Stove

dani — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 10:59:44 +0000

The real causes of the economic crisis

dani — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:14:23 +0000

It is obvious we are living one of the biggest economic crisis of the history of the world as we know it, and it is far from over.
We have heard many complaining and writing about the causes and what has been done wrong: the america housing bubble, the banks, the debt… And we are now seeing countries struggling: Greece on the second bail out, Portugal, Spain…, and we hear the politicians trying to fight defaulting by cutting expenses, augmenting debt and going into austerity mode.

I have another point of view on the crisis:
The money is more or less like the energy. It cannot be destroyed it can only change hands. Well, the money can also be created.
When we decided to go for free trade we forgot something. I believe the main cause of this crisis lies here.
The free trade model with the WTO does not takes into consideration the movement of people, only goods and services. Let me elaborate:
The beginning is pricing. We consumers in a capitalist world are looking for the best quality at the cheapest price.
An entrepreneur therefore, if she/he wants to be competitive has to either find a niche product or market where margins can be bigger or/and manage to get her/his product/service at the cheapest price.
With free trade entrepreneurs have outsourced production to developing countries where labour is cheaper. This has been good for the entrepreneur and for the developing country, and even for us consumers because we paid less for the end product… but…. this means that jobs are lost towards this other countries.
It is true that those loosing the jobs could move up the value chain and do something else with more value. The pie grows, at least this is the assumption.
Back to free trade. When moving production of this entrepreneur to a cheaper and efficient country we have not moved the person who was doing the job here. This person has to do/learn something else.
Theoretically if there was free movement of people as we have free movement of goods and services we would end up in a world clustered with regions or countries that are very good at one/few things doing those things only and everybody there being the best in the world at doing those things. In a way this happens even without free movement of people because we learn.
The problem with this is that we become very vulnerable as we depend entirely on trade and we are not self-sufficient.
An exception is food. Countries protect their food and agricultural sectors probably because of this fear. This is why the US, the EU and most of the countries in a way spend such large amounts of money in subsidies even if they know it would be more efficient to buy these items from cheaper countries. In the WTO a lot of the disputes and part of the reason why Doha failed is because of agricultural issues and subsidies.
So what happens? In our developed countries there are fewer and fewer jobs and the wealth is concentrated in fewer successful people and companies (remember the energy comparison).
Developing countries who benefited from this free trade are now consumer countries (We have also benefited by buying cheap). This rich people in our countries knew this would happen and now they are well established to sell their products and services there too. May be now switching production to an even cheaper country.
In theory all this is good: we buy cheap, entrepreneurs have more money and we help other countries to increase their middle class, but there is a big but. Is the pie big enough?
Wealth is partly spreading to this countries that are now consumers as well. Is the earth big enough for all of us driving cars and eating fish at 1000 km of the sea and fruits out of season?. I don’t think so.
This scenario it is not sustainable. We humans are really a plague.
Developed countries can have salaries 100 times higher than developing countries and now are competing with us at the same level…. In principle income should trend to converge with time.
So yes bank mismanagement, speculation, housing bubbles,… are contributors sure, but as I said I believe there are deeper fundamental issues.
What can be done then?
Governments should not focus on the consequences but on the root of the problem, and the problem is employment.
They should do everything to boost job creation: encouraging and facilitating entrepreneurship, aiming at being a better option for companies to stay local, by relaxing taxes, facilitating work permits, training, providing a competitive environment without subsidies.
What can we do? Expect we cannot earn the same if in other places for the same job they are paid 100 times less.
This should hopefully drop prices too or make some of us consider moving to where our skills are more valuable and cost of life cheaper.
Now for those very very rich, it is going to be difficult. The money is the power, and with money they can buy lawyers, patents and do whatever to stay on the edge. Regulation and government should then closely monitor and regulate the limits, specially after the atrocities done by the banking sector.

Most of us are like kettle. We go with the flow. There are few celebrities/leaders/entrepreneurs we follow. These include the rich who employ us, but who controls their ambition? The right laws and the governments.

What is going to happen?
I don’t know. Riots in London, disruptions in poorer districts, people defaulting payments, banks absorbing this defaults, government printing more money, countries not trusting the US money, EU bailing out Spain and others, or dissolving single currency… all this here. In the developing world? well, learning to leave without us. Us becoming the old economy, they becoming the new pole of the economy.

I see less problems for the US than for the EU though…

Note that I believe that free trade is good. It is fundamental to boost productivity and efficiency, it is just that is more complex than we believe, and it has been proven that as it is, it does not work very well.

This are just some thoughts I am writing from my iPad. I would love to see a discussion on the comments…

Facial recognition… the future of Social Media?

dani — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:34:40 +0000

Jailbreakme via web. Less than 30 sec.

dani — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:22:50 +0000

This is my iPad 2 3G 64Gb.
See how easy and fast is to jailbreak it. It is running 4.3.3.

MeshPotato – A Communication Revolution for Africa

dani — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 06:39:16 +0000

Mesh Potato could be a revolution in African communications.

The idea is just brilliant: The Mesh Potato is a new device for providing low-cost telephony and Internet in areas where alternative access either doesn’t exist or is too expensive.

Watch the video:

Blogging from an iPad

dani — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 08:03:15 +0000

Do you use wordpress for your blog?
Do you have an iPad?

Then you have probably have tried the wordpress free app.
Well, there is another app (not free) which works even better. It allows you to connect to flickr, youtube, picasaweb, and create rich text posts with photos and a much more flexible editing environment.

You can find more information at blogsy’s website

How To Embed Practically Anything On Your Blog or Website

dani — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:30:37 +0000

If you want the hands-down, easiest way to embed practically anything on your blog or website, have we got a tool for you!

The nature of the web is such that sharing and republishing content is common — and often even encouraged. The problem is, we increasingly store bits of our data on various services scattered across the web. Aggregating that content into one centralized personal hub can be time consuming — requiring user to manually copy text and links or upload files and photos — or fiddling with RSS feeds trying to make content automagically appear.

Twitter released a very cool tool to allow publishers to embed tweets in their blog posts, but the process is overly complex for most users, with plugins needed to streamline the process. Why can’t you just paste a link to a Twitter status in a blog post or webpage? It turns out, you can.

A Quick Introduction to oEmbed

A technology called oEmbed, in existence for a number of years, was built to solve the embeddable content problem. oEmbed is an open format, designed to let web publishers easily embed content such as photos, video, rich content — and automatically display other content by typing in a URL. Providers like YouTube, Hulu, Flickr and Vimeo all support oEmbed, meaning that pasting a URL for one of those services into a system with oEmbed support should allow users to quickly embed rich media.

WordPress, the world’s most popular CMS, has had basic oEmbed support since WordPress 2.9. Plugins for most other popular platforms exist, too. The problem is, keeping an updated list of the providers that support oEmbed and keeping libraries up to date isn’t a streamlined process.

Embedly: Secret Sauce to Web Embed Fun

In March, we wrote about the startup Embedly, which has developed a platform for converting URLs into embeddable content. Embedly is already in use by companies such as Storify, bit.ly and TweetDeck.

Embedly uses the oEmbed spec to add embed functionality to a growing list of services — 218 at the time of this writing — by interfacing just with the Embedly API.

When we first wrote about Embedly, our post focused on how third parties can use Embedly to provide rich-media previews in their own apps or to create their own embed targets. Embedly Pro also lets its users bring rich embeds to mobile users.

Still, the basic free Embedly service is extremely powerful. In fact, when paired with a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Drupal or Joomla, it makes embedding rich content a snap.

How to Use Embedly

Embedly has libraries available for a host of different client and server-side web languages, including jQuery, Python, Ruby and PHP. For users who don’t want to mess with writing their own tool, Embedly has built its own JavaScript tag and WordPress plugin. Community-developed plugins for Drupal and Joomla also exist.

Since the WordPress plugin was developed by Embedly itself (and we use WordPress at Mashable), here’s a brief overview of how easy it is to use Embedly to bring rich content to your website.

Install the Embedly Plugin

The first step is to download and install the Embedly plugin. Activate the plugin and you can select what services you want to enable from the Embedly menu in the WordPress dashboard.

Embedly frequently updates its service list, and you can run an “update services” command to get access to more libraries.

Paste URLs Into Your Posts

The next step is to simply enter a URL on its own line into your posts or web pages. Each service has slightly different parameters for how URLs should be entered, but in general, the base URL is all that is needed.

To embed a Twitter status update, for instance, you just need to enter in the URL to that update. The Embedly API page has the parameters for each service supported by Embedly.

Enjoy Rich Media Embeds

That’s it. You can now enjoy and share media from 200+ web services across your site.

The Tumblr support is one of my favorite features — simply entering the URL for a post will embed the content of that post. If it’s a photo, the photo is displayed; if it’s a video, you’ll see the video in its player, and so on.

On the Twitter end, Embedly’s Blackbird Pie implementation is a lot easier than any other method we have seen. The company even has basic support for Twitter Photos.

(from mashable)

5 Great Skype Alternatives

dani — Fri, 27 May 2011 08:00:47 +0000

Microsoft’s whopping US$ 8.5 billion purchase of Skype is probably good news for a large pool of video chat users, but there’s undoubtedly those who are worried about the possible implications of the acquisition. While there’s no exact clone of Skype floating around out there, a number of tools would still make great alternatives for those that fall into the latter category:

Viber

Originally an iPhone-only service, Viber (news, site) claimed somewhere around 10 million downloads in early May, 2011 when it opened up a beta for Android. The Android app adds a couple of unique features over the iPhone version, including a full call screen when a Viber call is received, popup text notification that lets users reply without the need to fully open the app, as well as the ability to act as the phone’s default dialer — for both normal calls and VoIP calls.

The VoIP service is free, runs in the background, and doesn’t charge anything to make calls over 3G and WiFi:

Just weeks later, the service now claims 15 million downloads. We wonder how many of those are thanks to the Microsoft/Skype deal.

goober Messenger

goober (news, site) is a multi-messenger for both your desktop and mobile device. Free services include calls from goober user to goober user, video calls, call forwarding to a goober user, and receiving calls.

Further, the desktop application integrates popular networks like Facebook and Twitter so you can keep track of all your favorite actions at once:

VoxOx

VoxOx (news, site) is like a combination of Skype, Google Voice and TweetDeck with some file sharing capabilities thrown on top. A unified Google Voice-like number will ring all of a user’s connected phones, calls are 1 cent per minute in several countries, and the service also has a mobile app, which was most recently demonstrated here:

ooVoo

ooVoo (news, site) lets you video conference with up to six people at once, and is especially neat because it also allows users to send video messages rather than emails if typing just isn’t your thing.

Although currently only available for Windows users, there’s some Mac-friendly software in the works. Further, the company sells several compatible third-party cameras, headsets and speakerphones, and runs its own servers, making an outage less likely.

Google Voice

You had to know this one was coming. Google Voice (news, site) provides free PC-to-PC voice and video calls, free PC-to-phone calls within the U.S. and fairly cheap calls elsewhere. The service also provides a range of other useful features, such as voicemail, SMS, conference calling, call screening and voicemail transcription.

(from cmswire)

Imaginative art

dani — Fri, 13 May 2011 10:48:49 +0000

Spring

dani — Mon, 09 May 2011 05:57:43 +0000

Coincidence?

dani — Wed, 04 May 2011 10:58:52 +0000

2011 Logo Design Trends

dani — Wed, 04 May 2011 06:26:27 +0000

Logo Lounge, for the past nine years, has posted annual logo design trend reports and they have just released the 2011 logo design trends report. I would love to hear your thoughts on the showcased trends.

Do these identity / branding trends effect you or your process? Do you agree with these suggestions? Have you noticed any other trends?

Logo Lounge: 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003
Disucssion on JCD: 2011 | 2010 | 2009

Disclaimer

On this topic of trends, one should not follow trends for the sake of following them. As Bill Gardner points out:

Every year, it’s worth noting that this is a report on trends, not a recipe book of styles. It is also not a finite list: There are other valid trends out there that are not mentioned here.

The report should serve you as an ongoing view of where logo design is headed. The word “trends” in itself can have a very negative cast, but in truth, trends aren’t bad. They reveal our growth. It’s our take on them that allows us to move even further forward.

2011 Logo Design Trends

Gradients

Juvi

Vibrate

O

Earth

Monoline

Series

Brown

Dandruff

Concentric

Loopys

Banded

Comma

Buckys

Fruit

Back Again

Isometric

Blackhole

PickUpSticks

Reactive

Medallions

Do these identity / branding trends effect you or your process? Do you agree with these suggestions? Have you noticed any other trends?’

(from justcreativedesign)

Panasonic Viera AR Setup Simulator app augments the reality of your TV dream (video)

dani — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:14:45 +0000

A cardboard cut-out, really? You pasted a 50-inch rectangle of stiffened paper to the wall in order to preview the flatscreen of your dreams within your new Vitsoe shelving system? For shame. A true nerd, nay, a real man would have cast aside those arts and crafts for Panasonic’s new Viera AR Setup Simulator app. Just grab the wall or pedestal AR marker from the printer and place it wherever you hope to showcase that new Panny. Then watch the app augment your reality through the iPhone’s camera. Don’t cost nothin’ but your time, starting with the 60 second video embedded after the break.

(from engadget)

Watch This Now: Aerial Photography Turned Into 3D Mapping

dani — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 12:52:30 +0000

The latest and greatest revision of Google Maps released at the end of 2010 brought an exclusive feature to the Android platform: 3D map imaging. Solid white 3D representations of buildings pop into focus when you zoom in and rotate the angle of the map with multi-touch, and the feature delivers some awesome depth to Google Maps. It looks even better on a tablet. Why is all this important? Picture those 3D buildings. Now make them a hundred times cooler, and you might be prepared for the 3D maps a Swedish company is creating with flyover aerial photography.

Technology once used in missile guidance systems has been adapted to convert flyover video into 3D city models. The company has already mapped over 100 cities, including New York. We want this in Google Maps yesterday.

(from tested)

catch the moment!

dani — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:57:36 +0000

Rome2Rio, a Vehicle-Agnostic Travel Site, Launches

dani — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 09:06:53 +0000

A new travel site called Rome2Rio launches today, the brainchild of two ex-Microsoftemployees, Michael Cameron and Bernard Tschirren. The site’s main innovation? It’s vehicle agnostic, in a way–you tell it you want to go from A to B, and it’ll tell you what combination of car, plane, train, or ferry you need to take.

In that way, it’s more like the “how to get there” in a Lonely Planet guide, points out VentureBeat in its story on the site today. Rather than piece together information from here and there, Rome2Rio aims for the all-inclusive experience of simply reading a paragraph in a guidebook.

And it goes further than that, too–to be truly useful, any travel site needs to let you book flights. Rome2Rio does that, presenting Kayak airfares, which you can click through to purchase flights.

Cameron and Tschirren told VentureBeat that the site is probably most useful in Europe, where the train systems are complicated and have varied pricing. “Hours of travel time and hundred or even thousands of dollars” could be saved, goes the claim.

The site joins the trend of creating technology that would make classic movie plots based on missed connections and poor communication–such as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles–obsolete.

(from fast company)

Guardly for iPhone: Your Personal Mobile Emergency Response System

dani — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 09:14:24 +0000

As mobile phones become more ubiquitous, they are undoubtedly changing how we respond to and record crises. We can report emergencies and call for help in real-time, rather than having to drive to the nearest phone. But we haven’t really built these networks out fully and taken advantage of all the power of the mobile phone to send text messages, phone calls, conference calls, photos, and instant messages – not just to the authorities but to friends and family.

Enter Guardly, a new app from a Toronto-based startup that arrives on iPhone today.

I don’t want to run a sampling of scenarios where you’d want to have to use a device like this. But consider this. Even if you walk around with your iPhone in hand (or in pocket), it still takes 8 taps to dial 911 (Home, Slide to unlock, Phone, Keypad, 9, 1, 1, Send). It takes 3 taps to launch Guardly.

When activated, Guardly is able to contact the user’s personal safety network (which can be a number of people via voice, SMS or email) and/or cal 911. It will keep you in contact with these groups so you can collaborate via conference call and instant-messaging. Yes, another group messaging app. But not really.

The app also includes mapping and photo-sharing and can issue a blaring warning sound too.

The app is free, but you’ll need to subscribe to the premium features – $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year – to unlock all the features.

(from readwriteweb)

OpenShot 1.3.0 released; cements place as the best video editor for Linux

dani — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 09:04:58 +0000

The latest version of Linux video editor ‘OpenShot‘ has been released with a raft of new features and fixes.

New features present in version 1.3.0 of the non-linear editor include: -

A new user interface and icons
Timeline and interface animations
Smooth scaling
Easier filtering of files/effects/transitions
Video upload support for YouTube and Vimeo
New 3D animations* (Snow, Particles, world maps and Lens Flare)

A full change-log can be found @ launchpad.net/openshot/1.3/1.3.0

As is tradition with a new release of OpenShot the developer, Jonathan Thomas, has created a new video to promote the release. Whilst it doesn’t show off the latest release to its full extent many of the new 3D animations are demonstrated.

The animated 3D maps in particular are impressive…

OpenShot 1.3 Released! from Jonathan Thomas on Vimeo.

…and the addition of smooth scaling will appease many of those who like to work with images in videos:

OpenShot Gets Smooth Scaling! from Jonathan Thomas on Vimeo.

Download

To install OpenShot 1.3.0 in Ubuntu 9.10 or higher add the following PPA to your software sources: -

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonoomph/openshot-edge
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install openshot
*Requires Blender to be installed
(from OMG ubuntu)

Signs

dani — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 08:57:02 +0000

Precise shoots

dani — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 21:02:23 +0000

[Show as slideshow]

Lipstick

dani — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:11:49 +0000

Posted from .

Amazon MP3: Cloud Drive and Cloud Player

dani — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:35:42 +0000

Amazon launched Amazon mp3 cloud drive and cloud player, for the US. You can shop 15 million songs and find bestselling albums from $7.99 every day. You can explore new releases and find fresh deals daily.

You can download a cloud player and start having fun, or just use the web.

easy easy photo galleries and more… with views.fm and dropbox

dani — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:21:58 +0000

Do you have a Dropbox account?

Then you should try views.fm. It is a web layer on top of dropbox that displays nice galleries, file sharing… pretty easy and straight forward.

Posted from Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.

Create stories using social media

dani — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:15:10 +0000

There are several tools where you just enter a twitter handle and you can create a story or news hub.

We have storify (beta) that turns what people post on social media into stories. Collect the best photos, video, tweets and more to publish them as simple, beautiful stories that can be embedded anywhere.

There is paper.li that creates sort of newspaper with just twitter handles and lists and even Facebook. A different and nice way to discover new content… See mine for example: http://paper.li/tokao

Google Debuts New Online Magazine

dani — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:42:24 +0000

Google has quietly launched its own full-length online magazine, a quarterly publication whose aim is to create a “breathing space in a busy world.”

The first edition of Think Quarterly, based out of the U.K., is a 68-page dive into the world of data and its impact on business. The first thing most people will notice is that it’s a visually stunning piece of work. It’s a rich Flash app with Google’s quirky sensibilities and the in-depth writing you might find in BusinessWeek or Salon. Google’s quarterly magazine is edited and designed by creative agency The Church of London.

The articles themselves are thought pieces about major business and technology topics from a variety of freelancers and contributors. Google was able to snag Simon Rogers (editor of The Guardian‘s Datablog), Ulrike Reinhard (editor of WE Magazine), and other journalists for the project. Many of Think Quarterly‘s articles feature interviews with Google executives and technology leaders. Some of the people featured include Vodafone U.K. CEO Guy Laurence, Google chief economist Hal Varian and famed psychologist Peter Kruse.

“At Google, we often think that speed is the forgotten ‘killer application’ – the ingredient that can differentiate winners from the rest,” Matt Brittin, Google’s managing director of U.K. and Ireland operations, said in Think Quarterly‘s introduction. “We know that the faster we deliver results, the more useful people find our service.

“But in a world of accelerating change, we all need time to reflect. Think Quarterly is a breathing space in a busy world. It’s a place to take time out and consider what’s happening and why it matters.”

It’s unclear whether the new online magazine is another sign that Google is entering the media business or whether it’s just a project to feed the company’s intellectual curiosity. Google doesn’t describe its newest project as a magazine or a publication. Instead, Google calls it a book on its website and a “unique communications tool” on its Twitter account.

Regardless of what you call it, Think Quarterly is an interesting and informative experiment by the search giant.

Update: Google says that Think Quarterly is designed as useful information for its business customers. Here’s the company’s statement:

“Like most companies we regularly communicate with our business customers via email newsletters, updates on our official blogs, and printed materials. This short book about data was sent to 1,500 of our UK partners and advertisers.

“There are only a limited number of copies, and they aren’t for sale or designed for anyone other than our partners – but anyone who’s interested can visit the companion website at www.thinkquarterly.co.uk.”

(from mashable)

Animal Kids

dani — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 08:26:05 +0000

Amsterdam

dani — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 10:25:21 +0000

Posted from .

Bugs bunny

dani — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:31:56 +0000

Postcards from Google Earth

dani — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:03:39 +0000

[[Show as slideshow]]

Chair drinks

dani — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:49:52 +0000

What’s next in location? Real time tracking? Glympse

dani — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:59:31 +0000

I have written several times about Foursquare, Gowalla, and all this check in apps that are more like games and that I find myself using less and less.

At the end of the day if I choose to communicate my position I would do it in two ways:

Using Facebook places to let my friends (not my followers) where I am.
Using an app to coordinate with people I am meeting with on our locations. This could be via Google latitude (that I don’t use) or, sending an SMS with the location with apps such as i-Finder or Kayak, or even better using Whatsapp

But now there is a new way, Glympse.

This app sends an email or an SMS not just with your coordinates, but it logs in real time your trajectory. You choose the time you want to be broadcasting that to the person or group or people you send the message.

I find it very very cool, just to say: “I’m on my way” and they can check exactly my location and the progress towards destination.

Looking Ahead to Drupal 8

dani — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 10:36:55 +0000

In the opening keynote for DrupalCon 2011, Drupal founder Dries Buytaert laid out what they’ve learned from Drupal 7, and his initial plans for Drupal 8.

Looking Back

Drupal 7 was a huge endeavor. The release took three years and had 1,000 contributors, with 30 people being responsible for 50% of the improvements. In discussions with the community, Buytaert feels that the things they did well were:

Test-driven development
Updating the development documentation as patches were accepted
Having a usability team
Taking development snapshots, especially at the code freeze stage
Having an accessibility team

On the other hand, there were things they could do better. Buytaert identified the following areas where he’d like to improve during the cycle for Drupal 8:

Many people wanted to work on a feature or a bug but weren’t sure if they’d be accepted
Some felt the release cycle was too short, and some too long — the main complaint was that no one knew when it would be ready
Lack of high-bandwidth communication
Better and stronger priorities, rather than letting them get muddy at the end
Too many critical bugs, there were 400-500 in the code freeze
Performance seemed like an afterthought

Drupal 8

The development branch for Drupal 8 opens today. People will work on their code in a Git sandbox, and it will have to pass through a number of gates before it’s accepted into the main tree. These gates will mostly involve the main priorities (which he’s dubbed initiatives) for the next version:

Performance
Accessibility
Usability
Documentation
Testing
No critical bugs

Rather than having a single co-maintainer, Buytaert will appoint an owner for each of the initiatives. This move, he hopes, will increase the project’s bandwidth and communication internally. Other focuses for Drupal 8 will include:

Publishing to any device, which means being more flexible in the types of code Drupal 8 can output
Pulling information from any source
Social features and the individual experience

Initiatives he’s identified for multi-device publishing include web services, contexts, CSS3, HTML 5 and mark-up free core. For dealing with any information, they’ll focus on interoperability, such as clean APIs and standards-based connectors. And to provide a “delightful experience,” the push for usability will continue.

To help large-scale Drupal users, there are two more important features Drupal 8 needs to address:

Configuration management
Content staging

Finally, Buytaert discussed the need to have a strong ecosystem around Drupal, as that is how the top players in techology today are driving adoption. To that end, they’ll be focusing on further improvements to Drupal.org and initiatives such as the Git migration.

This isn’t a short or simple list. To get started, he says they’ll focus on web services, HTM L5, UUIDs and configuration management.

(from cmswire)

Al Jazeera Uses Drupal and the Cloud to Handle Traffic Spikes

dani — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 08:48:12 +0000

As Egyptians took to the streets and overthrew former President Hosni Mubarak, millions of people throughout the world turned to Al Jazeera for coverage. The global interest in events in the Middle East drove record levels of visitors to the news agency’s Web servers. Traffic to Al Jazeera’s site increased by 1,000% and that to its Drupal-based live blog increased by 2,000% during the crisis in Egypt, according to a blog post by Dreis Buytaert, Drupal creator and the founder of Acquia, which is now providing its elastic service for the international news organization.

Previously, Al Jazeera’s site was hosted by a traditional Web host, but the demands caused by the surge required more resources. That’s where Acquia comes in, commanded by Buytaert, who also serves as lead developer.

In the move, Al Jazeera transferred its live blog to Acquia’s Managed Cloud service. Like other cloud hosts, Acquia offers elastic resources so that sites can scale up – and back down – with ease. Unlike general purpose cloud hosts, Acquia specializes in Drupal, enabling it to fine tune its servers’ performance to the CMS’s particular needs.

“Fast forward a few weeks, and the demands on Al Jazeera’s Web infrastructure have only increased with new crises across the region,” wrote Buytaert. But at some point the traffic level will taper down again. As readwriteweb pointed out recently, the ability to scale-down is one of the unsung advantages of cloud services.

Several other news media companies use Drupal, including The Economist, Fox News and Mother Jones. But regardless of the underlying CMS, news agencies should consider elastic hosting to handle spikes.

(from readwriteweb)

280 daily diary

dani — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 08:37:57 +0000

280daily is quite possibly the future of consistent journaling and the easiest way to create a searchable archive of your life.
Secure, completely private, encrypted and safe.

How could you put 280daily to use? Below are 7 possibilities.

Journal. Realistically keep a journal, 280 characters only takes 2 minutes!
Travelling. You’re too busy having fun to write down every detail!
Business. Keep track of your business life.
Sport. Running a marathon? Track your progress.
Food Diary. Losing weight or getting fit?
Target Progress. Record progress of a large task.
Backwards To-Do List. What did you get done today?

280daily: Sum up your day in 280 characters from 280daily on Vimeo.

Mars

dani — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:09:37 +0000

Situation under ctrl

dani — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 14:07:22 +0000

Hour.ly Lets Employers Interview Potential Temp Hires With Browser Based Video Chat

dani — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 10:45:45 +0000

Hour.ly, a New York City startup that matches temporary job seekers and freelancers with prospective gigs and employers online, unveiled two new features and partnerships on Tuesday with Trufina and Tinychat.

Co-founded by Brooke and Lynn Dixon (Left to right, in image below), Hour.ly has been in pre-revenue, beta mode since September 2010. The bootstrapped company’s newest site features should have it generating and sharing revenue in the second quarter of 2011.

Through its partnership with Trufina, Hour.ly will allow temporary job seekers to pay for and run their own identity and criminal background checks, so that employers won’t have to, and so that hiring decisions won’t be delayed. Hour.ly will also enable employers to conduct an in-browser video chat interview with job seekers — through its partnership with Tinychat — rather than requiring them to download and use a service like Skype or Jabber.

Lynn Dixon, EVP of sales and business development at Hour.ly, explained that her company’s early market research found a large number of temporary job seekers online — for example substitue teachers, barristas and cooks who might not require use of this technology at work — do not have existing accounts with (or even familiarity with) standalone video chat services.

Hour.ly started with a focus on temp hiring needs within the hospitality industry, inspired by Ms. Dixon who holds a culinary degree, and worked for a celebrity chef of the NYC fine dining scene, Daniel Boulud, after spending years in media and technology business development.

Among Hour.ly’s 10,000 active users today, she said, 8 percent are employers. Users can create a profile to apply for and get automatically matched with jobs on other sites with listings like Craigslist, or Indeed. Ms. Dixon reported that the greatest demand for qualified workers via Hour.ly, however, is split between tech and web design, hospitality and retail.

Brooke Dixon, the company’s chief technology and executive officer (and Lynn Dixon’s husband) noted that recent economic trends have driven people to seek temporary employment, yet existing job sites [ranging from Monster and CareerBuilder, to Mediabistro and Simply Hired] have not adapted to the quick sales cycle and price sensitivity of this market.

Hour.ly lets job seekers and employers build “dynamic work profiles” and job listings for free. Through Hour.ly, workers and potential employers get matched automatically, based on their location, availability within a range of time, keywords, multiple job functions that a worker would be willing and able to do, rate of pay, and experience.

(from techcrunch)

Celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2011

dani — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 10:41:00 +0000

We invite you to join tens of thousands of people coming together on bridges all over the world — from the Millennium Bridge in London, the Brooklyn Bridgein New York City, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, to the Grand Barriere Bridge joining Rwanda and Congo — to show your support for women’s causes and celebrate women’s achievements.

We also invite you to donate to one of the incredible

Find a bridge event near you and register, or create your own bridge event

Register to join a bridge event. Attend in person or virtually. Use the search box at the top of the map to find and select a bridge event near you. Or create your own bridge event: click the “Create new event” button at the top of the map and invite others to join using our Event Toolkit.

The Event Toolkit includes assets that you can take with you to the event such as hand held banners or use to promote it such as online banners or posters.

organizations that work to improve the lives of women worldwide. Support a cause you care about at the bottom of the page. See you on the bridge!

Support a cause that you care about

Empowerment
Economic security
Education
Equality & leadership
Health
Safety and security

Square circles

dani — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:51:30 +0000

Bush

dani — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 11:37:08 +0000

Room 77

dani — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 10:46:51 +0000

This website offers you a very cool service (in the US so far).

Room 77 is a site (and iPhone app) that helps you choose the right room in a hotel.

Normally you go online and book a room, and in the same hotel you could have very different room, one facing the sea, one with a building on the site. The idea is to have a database of the best rooms for each hotel… cool isn’t it?

Four-de-Bourg Chardonais

dani — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 17:10:38 +0000

Mas musgo

dani — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:17:23 +0000

Subway Animals

dani — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 15:24:58 +0000

In 1988 the british artist Paul Middlewick started seeing something else but subway plans in the Londonian underground. He took a second look at those maps and saw a forrest. In fact he saw many and many animals formed by lines and dots that actually make the subway map. From Dogs to parrots, passing elephants or turtle, they’re practically all there. He then started drawing them and these were pretty successful. He nows sells all of these Subway Animals on his own website called Animals on the underground.

Subway Animals – Bird

Subway Animals – Cat

Subway Animals – Chicken

Subway Animals – Deer

Subway Animals – Dino

Subway Animals – Dog

Subway Animals – Elephant

Subway Animals – Fish

Subway Animals – Fox

Subway Animals – Ostrich

Subway Animals – Parrot

Subway Animals – Penguin

Subway Animals – Pig

Subway Animals – Rihno

Subway Animals – Turtle

Subway Animals – WoodPecker

(from whitezine)

Internet Archive Partners With 150 Libraries to Launch an E-Book Lending Program

dani — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 09:47:55 +0000

The Internet Archive, in conjunction with 150 libraries, has rolled out a new 80,000 e-book lending collection today on OpenLibrary.org. This means that library patrons with an OpenLibrary account can check out any of these e-books.

The hope is that this effort will help libraries make the move to digital book lending. “As readers go digital, so are our libraries,” says Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive.

This new digital lending system will allow library patrons to borrow up to 5 e-books at a time for up to 2 weeks. People can choose to borrow either an in-browser version (that can be read via the Internet Archives’ e-reader that we covered here last December) or a PDF or ePUB version. The latter will allow readers to access the borrowed books from a number of devices, including iPads, laptops, and libraries’ own computers.

Lending e-books has proven to be quite complicated, for both individual book owners but certainly for libraries. As we have written here before, some publishers have been fearful of the move to digital books, let alone the move to e-book sharing, refusing to allow their books to be made available for lending or only allowing loans with certain on-site restrictions.

The publishers participating in this OpenLibrary project, including Cursor and OR Books, have a very different take on the future of libraries, publishing, and lending. “Libraries are our allies in creating the best range of discovery mechanisms for writers and readers – enabling open and browser-based lending through the Internet Archive means more books for more readers, and we’re thrilled to do our part in achieving that,” says Richard Nash, founder of Cursor.

As a number of startups spring up to take advantage of the lending options available on Kindles and Nook readers, it’s good to see public libraries also moving to embrace e-book lending.

(from readwriteweb)

Musgo

dani — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:13:45 +0000

Lanyrd Keeps Your Conference Life On Track, Via Twitter

dani — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:45:41 +0000

Lanyrd, via Twitter, track event sessions and keep up with favorite speakers — at all stages in the conference lifecycle.

Some newlywed couples work to produce an offspring on their honeymoon. Most don’t labor towards birthing a startup. But that’s exactly what British entrepreneurs Natalie Downe and Simon Willison did on their post-nuptial adventure. After traveling in Europe and Africa, the couple caught ill in Casablanca and extended their stay and booked an apartment to recover.

The pair have a shared love for building projects in their spare time — which is why, with all that extra time in a bedroom, they managed to create and release an early build of Lanyrd. Within two hours of its launch, Downe and Willison saw the site generate more than 14,000 visits.

After finding immediate success with social media denizens, the couple applied to Y Combinator’s accelerator program. Lanyrd was accepted and has since relocated to Mountain View, California to complete it. The site remains a largely bootstrapped effort, though the couple did accept the $150,000 in convertible debt offered up by Start Fund.

Willison calls Lanyrd “the IMDb of conferences” — except that its content is crowdsourced. The site asks its users to do the heavy lifting for them by filling in the blanks on each conference: sessions, speakers and content. The incentive? The same as at any conference: self-aggrandizement. Organizers will go to any lengths to promote their events. Speakers want to flesh out their profiles by adding past, present and future engagements. And everyone wants to see useful conference content.

“Conferences are traditionally insufficient for transferring knowledge,” says Willinson. “Longer term, this is about capturing the value of what’s shared.”

Lanyrd’s tie-in with Twitter is ingenious — and almost spooky. Sign in with your Twitter handle, and you’ll automatically be greeted with a smorgasbord of contacts and upcoming conferences, drawn from your Twitter relationships. You may see that Lanyrd knows you spoke at a trade show last month, or that you’re on a panel this fall. The site already lists 6,000 crowdsourced conferences and 30,000 user profiles.

Downe and Willison opted to use Twitter’s social graph — rather than Facebook’s, say — because they believe the “follow” has more aspirational value than the “friend.” You likely already follow the people you’d like to know, the speakers you’d like to see talk. According to Lanyrd, you’ve already composed a list of the thought leaders you’d like to bump into at an upcoming conference. So Lanyard is well positioned to find the sessions of social relevance to you.

Since users are encouraged to add speakers and their Twitter names to sessions, the speaker need not be a Lanyrd user to have a Lanyrd presence. On signing up, you may notice your conference history has already been charted for you by your Twitter followers, organizers or fellow attendees.

Next up, Lanyrd has its sights set on South by Southwest, held in Austin next month. The startup launched its unofficial guide to the show Tuesday to help users find which sessions their Twitter friends are attending, and stay current on slides, videos and notes.

The SXSW tool marks Lanyrd’s first real test at a major conference. At worst, the event will provide a trove of data and real-world experiences that Downe and Willison can use to better determine how to serve users while they’re attending conferences.

Downe and Willison describe the chain of events following their June 2010 nuptials to their present day found status as an unexpected, whirlwind affair. Their story, and their startup, are still in their nascent stages. The couple will graduate from the Y Combinator program in March, and may be forced to return to the UK when their visas expire. But location may matter little to a startup that has successfully leveraged the power of an international hit like Twitter.

Image courtesy of SimonWillison.net

(from mashable)

WhatsApp, Beluga and Viber

dani — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 09:47:34 +0000

There are a couple of iPhone apps that I started using recently. One is WhatsApp which is a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS.

A cool thing is that it is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Nokia.

In addition to basic messaging iPhone, Android and BlackBerry WhatsApp Messenger users can send each other unlimited images, video and audio media messages and even a map with your current location.

The nice thing they just add with 2.6.x version is Group Chats. It took me a while to find how they worked. Go to Chats and pull down. A menu appears on top with broadcast message and group chat. Groups could contain 5 people at this point, but it is great.

Check here:

For this you could also use Beluga which is basically for group texting plus a cool map to see where all your friends from a group are. The cool thing about Beluga is that you can create groups easily: a group for the ski outing, then see where everybody is and chat and send photos for free. WhatsApp groups has not the map with everybody but the rest you can do too, and more! share voice messages, videos, …

The third app I wanted to talk about is Viber. Viber is an iPhone application so far, but coming soon on Android and Blackberry. It lets you make free phone calls to other iPhone users that have Viber installed.

When you use Viber, your phone calls to any other Viber user are free, and the sound quality is much better than a regular call. You can call any Viber user, anywhere in the world, for free.

You could argue that for this you have skype or other messenger, but I was surprised to see how many people of my contact list (it scans it) had it. Also it just runs on the back, it uses push so you don’t drain battery.

Irina Werning 2

dani — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 09:37:01 +0000

I am LOVING Irina Werning‘s brilliant photo series ‘Back To The Future’. What a cool idea! And it’s good that this is an ongoing series, because I could keep looking and looking with fascination.

Irina Werning is a photographer born, and currently living in Buenos Aires.

Texture

dani — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:20:50 +0000

solowheel

dani — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 08:57:43 +0000

Like a stripped-down Segway, Inventist‘s new Solowheel is geared for the mobile urbanite. The “self-balancing electric unicycle” operates through gyroscopic technology, which a 1000-watt rechargeable lithium-ion battery powers. On a full charge (which takes about 45 minutes), the Solowheel lasts two hours—but the battery actually recaptures energy when going downhill.

Weighing only 20 pounds and consisting of little more than a simple wheel with a fold-up foot platform on either side, you can easily throw it in your backpack or briefcase once you reach your destination, or carry it by its convenient handle.

Irina Werning

dani — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 10:40:14 +0000

Came across this project today called ‘Back to the Future’ by photographer Irina Werning and just had to share. I think its quite genius.

I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today… A few months ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.

Steve Jobs Doesn’t Want to Kill Publishers, But Apple’s Subscription Strategy Will

dani — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 09:22:13 +0000

This guest post is by Tien Tzuo, founder of Zuora, a subscription billing company. Previously, he was chief strategy officer and employee No. 11 at Salesforce.com.

Publishers have been struggling for years. Now local newspapers, magazines and even the New York Times, that Grey Lady, are being treated like old ladies by Apple, stealing their pocketbooks while they’re trying to stay on a fixed income.

This week, Apple announced what the publishing industry has been clamoring for,subscriptions, in exchange for a whopping 30% cut. Clearly, paid subscriptions are a part of the future of all online media, whether tied to a print version or not. That’s what The Daily is all about and even AOL might one day go down that path (Tim Armstrong admitted as much on CNN). It’s part of the shift to the Subscription Economy that’s happening across not just media, but software, cloud computing, communications, consumer services, entertainment, you name it. In just the past year, as one example, my company, Zuora, has signed over $1 billion in contracted subscription revenue.

But something very dangerous is happening. Apple is now calling the shots for the entire publishing industry’s digital strategy. Think about that for a minute. While Apple is prescient and makes great products, it’s hardly a publishing expert. Yet, Apple is setting up new rules that could bring the publishing industry to its knees. As if it weren’t already in that position.

It’s not that Apple can’t save publishers—which I don’t think it will with these financial terms. It’s that its model completely ignores the realities of the publishing business:

The App Store and iTunes only offers one subscription pricing model. Will a single model work for the San Jose Mercury News, the Wichita Eagle and Runners World? The reality is that it’s likely going to be very different for different titles and subscribers.
Apple has no way to bundle physical and digital goods. Do you want to give up home delivery forever? Or would you still like to get a Sunday paper every week or monthly glossy magazine along with your digital version? I bet most consumers would like some combination of both.
With the Apple model, there’s not enough adequate ad revenue from tablet editions of magazines and newspapers. In particular, eliminating the Sunday delivery also means that local papers lose a huge advertising vehicle.
Consumers won’t stand for one subscription through one device. People want to consume their news on whatever device they have at hand—whether it’s a Blackberry, an iPad or an Android phone. Amazon is showing us all the way with their “Kindle reader everywhere” strategy (with syncing bookmarks to boot), and Google has set a strong standard in its deal with Time Inc around Sports Illustrated subscriptions. Publishers also know that content ubiquity requires platform independence.
As last week’s article from John Squires, former EVP for Time Inc, so rightly points out, access to customer data is truly the lifeblood of the publisher’s business model. In the Apple world, Apple is the one controlling this data.

To quote Steve Jobs himself, “A functioning media is vital to a functioning democracy.” I agree, and I think there’s a better way to use the genius of the iPad and other devices that enables publishers to control more of their destiny—and benefits everyone financially.

So what’s a publisher to do?

Take Matters Into Your Own Hands

Not Your Father’s Subscriptions: The industry continues to see “subscriptions” in terms that are far too simplistic. Yes, consumers will never agree to switch to a full “subscription only” paywall, so you need to have flexible billing that can slice, dice and package content by the month, the article, by home delivery days, by online, and the list goes on.

Make It Easy: Provide customers single click convenience while providing a PCI-compliantpayment and billing process. You need to be able to bundle, cross-sell and rapidly deploy promotions to capture more readers than you ever could through a call center.

And as for Apple? Can you redeem yourself?

Customers with Benefits

Freedom of Choice: You know consumers want both print and digital. This isn’t music. There’s no love lost for the CD. Most consumers want to keep home delivery, and publishers want to be free to work across platforms and devices. “Control” and “closed” are completely counter to the anti-Big Brother brand.

Help Them Help You: Selling publications is not the same as marketing the latest Black Eyed Peas song. Newspapers and magazine titles will get lost in the iTunes model. Just being part of the App Store isn’t enough. You need to deliver more merchandise value for a 30% cut.

The bottom line? The Subscription Economy is here, and Apple should be applauded for offering content via subscription. Unfortunately its model just scratches the surface. In the end, publishers should think twice before taking a bite of the Apple. This current plan will do more to hurt publishers then to help them make the shift to the online world.

(from techcrunch)

Chains

dani — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 08:48:22 +0000

Yvoire

dani — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 11:31:45 +0000

Sunrise in Geneva

dani — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 09:14:28 +0000

Tablets

dani — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:33:02 +0000

Tablets have been there for ages. I remember few years ago laptops with touch screens based on windows. They were sort of a flop. I wanted a tablet laptop back in 2008…

iPhone was the pioneer of a new generation of smart phones… and the iPad set a before and an after on the tablet world.

The iPad was launched a year ago and we are expecting a new version in the coming months. This new version will probably have a front camera, and they expect also a back camera, but who is going to use a 10 inch device to take photos? for me it makes little sense. Probably it will be lighter (not aluminium, maybe fiber or a strong resine) and will have a better processor (maybe dual core). The screen will be improved but not as good as the retina in the iPhone 4 (it would be too expensive).

Since the iPad was launched we have seen many promises of Android tablets, which never materialized. Only one the Galaxy Tab, with a very interesting form factor (7 inches), two cameras… very nice… but the current android version is not meant for tablets but for phones, so I guess it has not been as popular as expected.

Now we are seing many other tablets coming up: HTC, Blackberry, … some with new OS (fighting against Apple and Google) but most of them adopting the new version of android for tablets (so dual core). Now the fight becomes interesting.

I foresee that android will skyrocket and overpass iPad soon, even iPad 2. Lets remember it is not married to the hardware so everybody can build a platform for an android tablet, therefore bringing a lot more competition.

Also specific in the near future we will start to see devices targeted to specific tasks, like the nook color, based on android but just for reading, or even more into the future we will seeing the stylus coming back, specially for students, or just to take notes and draw diagrams more precisely than with the fingers.

I did not buy any tablet so far, not even an ebook reader. The iPad lacked the camera and for me it would be mainly a tool to do email, internet, video conference and reading.

Now I am waiting to see what Apple has to show for the iPad 2 and I reckon I will buy it.

I still think I will switch to Android in the future. Android honeycomb is in the right direction…

Google Search Chrome tips

dani — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:04:31 +0000

If you have made the switch to Google Chrome, as I did long time ago, then this tips are is going to save you some time:

Did you close by mistake a tab?
Click Command+Shift +T and there you have it again. (Control+Shift+T for Windows)

Going to the search bar?
Click Command+L and the cursor moves to the search bar selecting everything so you can just start typing

Synchronising Extensions, bookmark on all your computers using Chrome?
Go to Preferences, Personal Stuff and log in with your Google apps or Gmail account. You can sync bookmarks, extensions, forms, etc… across all your computers using Chrome. Neat.

You normally search using Google, but if you often search in other search engines, such as wikipedia, amazon, bing, etc… you can create easy shortcuts without having to go to their websites.
If you right click on the search bar, you have the option of edit search engines. There you can say for instance that the shortcut for wikipedia is wiki, so whenever you start a natural search with wiki in the bar it will fix wikipedia and search the next words in wikipedia. See the screenshots:

Lip Paint

dani — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 10:01:04 +0000

What have you seen, lively crabs, smart foxes, cute pandas, and other kinds of animals? Not exactly, because what is shown here is merely one thing: lips, and of course coming with various patterns. Isn’t that incredible, our lips now can create impressive paintings too?!

Posted from .

Fiat door handle

dani — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 09:17:51 +0000

Inspiring Home with One Garden per Level in Singapore

dani — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:06:20 +0000

The Meera House was designed by Guz Architects and is located on the island of Sentosa in Singapore. We consider it a daring and original project- after all, not many homes feature green spaces for every floor of the building. Here is a short description from the architects: The plots on the island of Sentosa are not large and neighboring buildings are built close to the sides of each house. Thus our strategy was to build a solid wall to each side neighbor to provide privacy where possible, while creating a central light and stair well which would funnel the sea breeze through the centre of the building.

The front and rear of the building meanwhile, terrace back allowing each storey to have visual or actual access to greenery. The intention was to try to allow each roof garden provided a base for the storey above allowing the layered effect to make each storey feel like it was a single storey dwelling sitting in a garden…..as much as we could do in the close confines of Sentosa island and with such a large building!! What a wonderful architecture idea and a call to sustainability as well ! (Photographer: Patrick Bingham Hall)

(from freshome)

The eye

dani — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 09:55:44 +0000

Valentines days by numbers

dani — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 09:59:14 +0000

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Leg Shaving Flowchart

dani — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 09:47:38 +0000

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Hengki Koentjoro, Jakarta, Indonesia

dani — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 09:42:15 +0000

Hengki Koentjoro was born in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia, in 1963. He is a graduate of the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California where he majored in film. He now lives in Jakarta where he specializes in fine art photography both underwater and on land.

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Love love

dani — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 14:10:47 +0000

Love Love is a sculpture created by French artist Julien Berthier that resembles a sinking ship. It’s a fully functional boat, well, half a boat created from a 21-foot yacht that he cut in half, adding a new keel and motor. Julien has taken the sculpture across the English Channel and toured it around Europe, attracting lots of attention from unknowing fellow boaters who offer their assistance before realizing the boat isn’t actually sinking.

Want to see it in action? Watch this video.

(from design milk)