Quick blog post to recommend Erika Stucky’s concert “Stucky plays Stucky”. Lots of fun.
Return on involvement
How do you master a new skill and become an expert? How do you leave mediocrity behind?
I am thinking a lot about how to cross the so-called suck threshold.
I have experienced crossing this threshold for some topics, and that’s where I want to be.
How to get there? John C. Maxwell writes:
If you invest one hour into a topic or skill every day for the next 5 years, you will be an expert.
Not always feasible. And getting involved is the hard part.
I particularly like Henriette Weber’s term “return on involvement” – ideas for marketing campaigns.
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The 3Ps of News Distribution
Via Cyberwriter, here are the 3Ps of news distribution:
- Portable : 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.
- Personalized : 28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.
- Participatory : 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.
Streams of Content
QOTD:
Successful businesses will not be everything to everyone; that’s the broadcast mentality. Instead, they will play a meaningful role to a cohort of committed consumers who give their attention to them because of their relevance.
QOTD
Like this (Too long for 140 characters):
Interested in technology
I stumbled across this quote:
We assume that people are interested in technology, just because we are. Most people aren’t.
My Basel bicycle tip
I managed to break the key of my bicycle lock last night.
Tomotec helped me to extract the broken key from the lock for free. Thank you.
Tip: remember to lubricate your bicycle lock at regular intervals!
Posted in Photos, basel Tagged bicycle shop basel, riehen, thank you, tomotec, veloladen Leave a comment
Twitter for the masses
I saw this retweet pointing to Jeremy Toeman’s article Will normal folks ever use Twitter?”. (By default that makes me un-normal….)
He makes an excellent point which matches my own experience. Most people don’t see the added benefit of using Twitter. The uses are difficult to grasp. Especially since Twitter turned off the SMS service for the rest of the world, which is the single feature that got me started on Twitter. Connecting the mobile world with the web world – at no extra cost – was a killer app in 2007. Unfortunately it didn’t last. Read this 2008 article, What Twitter’s global failure means for Africa by @whiteafrican.
In addition to not understanding Twitter uses, many people don’t like reading online. Reading deadwood media is more relaxing for the eyes, still more portable, less battery-dependent.
My suggested uses
Listed below are some of my Twitter use cases.
Search
Twitter Search is great for non-mainstream, niche topics. Many bloggers have added Twitter to their publishing toolset. Un-normal people everywhere in the world that are at the scene, on the ground have access to mobile phones and send out tweets. The data is raw, not confirmed, and unfiltered, but it gives a voice to the unheard and a different opinion from mainstream media outlets that dominate western opinion (commonly known as the gatekeepers). Google now searches Twitter and displays recent tweets:
The use:
In addition to all the mainstream media I hear and read, I read tweets on currents affairs as a supplement.
Traffic
Twitter generates traffic for your website, photo stream, blog, online shop. If you want to be noticed by the early adopter market segment, Twitter is the place to be. I would compare it with blogging in 2004 to 2005, when it was easy to google bomb yourself into the top 10 search results. One thing is certain, web traffic streams are constantly changing. Maybe Twitter will be discarded. The key is good content. Regurgitating or copying content that is not your own will not help you in the long run. Writing yet another review on an over-hyped topic is destined for oblivion. A good example how to build a web audience in a consistent way is Handmade 2.0.
The use:
Since generating traffic for websites is part of my day job, hanging out on Twitter helps me to figure out the changing traffic streams.
Tech help
I use Twitter to get feedback and help on technical topics. I share my knowledge and experience.
- Where can I get a copy of Ubuntu Linux in Blantyre?
- Should I use Drupal?
- Who offers training courses for Typo3 in Switzerland?
- How do I convert the character set in my re-imported MySQL database to UTF-8?
- Photography, web programming tips, etc.
The use:
Share knowledge, learn!
Connect
Still fascinating after 14 years on the Internetz: connecting with others. Discussing. Reviewing.
For example, every Sunday evening on German TV there is a murder mystery called Tatort. It’s an institution for some. A distraction for others, ironing clothes for the work week ahead. With Twitter you can review the latest Tatort in real-time.
The use:
As in the C.S. Lewis quote: We read to know, we are not alone.
Posted in General, blogger, marketing, tech, wordpress Tagged connecting, how i use twitter, Jeremy Toeman, search, suggested uses for twitter, suggested uses list, sul, tatort, tech help, traffic, twitter, uses Leave a comment
Technology Leapfrogs
I like this quote from Hacktivate:
We need to stop underestimating people. Don’t expect Africans to be content with boring old SMS and voice for long. Smartphones, droids and even iphones are much higher up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than we realize, especially if nobody around owns a computers, your schools suck, and the government controls the radio and newspaper. Africans have leapfrogged over landlines. They are now leaping over laptops.
(Desperate housewives, lonely on their isolated farms, also surprised the world by being the early adopters of the strange world of cranks and dials and operators that made up the original telephones of the 19th century)
@bikobiko posted a series of cell phone photos used by Community Health Workers in Malawi. One guy paid 8 bags of rice.
Posted in General, Malawi, tech Tagged cell phones, Malawi, mobile technology, smartphones Leave a comment
Connecting to the Internet from Blantyre
Just got back from visiting family in beautiful Blantyre. It’s rainy season now and there are regular rain showers every other day. Everything is green and lush. The sun is hot. The air is moist. And the shopping centres and outdoor markets of Blantyre are busy with holiday shopping. And except for a couple of power cuts and short water supply intermissions, I had good access to Blantyre’s “Big Three” from my part of town.
In search of the best Internet connection in Blantyre
To connect with my MBA study group, I needed an internet connection. Here are some of my findings and observations regarding Internet for private use.
Internet service providers in Blantyre include:
Mobile phone networks offer data services as well:
First, I tried TNM, but unfortunately they did not have any USB dongles in stock at the Chichiri sales office.
Next I tried Globe’s MAX 4G service. This promised the best connection speeds, but unfortunately the reception in my part of Blantyre was less than optimal. Instead of 4 LEDs lighting up, I only got between 2 and 3. And even then, the router showed a high fluctuation in signals. I kept losing my Skype audio connection when the signal dropped. When I got a strong signal it was speedy. But – due to my geographic position – the signal strength was unpredictable. I contacted Globe support and they wanted to update the firmware of the router and stated that they were some problems with Skype, which they had resolved.
If you don’t need audio or video streaming and if coverage in your area is good, then Globe MAX 4G is a good and viable option. But check the signal strength beforehand. Following the signal fluctuations, I started speculating about the quality of the provided Globe router, the influence of the weather, etc. When I returned the router, Globe suggested installing an external antenna to boost the wifi signal. At the end of the day, I think your geographic position and proximity to the signal decides whether this solution will work for you or not.
MTL (Malawi Telecommunications Limited) offers a wireless broadband product called MTL Liberty. A friend in Namiwawa strongly recommended it. The company is also advertising a new fibre optic cable connection in all major newspapers. I walked into an MTL shop near FMB in Blantyre to find out more about the fibre optic cable connection. The MTL sales person said that this will indeed connect Malawi to the Seacom cable and improve the Internet backbone, but it was not yet connected. He advised me to go to the MTL headquarters for more information. I didn’t have time to follow up on this.
I went back to TNM; this time to the head office in Livingstone Towers. The sales consultant was very savvy and explained the various data bundling options very well. I found out that if I have a postpaid TNM sim card, I can easily add mobile data services. The consultant advised me to wait another week and buy a 3G USB dongle. He said the 3G USB modem will go on sale on 30th December 2009. TNM is currently testing 3G in parts of Blantyre.
Automatic software downloads
Coming from Switzerland and a flat rate setup where I don’t care how many MBs are downloaded in the background, to a price plan where every MB counts, I realized how dependent software has become on a high speed internet connection. I was unable to download the latest Symantec Norton anti-virus update on my mom’s laptop via Globe Wifi at Chichiri because Norton timed out after 6 MB. I tried 3 times before I gave up. Unfortunately iGetter didn’t help cos Norton connects directly from the app. All kinds of software from Adobe Reader to Mozilla Firefox want to connect and download updates at regular intervals. It’s OK if you’re using a flat rate but if every kB costs extra time and money…
Software companies should consider alternative options for developing countries. Cloud computing is not yet available everywhere.
My mom had to go to SDNP to get her legally purchased version of MS Office registered *online*. What a hassle.
Flat rates connections are not yet very widespread in Malawi and usually only corporate customers can afford them. Most of my friends have Internet at their workplace or on their mobile handset only.
Opera 10
I strongly recommend getting Opera. Opera Turbo loads web pages much faster and compresses images. Thank you to Appfrica for their excellent article pointing to resources and tools.
Web design
Pages optimized for mobile internet and simple HTML load much faster than CMS-based web pages.
I was able to access the mobile version of chiperoni.ch at an acceptable speed. While other sites failed to display.
If you are targeting developing countries, please consider this in your web design.
Resize photos for lower bandwidth
Same for emails. My mom still connects using dial-up. Downloading 1.2 MB takes 20 to 30 minutes and many times the connection breaks. And she pays for the length of the dial-up connection. But, so many people from Europe forget to resize their photos for lower bandwidth. Please resize your photos before sending!
In Picasa 3 it’s really easy. Go to Tools > Options > Email and select a new size such as 640 pixel:
You can then email a photo from the Picasa interface.
Auto-upgrading WordPress and the .htaccess file
A pattern I have observed in the past months:
A couple of days after auto-upgrading WordPress, access to the WordPress blog is blocked.
My non-programmer’s workaround is:
- Rename the .htaccess file on the WP level. The WordPress blog displays.
- Login and go to Settings > Permalinks and re-save settings, or copy old .htaccess file content and upload by FTP to the server.
I would like to understand why this happens. Immediately after upgrading the WP install, there are no visible problems… but 2 -3 days later I come home to see that my site is down.
The web is evolving
Snapshot from Budapest
A quick snapshot that I took on my daily trek to class:
Posted in Photos, flickr Tagged budapest, from buda side, hungary, parliament building, snapshot, taken from buda side Leave a comment
Wordpress Woes
I am having some problems with the .htaccess file on the Wordpress level. I tried regenerating the permalinks. Hope that will help for a while.
A couple of days ago there was a lonely s at the end of the file. Amakhala scared.
And:
I am seeing a lot of “MySQL server has gone away” error messages in different context,
e.g. when I updated the WP install, when I try to access the website, in the right-hand area displaying categories.
I asked the hosting company and they pointed me to this link (which I haven’t tried yet).
If you have any hints please let me know.
Posted in tech, wordpress Tagged dont understand, help needed, htaccess, MySQL server has gone away, wordpress, worried Leave a comment
Analog Tweet
I found this text on the back of a signpost in downtown Basel:
An example of an analog tweet…
Posted in Photos, basel Tagged analog tweet, street art, street tweet, twitter art, twitter comparison Leave a comment
How to Backup your Twitter World
As many of you probably learnt by experience, Twitter Search only shows results for the last couple of days.
I guess, one of the preliminary assumptions is that you consider your collection of 140-character-long phrases valuable. And would like to search thru them from time to time.
Friendfeed
One easy workaround is to add your Twitter stream into Friendfeed. Friendfeed – currently in a difficult interim situation since the Facebook announcement – still has the best real-time search. It is a great way to archive your tweets and make them searchable.
Import OPML file into Google Reader
These days, bloggers don’t talk much about OPML anymore. OPML files (and the legitimate re-use thereof) were widely discussed in the early days of the Swiss blogosphere.
It seems many apps try to shield us from the underlying technical issues regarding import/export and backups.
Dave Winer shows how to extract the feeds of your Twitter world using an OPML tool.
My Twitter world is accessible at http://tw.opml.org/get?user=nchenga&folder=1.
Next, I can download this file to my desktop.
And upload it into Google Reader:
- Go to Manage Subscriptions
- Select Import/Export
- Select your OPML file and click Upload
It puts all of the newly imported feeds into a separate folder. ReadWriteWeb has a detailed how to.
The only downside is that you don’t want to re-read all of the tweets in your Google Reader. Especially if you’re reading other RSS streams within the same account.
Offline RSS Reader
You can use the OPML file to create an offline backup within your favorite desktop RSS reader. I use the feed reader in Opera 10 to pull a copy of my RSS feeds together. Advantage: doesn’t interfere with my online reading.
Twistory
Another fun tool is Twistory, which adds your Twitter prose to your Google Calendar. It offers an iCal feed. And you can time events by adding t and /t to your posts.
Timetracking tagging: start your tweets with both t or /t and Twistory will keep track of what you’re doing.
Posted in General, blogger, tech Tagged dave winer, friendfeed, google reader, Opera, opml, twistory, twitter backup 1 Comment
Chiperoni goes Mobile (kind of)
As part of my ongoing research regarding internet access via low bandwidth connections, I saw App+frica displaying a mobile version at http://appfrica.net/blog/.
I installed the same MobilePress plugin and activated it a few minutes ago. Based on the plugin description, it should detect if you’re accessing the website with a mobile device and display a version optimized for iPhone and Barackberrys and others.
A couple of Mobilepress URL hooks to remember:
- ?mobile – display mobile version
- ?nomobile – render the standard WordPress theme / normal blog.
- ?killsession – kill any session data stored and render the correct version of a blog, based on browser / device type
In addition I just downloaded the latest Wordpress app for my low and humble iPod Touch. According to @whiteafrican it is much improved compared to the last version.
Posted in blogger, blogging, tech, wordpress Tagged mobile access, mobilepress, wordpress, wordpress app for iphone Leave a comment
Today’s link
Stumbled across this – very high-level but might be a useful reminder. Esp. the remark “life is short” in bullet no. 5.
1. Don’t worry about being perfect. There are never right or wrong answers to complex business decisions. The best that you can do as a leader is to gather all of the information that you can (in a timely manner), do a cost-benefit analysis of potential options, use your best judgment — and then go for it.
2. Learn to live with failure. Great salespeople are the ones who get rejected the most often. They just ask for the order more than the other salespeople. You are going to make mistakes. You are human. Learn from these mistakes and move on.
3. After you make the final decision — commit! Don’t continually second-guess yourself. Great leaders communicate with a sense of belief in what they are doing and with positive expectations toward the achievement of their vision.
4. Show courage on the outside — even if you don’t always feel it on the inside. Everyone is afraid sometimes. If you are a leader, your direct reports will read your every expression. If you show a lack of courage, you will begin to damage your direct reports’ self-confidence.
5. Find happiness and contentment in your work. Life is short. My extensive research indicates that we are all going to die anyway. Do your best. Follow your heart. When you win, celebrate. When you lose, just start over the next day.
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Impatient new-media pundits
Quote of the day:
One of the things slowing tech uptake by the rest of society is that you new-media pundits get so impatient you have moved on to the next thing before we’ve had a chance to digest your last idea.
via Scoble’s “Why I don’t use Google Reader anymore”
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Rules, guidelines, research and more
hmmm…
All these rules, guidelines. Not sure I endorse any of them. I assume their target audiences are people tweeting for business reasons.
Twitter is many things to many different people. What works for you may not work for the next person. Or do you plan your conversations to include “70% of resource sharing”?
But by quoting this guideline, I am showing that this kind of article works. 10 steps to success… Follow this method and success will be yours.
Apparently… who knew… Research has found… Microbloggers are really boring… The article shows 3 things: either there were no linguists on the research team, otherwise they would know that a lot of content that is sent across the communication channel is “meaningless in itself” but serves the purpose of keeping the communication going. Or secondly if there was a linguist on the research team he or she failed to make this connection. And thirdly the amazing culture of searching (errr… by default gooogling) for everything. I entered the new disclaimer of this site as a search phrase “This is a very boring personal website” to find the article on Jaiku research.
In was für einer Welt lebe ich eigentlich.
Personal projects:
The MBA project is moving along. It was quite an experience to be on-campus at a large state university. One thing that struck me most was the vast expanses of ruralness. When I think of the US from my Euro-centric perspective, it comprises sprawling big cities like San Francisco, New York, Miami, Chicago. Influenced by visits and movies. But 2 weeks in West Lafayette have changed this image. Lots of farmland between O’Hare International Airport and the uni.
I learned – during one of the cultural classes – that China has 143 cities with a population of over 1 million. Compared with the US where there are about 52 metropolitan areas with a population of over 1 million.
Somehow I find it both comforting and scary that the superpower of the world is based on large expanses of small and mid-sized towns that depend on farming.
Compare this with the increasing pressures of urbanization in many parts of the world.
The big three: Land, water, food.
Another amazing fact from a euro-centric perspective: The wage rate in Indiana dropped from $30 to $15 within one year. That number alone shows the crisis.
New cam: Going to get an S90 to replace my overexposing Ixus 900 Ti.
Flickr wall: I want to build a Flickr wall based on this example. Wish me good luck…
Free advice for a Twitter/Google/Facebook/Friendfeed world…
And a finally word of advice: Remember that all of your precious UGC data that is stored at external, commercial sites may be gone tomorrow. Don’t take 5 years to learn this.