Category: General

Absurd bureaucracy in many poor countries leads to the fact that only the rich and well-connected elite can get around the laws and regulations. Better than doubling development aid and cancelling debts would be to promote private property, set up a fair legal system and a free economy. Die Entwicklungsländer, sagt er, könnten die Armut… Continue reading Weltwoche.ch article on Hernando de Soto

Entry in an advertising agency’s blog: Können Sie auch altweiàŸ? (in German)

found this very useful link on speaking at technical conferences.

I enjoyed reading A.J. Jacobs’ article on outsourcing his life to India. I particularly liked the emails his personal assistant wrote on his behalf to stop receiving press releases: Dear All, Jacobs often receives mails from Colorado news, too often. They are definitely interesting topics. However, these topics are not suitable for “Esquire.” Further, we… Continue reading Personal Outsourcing

Bei der Ciba Spezialitätenchemie im deutschen Grenzach ist am Dienstagmittag ein Grossbrand ausgebrochen. Die Bevölkerung in der umliegenden Region und auch in der Stadt Basel wurde aufgefordert, Türen und Fenster zu schliessen, da zunächst nicht feststand, ob giftiger Rauch entwich. source: Basler Zeitung Online

It’s absolutely crucial for anybody in communication — and that could be journalists, TV, media, all of it, or marketing people — if you want to appeal to people, it’s absolutely crucial to understand what I call the reptilian hot button. If you don’t have a reptilian hot button, then you have to deal with… Continue reading interview with Clotaire Rapaille

useful: Test bed for WordPress

for future reference: One of the key reasons for Google’s success is a belief that good ideas can, and should, come from anywhere. Page and Brin insist that all engineers in the company have one day a week to work on their own pet projects. An ideas mailing list is open to anyone at Google… Continue reading Managing Google’s Idea Factory

Rick Segal’s advice: Avoid Web 2.0 categorization. And it’s not just an easy way to find funding. You still need the business to go with it. if you are working on solving a problem and looking to make money from the solution, focus on the customer and take advantage of what your ancestors, those Web… Continue reading Web 2.0 again

Quark’s “New” Look

Brief overview of themes in WordPress 1.5 Hat tip: weblogger.ch (update 21.03.2008) both of the above links no longer work 🙁

This would be very useful on Sunday afternoons in the ICE train: a sitbag

found this so-called meme map on Web 2.0 via Read/Write Web.

Web Design Cheat Sheets for Illustrator, Photoshop, and co. via Swissmiss

the numbers say it all: $26 In CASH per download. 43x current year revenues. works out to about $20 million/Skype employee source: Om Malik’s Broadband Blog » SkypeBay done for $4.1 Billion. My comment: i hope Skype won’t change for the worse. Cos I like the tool and use it often.

get a printed version of your Flickr photos at: Qoop* This might be useful for friends and relatives that live very *offline*. via kottke.org (* what a company name! I wonder how it is pronounced… I think you should always consider what the name sounds like over the phone, or in an international context, or… Continue reading hard copy version of your Flickr album