Chiperoni ku Basel

Month: August 2006

  • August

    for the record:
    Swiss meteo (yeah, the one that is in Swiss German) reported that this has been the coldest August in the past 50 years.

  • scrolling infinitely

    Scoble says:

    It’s my thesis that people will scroll almost infinitely. Just give them high-quality stuff. At Microsoft they did research and found most people won’t click on the “next” button. But, they will scroll. You’ll notice that the search engine at live.com doesn’t ever end. If I remember the research right they are finding that people look at something like five times more information if it just keeps scrolling than if they have to click next.

    There goes one of my arguments…

    Source: Scoble himself

  • well-intentioned, but…

    stumbled across this well-intentioned attempt to increase the salary of Malawi’s health personnel in Joanne’s blog:

    Sometime last year DFID (the British development agency) decided to give money specifically to increase the salaries of nurses and clinicians, the thought being that this would help with retention of health workers. Unfortunately, the government decided that the new salaries bumped everyone into a higher tax bracket and in the end, nurses took home less money.

  • Donizetti

    This week in Riehen: Opernfestival

    I listened into the rehearsal this afternoon. Great voices. And the stage is some kind of catwalk.

  • About the inhabitants of JavaPolis

    Linguistic nit-picking on a Friday afternoon:
    I noticed this phrase over at the JavaPolis 06 website (a login is required):

    17 299 JavaPolians registered

    And I started wondering why JavaPolian, why not JavaPolitans?

    After all, people living in a metropolis are metropolitans or have metropolitan characteristics.

    The same applies for people from Minneapolis.

    Maybe the ending for metropolis is different in French or Flemish…
    And what about the inhabitants of Atlantis, what are they called?

    As you can see, the benefits of a linguistics degree are endless.

    More linguistic nit-picking available here.

  • mouse potato

    Main Entry: mouse potato
    Function: noun
    Etymology: after couch potato
    slang : a person who spends a great deal of time using a computer

    Source: Definition of mouse potato – Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

  • on writing white papers

    For future reference:
    How to write white papers.

  • TV Sunday

    I just zapped into the making of Vitus on Swiss TV:

    Die VITUSmacher

    A film I really enjoyed. If you get a chance, go see it esp. in dialect…

    It’s raining cats and dogs in Basel. I hope this rainy weather will not result in floods and landslides in the mountains.

    open air cinema on the Muensterplatz

    Yesterday I saw War of Lord* at the open air cinema on the Muensterplatz. I was lucky: it didn’t rain! It’s a good movie and realistic. And the movie definitely brings its message across. Category: Must see.

    update:
    *an offline commentator pointed out that I got the film title wrong. It’s Lord of War, starring Nicholas Cage.

  • PR 2.0

    while I was blonking about the future of communications, some PR agency has come up with a press release template suggesting how to integrate Digg, del.icio.us, RSS feeds, as well as audio, and video links.

    source: MarCom Blog

  • Future of Corporate Communications?

    just stopped by at Techcrunch a few minutes ago and stumbled across this Yet Another Corporate Blog entry. From what I gather this blog was started by the Director of Corporate Communications at Yahoo.

    I’m just wondering how long it will take until you need to show up with a blogging reputation to get yourself a regular communications job. All you need is 15 people to get the news out. Says Scoble.

    But there is a downside to it all: the more PR agencies and communication departments start using blogging as an instrument, the more we’ll lose the personal voice aspect. And it’s already turning that way. Just look at the sheer volume of posts.

    This Tim O’Reilly quote in the link I posted yesterday sums it up:

    Blogging is migrating towards this whole attention economy vein. It’s people who are effectively working on deadline to be the first to notice something. It really has become a very specialized job that you have to devote full time to. I can’t afford to do that, so I blog on things that matter to me. And sometimes I don’t do it for two weeks.

    Adding Google Calendar

    Anyway, it’s nice to know that all of my WordPressing here at the Headquarters of Chiperoni.ch isn’t futile. Talking about WordPress, I’m currently investigating how to add future events to a WP site I’m working on. I’ve found this post discusssing the Firetree plugin. But there’s also the possibility to add a public Google Calendar via XML, iCAL or HTML and display it on your website.

    How to add Google Calendar:

    • Select your Google Calendar page.
    • Click Settings
    • Select the public calendar you’d like to add. BTW, I don’t recommend this for private calendars 😉
    • Select the format (XML, iCal or HTML).
    • Copy the feed, code or link.

  • business blogging

    for future reference:

    CIO on business blogging

    via Anil Dash