Author: nchenga

Get a blog!
Via this tweet, I stumbled across this article:

“A new study from Forrester Research has found a decline in the number of content creators across social networking sites, even while general use and participation on these sites has risen.”

High time to start blogging and creating content.

I personally feel that we are moving back into a media world where news is controlled by a handful. Simply ‘cos many of us (me included) have no time for citizen journalism.

Creating is more fun than echoing other folk’s content.

One of my fun projects is the boring flower snapshot set

Current projects:
- Website project manager – Adding features and landing pages to a Drupal website
- Testing a Powerpoint template for MS Office 2007 – I found out that PPT 2007 uses themes
- Planning vacation – Going south I think. Tas and/or Malawi?
- Learning about indoor photography – Asking Dive-angel how to take photos at an indoor event with my beloved DSLR
I am also planning to take a closer look at Open Atrium and Heart of Co.
29 September, 2010
Suburbia

Beautiful weather. Saturday morning. The most natural thing to do is to keep the window open, listen to the birds singing, and quietly sip some coffee while catching up with Twitter and Flickr and co.

You would think. But not in suburbia.

What is it with suburbia, that whenever there is beautiful weather, my neighbors bring out their noisy lawn mowers?

I live in a quiet, residential area, but this infatuation with noisy lawn mowers is striking. Yesterday. Today at 8:30. Probably lawnmower fanboys trying out their new toys… new lawnmower apps to try out.

Update 23 Sept:

Yesterday I was at home working on my MBA papers. Beautiful day. Sunny. Suburbia responded by bringing out the lawn mower.

Update 8 October 2010:

It’s sunny and warm. And the lawn mowers are mowing. Again.

7 August, 2010
Auto upgrade from WP 3.0 to 3.0.1

For some reason I couldn’t auto upgrade from WordPress 3.0 to 3.0.1.

I kept getting an error message.

I decided to deactivate all plugins before starting the auto upgrade. Ãˆ voilÃ . The install went thru.

I still had the auto upgrade plugin installed from 2.7 installed. Maybe that was the problem? Or another plugin clashes with the upgrade process?

4 August, 2010
Leo

I stumbled across this Swisscom poster showcasing Leo’s mobile app to sell a smart phone:

I started using Leo’s English – German dictionary regularly long time ago – in the late 90s. I think it must have been about 1997 or 1998 at my first full-time job after uni. The vocabulary wasn’t as extensive as it is today. And at the time many people questioned and challenged its reputation as a reference. But, working in an IT company, we had unlimited access to the Internet. And Leo’s website was accessible from every workplace, whereas hard copy dictionaries were few and bulky.

I remember lively discussions with a secondary school teacher for German and English. Her main point was that there was too little information on usage and folks studying English as a second language would be confused and misled by the simple list views. I felt that this also applied to most hard copy dictionaries. Regarding usage I – in turn- recommended Oxford’s monolingual Advanced Learner’s Dictionary.

From early on, Leo offered access to a forum where dictionary users could ask questions, make suggestions, improve dictionary entries, clarify usage, etc. And they added links to other language resources. Which indirectly helped me to find a job during the dotcom downturn.

Well, here I am walking to the office in Züri on a fine, sunny morning… just 13 years later… and Leo is helping to sell smartphones:

Related links:
Leo’s history
Online version of Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary

24 July, 2010
Powerpoint resources

Everybody uses Powerpoint. Yet it is tricky to use. I am currently testing and reviewing a PPT 2003 template file. In this blog entry I am collecting useful resources for reference purposes.

Some links that @handmade2_0 suggested:

Fixing Powerpoint Annoyances

25 Powerpoint Tips

Merci vielmol!

While searching about recommended font sizes, I found this page on viewing distance and font size. I always learnt the minimum font size should be 18pt. But it seems there are creative agencies that suggest 15pt.

In the backlogs of Chiperoni, there is a very useful website if you are moving PPT slides from Mac to PC or vice versa.

Any other useful sites for Powerpoint?

14 July, 2010
Fun Photo Project

Face your pockets! via Photo-JoJo

12 July, 2010
Installed WordPress 3.0

Message from the Chiperoni admin:

I just installed WordPress 3.0. Everything seems to be running smoothly.

And I found a new minimal theme to try out: Carrington Text.

Me and WP go back a long way.

23 June, 2010
Tour de Benelux
I am back from my 5th MBA residency. This time I traveled to Utrecht, De Ruwenberg, Tilburg, and Bruxelles.

Tour de Benelux without Lux.

It was great to meet with the class. And I really liked the lecturers this time.

The first week in Utrecht and De Ruwenberg and Tilburg was very busy with lots of late nights to finish assignments. And I didn’t really have any time to explore.

Bruxelles
It was fun walking around Bruxelles again. 17 years after I had studied there for a year. Although speaking French took getting used to. I don’t switch easily between languages.

Lots of good food. I can recommend:
- Belga Queen
- Bonsoir Clara
Tried this patisserie on Grand Sablon. The sweets were great but the service was very don’t carish.

There has been an explosion of chocolate shops in the downtown area. So many. One lecturer recommended Marcolini, while another suggested Frederic Bloondeel near the Sainte Catherine church.

Apparently Belgian chocolate contains less sugar than Swiss chocolate and it is softer (i.e more conching is applied).

All the Belgians we asked were in favor of separating Flanders and Wallonia into 2 separate states.

I went for a walk thru Schaerbeek where I stayed when I was a poor student.

The cinema was right across from the hotel. The same cinema where I watched Schindler’s List 16 to 17 years ago. Watched a couple of movies including an Argentinian film called El secreto de sus ojos. It was in Spanish with French and Dutch sub-titles. Excellent film. Category: must see.

I’ve always wondered why so many tourists travel to Bruxelles. I guess it offers good food, interesting architecture, lots of museums and it’s probably less expensive than Paris. By the end of my stay I was nearly persuaded to go back for a long weekend…

Some wild snapshots in the true Chiperoni tradition:

The flight attendant on Saturday’s 18:35 Swiss flight from Brussels to Zurich was very friendly. Thank you. It helps.
21 June, 2010
Online dictionary for Chichewa

I am really excited about this online Chichewa/Chinyanja dictionary, which I just heard about on Twitter (hat tip @kristungati).

Try entering Mchenga.

Select Chichewa/Chinyanja to English

Click Translate

mchenga 1.sand; maziko ena onse npamchenga = all other foundations are on sand (see: hymn 362, Nyimbo za Mulungu); expression: walemba pamchenga (lit.: you have written in the sand) = you’ve wasted your time; expression: kugwetserana mu mchenga (lit.: throwing one another on the sand) = reconciliation;

Read more at Clement Nyirenda’s blog

28 May, 2010
MakerFaireAfrica

This time in Nairobi, Kenya on August, 6th and 7th, 2010.

Follow the tweet stream at @makerfairafrica

21 May, 2010
More visits, more hits, more SEO tips

Food for thought:

(…) we should not be sacrificing our own personal ideals and our own internal moral compasses in a never-ending battle for position, for status, for scoops, or for access.

While 2010 is the year where many will find ways to monetize their online blogs, photos and apps (which is ok), don’t forget your personal voice.

Even if you have only 5 readers per day, you have influence.

There are enough echo chambers.

I spend a lot of time reading online. And there is a lot of repetition.

Don’t sell out to the latest SEO and social media marketing gimmicks. It’s a fact: google-bombing your way into Google’s top ten is getting more difficult by the day. Esp. for common terms. Even if you follow all the social media marketing advice out there. There is no silver bullet. Consider plain, old-fashioned offline marketing as well.

Remember why you started blogging and tweeting and have fun.

Stay independent.

I know why I am here. I enjoy writing. I like documenting my web world. The tools that I used. The feedback that I get.

15 May, 2010
Engaging customers
I attended a talk – organized by the ifj.ch, venturelab and FHNW – by Karsten Füllhaas on “Social Media: Wenn Kunden mein Marketing übernehmen” (translation: when customers take over my marketing). A well-balanced talk.

I like the Brian Solis quotes:
- Use of tools such as Facebook and Twitter does not guarantee people will listen.
- Engage your customers in meaningful conversations, empowering them as true participants in your marketing and service efforts.
And you need good content. Just blasting out your marketing message will not lead to dialog and engagement.

Slides (in German) for future reference

Social Media: Wenn Kunden mein Marketing übernehmen
8 May, 2010
Rainy

5 May, 2010
60 Prozent Paradies

Martin Gyger is exhibiting:

at the Bau- und Verkehrsdepartement Basel
Münsterplatz 11
Basel,

from 16th April to 20th May 2010.

Opening hours: Mo – Fr from 8am to 6pm

13 April, 2010
A snapshot a day…

I am always taking photos… Not sure how to take this hobby to the next level. I am very involved and I hope I can convey the fun and enjoyment that I experience while I am on my discovery journey.

Have a good week 🙂 Alles wird gut. Andra’ tutto bene.

11 April, 2010
Spring 2010

For the boring flower snapshot set.

5 April, 2010
Buildings to see in Basel

I stumbled across a list of places to see in Basel (link now broken) and decided to venture out and have a look at some of the listed architecture.

Freidorf Residential Estate (1920) by Hannes Meyer in Muttenz near Basel

See the full album

Antoniuskirche (1927), near Kannenfeldplatz, Basel by Karl Moser

I really like this church building. It feels very modern. The stained glass windows are exceptional. Highly recommended. More background info is available at Wikipedia.

My snapshots of Antonious-Kirche

Kraftwerk Birsfelden / Power Station (1955) by Hans Hoffmann in Birsfelden near Basel

St. Alban-Tal Housing (1984 to 88) by Diener & Diener at St. Alban-Rheinweg 94 in Basel

Schaulager (2003) by Herzog and de Meuron in Münchenstein near Basel

Breite Zentrum (2004), Zürcherstr. 149, 4052 Basel
The Breite Hotel was designed by Larghi and Stula. More details on the design can be found on the hotel’s website. The hotel manager was very friendly and would have shown me a room. Unfortunately all rooms were taken due to the watch and jewellery trade fair.

Residential Housing in a former factory (2005) by Buol and Zünd at Oetlingerstrasse 69 in Basel
This building proved difficult to find as the former factory is located behind an apartment building in Klein-Basel withia an inner courtyard. But it is an instant fave. I would love to live in a building like this. Well worth the search time…

Apartment House in Riehen (2009) by Pedrocchi Meier Architekten at Hinterwenkenweg 3 in Riehen near Basel
I am not such a fan of all the corners but it does look very spacious and the location is great:

School cafeteria by HHF

Gymnasium Kirschgarten
Hermann Kinkelin-Strasse 10
4051 Basel

Further details:
The city of Basel publishes this architectural guide.

Update: new building to see in Allschwil: the corporate headquarters of Actelion by Herzog and de Meuron:

Update no. 2:
Another building to see is Ackermannshof:

HdM: Basel is Herzog and de Meuron City.

Central signal box

Südpark by Herzog and de Meuron.

Messe Basel

Herzog and de Meuron archive and apartment building, Dreispitz

Another HdM construction in Basel-Stadt is the natural water swimming pool in Riehen. I really like the pool and it reminds me of old wooden lidos.

New in 2016: Kunstmuseum by Gantenbein and Christ.

And at night: Looks like there are LED lights in the walls. The museum opened in April 2016.

And another view of the new wing of Kunstmuseum by Gantenbein and Christ:

Opening in 2019: Meret Oppenheim building by Herzog and de Meuron.

Baloise Park:

5 April, 2010
On digital natives

Using the term digital native to describe all netizens born after 1980 is way too general. I found this interesting article discussing various findings:

Only a minority of students actively created their own content or used emerging technologies such as blogs, social networking and podcasts. And a significant proportion of them had lower levels of technical competency than would be expected of ”˜digital natives’

via Myths of age and digital capability.

31 March, 2010
Firefox Add-ons

Besides iPod Touch apps, another apps marketplace that has really grown is the one for Firefox. There’s an add-on for everything, it seems.

Here’s a break-down of Firefox add-ons that I am using:

Delicious
This a Firefox add-on I can’t do without. Very stable. Useful. Mark a text on a webpage and hit the TAG button to add a Delicious bookmark.

DownThemAll!
A Firefox Downloads utility especially for low bandwidth. I’ve used it to download videos, many Word and pdf files. Useful.

Echofon
I installed this recently cos I don’t like Twitter’s and Brizzly’s AJAX-laden, slow, error-prone web interfaces. I like the iPhone version of Echofon. I really haven’t used the Firefox add-on enough to form an opinion. It looks promising. An intermediate step while I look for an AJAX-less, text-only web interface for Twitter.

FastestFox
I really like the page loading function that enables endless pages. Very cool. Works for Google, WordPress blogs, Friendfeed and many other apps with pagers. I don’t use the other functions as much.

Firebug
Essential for every web developer and internet project manager. It’s either this or Web Developer. If you don’t have hands on experience with either of these, I will sincerely doubt that you have adequate web development experience. Very useful and highly recommended.

FireFTP
I don’t use this add-on much. I prefer Filezilla any day. But for completion’s sake, I’ve left it in the list. I haven’t uninstalled it yet. But Filezilla in combination with Notepad++ are hard to beat.

FireShot
Take screenshots within Firefox. I am comparing this tool with Screengrab.

Google Analytics Watcher
Links to my Google Analytics and shows the current no. of visits in the Firefox status bar.

iGetter
A Firefox Downloads utility especially for low bandwidth. I’ve used it to download videos, many Word and pdf files. Useful.

Integrated Gmail
I am testing this. You can switch to Google Reader from Google Mail within the content area.

Adblock Plus / NoScript
This is supposed to help block advertising and malicious scripts, but I haven’t really figured out the best way to use this add-on. Tips?

Screengrab
Like FireShot, this add-on takes screenshots. Sometimes it doesn’t work and you need to re-start Firefox. Not good. But it takes screenshots of the full page not just the visible area.

TV-Fox
I like this add-on. It lists and links to free online TV streaming from around the world.

YSlow
This add-on provides a measure of website speed.

The Browser Highlighter
Skype when it still belonged to eBay, automatically installed The Browser Highlighter. There is no easy way to uninstall it either. I can only disable it. #Fail

29 March, 2010
Link captions in WordPress

There is a plugin for WordPress that simplifies adding hyperlinks to captions

Many thanks to {a.} of Handmade 2.0 for sharing this info.

Link captions simplify the attribution of Creative Commons photos shared in the public domain.

Before using any photo, check the licensing conditions first.

At Flickr, these are listed in the right sidebar under the sub-heading Additional Information.

Please don’t just take, but contact the photographer and ask for permission. If you are using Creative Commons photos and graphics, which are free for non-commercial use, please follow the attribution conditions listed in the license. Usually this is the name, nom de web, or website address of the photographer and a link to the photo used. Contact the photographer to ask how he or she would like to be listed.

17 March, 2010
CMYK JPEGs

JPEG not displaying in MS Internet Explorer 7 or 8 ? I was puzzled. I checked the src link, re-uploaded the image…

Well, then I learned that JPEGs saved in the CMYK color model will not display in MS IE, while they do display in Firefox 3.x.

I guess saving JPEGs in CMYK is unusual, esp. for screen use. I assumed the file was in RGB, given that it was intended for the web.

More:
CMYK color model
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 does not display JPG images with CMYK color mode

17 March, 2010
Shadows

12 March, 2010
Rules, guidelines, research and more

hmmm…

70% of your tweets should share resources- sharing others’ voices, opinions, quotes, blog posts, articles, content and resources

20% of your tweets should engage in conversations with others, responding, connecting, collaborating and connecting with others.

10% of your tweets can be chirping, chitchat as Angela calls it, on trivial details or self-promotion.

via 10 Tips For Managing Twitter As Your Usage Increases | Blog of Mr. Tweet.

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.

Research on Jaiku:

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.

12 March, 2010
Stucky plays Stucky

Quick blog post to recommend Erika Stucky’s concert “Stucky plays Stucky”. Lots of fun.

MySpace

Website

Lots of Youtube videos

Kaufdorf car cemetery video

12 March, 2010
Spritely

For future reference

Spritely

10 March, 2010