Chiperoni ku Basel

Category: tech

  • Mozilla Thunderbird plugins

    I installed Sunbird and Sugarbird (aka Asertiva Extension for Sugar CRM) for Thunderbird. Even though I’ll probably need to go thru the process again in a couple of weeks.

  • DSLR fun

    Listening in to several videos on DSLRs and lenses…

    Nikkor DX lens tour:

    Nikon D80:

    Canon EOS 400D:

    buon weekend,
    nchenga

  • sakku.worker

    haben wollen

    Via this Flickr comment I heard that there’s a Sakku competition for bloggers…

    I already blogged about Sakku bags some time ago. And I would love to win a bag. As a knowledge worker and digital nomad, I believe I’m the right candidate 🙂

    I’ll write a review.

    Take photos.

    And test the solar cells where ever I go.

  • Pitfalls of Building Social Web Applications

    for future reference:
    Common Pitfalls of Building Social Web Applications and How to Avoid Them

  • On Mashups

    for future reference:
    ProgrammableWeb: How to Make Your Own Web Mashup

  • Bringing technology to Africa

    Here’s a cross-reference to Mike McKay’s blog post on TED and Africa:
    Hacktivate » TED gives Africans free laptops

  • nchenga’s Web 2.0 roundup: Links and comments

    How many online services did you sign up for, use once or twice, and then never return again?

    In my case, that would be lots of ’em. Some of them are really popular services like Digg or Mister Wong, where I just haven’t found a personal use case, or I’ve got a substitute or workaround. While some of them have disappeared, like leze.de or gada.be.

    Here’s an idea for a blog post which I’ll update as I go along and find more unused websites in the backwaters of my Internet history.

    Sites I tried, but which I don’t use anymore:

    • Digg
    • Mister Wong (I keep forgetting the url and typing mrwong.de)
    • MyBlogLog (I wanted to un-subscribe, but I didn’t see the corresponding info, and now I’m too lazy and too busy. I don’t like the automatic delurking. Sometimes I want to lurk around for a while to get an opinion on the site…).
    • Stumbleupon (I tried this once or twice, got really frustrated by the navigation and the tool bar, and couldn’t find a way to un-subscribe and leave).
    • Web.de (changed the policy for their free email service to make it unusable, a clear goodbye from my side.)
    • Blog-city.com (the hosted blog service I first tried out when I started blogging in 2003, at the time it had long and frustrating upgrade cycles, the reason that I moved to my own installation of WordPress)
    • Blogger (I read some Blogger sites… but I hate it if I need to sign in into Blogger to leave a comment, I’ve got about 2 Blogger logins floating around and I just find it cumbersome).
    • Bloglines

    Sites or services that I visit regularly:

    • Flickr
    • del.icio.us
    • Gmail, Gtalk…
    • Wikipedia
    • Technorati and blogsearch.google.com (mainly due to lack of alternatives, I think there’s lots of room for improvement in both)
    • Slug.ch and blogug.ch (for the Swiss perspective)
    • Youtube, Revver
    • Skype (I recently signed up for SkypeOut and used it to call Malawi, very good sound quality, comparable or lower pricing compared to telecom carriers)

    On the content side of things, I read:

    • Scoble
    • Dooce (you’ve got to have at least one mummy blogger in your Webtwodotoh portfolio)
    • Metablog.ch (although recently this blog has slowed down a bit… I guess, Matthias has a lot of other duties)
    • Climb to the Stars
    • Gapingvoid (all time favorite)
    • Google News, and I’ve set up Google Alerts for a couple of keywords.
    • WordPress and WordPress.com (WordPress goodness hosted for you)
    • Lorelle on WordPress

    My favorite RSS feed by far:

    • Dilbert

    New explorations:

    • Twitter
    • Stickis
    • Vox.com (they offer a smooth integration into external sites like Flickr. Pretty cool!)
    • Jumpcut (downside: another Yahoo! company…)
    • Afrigator (Blog aggregator for African sites, I like their crocodile icon!)

  • Google Street Views

    With all of the FOG posts regarding Google Maps street views, I decided to have a closer look. It’s a cool tool. I like it very much and can easily imagine using a Wifi-enabled smart phone and this to navigate thru cities unknown.

    e.g. Whole Foods on 4th near Moscone – an essential alternative to conference food during my recent visit.

    whole foods.

    I remember there was a North German company that had similar visions back in dotcom times (I faintly remember a presentation at the Conti Technology Park in Hannover, but I forget the company name). And at LIFT 07 there was a workshop where people headed out onto the streets of Geneva with their GPS.

    Side comment: negative news and criticism often raises awareness for a new service or product just as much as good news. Maybe even more. In a TV interview I heard recently, a Phonak official claimed that the company profited immensely from last year’s “Tour de France” sponsorship despite the Floyd Landis doping scandal.

    Buon weekend,
    nchenga

  • Fiber and solar-powered towers

    An American tech entrepreneur, dreams of bringing the Internet to Rwanda.

    via Lunch over IP.

  • Blog resource links

    Here are a couple of starting points:

    Blog hosting

    Three possibilities:

    1. Sign up with a hosted service such as WordPress.com, Typepad or Vox (fastest cos it takes all of 5 mins).
    2. Sign up with a webspace provider that already includes blog software in their package.
    3. Sign up with a webspace provider that offers PHP 4.x or later and MySQL and install WordPress on your own.

    WordPress.org documentation:

    Installing WordPress on your own server

    The install documentation covers most setups. Installing a local copy using XAMPP or MAMP is useful especially during the design phase.

    Other useful WordPress.org docs:

    Importing content from other blogs.

    Posting entries by email. As mentioned during the talk I set up a cronjob on my server, which checked at regular intervals if there was any email to post.

    Templates galore:

    As mentioned, setting up WordPress is fast, finding the right design theme will take a little bit longer… cos there are so many out there.

    I like Scott’s collection of minimal designs.

    My advice: get a theme which offers the structure you’re loooking for and then customize the CSS file.

    Flickery goodness:

    I cross-link to Flickr to add pictures to my blog, but you can also upload files and photos directamente into WordPress. Please note: you’ll need to resize for the web and your layout. I’m lazy: I use Flickr and Quickr Pickr.

    You can also set up Flickr to post pics directly to your blog. Within Flickr, go to Your Account > Extending Flickr . Click edit in the section labelled Your Blogs and follow the instructions displayed.

    Here’s an advanced user guide for Flickr, describing how you can post pics per email, etc.

    On commenting:

    All comments at this site land in the moderation queue and I check the queue once a day. I don’t always reply or write back immediately. As you’ll probably notice in the next few weeks, sometimes I don’t have the time. But if I do, I’ll usually reply online at the source – in my blog, if it’s a comment on my site, or if it’s a trackback, i’ll go see their post and add a comment in their blog.

    I think the main point you need to get across is that you reserve the right to edit or delete comments. This is especially important if you’re moving into business blogging.

    There’s the Lifehacker’s guide to commenting to refer to.

    Commenting is a way to increase traffic and expand your network.

    And remember to activate Akismet or other comment spam plugins.

    RSS feeds:

    Every WordPress blog offers a feed for entries and a feed for comments. At Chip this is:

    http://www.chiperoni.ch/wordpress/feed/

    http://www.chiperoni.ch/wordpress/comments/feed/

    Again, there are numerous RSS feed readers. And your choice of reader will depend on your personal reading preferences. I use the newsfeeds reader included within Opera. Thunderbird also includes a feed reader per default. And there are numerous feed readers for FireFox. Please note: some media news feeds (e.g. BBC) send out entires every minute and will easily swamp you.

    More high-level infos on the concept of RSS are available in this Wikipedia article.

    Further background links:

    The Corporate Weblog Manifesto by Scobleizer

    Ten Tips For A Better Weblog

    How To Blog And Not Lose Your Job

    😉

  • Beryl

    for future reference (when I get myself an Ubuntu laptop):
    Beryl-project.org

  • Podcasting: The Beginner’s Guide

    for future reference:
    Podcasting: The Beginner’s Guide

    If you have any tips on good and inexpensive digital recorders or mics, feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment.

    Inspired by Pauline’s podcast interview…

  • CSS Positioning

    Useful reminder when divs start getting more and more confusing:
    CSS Positioning

  • The Nihilist Impulse

    For future reference:
    Eurozine article by Geert Lovink on weblogs

    via Bruno Giussani

  • Adding a Flickr gallery to my website

    Like Stefan, I’m looking for a simple way to display my Flickr photos on my website. A couple of weeks ago I had a short look at the tan tan noodles album.

    satellite

    Today I tried out Satellite. It’s a simple php program that connects to your Flickr account. Simple and easy in setup.
    There are a couple of little things to improve. For instance, I would prefer if clicking on an image in the photoset sends me to the normal Flickr page instead of the static version.

    It’s installed at www.chiperoni.ch/photos/

  • Free Software for Malawi

    Alex Antener presents a talk on his Malawi projects:

    Freie Software – Eine Chance für Afrika, (in German)

    Very interesting, and lots of screens with GNU Linux.

    [update] The official recording of the talk is available online.

  • Overcoming the Digital Divide in Malawi

    Interesting:
    Overcoming the Digital Divide in Malawi

    via Hacktivate

  • A conference about technology in our society.

    yay, I’m going to LIFT 07.

    How about you?

  • Malawi bloggers on Madonna

    My Google alert for news on Malawi has never had so many US and European articles as in the past months. All because of Madonna. Topics such as the last General Elections or bad harvests – which have a much bigger impact – were only covered by the usual outlets (BBC World, CNN). I remember searching Malawi forums for news on the election results.

    A friend asked how Malawians see Madonna’s recent adoption of a Malawian baby boy. I haven’t heard much. Cos I’m here in Basel. But here’s a summary of Malawi bloggers that referred to the celebrity news:

    • Mike of Hacktivate built the Kumbali Lodge website, where Madonna stayed 😉
    • Alex of Lix.cc posted this excellent caricature of NGOs and their reaction (rough translation: the child needs to return, is that understood?). He helped to keep us informed during the last General Elections by setting up a web server at the Polytechnic and posting news and comments at frequent intervals.
    • and Soyapi uses the Madonna news item to point to Malawian software that you can also “adopt”.

    I guess, there’s more out there. And more to come when Madonna goes back. I hope, she’s not in it for the PR only. In my humble opinion being adopted by a rich celebrity doesn’t really mean you’ll have a better life.

    But even for Malawi, you can say that blogging technology has made it simpler to read personal thoughts and reports on news items.

    Feel free to leave a comment.

    BTW, this blog post was again inspired by fresh air.

  • OpenBC IPO

    just stumbled across this news item at GigaOM:
    First Web 2.0 IPO, Xing?

    Does anyone have more details?

  • GooTube

    Om Malik was wrong and the rumors were right:
    Google purchases Youtube for 1.65 bn $.

    Somehow I felt Google wouldn’t be put off by the copyright nightmare.

    What’s next?

    P.S. GooTube is already taken.

  • off the beaten track

    This guy has got some very nice WordPress themes:

    wildbits — Kram

  • Customizing Vanilla

    for future reference:
    Customizing Vanilla

  • 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

  • on writing white papers

    For future reference:
    How to write white papers.