A friend and I went for a Probetraining (free trial session) at one of the fitness centers close to work.
This is just a quick note to say that we’ve launched the evaluation process.
Blog
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Lift 08: Fragments of Captured Attention
Here are some of my Lift 08 notes, pêle-mêle:
This year I tried to provide a running commentary on Twitter. Unfortunately the wifi was patchy and a number of valuable text snippets were lost… 😉 I got one Tweet response – all the way from Malawi – that appreciated my effort.
I tuned in to the Lift backchannel on Skype:
The Skype backchannel was an interesting experience with live comments, opinions and background links. BTW, Skype was the most resilient of all Internet apps and managed to stay online throughout.
The format of this year’s Lift was a little different. There was one main track, i.e. we were all blogging and twittering about the same presentations. But I didn’t even notice it until we started discussing differences between ’07 and ’08. I liked the new format. I liked following the flow, without having to decide which session I’d need to move to next.
There was a red flashing light to indicate that the speaker’s time had run out… a neat feature.
At any one time, there were an incredible number of cameras in use. Automatic de-lurking.
I met a lot of new people from diverse backgrounds. And I met lots of ’07 attendees (there must have been a high degree of returnees).
My favorite talks:
Younghee Jung – she presented design ideas from Mumbai, Rio, and Accra regarding their vision of a suitable mobile device for their needs. I hope Nokia hears the request for cheap, sturdy and waterproof mobile phones.
Genevieve Bell – I liked the Australian humor.
Eric Favre – even though I don’t like Nespresso, I respect the perseverance.
Noel Hidalgo – a 5 min talk on traveling around the world in 7 months, sponsored by bloggers.
Kevin Warwick – scary but fascinating. He said “tremendously exciting” several times during the talk.
Holm Friebe and Phillip Albers – two Germans with a dry sense of humor described their creative way of doing business. For example, they don’t wait the usual 30 to 60 days to pay their bills but pay them up front.
Henriette Weber Andersen – enjoyed this refreshing 5 minute reminder that the marketer’s dream world has changed.
Robin Hunicke – great talk. She managed to link her presentation to other content we had heard. I particularly liked her slides that use small sketches as icons. A good idea. I had met her and Souris in the Lift workshop on Forgetful Interfaces and enjoyed their constructive input.
Finally the last sessions on Foresight inspired me. I can recommend watching the videos of Scott Smith and Bill Cockayne.
The corresponding Lift videos are available at: http://www.nouvo.ch/liftvideo
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Yet Another Community System
At the Lift 08 fondue I sat next to the developer of an open-source community tool called YACS:
YACS, le CMS Open Source 2.0 – Yet Another Community System
It uses PHP, MySQL and Apache. And from what I understood it is being used in a large international organization to build up a knowledge management system without the hassle of a complicated, cumbersome tool.
How to get people within a corporate setting to contribute? Make it bonus relevant.
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Lift08
I attended these workshops:
Forgetful interfaces
Ubiquitous computing
I’m uploading a couple of snaps in my Flickr stream.
A fave:
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Crossroads
Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls. -
Ruling Families
I agree with this:
I’m tired of Bush and Clinton families running America and want a change.
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Handheld with WiFi…
I’m dreaming of an affordable mobile device with WLAN/WiFi functionality.
I noticed there’s a lot of open WiFi. A way to circumvent expensive mobile data services.
There are a couple of gadgets out there, but they still tend to be on the expensive end. -
They say it’s all about the customer
Since Mlle. A. started using Google Reader in full force a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been getting a steady flow of cool, funny, high-quality articles and links.
This one caught my eye:
(…) customers don’t really care how you’re better until they understand what you’re gonna do for them. -
Holiday reading II
I recently read “Digging to America” by Anne Tyler.
It’s an easy read. I read the entire book in one day while travelling. I can’t really decide on my recommendation level though. I liked it because it feels like a biography and I tend to like biographies. It feels a bit like real life, i.e. it chugs along. No sudden surprises. No unexpected twists. A good description.
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Adding my Del.icio.us feed to my Google Reader
I guess I’m trying to be too clever:
The Scenario
I added my Del.icio.us feed to my Google Reader account. Then selected a feed item and clicked Share.
Within Google Reader this works ok. I can click on the link and the corresponding URL opens.So far so good. No problems.
But if I display the Google Reader RSS feed on an external website such as my blog, the feed adds my Del.icio.us URL to the article’s URL. Which in turn leads to a bad address.
Probably an unintended use…
(update) This is due to the Atom feed. The workaround is to use Feedburner.
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Connecting users
A quote to keep in mind:
Sites that look like they suck are often a hundred times more useful and popular than sites that actually suck. Why? Because the key to Craigslist and Plenty of Fish is their ability to connect users to useful user-generated content, and vice versa. Everything else (…) is “trivial.”
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Back to Running
Today was my first run with the running club since mid-December. And mid-way I felt kind of unfit. That’s the downside of jogging. You really notice the slacking.
Due to a cold during the Christmas break and my South Florida holiday I didn’t run as much as I’d planned initially.
Add lots of Swiss chocolate for Christmas and one week of American Breakfast.
Though I did manage to get up early a couple of times and run along the beach.
Given these distressing facts, today’s run was ok. The weather was perfect: about 7 degrees plus. We ran for exactly 1 hr (St. Alban – Birsfelden – Jowa – periphery of Muttenz and back). And if I include my regular bike trips, I did about 2 hrs of sports.
The lights of the Joggeli Stadium (built by Herzog & de Meuron) were on. I wondered out loud if the red and blue lighting means that there’s a game. BTW, there’s a film on the Beijing stadium coming soon.
Yesterday I saw The Band’s Visit about an Egyptian music band that gets stranded in an Israeli village in the middle of nowhere. And being the googling kind, I found this NYT article about some kind of controversy regarding Oscar nominations. The film is funny, likeable, and manages to convey a realistic feeling of awkwardness when people from different backgrounds meet for the first time.
Favorite quote:
“A: No Arab culture center?
B: No culture, not Israeli culture, not Arab… no culture at all” -
Malawi runners at Austin Marathon
While googling “porters race” I found this:
Rogue Training Systems, a health and fitness company in Austin, Texas, is giving Malawian runners the chance to run Austin’s AT&T Marathon in February 2008.
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Kenyan blogs
Cedric of m.zung.us writes
Das es inzwischen eine aktive afrikanische Blogosphäre gibt, ist nicht erst seit dem Chaos um den Wahlbetrug in Kenya bekannt. Aber genau jetzt wird deutlich wie gut und wertvoll es ist verschiedene Sichtweisen über die Massenmedien hinaus einzufangen.
See the full post here: Bürger-Journalismus in Kenya
White African has a roundup of blogs. And there’s a mashup called Ushahidi to document and report violence.
Swamp cottage, a long time blogger based in Nairobi, offers further links to news articles and lists several Africa blogs in his blog roll.
And Insight Kenya is posting photos from Nairobi.
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Floods in Mocambique and Malawi
Heavy rains are causing the Zambezi and the Shire to flood.
Here’s a BBC report:
The Malawian government is warning people to relocate from flood-prone areas, but many have been reluctant to leave their farms.
