White African has listed some company logos here.
Blog
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Embedded video
my friend Benno:
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Conf Attendees 2.0
new word:
“VapoGurus” – People who seem to make a living solely by attending “2.0” conferences.seen in Gapingvoid’s Twitter stream
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Running Update
I’m kind of busy at my day job and I didn’t get around to post my regular weekend post. So here’s a short blog post to say hi.
And btw – about 20 years after everybody else – I’m discovering Twitter: Call it pseudo-blogging for busy knowledge workers. Or a quick way to communicate my jogging achievements.
So far Autumn 07 has been great for jogging. The dry, fresh weather is just right. I’ve been running regularly in a running club (the corresponding German word is Laufverein) since last summer and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. I’m still a slow coach, and don’t have any marathon plans (gory details how toe nails come loose and fall off are enough to scare me off 😉 )
A couple of running tips of the top of my head:
- Start slowly but be persistent. If you’re just starting out this means 1 minute running, 1 minute walking for about 1 hour. Extend the running period slowly from week to week. I’ve been part of several beginner groups in the past year and some people start off much too fast.
- The bad news for our instant gratification generation: you need to run at least twice a week for at least four to six weeks to see any improvement.
- Get some good running shoes. Don’t worry so much about the clothes. The functional shirts and running tights will somehow find their own way into your wardrobe. Plus running is a good place to wear all of those over-sized IT conference t-shirts.
- There is a phenomenon within our running club that I can’t quite understand yet. When it comes to forming running groups, there’s usually two groups: a fast one and a slow one. And about two to five people that don’t want to go along with the fast guys, don’t want to form their own middle-fast group, and end up running with the slow coaches (MY group). Inadvertently making the slow group faster. Too fast for the newbies. Instead of feeling discouraged by the middle-fast guys, keep going at your own pace. Be self-confident. Know your true performance level. Say what you want loud and clearly. For example, tell the middle-fast guys to form their own group or live with the slower pace.
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uploads
i’ve measured my life out in flickr uploads
here’s another life phase
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At BlogCampSwitzerland
Listening to a talk on “Getting Blogs Done” and eating chocolate.
The talk’s about applying “Getting Things Done” concepts to blogging. Getting kind of boring. I guess, I’m not really into GTD.
I enjoyed Patrick Zoll’s talk on Corporate Podcasting.
Looking forward to Sarah’s talk on the blogs and politics.
Enjoying Krusenstern on writing better blog texts.
Some text snippets at: http://twitter.com/nchenga
Some Flickr snaps at:
Good food = good conference ? The catering service tuck-tuck.ch deserves a special mention.
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Silicon Valley Lifecycles
Stumbled across this:
‘Un-sexy is good business,’ and other rules from Scott Rafer -
BlogCampSwitzerland on Saturday
I’m de-lurking on Saturday….
Hope to see you at the BlogCampSwitzerland
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APN
Today’s attempt to use the USB modem GlobeTrotter Connect with my MacBook failed. I had the right PIN and the right software. But couldn’t connect.
The preferences revealed a dialog box with input fields for an APN, a username and a password. I checked the help. There was no explanation what APN stands for… and whether it’s required or not.
And I was offline so i couldn’t search either.Aaargh.
APN stands for Access Point Name.
The user manual can be downloaded here.
But I don’t know if that’s the missing puzzle piece I need to connect. Or if it’s optional.
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The Nutella Alternatives Group at Flickr
Yay, the Nutella Alternatives group is growing (world dominion imminent…).
Recent additions include:
The question
Why spend so many hours and bytes on Nutella and derivatives?
It’s a web differentiator! And when people wander thru the shopping aisles with their phone cams they need a purpose.The Flickr group lists all the details:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/nutellaalternative/
Childhood memoriesAs regular readers of Chiperoni know, the author grew up under African skies. Nutella and all subsitutes thereof were unknown. A friendly soul somewhere in Germany sent a package containing a small bucket in brown plastic of Nutella-like bread spread.
At school my Nutella sandwich was commented with a universal “Yuck“. South Africans, Brits, Zimbabweans, Indians, North Americans and Malawians didn’t even try it.
More for us and some classmates from the Netherlands.
I -in turn- never really acquired a taste for Marmite.
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Ant hill phone booth
Remember I wrote about the villagers in northern Malawi that climb an ant hill to get GSM reception?
Looks like Soyapi saved the newspaper article and passed it on to Mike:
(Insert comment on power of blogging, impossible is nothing, etc.)
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120 registered nurses leave Malawi per year
Article on the continuing brain drain in the health sector of Malawi.
Some excerpts:
Official figures show around 120 registered nurses have migrated to Britain and the United States alone every year in the last decade with the health ministry unable to even begin to match the wages on offer abroad.
Malawi currently has only 56.4 nurses and two doctors for every 100,000 potential patients.
“We have only 3,000 nurses on register for a population of 12 million (…)”
A junior doctor now earns 450 dollars, while a senior nurse goes home with 300 dollars.
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open source morality
This article has been linked to from lots of WordPress sites, but I was just struck by the use of language… software is getting more religious and political comparisons.
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crumbled
Here’s a simple and rustique family recipe to make crumble:
Cover the bottom of a heat-resistant dish with slices of fruit such as apples, pears, or plums.
Stir up some crumbles for the topping (you can use the same recipe for the topping as in Streuselkuchen, but i’d leave out the cinnamon and use brown sugar instead)
Add nuts and put into the oven for about 40 to 45 minutes until slightly brown.
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Draft status
Fun event:
Finish your %#&*@ blog posts. at Citizen Space (Thursday, October 18, 2007)
I’ve started deleting blog post drafts, that have been lingering in draft status for over a year…
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Like this
website, especially the little icons…
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Weekend Thoughts
I just installed GIMPshop on my (no longer new) MacBook. And the interface looks a lot simpler.
And I received a Skitch invite. I don’t like the pink heart icon much. Kitsch.
But I somehow managed to get past that and watch the introductory video (!). The features look very useful. It offers a direct upload to Flickr. Looks like a good tool for quick screenshots. OS X’s Grab only offers TIFF, which isn’t recognized by the Flickr Uploadr for some reason or other. And which means opening GIMP or GraphicConverter or Preview. 20 clicks more.BTW, I’m sitting in a train to northern Germany and there are quite a number of free seats for a Friday evening… (and a power plug right next to me: hope it works). I guess, the strike warnings caused a lot of people to reschedule.
(Insert pause to take a snapshot of setting sun near Karlsruhe, will be uploaded when I find adequate WiFi access)
Quite a few regional trains have been cancelled. The official reason given via the pa is “wegen Notfall” (Translation: cos of an emergency).
Why not say strike? Emergency sounds like accident or natural catastrophe (can’t spell, too much German on my brain).Wondering out loud:
Would the new PR approach be more direct and advise the German railway company to use the word “strike” or would it find a roundabout way to describe the situation?(I forgot to take “The New PR” book with me.)
(I like the size of my 13″ MacBook. Just right for travelling.)
Anyway, “the new PR” book has got me thinking a lot more about buyer personas.
Who am I writing my marketing collateral, company blog posts, and technology announcements for? What kind of things are they interested in? How does a buyer persona search for a new service provider? Keeping your target audience in mind while writing is nothing new. Buyer personas, though, are on a more detailled level, describing a character and a typical work/leisure setting.
And it also reminded me of Bogo’s talk at the STC Transalpine conf in Zurich last April. He stressed the importance of agreeing on personas to develop adequate tech. documentation and user interfaces.
I signed up for Redbubble.com a couple of days ago. It offers a service to upload, sell and print artwork via the web all-in-one. Payment is transferred by Paypal or cheque. There’s a minimum price for the printing and production costs. And you as the seller of the artwork can decide on the markup (i.e. your gain/income/profit). I stumbled across this service via Ozczecho’s Flickr profile. My first impression of Redbubble.com is very positive and IMHO this could develop into a viable Flickr and Etsy alternative.
Still on my list of fun to dos:
Buy a DSLR
Set up an Ubuntu laptop
Learn more Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts (zoom in and out with command + option and ^ or ‘)
Install WordPress 2.3
Try out Pixelmator
Write a book (LOL)
Go on vacationDisclaimer: at times Chiperoni.ch is my personal online thinktank and my half-geek playground.
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Introducing social software into corporations
for future reference:
An adoption strategy for social software in enterprise.Though the first comment makes me wonder a bit… why would you force somebody to go to a wiki to get a text. Surely using a tool is about making things easier.
