Recent blog posts

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Thinking about Silicon Valley? Did you hear about the Slovenian / Slavic startup house?

I can't believe it's been more than half a year since I went to the Valley. Good times, a lot has happened there, even more has happened since. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are a place every developer and / or entrepreneur should visit at least once, to get the idea about how things work on a larger scale. To receive another orientation point, to think outside the box. All roads in technology lead there, and if you are planning on ever doing something major, this is definitely the place to be. Startups, developers, investors, enthusiasts, geeks, technology corporations, everybody's there. Good news: it's easier than ever for you to be a part of it too.

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written 17:41 CET on chronolog
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Sempl 14 key takeaways: top trends in (digital) marketing

The 14th media trends seminar Sempl took place last week in Portorož. This year, I had an opportunity to attend the conference, since Neolab provided the official Twitter wall. And I was glad I could, because Sempl proved itself as an event worth visiting, packed with high profile speakers and marketers not only from Slovenia, but from the entire region. Most lectures were very interesting, and the fascinating fact is that they all went into the same direction. It seems mobile, social and local are so mainstream, they are not even put into the spotlight anymore. But here are the things that were.

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written 8:35 CET on chronolog
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Is social media empowering social media?

Here's a funny thought. You've probably noticed infinite blogs that give you advice on how to blog. Yes, I'm doing it too sometimes. You've probably also heard that tweets containing the word Twitter are one of the most clicked and retweeted out there. The most successful blogs are focused on technology, social media and (mobile) gadgets, which again, enable consumption of the beautiful global network we've built. There are links about Facebook on Facebook, visualizations about the rise of Pinterest on Pinterest. The most clicked links on this blog contain the words Facebook, Twitter or Social. I think I'm not the only one who's noticed this trend, even though I probably tend to have my feeds in configured in such a direction. Is social media empowering social media?

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written 15:41 CET on chronolog
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How I managed to train myself for a half-marathon in six months

I'm not that fit of a person, about half a year ago I had well over 100 kg. That's when I decided to start running to get in shape. I began with workouts of around 2km, I couldn't do more, I ran out of breath. But each time I went running again, the easier it was. Supposedly you need to exercise at least 30 minutes to start losing weight, which is about 5 km of running. I clearly remember the first time I managed to run that distance, the feeling was overwhelming, and I sensed the ecstasy - when you get the impression you could run until exhaustion. After you hit that half hour mark, you start progressing faster, which made me think about doing a 10 km or even a 21 km run this October on Ljubljana Marathon.

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written 22:42 CET on chronolog
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A case study in agile development: the algorithm for Ljubljana Realtime's event discovery

When we started working on Ljubljana Realtime, we decided to approach it in an agile way. Amongst others, we wanted to use a few interesting lean concepts such as rapid development, Minimum Viable Product and the Build - Measure - Learn iterations. Less than two months later, the results are in, and they are very pleasing. The MVP in the shape of an activity map was developed in a few weeks, only to show there is a lot of social noise which will somehow need to be taken under control. But that's currently low priority, since the first pivot is already taking place, slowly shifting the focus from the rich map application towards an event discovery algorithm and stream. That's where I see the most potential of Ljubljana Realtime, and in the last weeks, that's where the most work was done.

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written 21:01 CET on chronolog
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Targeting non-vegetarians with veggie food? Well played, Spar, well played.

I'm not vegetarian, and apparently I share this habit with more than 95% of other people. I generally don't buy vegetarian food, a steak works fine with me. I didn't even know I could/should buy vegetarian food - after all, vegetarian food is designated for vegetarians, which I'm not. I don't have anything agains them, but we're a different breed you know, like wolves and butterflies. To be honest, I wouldn't mind eating a vegetarian meal, if only I would feel it's something intended also for me. That's why I don't. But Spar told me I could and I should. And I think they might be on to something.

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written 21:04 CET on chronolog
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Discover what's happening in Ljubljana in real-time

I've always been a big fan of the power of the crowds. When a mass of people can achieve much more than a few skilled individuals can. And ever since we've started playing with Twitter's API, I've been think about the possibilities of this magnificent data source. Besides Twenity, we've done a few other Twitter mashups like Twitter walls, but this wasn't enough. We wanted something more - geolocation. Displaying information on a map in real-time. But since there aren't that many tweets equipped with GPS coordinates, we needed to include other services for more diversity as well. Which we did, and Ljubljana Realtime, a social event discovery application, was born.

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written 14:37 CET on chronolog
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