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In the past few weeks I've done an extended analysis of visits on my blog, which made me wonder how the super fancy new web gadgets and features influence Google Analytics and traffic reports. By these new gadgets I mean the nowadays very popular URL shorteners, such as tinyurl or bit.ly, and the annoying inside-browser toolbars, used by Digg, Stumbleupon, Google images and other services. These inventions made me wonder, as well as probably many other bloggers, web developers and marketers do - are these things messing up the traffic statistics? To be sure, I had to try it out by myself and found out the following: No, they do not. Or better put, Google is smart enough to know what's happening.

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written 9.3.2010 19:51 CET on chronolog
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In the past years, we've witnessed a very important transformation: the consumerization of information technologies. Billions of connected users living their life online, overwhelmed by millions of information systems that have been tailored to suit their every need and desire. Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon came a long way with their products and infrastructure, but the enterprise isn't losing any time. Learning from the new paradigms and adopting new funky technologies, that have traditionally been developed in corporate laboratories. Can the Fab 4 also predict where enterprise IT is headed? And what will it become?

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written 2.7.2012 19:38 CET on chronolog
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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 22.10.2012 21:01 CET on chronolog
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Emoticons are becoming quite a serious form of enriching (web) communication, as picture can tell a thousand words. The truth is that a word can tell a thousand pictures, at least when emoticons and other "digital" forms of speaking are concerned. The way of using short and to-the-point statements, such as short messages, tweets and emoticons, is here to stay. Congratulating the internet, welcoming emoticons. \o/

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written 16.6.2009 23:12 CET on chronolog
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I can't believe how much has happened since I first wrote about going viral on social media. I also can't believe what I wrote then, talking mostly about how virality has the most to do with luck. Well, it does, but any proper RPG character can fully understand luck can be influenced one way or another. As you evolve as a blogger, you learn a lot about writing good headlines, best times to publish, using various platforms to promote content and other general best practices, all adding a bit to the chance of going big. Of course, you're still competing in your own league, but a few hundred posts more, and you might do something extraordinary like swizec did. Get noticed and amplified by a heavy influencer.

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written 22.1.2012 20:58 CET on chronolog
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Slovenia has a surprisingly high level of technology companies that made a global impact. These startups are an inspiration to everybody, and we hope more of us will be joining them soon. Some made it with the support of different incubators, such as Seedcamp or Y Combinator, others made it on their own. They all share an innovative and outstanding product or service, proving that Slovenia is a place of very talented and ambitious people. While there are probably even more successful startups I haven't heard of or mentioned, I think these eight Slovenian technology organizations created the most hype in the recent few years.

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written 5.2.2012 18:23 CET on chronolog
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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 28.9.2012 14:37 CET on chronolog
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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 6.12.2012 17:41 CET on chronolog
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Being a manager is not something that's in my DNA. I'm primarily an engineer, a scientist, a software developer. I find it hard to spend time on governing activities that have no direct output, and prefer doing things rather than guiding and supervising how things are done. Some people are natural organizers, others need to somehow learn and adopt that specific set of technical and social skills that help teams operate smoothly and efficiently. While I may have the technical skills of understanding how things should be done, my problems lie elsewhere.

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written 16.4.2013 9:22 CET on chronolog
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The year is coming to an end, and our favorite big brothers all published reports about trends inside their ecosystems (Facebook, Google, Twitter). Even though the services are not perfectly comparable (information gets pulled and pushed: while you search, you pull data; on social networks the data gets pushed to you), I think they can provide a clear picture about the general state of the Web in 2010. Three obvious winners emerged, coming strong in all the charts. Apple made the iPad the most wanted gadget around, FIFA World Cup mania took over the whole planet, and Justin Bieber topped the celebrity world. I was curious about the comparison, so I've joined all three lists, gave all topics a score, and put the results into pictures. Sadly, I'm not a designer to make a really cool infographic about it, so this will have to do.

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written 21.12.2010 8:42 CET on chronolog
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The question if Facebook will start producing it's own mobile OS on top of Android made a huge buzz a few months ago. Technology authorities such as TechCrunch and Mashable gave us diametrical coverage about it, the first claiming the rumor is true, and the second denying it. Needless to say the mobile market is one of the fastest evolving. Since 2007, when Apple supposedly revolutionized the mobile telephone by introducing the first popular tablet smartphone without a keyboard with an app market, things didn't change much, but in 2011, Facebook has a great chance to reinvent the phone again.

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written 9.1.2011 20:28 CET on chronolog
3651 views   •   3 likes   •   5 comments  •   Like   •   
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The influence the Internet is having on our every day lives is reaching almost unimaginable levels. The extent of the information revolution can only be compared to inventions of speaking, writing and printing in the past, which are all major achievements that allowed new ways of sharing thoughts and ideas between people. Web 2.0 is the next step of this information (r)evolution, and to understand why it's so important, we have to observe all the significant applications it represents (according to Wikipedia). This will hopefully give us a better insight into the potential they bring to our personal and professional lives, besides their impact on the whole humanity which we still perhaps don't fully comprehend.

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written 14.6.2010 21:10 CET on chronolog
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The epic article by Fast Company about the technology wars of 2012 provides great insight into what's happening in Silicon Valley and software in general these days. Four players, or the Fabulous Four, are mentioned to be the real market and innovation leaders: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google. Each of these companies found its place where it dominates and invents new business models, and each one is a role model for new generations of technology startups and leaders. And if you didn't notice, all of them sell software to consumers, not other companies (in case of Google and Facebook, you are the real customer, but advertisers pay for it). Software is becoming more and more consumer-oriented, and the clash of these titans will determine the outcome, the software of the future.

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written 14.11.2011 12:25 CET on chronolog
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iOS 7 is all over the place. Some love the new look, others think it's childish and confusing. Some even say the flat look symbolizes Apple's capitulation, since they're abandoning the skeuomorphic paradigm they have been using for ages. The new icons are obviously the most controversial part of the released software, and they seem - yes - wrong and unfinished. But what if the unpolished icons are just a marketing trick, a temporary solution presented on purpose to annoy people, especially the designer community? Rumors have it, they were designed by their marketing team anyways.

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written 14.6.2013 7:50 CET on chronolog
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The Internet, specially the World Wide Web as we know it today is all about interaction. The first generation of web applications supported little of it. Most of the web was "official" authorial content, but at some point the world was ready for a step forward. User generated content was manifested through forums or discussion boards, which gave surfers a newly discovered access to tons of "unofficial" knowledge. The boom was driven by user interaction and necessity of sharing ideas and thoughts. Looks like times are changing again and forums are dying, at least in the form we knew them. What the hell happened?

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written 13.12.2009 17:05 CET on chronolog
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