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Slovenian grocers going for Web 2.0 design

It’s obvious that Slovenian grocers are using TV as their main advertising medium, the same as many others. Nothing wrong with that. Their commercials are typical for their industry, emphasizing actual promotions and discounts and going for direct sales mostly. Nothing wrong with that too. They finish off with their logo on the screen, so they do a bit of branding too. Reasonable, you have to use all marketing approaches. But wait a minute, why do their logos look Web 2.0?

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written 22.1.2010 19:12 CET on chronolog
2244 views   •   2 likes   •   1 comment  •   Like   •   
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Adding share buttons to your blog or website - a comprehensive guide

A lot has happened in the field of share buttons in the past year: Google +1 button for web pages was introduced, Facebook started to migrate the Share and Like buttons, TweetMeme button is slowly getting replaced by the offical Tweet button, etc. Enough to make maintenance of these buttons a pain in the ass. But since social activity is getting more and more important for SEO, this needs to be done, one way or another. To make it easier, I've put together a comprehensive list of different share widgets, together with some explanation, sample code and direct links to full documentation.

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written 6.6.2011 13:05 CET on chronolog
10539 views   •   5 likes   •   2 comments  •   Like   •   
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The Silicon Valley tour, part 1: Seedcamp America Trip visiting the Googleplex

When I decided to travel to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, I didn't expect things will be happening so fast. But thanks to Andraž from Zemanta, I managed to do two awesome things already on the first day after I've arrived - visit Google's headquarters in Mountain View and talk with the Seedcamp teams, currently on their tour of the United States. They came here to present their projects to potential investors, and Google was nice enough to accommodate one of the mentoring sessions in the Googleplex.

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written 4.3.2012 3:05 CET on chronolog
6601 views   •   3 likes   •   Like   •   
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The Silicon Valley tour, part 7: A few exciting new business models that actually work

Visiting Silicon Valley enabled me too peek into the future a bit. Finding out about new technology trends, meeting disruptive new software startups and seeing fascinating new business models that are proven to work. There are even more futuristic products / services than the ones mentioned in this post, but these are the ones that made the biggest impression on me. And they all share similar competitive advantages: using smartphones and other mobile devices, canceling middlemen and supporting cashless commerce.

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written 25.3.2012 18:28 CET on chronolog
13149 views   •   1 like   •   2 comments  •   Like   •   
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The future (of software) is in platforms

I don't know if you've had the chance to read What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis. You should, it's a very powerful book, even though it's been written a few years ago. Things have changed a bit since then, when Google was on top of it's game, but that doesn't mean the ideas presented in the book aren't more actual than ever. One of the chapters that made the biggest impact on me was the one about platforms and distributed systems. Google managed to conquer the world of Web 1.0 by being decentralized, allowing others to embed YouTube videos, Google Maps and Ads anywhere on the Web. This orientation provided the fuel for Google's further development and growth. Today, this way of thinking is not a competitive advantage anymore, it's becoming a necessity. As you will see, current online market leaders of various industries are not those who provide the service, they're the ones who provide the platform.

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written 8.4.2012 17:26 CET on chronolog
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Queensday in Amsterdam, the greatest party in the universe

In my life, I've visited many parties, events and festivals. But nothing quite beats Queensday, the holiday celebrating the (previous) Queen of Netherlands' birthday. Every April 30th, festivities are taking place throughout the country, but the greatest gathering happens in Amsterdam, where around 700.000 people take over the city. Amsterdam is one of the coolest and most easy-going cities in Europe, worth visiting by itself, but if you want to see something like you haven't seen before, you should do yourself a favor and visit the Koninginnedag.

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written 8.5.2012 18:35 CET on chronolog
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Daft Punk, Arrested Development, and how content is becoming an experience

What a great year for content! In October 2012, Red Bull Stratos set a benchmark for what can be done with branded content. The jump was watched live on YouTube by 8 million people. A few months later, Gangam style established a new standard for how far online virality can take you. It became the first video to reach 1 billion views on YouTube. Powered by the internet. These two extreme cases probably won't be topped for quite some time (internet time, that is) and are clear leaders in their categories. But lately, I've noticed two other great examples that clearly show something else - where commercial content (promotion) is headed. It's all about delivering experiences, which are created and amplified by digital marketing.

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written 15.5.2013 8:32 CET on chronolog
6327 views   •   2 likes   •   2 comments  •   Like   •   
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Project: Chronolog
What happens if you combine a blog, twitter and friendfeed? Check out the chronolog.
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The awesomeness of the Facebook Like button

Usually I'm quite critical towards Facebook and their policy for dominating the World Wide Web, but in this case I have to give them credit and respect. I finally took the time to add advanced share buttons / badges to my blog (and actually made a whole science out of it, but more on that some other time), one of them being the infamous Facebook Like button. Needless to say it's probably the most advanced available share widget from the technical point of view, but I never imagined it's that advanced. Looks like Facebook isn't loosing any time to index the web, and their architecture for achieving this goal is set up very well. The Like button is fully connected with all other social activities on Facebook, which obviously means Facebook is building a giant man powered map of the World Wide Web.

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written 28.6.2010 8:46 CET on chronolog
2596 views   •   3 likes   •   12 comments  •   Like   •   
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Twitfluence prototype calculation for measuring Twitter influence

The prototype calculation of Twitfluence uses the data available form Twitter API to measure your Twitter influence and coolness. The basic technical specifications of the application is available, but I will also be supplying the basic information about how the algorithm works. The actual calculation is already online for beta users, and generally speaking, there are three major components that add up to the score: your followers, your mentions and retweets, and your lists, all accounted as ratios between you and others.

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written 1.8.2010 12:54 CET on chronolog
2840 views   •   4 likes   •   Like   •   
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Web 2.5: Looking for the missing link between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0

The great revolution of Web 2.0 is still here and well – it looks like it's not going anywhere. Actually, its name did change, making "social media" more widely used today, but I'm still sticking to the original Tim O'Reilly's term. It's been more than five years since that happened, and a few years ago Web 3.0 was also starting to get mentioned. Web 3.0 mainly stands for the semantic web, using mathematical algorithms and meta data for trying to understand the meaning of content. But the whole thing is getting kinda old, because we still didn't see any real great results or services online – or perhaps they just did not make it to the mainstream. So while we wait for that to unveil, we could discuss something in between.

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written 10.11.2010 18:39 CET on chronolog
2742 views   •   2 likes   •   2 comments  •   Like   •   
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Twitfluence received some media attention. And almost went to Seedcamp.

Lately, a lot has been happening with Twitfluence. We've finally decided it's time to go out of prototype mode and make Twitfluence a fully working solution, a joint venture between Neolab and IlovarStritar. A fine combination of great technical expertise and amazing visual experience. We've even applied for Seedcamp Ljubljana, but only made it as runners-up (which is actually not that bad for the first try). But that won't stop us – we are more certain than ever to make Twitfluence a complete product, and we'll try even harder the next time.

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written 6.10.2011 10:05 CET on chronolog
3043 views   •   1 like   •   Like   •   
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The Silicon Valley tour, part 5: Visiting the technology giants

Visiting the global technology bluechips was one of the things I was looking forward to the most on my trip to the Valley. Seeing how things work, the giant campuses they have, the amazing work conditions they offer. But like some other things, this plan didn't turn out as expected. I have to admit I was a bit naive, but a man can have his dreams, right? These corporations have their business to run, so why should they accept visitors like me? The fact is, they do accept them, but you have to have a contact on the inside. No contact, no glory. I was actually lucky enough to have some, and the next time I'll decide on journey like this, I'll make sure I address the situation more strategically.

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written 20.3.2012 6:15 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 28.9.2012 14:37 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 22.10.2012 21:01 CET on chronolog
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