Stritar's chronolog

Google 2.0, take infinity: Google Me

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:17:35 GMT

The past few months have been loaded with expectations and speculations about the new social service from Google that will be introduced soon: Google Me. Facebook is currently dominating the social market, with 500 million registered users and an expected 2 billion dollars of revenue in 2010. It's satellites, mostly in the form of social gaming providers, are also gaining momentum, e.g. Zynga, the most successful of the pack, could generate $500 million in revenue this year. Even though Google's revenue is still much much greater, more than $20 billion a year to be exact, this does not change the fact the future of the World Wide Web lies in social – and Google obviously wants to be a part of that.

SEO is out

We can see for ourselves that the Web has been shifting to a new shape, where you don't look for information anymore, information finds you (push vs. pull). Another interesting fact - The Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference was not about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) this year, it was about possibilities of new social strategies. Modern viral campaigns that use social media, such as the one for Old Spice, make traditional web strategies seem plain, ineffective and a thing of the past. And Google, once the ultimate company and employer, the coolest place to work in, is facing a leakage of its employees towards Facebook, currently valued at 33+ billion. Middle aged Google, slowly loosing its coolness against the new kid on the block.

Facebook is in

A few days ago, Facebook was granted with a patent concerning social search, an algorithm build on the number of clicks made by your social vicinity. A really interesting idea, and potentially a great threat to probably the world's greatest (most valuable) mathematical algorithm – Google PageRank. This is not some service of a new type anymore, this one competes directly with Google's core business and the thing that made the corporation what it is today. And Google desperately needs to strike back.

Google's past attempts with Web 2.0 weren't that successful. From the decline of Orkut, to canceled Wave and useless Buzz, these services didn't quite make it to wider use, leaving aside YouTube. The following infographic beautifully shows all Google's (mostly failed) attempts at social, but they will still give it another go - this time in the form of Google Me.

Google wants in

Aimed to be a Facebook clone, some people say it has great potential, some are reserved, while others think it will be a failure. Besides, an open alternative called Diaspora is set to launch September 15th with huge social buzz, so this game might turn out really interesting. But Google, once the web's innovation leader, is slowly turning into an old school player, finding it hard to cope with new concepts. Something similar is happening to Nokia, who has problems with fully penetrating the smart phone market, and is loosing ground towards new players, such as Apple and the whole Android movement.

But a few strategic takeovers (check out the complete history) and strong partnerships and acquisitions of social gaming providers may just enable Google the brain power it needs to provide a successful Facebook alternative. Facebook is currently loosing some hype and if Google is able to provide a fresh service for what the core functionality of Facebook is – connecting with people you know – this just might work. But this time, it will have to be something smart and creative (but not too creative like Wave), similar, but different (not a total clone like Twitter's clone Buzz), and Google could get a chance to get on top of things again. The only question is if Google still has enough out of the box thinking left to pull it off and finally become a real Web 2.0 player.

I'm really eager to see what they'll do and like many curious people, I will surely give it a try. The only question is if it will be just a try, or will it be interesting enough (for others) to persuade me to stay. For Google's sake, I hope it will, otherwise they may face an even bigger problem on a strategic scale: the lost domination of the World Wide Web.

My 50th blog post. Time to contemplate.

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:33:07 GMT

It's been a while since I've started blogging. I'm proud of what I've achieved so far, but this is just the beginning and a prologue into greater things coming in the future. I did it on my own custom platform, which enables me to play around with features and information presentation, something I like to do whenever possible. I didn't expect it to be this hard, at least in the time it takes me to write a good post with images and references, besides the time I need to promote it using all means necessary. But it's definitely been a fun ride, and the need to express myself has truly been satisfied.

Usually I'm not that fond of "about me and my life" blogging, but since this great jubilee came around, I feel it's quite suitable. Almost a year after I published my blog (it's been officially presented on September 14th 2009), I managed to write about 50 articles, which makes it about one a week on average. The general content did shape in the way I expected and projected – mostly about technology, IT and web - and hopefully I will be able to continue in a similar way. I'm happy with the result, even though I rather won't read my old posts again, just in case.

According to Google Analytics, I succeeded in attracting around 4,000 unique visitors, which is clashing a bit with my count on the strongest post I've made, but I count non-unique visits, so this discrepancy is explainable. These visitors came from 93 different countries, which means using social media channels for distribution and promotion can get you far away from home. I was even lucky enough to make some of my posts go viral, and the one I feel most proud of is the one about Facebook and Twitter, which received a stunning 136 retweets. Pretty cool for a simple geek from Slovenia.

You can expect even more innovative chronolog features and demonstrations of technology in the future, as I'm planning to upgrade it even further, whenever I will get a good idea and some extra time to develop it. Perhaps even a graphic redesign will come around sometime, but for now this will have to do. The chronolog is becoming the most exact portrait of my virtual presence, so I'm prepared to invest all the energy needed into making it as interesting as possible.

Enough with the emotional stuff. I hope you are enjoying my discussions, I will try to make them even better as I evolve as a writer. And yes, I actually lied a bit, because technically speaking this is already post no. 53. Since I've been heavily involved on our Twitfluence project for the past month, my activity also included 3 supporting posts which made me forget that I've already went past the round mark. But this post was meant to happen for months, so I'm still counting it as the big number 50.

Thanks for coming around, and stay tuned for more. The chronolog is slowly becoming mature, and so is this blogger. Mature enough to fully appreciate any suggestion, critic or comment about what can be done or improved, so go wild.

Twitfluence calculation version log

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 10:54:15 GMT

In the prototype phase, the Twitfluence calculation will probably be going through some major and minor changes concerning the application and the calculation. For better understanding, transparency and of course, to satisfy the curiosity of those interested, the simplified version log will be available on this link. Feel free to comment on all the issues below, any feedback will be more than appreciated.

Here is the full Twitfluence version history:

0.1 (5.8.2010) – original version of the calculation.
0.11 (11.8.2010) – Twitfluence Twitter client is changed to read and write access to enable tweeting of results.
0.2 (13.8.2010) – the result of the calculation gets compared to your previous result.
0.3 (14.8.2010) – Twitfluence gets a slight modification of the algorithm, specifically of the part about followers. The results in version 0.3 are generally a bit higher than those in prior versions.
0.35 (14.8.2010) – a minor modification to take care of those who follow only a few people, so their score is not too high.
0.4 (15.8.2010) - replied to and mentioned now have a different weight, because the reach of mentions is higher than the reach of replies. The score should be a bit lower.
0.45 (15.8.2010) - another minor adjustment to take care of "beginner" accounts.
0.5 (18.8.2010) - the fail whale 502 Bad Gateway error has been taken care of.
0.51 (19.8.2010) - tweeting of results is back online.
0.6 (20.8.2010) - a modification to the calculation has been made, for extreme situations with many followers and little following.

Want to contribute to the project? Leave a comment or calculate your Twitfluence now.

Twitfluence prototype calculation for measuring Twitter influence

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 11:54:40 GMT

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.

Followers

The strongest component of the calculation is the number of followers you have. In my opinion, your presence on Twitter and getting followers can be influenced by at least the following three major factors concerning you and your Twitter account:

Persona – how known you are. Measured by the number of followers you have, compared to your time on Twitter.
Engagement – how engaged you are. Measured by the number of followers you have, compared the number of people you follow; Measured by the number of followers you have, compared to the number of mentions and retweets you’ve made.
Wits – how smart and creative your tweets are. Measured by the number of followers you have compared to the total number of tweets you've made.

For this part, I gave the followers/following ratio the weight of 3, the followers/tweets a weight of 2 and the followers/time a weight of 1. The followers/(mentions + retweets) has a weight of 0.5 and works in the negative way, so people who bother other people get a bit of a minus to their followers result. Besides, those who are able to get the same number of followers without mentioning people, must have a small advantage.

(Needs to be upgraded with taking into account only your mentions and retweets of people who don’t follow you.)

Interaction (mentions, replies, retweets)

The second most important part of the calculation is the ratio between mentions and being mentioned, together with the number of retweets you get with the absolute "reach" of those retweets (measured in the number of people who follow people that retweeted you). A similar reach is also accounted in the mentions and replies. This component of the calculation uses only the data from the last month, also to make Twitfluence a bit dynamic for multiple calculations for a single user over time. To finalize this part, the total number of tweets in the last month also contributes a small score.

(Needs to be upgraded with unique reaches of your retweets and mentions. For now, it just adds them together.)

Lists

Twitter lists are getting used more and more, so they are also considered in the calculation. The number of lists you appear on, the number of people who follow those lists and the number of people, who follow lists you've created are the basic parameters for the calculation. This component adds only a small bit to the final score.

(Needs to be upgraded with unique reaches)

The basic ratio calculation

All ratios in the calculation are based on the same elementary formula, which looks like this:

Generic result = Sqrt(others / you) * Log10(modifier + 10)
Followers = Sqrt(followers / following) * Log10(followers + 10)
Mentioned = Sqrt(mentioned / mentions) * Log10(mentioned + 10)

I've decided to go for this architecture because of a number of reasons. F.i., the followers / following and other ratios are used to get an objective value for all Twitter users. This ratio gets square rooted so the differences between people are not so huge. The multiplication is there for adjustment, so people who have the same ratio and the absolute number are bigger, get more points. The logarithm is used to make this modifier of absolute number smaller, while + 10 is used so this number is always bigger than 1 (and the logarithmic function becomes more stable after the result 1: Log10(10) = 1). This means that the modifier for those who follow 10 people is around 1, 100 people around 2, 1000 around 3 etc.

Putting it together

The three major components currently have the following weight in the final score:

Followers: around 60%
Mentions and retweets: around 30%
Lists: around 10%

That's about it for now. I've tested the behavior with some real accounts (thanks for help @TejaSmeja and @jakasibicekaka), together with some projections, and it seems to be working quite OK. But the real test will happen after it analyzes results of actual people, which will allow real insight into the performance and objectivity. The Twitfluence will be online soon, and I will be asking you to help with testing the prototype. You also more than welcome to leave any kind of feedback about the calculation as I've described it.

Let's play.

Twitfluence application basic technical specifications

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 11:53:43 GMT

Twitfluence is a registered Twitter application for calculating the "weight" and influence of your Twitter account, and is already accessible for beta users. It uses read and write permissions on your Twitter account. ~~Perhaps it will be upgraded with write permissions one day too, so it will be able to post the results to your timeline on request, but for now, read permission is all it needs~~. The original idea was to have it done without Twitter authentication (by simply entering a user name), but then you're not able to access mentions and retweets, which are obviously a big thing in measuring someone's Twitter influence.

The data

At this stage, the Twitfluence calculation uses and stores the following information for it's calculation. None of your personal data, your authentication info and your tweets are stored, so you need to approve it each time you do the calculation. Here is the full list of the parameters captured:

You
- How many people you follow
- How many people follow you
- How many days you are on Twitter
- How many Tweets you've made
One month of tweets
- How many Tweets you've made
- How many mentions and replies you’ve made
- How many retweets you’ve made
- How many times you were mentioned and replied to
- How many times you were retweeted
- What was the reach of you being mentions and replied to
- What was the reach of your tweets retweeted
Lists
- How many list you appear on
- How many people these list follow
- How many people follow these lists
- How many people follow the people on whose lists you appear
- How many lists you own
- How many people follow your lists
Other
- Your screen name
- Your profile picture
- Your description
- Your timezone for comparison to nearby users

API calls

Twitfluence calculation makes 6 API calls to capture the data mentioned. Here is the full list of the requests:

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.xml: your tweets
http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/retweeted_by_me.xml: you retweets
http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/mentions.xml: you being mentioned
http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/retweets_of_me.xml: you being retweeted
http://api.twitter.com/1/screenname/lists.xml: list you own
http://api.twitter.com/1/screenname/lists/memberships.xml: list you appear on

Retweets

Twitter allows different clients (web, mobile clients,…), and some of them make retweets in a technically different way that the core Twitter web client. Therefore retweets are scattered inside retweets and mentions, but the Twitfluence application is smart enough to recognize them. The following tweets are consider retweets, and the calculation uses retweets in a different way than mentions and replies:

actual retweets
mentions that contain the syntax "RT @"
mentions that contain the syntax "via @"

Reach

There are a few parameters inside the calculation that use the "reach" of tweets (retweets, mentions, lists). You should know that this is not the actual real reach (potential unique users) of your tweets without duplicates, but a simple addition of the followers for the specific case. Therefore the score from reach may not be perfectly correct, but at this point it will have to do.

Links

Clicking on links published on Twitter is currently not a part of the calculation. Measuring clicks can be a bit difficult, specially if the links point directly to the website (compared to using URL shorteners, which offer analysis of clicks). Hopefully I will be able to use links in Twitfluence as well someday, in a way that's proper and objective for most users, but for now they'll be ignored.

This is the basic technical specification of the Twitfluence application. In case your curious about the mathematical algorithm behind it and how the calculation works, you can visit the following post, but otherwise, feel free to leave a comment or suggestion. I want to make the calculation as correct as possible, so any feedback of yours would really be appreciated.

The Web is going rogue. The Web is going mainstream.

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:16:40 GMT

Times are changing, and the World Wide Web isn't any different. You've probably already noticed your mother on Facebook and it's not too hard to understand that interests of specific generations can be a bit different. The same goes for young people, who are obviously growing up in a world of their own, a confusing world overwhelmed with infinite amounts of information.

In the USA, already 93% of people under 18 are online. A massive group, which is probably the main driving force behind changing how the Web looks, and they are actually doing quite a good job in making it mainstream and pop. The Web used to be a part of the geeky subculture, but lately it's becoming just one of the mass media, another television on steroids.

YouTube

A great example of this pop transformation are top videos on YouTube. Star Wars Kid, David After Dentist and other classic home-made videos are starting to look unimpressive compared to Lady Gaga's and Justin Bieber's music videos. If you check the current list of most viewed videos, you can see that YouTube is really becoming more of a PopTube, where record labels are dominating the chart with high budget music videos. Lady Gaga managed to be the first pop artist with the most viewed YouTube video, but was quickly dethroned by Bieber. A sad fate for the biggest online video sharing tool.

Twitter

When people who actually have something smart to say are getting less followers on Twitter than pop princesses, you know something's gone wrong. Ashton Kutcher, the king of Twitter and the guy who beat CNN to one million followers, was overtaken by Britney Spears in the number of followers just a few moths ago. This is just the beginning - the following list provides information about top Twitter users, where you can see more and more pop stars whose accounts are emerging and taking the lead. Perhaps I'm not the correct target group, but Britney's Twitter account with her 423 tweets kinda sucks!

Google

Google is kind enough to allow us insight into it's most popular searches of every year, which offers great overview of the culture of a specific era (Google Zeitgeist: 2007, 2008, 2009). This is The spirit of the times, as seen by world's biggest search engine:

In 2007, there were no people or other pop brands on the top 10 list of searches.
In 2008, Sarah Palin became 1st and Obama took 6th place, but that was mostly because of the US presidential elections, which can't really be considered pop. Pop star searches included Heath Ledger on 5th (because of his death) and the band Jonas Brothers on 10th place.
In 2009, the trend of pop searches continued. Michael Jackson became 1st (due to this death), New Moon (Twilight movie) finished 6th and Lady Gaga 7th. Creepy enough, but wait until Justin gets on the list in 2010.

These are some of the cases showing the evolution of the World Wide Web, currently ruled by it's undisputed queen, Lady Gaga. The scary part is that all of this is probably just a virtual portrait of the real world of today, where Pop Stars and Supermodel reality shows are helping to create new values and a wannabe society. And the Web is not just a victim of this trend anymore, it became an active player helping to promote this new and strange culture.

All of this saddens me a bit, and this is my puny effort to change this trend. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Many colors and identities of different brands with the same name: Neolab

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:43:10 GMT

The company I work for is called Neolab. It's a name we obviously share with many other companies from all over the world, producing a little global identity crisis. We were aware of that fact when we picked the name, but nowadays it's becoming almost impossible to find a unique name for a brand. A few years later, I went on a quest to find as many Neolabs as possible online and stumbled upon 21 of them. While I was at it, I also took my time to try to find out which industries these companies are from and to understand why other people chose this brand. This post will bring you a diversified collection of different "Neolab" logos, so similar in name, but yet so different in corporate identity and design.

In the case of Neolab Slovenia, my partners and I decided to go for the name "Neolab" because we wanted something that would represent and communicate our focus on Research and Development (the Lab part) which has to be in tune with all the newest technologies available (the Neo part). Neo-Lab. Others were probably thinking in a similar way, and the interesting fact is that these "New Laboratories" don't come from many different industries. As the name already suggests, all Neolabs that exist (online) today focus on knowledge intensive fields.

Medical

"Neolab" is obviously a name which people instinctively connect with medical industries, and most of the Neolabs I was able to find are working on that field:

Neolab Chile
Industry: Clinic
URL: http://www.neolab.cl/
Design: 3 points

Neolab Germany
Industry: Medical Equipment
URL: http://www.neolab.de/
Design: 4 points

Neolab India
Industry: Medical Equipment
Design: 3 points

Neolab Russia
Industry: Medical Equipement
URL: http://neolab.ru/
Design: 2 points

Neolab Serbia
Industry: Clinic
URL: http://neolab.co.rs/
Design: 4 points

Neolab Switzerland
Industry: Medical Equipment
URL: http://neolab.ch/
Design: 5 points

Neolab Ukraine
Industry: Clinic
URL: http://neolab.kiev.ua/
Design: 6 points

Neolab United States
Industry: Medical Supplies
URL: http://www.neolab.com/
Design: 4 points

Average score for Medical: 3.9

Pharmaceutics & Biotechnology

The other similar industry the name "Neolab" is well suited for is definitely Pharmaceutical. Here are some of them:

Neolab Argentina
Industry: Biotechnology
URL: http://www.neolab.com.ar/
Design: 5 points

Neolab Canada
Industry: Pharmaceuticals
URL: http://www.neolab.ca/
Design: 3 points

Neolab Peru
Industry: Pharmaceuticals
URL: http://www.neolabperu.com/
Design: 6 points

Neolab United Kingdom
Industry: Pharmaceuticals
Design: 1 point

Average score for Pharmaceutics & Microbiology: 3.8

Marketing, Web and Design

The connection between Marketing, Web and Design is usually hard to distinguish, and the following Neolabs are focused on some or all of those fields:

Neolab Brazil
Industry: Web & Design
URL: http://www.neolab.com.br/
Design: 5 points

Neolab Denmark
Industry: Design
URL: http://neolab.dk/
Design: 4 points

Neolab Italy
Industry: Design
URL: http://www.neolab.it/
Design: 9 points

Neolab Japan
Industry: Web & Design
URL: http://www.neolab.co.jp/
Design: 8 points

Neolab Korea
Industry: Web & Design
URL: http://www.neolab.kr/
Design: 7 points

Neolab Norway
Industry: Advertising
URL: http://www.neolab.no/
Design: 8 points

Average score for Marketing & Design: 6.8

Technology & IT

IT companies also often see themselves as laboratories and here are a few of them, including our Neolab:

Neolab France
Industry: IT
URL: http://neolab-systems.com/
Design: 6 points

Neolab Poland
Industry: IT
URL: http://www.neolab.pl/
Design: 4 points

Neolab Slovenia
Industry: Web & IT
URL: http://www.neolab.si/
Design: 10 points

Average score for IT: 6.7

Other

The special case from Thailand is working on construction projects.

Neolab Thailand
Industry: Construction
URL: http://www.neolab.co.th/
Design: 4 points

Average score for Other: 4

While I was putting the list together, I decided to quickly rate each one of them to see if there are any significant differences in the quality of logos and websites between different industries. This score was made on my personal opinion and not on any scientific methodology. You can see for yourselves that those Neolabs, working in Marketing, Web and Design have the best corporate identities. IT is close, but mostly because our design is so unique and won many awards last year. The Medical and Pharmaceutics follow miles behind, and their websites and logos already look a lot out of date. These industries are maturer and the companies older, and they probably take their competition to other fields (research, quality, professionals), without giving so much on their image and marketing, at least online.

Applying the same calculation to Neolabs from different continents, we can see that Europe scored the highest score (average 5.5), followed by Asia (average 4.8) and Americas (average 4.3).

Neolab - the name behind so many different companies, brands and identities. It's interesting to see how specific industries, people and cultures are able to portray the same simple name in so many unique ways. Some our good, some our bad, and really trying to be unbiased, I still think ours is the best, followed by Italy, Norway and Japan. Or am I just too blinded and you have a different favorite?

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

The awesomeness of the Facebook Like button

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:46:07 GMT

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.

After the Facebook Like button was released 21.4.2010 on the f8 conference as a part of the new Open Graph protocol, it was quickly adopted by a lot of sites and portals, many of them mainstream. It didn't take long for the button to produce criticism, because it turned out it can be used to exploit user profiles by installing applications and gathering user data. Today, this debacle is slowly turning into history, and more than 100,001 sites already use the Facebook Like button, producing probably unimaginable amounts of likes and driving massive traffic to their sites.

I use Facebook (and other social sites) to promote my blog by sharing links, and actually get quite a few referrers from it. Many of my previous posts have been liked and commented, making it a very useful tool for generating visits. But I haven't imagined these interactions would also reflect on the Facebook Like button I finally adopted on my blog. I apologize if this is a well-known fact, but I haven't heard about it from anyone and still have trouble finding any mention of it.

When I first tested how the Facebook Like button behaves, I noticed it displayed a few likes even though I've clicked on it around 2 AM. This made me wonder if something is wrong with it. Is Facebook trying to fake likes to make the button more appealing for publishers? Surely they have to be smarter than that. After I dug in a little deeper I noticed it displays a different number of likes on different posts I've made and published to Facebook. Hm... Could this mean...?

I was intrigued by what I found out. Besides the actual clicks, the Like button also displays all the likes and comments on the links you or anybody else shared on Facebook, making it a global Facebook social interactions counter with a specific URL (link). I manually went through the statistics and concluded that all shares, likes and comments of posted links are also converted into likes on the button. I have tested it with 10 different posts and the numbers are pretty much correct, and I even found some proof of this fact. The people behind these likes and comments aren't mentioned with their names on the Like button, but they are there in the number. A pretty awesome feature for making your content look cooler and getting the most out of social interactions on Facebook.

Here are some results from my testing, which provide almost a perfect match between likes on the freshly published (and unclicked) Like button and shares, likes and comments inside Facebook.

The influence of new generation information systems on modern organizations: 5 likes on the button vs. 1 share (me), 2 likes (A, B) and 2 comments (me, B) - 5:5
Facebook vs. Twitter - Part 2: Privacy and real-time web: 6 likes on the button vs. 1 share (me) and 5 likes (A, B, C, D, E) - 6:6
Why are all browser logos and icons round (and blue)?: 8 likes on the button vs. 3 shares (me, A, unknown), 4 likes (A, B, C, D) on my share, 1 like on A's share - 8:8
Arthur C. Clarke envisioning the World Wide Web in 1968: 19 likes on the button vs. 8 shares (me, 7 unknown), 4 likes (A, B, C, D) and 2 comments (C, me) on my share, other interactions unknown - 19: 14 + x
Neolab in 2009: 19 likes on the button vs. 1 share (me), 9 likes (A - I), 8 comments (A, 2 x me, J - M) - 19:18

Even though there are some differences, I still think the explanation is more than satisfactory and if I'm right, this fact alone probably makes it worth implementing anywhere. Besides, the Like button supposedly produces more traffic on sites and blogs using it, which will definitely be an interesting statistic to monitor. The only sad thing about is that I had to like (and unlike) all my previous blog posts to activate the count (taking some time and producing an empty Facebook profile), and it turns out sometimes the numbers don't load correctly because of unknown reasons.

My fascination with the little widget doesn't mean Facebook is off the hook from my side. As useful as the Like button may be for companies, publishers and bloggers, it probably isn't that good for the users and their privacy. Facebook should build a fair and transparent strategy covering these issues, because it becoming Big Brother surely isn't that promising for the people and the future of the World Wide Web, and more and more of us are aware of that. But taking a look from the other perspective and comparing it to similar sharing solutions, the Facebook Like button is pure awesomeness.

Why Web 2.0 is so important

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:10:53 GMT

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.

Social networking

Social networking sites enabled probably the greatest migration of people to the virtual world. People have a new opportunity to interact not only in real life, but also in cyberspace, where geographical and other physical barriers don't exists. I'm not saying this is a promising thing overall, some people are obviously overdoing it, but it's still useful for keeping in touch with people. Together with the implementation of feeds and streams which enable dynamic information, social networking could represent the biggest and most important component of Web 2.0, reshaping business, marketing, politics and just being plain amazing.

Video sharing

Yesterday we read the newspaper, listened to the radio and watched television. Today, we have a super-medium that supports all of it at once. Video, as the most complex form of multimedia, is something that you can record with your telephone and publish online in minutes, from where it can go anywhere. If distributing a video is easy, anything else surely has to be a piece of cake. This fact obviously holds massive potential for science and arts in general.

Wikis and folksonomies

Wikis and folksonomies are tools which harness the amazing effect of participation and collaboration of millions of people to create information and knowledge. Wikipedia is the biggest encyclopedia in the world, holding knowledge whole mankind can benefit from. Folksonomies, such as tools for collaborative tagging and social indexing enable structured knowledge, while recommendation engines help us get information from massive quantity of data available online. Today, if something important is discovered, everybody knows it in minutes.

Blogs

Most people have the need to express themselves, and blogs (and microblogs) are the perfect tool for that. Plain and simple: anybody can be a journalist and if you have something smart to say, people will listen. Those who are influential enough can even break out of anonymity and become opinion leaders.

Web services and mashups

Web services and mashups enable and use open flows of data from one online service to another, from one online platform to another. System integration used to be one of the most complex things in IT, but thanks to new standards, protocols and technology, data can freely travel from and to different sources. This provides a perfect ground for exchanging information and enables evolution from software services to software platforms.

Perhaps we should also mention cloud computing, which makes hardware requirements irrelevant – the processing power and memory is around in plenty – but computer grids with shared resources have already been around for decades. All the better to understand that Web 2.0 is more about concept than it is about technology.

Web 2.0 is important and revolutionary, both in a good and a bad way. It brings a new perspective and new opportunities to different arts and sciences, such as business, education, sociology, psychology, literature, politics and many other. My professional and academic work focuses mainly on it's influence on information science and technologies, but it's clear that this new paradigm has a huge global effect, whose scale we still can't fully estimate. Now we just have to hope younger generations don't get too overwhelmed because of it and will be able to adjust to this new reality without abusing it too much.

The influence of new generation information systems on modern organizations

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 15:08:48 GMT

The traditional role of Information Science and corresponding Information Technologies is providing organizations with information. This makes it a tool supporting decision process, which can be counted as an organizational process. But today, this role is becoming more widely spread, making Information Sciences and Information Technologies also an important part of the operational process itself. Concepts such as Business Process Reengineering (BPR) make information solutions a vital part of any modern organization process, present in all components in the business cycle of planning, realization and controlling.

The World Wide Web as a platform

If Information Science and Information Technologies revolutionized modern organizations, there is a heavily related technology that revolutionized our every day lives. The Internet and its main service, the World Wide Web hold unimagined potential both for personal and professional goals. This technology enables unlimited knowledge sharing between people and organizations, while at the same providing the platform on which different information systems can be created. Intranets (designed to support internal people and processes) and Extranets (designed for connecting with external entities, such as clients, suppliers, partners and competition) enable effective, flexible, scalable and accessible web-based information systems that can support most of organizational needs of a modern organizations.

To understand the implications of World Wide Web we can also take a look at the companies behind it, as they have become some of the largest IT companies in the world, and their services the most widely used information systems, leaving aside operation systems. There is an important point hidden in that statement – most information systems of today are not used to support organizations any more, they are designed for personal activities. Software solutions are shifting from B2B to B2C, and where management was the key buyer of software yesterday, ordinary everyday user is the main "buyer" of software today.

The Internet with its possibilities to share knowledge is a revolution probably comparable to the inventions of speaking, writing and printing in the past. Those organizations and individuals who are able to recognize this fact have a great opportunity for progress. That potential goes both for getting useful information and knowledge from other sources as for getting useful information about organization to those or any other sources. There is no doubt that today we live in the information era, and those who will not adapt that fact, probably have no future.

Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and IT 2.0

In the past years, a new generation of World Wide Web solutions has emerged, which we understand as Web 2.0. These services are focused on collaboration, cooperation, communication and connectivity, enabling sharing between millions of users and utilizing the effect of mass participation. The potential marketing revenue, which is the driving force behind the World Wide Web, and the large competition between millions of software companies around the world allow these services to evolve with light speed, making them both technologically and functionally more advanced than classical information systems. It didn’t take long for managers and entrepreneurs to realize the effect of these now approaches and services can also be beneficial on organization, marketing, decision support and other fields of organization and management.

The concept of Enterprise 2.0 adapts Web 2.0 for business-oriented use and represents using these new technologies, approaches, concepts and services in business-oriented environments. With a focus both on internal optimization (wikis, idea banks, social networking tools) and external optimization (blogs and microblogs, RSS, social bookmarking and tagging), it enables companies and their employees new ways to connect and interact between themselves and with other organizations. The focus of information systems is shifting from technical elements to social elements of organizations, and traditional information systems, such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems are getting upgraded with modern systems, such as custom developed intranets and extranets.

But Enterprise 2.0 solutions are still mostly partial (separate) software solutions modern organizations can use to optimize their performance and strategies. In my opinion, future information systems will have those concepts and approaches incorporated into the core of the system, enriching traditional business-oriented solutions with social components that will support connections both with other individuals within organizations and with individuals from other organizations. Real-time interactions and communication will be one of the foundations of new business models that are emerging on the market, and IT 2.0 will be the platform that supports those concepts and activities.

It's time for IT to go social

Modern organizations are mostly service-oriented, so traditional ERP systems are becoming used mostly for low value-added activities. These new organizations are founded on innovative business models, knowledge and human capital. High value-add information systems for those organizations are systems for Project Management, Customer Relationship Management, Knowledge Management etc., which are not oriented on technical components of organizations, but on social ones, such as people, relationships, connections, interactions, knowledge, cooperation and other.

New services that Web 2.0 "invented" fit into this picture of new generation IT 2.0 software solutions perfectly. Social networking tools can enable higher connectivity, new forms of interactions, team building and cooperation between all the people in the process. Social bookmarking and tagging produce structured knowledge and can harness the effect of crowdsourcing. Visualizations of data and information can bring more information used for decision making and clearer view on organization process. Feeds and streams enable faster data flow and clearer connections between most individuals inside the organization.

Organization is a system of dynamic relationships, and people are no longer considered only as a part of the machinery, but as complex entities, building even more complex social units. The greatest corporations that exist today were produced by capable individuals, forming even more capable teams. Therefore we must not ignore the science behind it – human capital is the probably the most valuable thing any modern organization can have and most software solutions of the future will be focused on these social components. The interesting symbiosis between new generation information systems and modern organization approaches is more obvious than ever, providing all the elements needed for business-oriented IT to go 2.0.

Facebook vs. Twitter - Part 2: Privacy and real-time web

Thu, 13 May 2010 17:11:14 GMT

After my previous post comparing Facebook and Twitter I received a few comments about how Facebook and Twitter are two totally different services which can't really be compared. I admit they are not perfectly analog, but my thoughts originate mainly from the fact that these two players will probably be those who'll define how the social web of tomorrow will look, both as a user experience as an organizational and marketing tool. Where Google dominates Web 1.0, Facebook and Twitter are obviously becoming the leaders of Web 2.0, and the fact is any of them (including Google) has a good chance to define Web 3.0.

What's new

The past few weeks have been pretty intense for Facebook and Twitter. The two Web 2.0 rivals both held conferences about how their companies are doing and revealing plans for the future. Facebook's (f8) main presented functionality was the universal Like button, which was already adopted by more than 50.000 websites in its first week, even though with a bit of problems. Twitter (Chirp) announced its service has more users than expected (105m registered, 180m unique users a month) and their main focus in the future will be Twitter Annotations, used for making Tweets embedded with meta-data used for better indexing and search. These two features imply that one of the main battlefields of the future of web will surely be the semantic web, for which experts say at this point Facebook has the advantage.

Real-time web

Leaving aside speculations about where this whole story is headed and how the semantic web will turn out, and concentrate on another thing hot right now: real-time web. Real-time web has so much potential even Google wanted a part of it. Sadly, Buzz came out a bit of a failure, and most of it's traffic is non-generated. The giant probably doesn't really care because it can display Tweets and other streams in it's search results, finding a symbiosis with real-time web services, similar as it has with Wikipedia. But still, it's "new" Buzz service proves that real-time web is interesting for everybody, even the biggest web company in the world.

The main point of real-time web is already hidden in its name. It's about information when it happens. News portals and blogs are minutes if not hours behind, after all, they usually present professional and lectured articles with sources and photographies. But in this hectic and hyper-speed world we live in, information has the highest value when it happens. In the case of extraordinary and unpredictable events, such as natural and man-made disasters, or just casual popular things, such as the premiere of a new movie, timing means everything. That is why journalists turn to these sources more and more, and CNN occasionally analyzes the twittersphere live on television, taking advantage of these new modern media platforms. They actually deserve to be congratulated for seizing this great opportunity.

Privacy issues

Where does Facebook fit into this picture? Well, to be honest, I think it's still trying to fit in it, and that's what the whole "Privacy and real-time web" in this post title is all about. To understand what I'm getting at, we must go a few years back, back to Facebook's beginnings. Facebook started as a closed network for elite schools, then slowly opening up to general public to become one of the biggest websites ever. The service and concept was originally based around privacy – where everything you did you had a full control over who will see it, what probably made it big in the first place. Today, this privacy is almost gone, and even Mark Zuckerberg admitted it doesn't interest them any more.

This decline of Facebook's privacy is concerning many people right now, and you can check out this interesting evolution for yourself (also visualized). Activism and search for alternatives have already made it to the mainstream and it looks like I'm becoming a part of this movement too. Don't get me wrong, I still think Facebook is a great service both for personal and professional life, but sometimes you just have to not want it all (sounds familiar?). It's a bit ironic actually, the thing which made Facebook could also become its end.

In the case of content providing, real-time web and search, for which Facebook perhaps also has ambitions, privacy is a giant barrier. Facebook has content, not only that, it has the most content of them all (including multimedia), but this valuable content is entangled inside Facebook's huge web of (dissolving) privacy, making most of the streams unreachable for general public. Even Facebook Pages, designed to have their information fully open to public, were not helping a lot, because it's the the millions of microbloggers, from the most influential, to the most insignificant, who are empowering the real-time web, and not brands and corporations. Real-time web is a giant crowdsourced news network with reporters scattered all around the world, and that is something Facebook so desperatly wants to be a part of, using all means necessary.

Twitter is the king

We will see if Facebook went too far or will it be able to become a real player in real-time web too. For now, Twitter seems to be the dominant platform and the fact that it's entire timeline will be archived in the Library of Congress is an amazing achievement proving this theory. Facebook's only option to make it on this market is to continue getting rid of privacy, making it's content available for everybody, both human and machine. Of course, there will be other players too and uncle Google will sit right on top of it, trying to use all the platforms and services to its own benefit.

Number of users is the crucial component of real-time web, so Facebook could probably have a greater potential in this field in the long run too. But the truth is Facebook users are becoming annoyed, and it's still a question how they'll accept its new strategic policy and how intimidated they will become by its frequent debacles. But the attachment to Facebook can sometimes be too heavy, so it will be interesting to see if users will actually leave Facebook or simply adapt to its new privacy, continuing to feed it with accessible real-time content.

If the future is semantic web, reality is real-time web, and at this point Twitter is very much in the lead. In the end, it probably doesn't make a lot of difference for a casual user if he gets the information late, but still, the whole concept of real-time web is quite amazing and holds great potential for many people and businesses. An interesting thing, the World Wide Web is, and everything that came with it. Welcome to 2010.

Check out the complete Facebook vs. Twitter series.

Why are all browser logos and icons round (and blue)?

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:23:31 GMT

I'm not a professional graphic designer, but I've been doing web development for years and got to know a few things about it, both intentionally and accidentally. I hope my designer friends won't get mad with me simplifying design in this post, but the way I see it, there are mostly two main purposes design serves. One is to support function (present both in industrial and graphic design) and the other is to enable effective representation and communication (specific for graphic design).

Logos are probably one of the most praised elements of graphic design. They make an effective characterization of a company, product or service, besides being aesthetic and memorable to enable high user recollection. It's also good to have an original logo, something that stands out from the rest and helps a brand not to get mistaken with other brands. But there is always a trade-off between creativity and standard, and in our case of browser logos and icons, it looks like this desired representation was a bit more important than originality. Most of the browser logo designers went for a safe and predictable solution, producing one of the greatest graphic design cliches of our time.

When you think about the Internet and the World Wide Web, there are probably not so many geometrical shapes and colors you can associate it with. The net is huge, endless and fluid, so the proper shape is definitely not a triangle, a square or something else with edges. The net is global and it's everywhere, so the color representing it has to be something resembling our planet.

If you compare six of the most popular internet browser icons, you can see this concept in action. Most browser logos and icons are round and contain blue, except Opera, who went for red. But it's not just about the shape and the color, the bottom line is they generally look alike, using similar elements such as Earth, light beams and reflections. Opera logo stands out, but upon second observation, it kinda looks like an uncreative red Internet Explorer clone, so perhaps it's even worse than the others.

Are the designers behind these solutions to blame? Probably not. The internet browser is arguably the most widely used piece of software there is, so it's important that your mother also finds it's icon representable and appealing. The truth is we probably won't reinvent the World Wide Web or colonize the galaxy any time soon, so there is a good chance we also won't see any original and creative browser logos any time soon too. Therefore we just have to accept that round and blue it is.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

What's hot on the web - Part 5: Cool and funny webcomics

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:52:32 GMT

There are probably millions of different webcomics online today. A few of them actually made it to the mainstream, with a bit of help from the social media and the cyber community. If you examine the most popular ones, you can see that they actually have a lot in common. They are short and to the point, providing great and funny content within usually simplistic drawings, with a focus mostly on geeky topics. After all, this geeky community is probably the driving force behind the World Wide Web and if they like it, the comic has a great chance to succeed. This part of What's hot on the web will display some of my favorites and help you spend a bit of your valuable time doing useless things.

Amazing Superpowers

This comics has a great sense of humor, covering themes based mostly on weird situations and self irony, usually with a great twist at the end. It's up to you to decide if you'll laugh or cry.
URL: http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/

Cyanide and Happiness

Another very popular webcomic feeds on dark humor, often focusing on offensive topics some could describe as insulting and tasteless. Nevertheless, this doesn't stop it from being one of the most well known and most praised by the cyber community and the social media.
URL: http://www.explosm.net/comics/

Dilbert

One of the most successful online and offline comics is Dilbert, a satyric office humor comic that managed to make it everywhere – books, merchandise, cartoons, video game, etc. If you don't mind it being a bit commercial and if you work in an office, you'll probably be amused by witty portraits of real life situations.
URL: http://www.dilbert.com/

Penny Arcade

Focusing mostly on geeky themes, such as video games and technology, this comic has also gotten its fair share of fans on the web. Because of its success, the authors were able to make other projects connected with it, also because Penny Arcade is supposed to be the first gaming oriented comic.
URL: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

A bit twisted and dark, this comic mocks practically everything it can get its hands on, specially religion. A good and light reading if you don't have problems with that sort of things.
URL: http://www.smbc-comics.com/

The Perry Bible Fellowship

This amazing comic sadly stopped coming out back in 2008. Before that it was one of the most popular around, appearing also in newspapers and books. Because of it's great surreal humor and experimentation with different drawing techniques it definitely still deserves a mention.
URL: http://pbfcomics.com/

White Ninja

With a plot set around weird and funny everyday experiences of white ninja and more than 1,000 different parts already written, White ninja became an online success. Short and simple stories provide great casual reading.
URL: http://www.whiteninjacomics.com/comics.shtml

XKCD

This famous stick man is one of the most popular online comics, focusing mostly on geeky topics, such as computer sciences and mathematics. This webcomic became so popular that the author got a book deal in 2009. Yes, with a stick man.
URL: http://www.xkcd.com/

local: Paradise Misplaced

Written and drawn by one of Slovenia's most talented comic artists Izar Lunaček, this emerging webcomic puts Adam, Eve, God and other biblical characters in Eden, doing crazy things and getting acquainted with different sins. As the authors puts it, 'Every sin is original', so why shouldn't it also be funny.
URL: http://www.paradisemisplaced.si/

Hope you enjoyed this part's selection and had fun browsing the mentioned sites. These comics and artists can truly make your day, so they are worth checking out. Face it - comics are no longer considered to be just for geeks and children, so you might as well embrace them without having a guilty conscience.

Check out the complete What's hot on the web series.

The impact of hyperlinks, toolbars and URL shorteners on Google Analytics

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:51:45 GMT

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.

The methodology

Google Analytics and other statistical software is based on combining the user agent (operating system, browser), IP and browser cookies to calculate visits on a site. While others are captured for different information, cookies are still the base of elementary web metrics, so it's crucial to understand them and have them under control. I did just that each time I did a test – clean Google's cookies, close the browser, open the browser, check it out. I made a hidden post for testing, one which definitely wouldn't get any other referrers other than me, besides using some old and already forgotten posts I made on Digg months ago and some indexed by Google images. Then I started testing different cases, which would help me understand the behavior of all the above mentioned things.

Referring vs. navigating

The first interesting thing I found out was that Google Analytics knows the difference between clicking on a link and manually navigating to a page by entering the URL in the browser. In the first case it recognizes the referrer, and in other one it doesn't (it is displayed as google / organic in the statistics). This is caused by the referrer information captured in the HTML header of every web page. So, if somebody manually enters your web page's address after seeing a link on Facebook, Facebook won't be counted as a referrer, but if they click on the link, it will be.

Url shorteners

I tested a few url shorteners, tinyurl, is.gd, skrci.me and the one Twitter automatically uses (bit.ly). I found out that the ones I manually created and clicked on them inside the URL shortening site showed this site as the referrer. But in the case of Twitter, on which I made a tweet, clicked on the link and deleted it within seconds, Twitter was correctly shown as the referrer, even though the click first went to bit.ly and than to my blog. I went further, created a new shortened URL, put it in a hyperlink on a server, clicked on it, and again, this server was shown as the referrer. Because url shorteners only make the redirect, the click is keeping the original referrer, which enables the referrers to be fully captured, even if they go through the shortened URL.

Toolbars

I use a few Web 2.0 services to promote my blog, and it's been a trend for them to provide toolbars, which display the target site inside the parent site. The main reason for them doing this is to keep users inside their site, and in my opinion, it's annoying and it sucks. But at least it doesn't influence the statistics. I tested this behavior on Digg toolbar and on Google images (without removing or closing the toolbar) and in both cases it worked perfectly – the referrer was correctly recognized. After all, upon technically examining both cases, it's only an iframe opening the designated page below the toolbar, so the target page actually does fully open anyways.

Proof

The screenshots of Google Analytics below support my theory. In the case of the hidden post, I managed to create the following situations which prove my discussed behaviour of hyperlinks and URL shorteners:

I clicked on a link from neolab.si (one referrer from neolab.si),
I manually navigated to the post from neolab.si twice (by entering the url in the browser while being on neolab.si), shown as google / organic,
I clicked on a shortened link on the is.gd site, later I pasted another is.gd short url directly to my browser (two referrers from is.gd),
I clicked on a shortened link on the tinyurl site (a referrer from tinyurl),
I clicked on the automatically bit.ly generated url in a tweet (a referrer from Twitter),
I generated the skrci.me short url, put it in a hyperlink on localhost and clicked on it (a referrer from localhost).

The second report displays the referrers from Digg and Google images, both services using toolbars. On the first occasion, I opened two different posts inside the Digg toolbar, and on the second, two posts inside Google images toolbar, all of them without closing the toolbar (I went for one post twice, to check out if a session is also created and found out it is). As you can see, the referrers are all there and the toolbars don't corrupt the data in any way.

Conclusion

Look like we don't need to worry about these things anymore. I'm actually quite surprised about finding out the mentioned things work like a charm, not influencing the analysis and statistics in any case. From now on, there can be no more blaming these new features and gadgets on low traffic and weird referrers. The World Wide Web has been well planned and Google Analytics is able to know everything, so if your statistics seem weird, there is probably more chance that you are the one who's wrong.

Creative online advertising at its best – Wired and Youtube

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:48:41 GMT

I used to work for an online advertising agency. For large projects we were usually trying to make a campaign extraordinary and special, something that would stand out from the rest and be creative and effective. When you are trying to achieve something like that you are usually limited by a great number of facts, such as the campaign budget, creativity of the team, capabilities of the designers and programmers, but perhaps most importantly, the technical issues and platform of the site that will serve the ads.

Looks like Wired.com and YouTube.com don't have those problems and are actually cooperating with the advertisers to go towards perfection. YouTube you know, but in case you haven't heard of Wired, it's an online blog and an off-line magazine, one of the most respectable with focus on new technologies. They have great content, high reach and are a big potential for advertisers and marketers. Some of them are actually prepared to go for it all the way. I have noticed two campaigns on Wired and one on YouTube that really stand out, all of them fully integrated with the site. Forget floaters and takeovers, in-site advertising is the bomb. We can only wonder how much money was spent on the design, development and the serving of the ads.

Acura

The Acura ZDX banner works in a such a way that the site's main menu and some content are reflected onto the car (fake, of course). This makes it look as if the commercial is fully integrated with the site, making it interesting and appealing. It doesn't do anything special besides that, but the graphic rendering is pretty good.

Apple

Apple's iPod nano and iPod touch advertisements on Wired.com are even more outstanding. iPod touch goes a step further, breaking apart the site and its main menu (fake again, of course), trying to communicate the motion sensitivity, multi-player gaming and other features of the gadget. This approach goes beyond in-site advertising, because it uses the takeover ad to emphasize iPod touch capabilities, giving it an outstanding look and probably a very high effect for both branding and direct response. You must be weird not to click it, even though you know where the link leads and you don't actually need or want it.

Nintendo

After Nintendo's Wii console came out, they made a really awesome Wario Land ad on YouTube. Emphasizing the gaming console's capabilities and motion sensitive controllers, they went even a step further than Apple. The final result is a totally destructed YouTube page, with most of the site's elements slowly being kicked off the screen. Creative and amazing, again with great direct and branding effect, use of beyond in-site advertising, and a great demonstration of focused communication. This one looks like it actually really does take the site to bits and pieces, because all the elements look real and updated. Nintendo was probably able to negotiate full control over their YouTube channel.

These are bits of advertising excess I have noticed while browsing the web. The mentioned commercials are usually online just for a day or so, so it's hard to catch them if you're not a regular user. I'm sure there are more similar cases like this on other portals too. It's been obvious for quite some time that advertising is shifting towards online, with effective and amusing results. Technical capabilities of this medium are probably unlimited, so we can expect even more amazing displays of creativity, design and modern marketing in the future.

I got the scent of going viral on social media. Now I'm a bit confused.

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:22:28 GMT

The previous few posts I've written have been accepted really well. They even went viral to some extent, which made me proud and happy. Now I feel a bit confused. It's obvious this can't happen each time, so I better just get used to my old 50-100 viewers per post. This puts me in an awkward situation, where past achievements rose my expectations, but to be realistic, I don't really expect this to happen again any time soon. But this doesn't mean I will stop trying and it surely doesn't mean I won't consider everything I can get my hands to try to understand the causality behind it.

Going viral is every marketer's and blogger's dream, but sadly something you can't plan or do on demand. You can try to set up the scene and raise the odds, but bottom line is - it happens or it doesn't happen. Millions of variables, correct timing, correct readers, correct everything and a lot of luck is what can bring you extended exposure and virality. In my case, there are probably 5 posts that made it more or less. Analyzing their performance and behavior, combining Google analytics and other tools available, I can get a bit of insight into what's happened.

Digg

My post about Snow Leopard had some exposure on Digg, but only because I asked a few friends of mine to digg it after I published it (thanks guys!). Otherwise, what they say about Digg is totally true, power users control most of the content and you are nothing without the initial push. My other posts got a few diggs, but mostly none.

Google images

I have two posts that are quite popular on Google images, thanks to two different specific parts of information they contain. Lego succeeded because of mentioning the Star Wars minifig poster, while What's hot on the web made it because of a Demotivator. Google images is not really something you would like as a power referrer, but still better than nothing.

The post about Arthur C. Clarke's vision of the internet came strong on Reddit, which is probably the geekiest community of my social publishing channels. Reddit loves sci-fi and I was able to come to page 5 of the front page, which is quite an achievement. And it's much more accessible than Digg.

Twitter

A few days before Google Buzz came out (lucky me), I did an extensive study of Facebook and Twitter and speculated on how things will turn out. Somewhere in between I was retweeted by Twitter_Tips, which has 160.000+ followers, and things took their own course after that. Pretty cool, it got me a total of 135 retweets and a lot of visitors.

These are the simple facts behind the success. I can conclude that power users are really important for social media virality. That's why I will use the social media as much as I can even further and hopefully make it again someday. I am also building a better sharing engine, which should be online soon and also add up a few points. Besides, I did a bit of research on how to go viral in general or on specific platforms, f.i. Twitter or Digg, which made me reconsider about using better titles, different post times and other approaches that could influence my exposure.

There is probably one component which I haven't mentioned that much until now, but is surely critical. You will never go viral if your content or product/service isn't good. Luckily this is something I have full control over, and I promise it will be my primary focus in the future. I still have miles to go, but for less than a year since I started blogging, I'm probably quite well on the way. Content is king and that's what blogging is mostly about. Now I just need to get lucky again.

Facebook vs. Twitter - Part 1: The battleground

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:50:45 GMT

Facebook and Twitter are probably the two hottest Web 2.0 services available. A lot of us are familiar with both of them, but it's hard to predict which has greatest potential in the long run to take on the title of the main social networking service. The competition is on, but it's also obvious the race is long, even infinite. The World Wide Web runs on a time of its own, and we have seen major players vanish and marginal players with great ideas take the lead in years, if not months. Because I like to speculate on things like that, I bring you the first part of my thoughts on Facebook vs. Twitter.

For now, I won't go into details, but we'll rather check out different categories and variables that represent the already made success and future potentials for both giants. The list of the comparisons is based on my opinion as a web developer, web 2.0 user and social media strategist, in no specific order. Later posts will go into specific fields and analyze how things are turning out.

The size

Today, Facebook is a few times bigger than Twitter, with 350 million registered users vs. Twitter's 50 million. The following diagram is already a bit old, but still gives an interesting overview on the comparison between the two giants. We must admit Facebook has been around longer, but that doesn't change the fact it's way up ahead in this category. More users mean more possibilities and greater potential. Facebook 1.

The revenue

Facebook already went cash flow positive, while Twitter is still thinking about its revenue model. This could turn out to be one of the crucial stages in Twitter's development, where bad decisions could change everything. Besides, it's a no brainer that making money is good, in our case probably even the main goal for everybody. Facebook 2.

The karma

Facebook’s karma is getting worse and worse. Ever since the infamous Facebook beginnings and stories of the stolen idea, issues concerning privacy and other weird decisions have been a pain in Facebook's behind. On the other hand, Twitter with its involvement on the Iranian elections and now with live reporting on Haiti earthquake, seems like the good boy of Web 2.0. Twitter 1.

The service

Facebook was built around a ton of services, such as events, photos, fan pages, etc. On the other hand, Twitter was build around one service, analog to Facebook’s status, but so much different in content. The so called microblog. External services, such as Twitpic also exist, where one photo becomes richer than the whole album with 100 photos on Facebook. Besides, we have to admit Facebook is becoming a little spam machine and we all know less is more, so this one goes to Twitter. Twitter 2.

The openness

Facebook’s API is focused on building applications inside the portal, where Twitter’s API is focused on having different clients to access Twitter. But concerning the time an average user stays on Facebook to play all the quizes and games, looks like this is an effective approach. Farmville alone, one of the most popular games on Facebook, is bigger than Twitter. Besides, looks like different Facebook clients are also more actual and available than before. Facebook 3.

The relationships

Facebook and Twitter have two different approaches on relationships. On Facebook, both people have to "confirm" each other to become friends. This is called symmetric friendship, which ends with 5.000th friend on Facebook. On the other hand, Twitter has asymmetric friendships, which allows people (and celebrities) to have millions of followers. This makes it more flexible and open and we can only wait for Facebook to do the same. Twitter 3.

The publicity

The celebrity base made Twitter big, and many popular microbloggers intentionally and unintentionally help to promote Twitter. Oprah did her first tweet live on her show and got immediately corrected by Shaq. This type of publicity is something Facebook just can't manage with current architecture. Here is the list of the most followed people on Twitter which gives it a lead over Facebook, because they are far more active and appealing than Facebook fan pages, managed by PR companies. Twitter 4.

The technical platform

If you had to take an estimate, it would be clear that Facebook’s platform and service is much more complicated from the technical point of view. Besides, Facebook has much more users who are more active, but still remains more stable and is online more often. Twitter has a problem with being over capacity often. Is this a problem with the core software architecture or just with the physical architecture and number of servers? Facebook 4.

The influence

2009 was the year of the Twitter, and Twitter was the top word of 2009. Ashton Kutcher kicked CNN's ass to become the first account to have a million followers on Twitter. This clearly show the shift of broadcasting information from mainstream media to opinion leaders. Facebook is for following people you actually know, Twitter is for following people you would like to know. On Facebook you are trapped inside your social circle, while on Twitter you are free to go and look anywhere. Real time search is more actual than ever and Twitter is faster with delivering news than the mainstream media. Even though Facebook groups have some activism influence, Twitter is becoming a platform rather than a service and in this surely means future. Twitter 5.

Conclusion

I think these 9 facts should cover the initial battleground between Facebook and Twitter. For now, I would go more towards Twitter, who also won this faceoff 5 points to 4. Leaving aside this rough analysis, history usually likes to prove that ideas that are the most simple and the most elementary, usually are the best and most history changing, and Google is direct proof of that. You can't go more minimalistic than Twitter, and collaboration of millions of users could mean a whole lot of information and potential. This gives Twitter an opportunity to go beyond Web 2.0, something even Google could be afraid of. On the other hand, Twitter is probably not that useful and fun for non-heavy Web 2.0 users, because it doesn't offer so many things to do. We probably shouldn't underestimate people who are bored online.

This competition will be fun and interesting and I really am curious what will happen. We will see soon, probably even too soon, but it's safe to say the ordinary web user will benefit from this battle anyways.

Check out the complete Facebook vs. Twitter series.

Arthur C. Clarke envisioning the World Wide Web in 1968

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:10:06 GMT

One of the greatest thrills in my life is when I stumble upon a visionary prediction in any form – text, movie, novel, painting, etc. Arthur C. Clarke, one of the most acclaimed science fiction authors of our time, did just that in his famous novel 2001: A space odyssey. Most of us are acquainted with the plot and the scary artificial intelligence named Hal. The whole novel is really revolutionary for the age, but the thing I found most intriguing when I read it, is the detailed description of the technology we know today as the World Wide Web.

1968 was a year marked by student protests, the Vietnam war and the death of Martin Luther King. The Apollo program was well on the way, but would still need to wait one year until men could land on the moon. 1968 also marks the year when Intel, one of the biggest microchip manufacturers in the world was founded. Personal computer was still ages away, but the global network Internet was already being designed. This year UCLA was selected to be the first node of the incoming new network. Since then, things evolved and formed the modern computers and the Internet as we know today, but let's take a look at what our author had to say about it then, in 1968.

"There was plenty to occupy his time, even if he did nothing but sit and read. When he tired of the official reports and memoranda and minutes he would plug his foolscap-sized newspad into the ship’s information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display unit’s short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him. Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-sized rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen, and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousand of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word ‘newspaper’, of course, was an anachronistic hang-over into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorb the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites.

It's hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to Caxton or Gutenberg.

There was another thought which a scanning of those tiny electronic headlines often invoked. The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry of depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes, natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials – these still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the ether. Yet Floyd also wondered if this was altogether a bad thing; the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull."

Pretty impressive. His vision goes even beyond technology and well describes the role of modern news and media. Predicting all of that in 1968 can only be marked as pure genius, and is a great example of why so many people love sci-fi. Sadly, Arthur C. Clarke passed away in 2008, but shall be remembered forever for many things. Perhaps space travel did not make it as far as he foretold, but looks like he knew how technology, information and media will look 40 years later in stunning detail.

Slovenian grocers going for Web 2.0 design

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:12:48 GMT

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?

Using a reflection under a logo, picture or icon was started by the king of design, Apple, and was later on embraced by the Web 2.0 architects and designers. Here is an overview of history of Web 2.0 design, from the times we didn't even know what Web 2.0 was. Today, this stylish feature can be seen anywhere and is already becoming a cliché, but who am I to tell...

After I started being more observant, I noticed that half of the commercials on Slovenian television are using some sorts of reflections, for which we don’t know if they supposedly communicate modern and web (2.0) approaches or are they used just for aesthetic reasons. So much for their creativity anyways. But there is something important they forgot – Web 2.0 is not design, Web 2.0 is a concept.

In our case, the two grocers mentioned are Mercator and Tuš who, interesting enough, don't use the same Web 2.0 logos on their websites. Mercator is ahead though, they have a Facebook page and an active Twitter account, while Tuš failed to recognize new types of media and new Web 2.0 approaches for marketing (and their web site looks like it's from 1995).

I wasn't able to find these advertisements online, so I had to do it old school - photographing the television. The quality is miserable, but enough to prove my point. Looks like Web 2.0 design is so in that it's already out.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

How mini-feed and other streams revolutionized IT

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:59:20 GMT

Web 2.0 brought us a lot of interesting things, approaches and solutions, so it's hard to imagine how we ever managed without it. Most of us are half addicted to floating around in cyberspace, looking at what people are doing and talking to everybody at once. It is a little social revolution that we are witnessing, and it doesn't seem it will end soon. Web 2.0 changed our everyday lives, but for an IT expert such as myself, these new concepts also have a big influence on other sciences and in our case, they will change management, organization and corporate IT forever.

Besides the whole social networking concept, one feature of Web 2.0 stands our as one of the main building blocks of this new paradigm. Call it the news stream, mini feed, activity log or whatever, it is the little information report that makes you come back every hour to see what other people are doing and if something new happened. Without it, Web 2.0 portals and services would be boring and useless, and they definitely wouldn't be as attractive interactive as they are.

Besides being cool and addictive, the mini feed is also a major shift in the presentation of data and information. Until it came around, data was static, but now, we can notice that data has the ability to become dynamic. In Web 2.0, this feature was "invented" to amuse users, but this approach is also fully applicable to business oriented software. Imagine a corporate solution that is intended for project management, where projects are consisted of tasks that have people working on them. The simplified dashboard for a project would probably look something like the table below.

Two weeks ago	Today
Write the documentation (John - Completed)	Write the documentation (John – Completed)
Delegate tasks (John – Active)	Delegate tasks (Mary – Complete)
Design wireframes (Mary – Active)	Design wireframes (Mary – Active)
Enter data (Unassigned)	Enter data (Simon – Active)
Make HTML (Simon – Active)	Make HTML (Simon – Complete)

The two dashboards, even though they represent the same project two weeks apart, look quite similar, and they actually don't give those, who are not directly connected with the project and people working on it a lot of information about the flow of activities, data and work. This data represented is static. But if we add another layer of mini feed / activity report on the same case, things start looking more interesting and give a lot more information about the project. The data becomes dynamic. When we look at the dashboard above, we don't really know that this is what actually happened with our project.

12 days ago – John changed the status of the task Write the documentation to Active.
10 days ago – John added a new note to the task Write the documentation.
10 days ago – John changes the status of the task Write the documentation to Completed.
8 days ago – John made Mary responsible for the task Delegate tasks.
8 days ago – Mary made Simon responsible for the task Enter data.
6 days ago – Mary added a new task Contact client.
5 days ago – Simon changed the status of the task Make HTML to complete.
3 days ago – Mary deleted the task Contact client.
2 days ago – John added a new file to the task Make HTML.
2 days ago – Mary changed the status of the task Make HTML to Incomplete.
1 day ago – Simon added a new note to the task Make HTML.
Today – Simon changed the status of the task Make HTML to Complete.

This dynamic component wasn’t available in business oriented software until now, except in the most sophisticated analytical systems, where data mining and other high level approaches provided dynamic information. Using Web 2.0 approaches such as the mini feed, operational and transactional information systems finally got the dynamic component too. Not to amuse, but to inform.

These are the approaches we use and things we think about when developing our software solutions. There are actually more useful applications of the mini feed we already noticed, but some mystery must remain. If you are interested, say hi to Neolab, one of the first companies in the world to offer fully integrated Web 2.0 features in business oriented software, all part of the IT 2.0 concept we are developing, for which already got an award for. Made in Slovenia, shipping worldwide.

New features on the chronolog: Blogroll, RSS, Twitter client

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:10:00 GMT

Less than a year after launching the chronolog, it’s already obvious that I made the right decision by developing my own platform. Usual blogging platforms are rigid and resemble news portals. I went more towards web 2.0 approach, because I like thinking out of the box and making something special. Hundreds of hours went into chronolog's development and some modules don't actually bring any real value add, but still, I think that the features I built in make it fully comparable with any other blogging platform. Now I have my hands free to take it anywhere I choose and believe me, it will be fun, creative and interesting.

The first wave of features were focused mostly on internal optimization and getting the most out of the data available. The recommendation engine is working like a charm, and the statistics and analytics offer interesting insight into the chronolog information flow. Now, the time has finally come to go towards externalization, towards openness and connectivity with other platforms, services and people. Information must flow not only on the inside, but also on the outside.

RSS

My blog's core is based on RSS feeds, where information from various sources get combined into one unified stream, the chronolog. A lot of other services and aggregators on the market also stand on the basis of RSS. Now, finally, after all this time, the amazingly anticipated, so much appreciated, different RSS feeds for different chronolog views are available for your reading pleasures.

Twitter client

I'm saving the best for the last, and this one is pretty awesome. My chronolog is now a registered Twitter client, able to post links and thoughts directly to Twitter using its API. This is both cool and useful, because until this point, the chronolog was only able to read data from various sources, but now it's also able to generate data. This opens a whole new set of interesting opportunities, both in the direction of building a complete Twitter client, as in the direction of full integration with other online services. Did I mention it was cool?

I'm quite happy with the whole situation and the chronolog's development. Sometimes it's hard to invest both into content and into technology on one single project, but this thing has already gone too far not to use and abuse it even more. I like challenges, so If you have any cool suggestions, they will be more than welcome, but for now this is it. I like to play.

Environmental, political and technological influences of Avatar

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:46:28 GMT

This post is probably already out of date, but I still feel I should say a few words about the movie that could become one of the biggest blockbusters of all time and surely a cult movie of the future. I personally loved it. Not just because of the story and the package, but because of the positive influence it will bring to this confused era. I think the director James Cameron is quite bold to openly address most of the biggest global issues of our time in it, a thing that actually wasn't mentioned as much as it probably should be.

Comparing Avatar with Pocahontas is very popular these days, but I simply don't care about the similar plots. I see Avatar not only as a movie that changed cinema forever, I think it will also change the world for the better. We, the people of this planet needed a statement like this badly, now we can only hope that many of us got the obvious and the subtle messages it holds. The messages which doubt the actions of governments and corporations worldwide and support a more responsible attitude towards life, the universe and everything.

Environmental issues

The debate on global warming is more actual than ever, and the media are doing great to confuse people about the fact if it really exists and if it is really caused by humans. I personally don't care about what's true anymore, because one thing I did get out of this is that there is nothing I can really do about it. But that doesn't change the fact that I care about this planet and I feel we should be more responsible and respectful towards 'our mother'. Humans are the only species on the Earth that will take anything we are be able to get our hands on as long as it's available and possible, without thinking about the consequences. We were supposed to be the most intelligent species, but in this case insects or rodents act more intelligent and strategic than we do. If our planet dies, we will just go somewhere else.

Imperial and political issues

The age of imperialism is far from over and capitalism without any morale is a global trend. Child and slave labor, other types of exploitation, mining of scarce natural resources using all means necessary, destroying nature for business opportunities and even wars are things we got used to seeing as normal. Because of these actions, some people and other living beings are dying, suffering or barely able to survive while some other people are getting richer and more influential. Bad things used to happen because of religion. Today, in the advanced world of democracy and liberty, the worst things on the planet are happening because of political, economical and corporate interests. In contrast with your television, Avatar makes you sad because of this.

Revolutionary technology

Leaving aside the global problems, we can’t go past drooling over supposedly revolutionary technology of film making on which James Cameron waited for years before he filmed Avatar. The imaginary landscapes, together with amazing flora and fauna is really beautiful, even though we have to admit the whole concept resembles The Lord of the Rings a bit. But one thing is certain, the 3D screening is pretty awesome and almost makes you think the movie is a real theater stage. It’s really real 3D. You have to see it to believe it, which you probably already did. Electronics manufacturers are already making 3D television prototypes so it looks like we are ready for the next generation of broadcasting. Another thing to spend money on, but still pretty cool.

I enjoyed Avatar because of the listed reasons and statements, which are portrayed in the film in different forms and to different extent. Hopefully you were able to notice them too. Besides, the movie is fun and surely a positive influence on the world and our perception of it. Hell, you can’t believe a movie like that has a chance to break the all time box office record, looks like it's not so hopeless after all and people actually do care about our lives and our future, even if they saw Avatar mostly to admire the technology. If they sympathized, they understood, and that's what's important for the already messed up future up ahead. Avatar, we thank you.

Neolab in 2009

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:38:32 GMT

2009 was a hard year for everybody, specially for start-ups such as Neolab. Greed and wrong decisions of global financial institutions and their leaders turned the world upside down. Luckily we were able to survive, to stand tall against all the challenges that await for us next year. Projects have been confirmed, so the biggest issue that we face now is consolidating our inner organization and finishing our software framework that we put so much time and energy into.

A few weeks ago, Neolab celebrated it’s second birthday. The first two years are supposedly decisive for the survival of start-ups, so if this unfriendly situation won’t last too long, looks like we’ll make it. To sum it up: for us, 2008 was the year of checking out the scene, where we were observing if it’s possible to make it on our own. The second year, 2009, was the year of marketing, where we presented ourselves to broader audience.

Our presentation was quite successful. After a few years of building and optimizing our design and marketing concept with IlovarStritar, we finally launched our web page, a thing we are very proud of. Until this post we (they) have already received two awards for Neolab’s broader corporate identity, Brumen award and Taiwan international award. This confirmed we made the right decision by doing something special with our image.

The whole story of our design identity is built around a fictional ecosystem of pixelized mutant animals, representing connectivity of people, organizations and processes using information technology. Different animals are used for different documents and people so the whole concept is scalable, artistic, interesting and fun. If you like, you can check out the whole showcase on the IlovarStritar website.

We are becoming one of the biggest slovenian experts in IT. In april we received an award on the Slovenian IT conference for best paper on the subject of IT 2.0. If that wasn’t enough, we were also named the Emerging web agency of 2009 on Slovenia's biggest web authority, Netko. The barriers between organization, marketing, IT and web are obviously getting thinner and thinner, and Neolab stands strong right in the middle of it.

We may look good on the outside, but we are also healthy on the inside. At this point we employ six people, which actually brought a bit of organizational confusion. By adopting stronger approaches in project management, things are turning for the better. Besides, our big investment into our framework, which now stands stable, scalable and promising, will soon be complete, so we are more than ready for all the projects that are coming upon us.

Hopefully this year will be more welcoming. As we and our services mature, new challenges for our clients, suppliers, partners, supporters and ourselves are on the horizon, so you better be ready for all the things we have in store. To a successful 2010!

What's hot on the web - Part 4: Performances gone wrong

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 14:03:09 GMT

A lot of time has passed since our last What's hot on the web broadcast, so I bet you are already eager to see more. The series is doing quite well, but the time has come to do a bit of specialization. This part will be focused on weird (and therefore funny) performances from around the globe, turning into epic fail. Looks like some people think they are ready for the spotlight, but they aren’t. Youtube, you can make our day.

Model takes a tumble twice

I don’t know what's funnier about this one, the commentators who can't stop laughing or the model who does the boogie woogie. We all know fashion has it's price, but the price for this one is a new type of dance nobody can reproduce.

Staying on stage fail

If you have a public performance and you actually do choose to play on playback, make sure you stay on the stage. Otherwise, everybody will know what you're doing...

Ken Lee

This one already became a legend. A girl, performing at a Talents competition in Bulgaria wanted to sing Mariah Carey's Ken Lee, a song which nobody heard of. It turns out she got the lyrics of Without you a bit wrong, which is amusing the jury. Later on she tried to repeat the performance and do it again with the right lyrics, but the original version took the most applause. The extensions of this meme went so far that even Mariah herself made a comment about it.

Is Europe a country?

Stereotypes have it that Americans suck at geography and that blonds are a bit, well, you know... This one proves them right. In a show where people compete against fifth graders, this girl fails miserably when she thinks Europe is a country.

American educational system

On beauty contests, answers of the competitors are always a bit interesting. In this case, it looks like Miss South Carolina didn't quite understand what the question on American education was and she answers a totally different thing. Besides, even if she answered something, nobody knows what that was. A sad irony.

Exclusive nightclub fail

There are a lot of interesting moments on TV shows and quizes, so we won't even try to go through all of them. We’ve all seen The wheel of fortune, where people have to guess the right letters and words. The following competitor almost had it, but not quite. Check your spelling capabilities before you go playing a game like that.

Wrong price is right winner

Another cool quiz that produces a lot of awkward moments is Price is right. This one is twice funny. First, this woman makes a really stupid bet, putting her in a situation where she has almost no chance of winning. Besides, when the price is told, she thinks she actually won. Twice. Triple fail for that one.

Coconut breaking

People do all sorts of crazy shit to get noticed. Like this guy, who sets out to break a few coconuts with his hand. Hm, even before you see the footage you can tell this was a bad idea...

I hope these perfomances make you think before going public. Once it’s online, you’ll be marked forever.

Check out the complete What's hot on the web series.

Evolution of men and its representation in James Bond movies

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:11:18 GMT

If you didn’t notice, things have changed quite a lot in the past 50 years. The perception of the world changed and so did the people. One species that went through extremely significant metamorphosis is the human male. Once strong, rough and commanding, now cute, femininine and emotional. A term used more and more often for urban men is metrosexual, representing someone that looks a bit gay even though he is heterosexual, taking care of his looks and appearance.

The mass media and pop culture have been giving people representations of stereotypes since the dawn of television. People have been giving it back. It doesn’t matter who was more influential, the fact is that this evolution of society has been documented and can now be studied. In our case we will focus on a figure of a man. To make things easier, pop culture brought up a perfect case study, represented in a series of films about one perfect alpha male, detective James Bond.

Since Dr. No was filmed in 1962, the mentioned 50 years passed. In more than 20 films, James Bond was portrayed by different actors representing different ages. If you compare all the different looks and different behaviors of actors representing the same character, you can perhaps get a clearer picture on how the society of each time was perceiving a perfect male. Amongst other things, James Bond definitely got less hairy and more buff. You could say he’s not that handsome anymore, now he’s a bit beautiful.

Comparing Sean Connery and Daniel Craig we can wonder in which novel James Bond actually thought about shaving his armpits and waxing his chest. We can also wonder in which novel he’ll start to pluck his eyebrows and wear a bit of mascara. Perhaps he and his Bond girl can then do it while they are getting their legs waxed. It may seem far fetched, but cultural changes between consecutive Bonds are massive, so don’t get surprised when something like that happens.

Another important thing occurred in this feminization process - James Bond became a bit less charming. The old school acts and seduction methods the original used have been replaced by modern ones, quite boring and lame. A simple task of ordering a drink could once be made legendary, but now such things are loosing it’s appeal and look weird. Today it’s more important which telephone someone has and which brands he wears, because wits are not that appreciated anymore. All in accordance with the figure of a modern male, looking good with not much smart to say.

The way the future man will look is probably up to the women and their expectation of men. This will probably manifest in the form of which pop star they will idolize the most. Seeing the hysteria over that vampire guy, it looks like it’s futile to resist. The ultimate question, is James Bond imitating a stereotypical cool guy or is a stereotypical cool guy imitating James Bond was probably answered with that thought, so I might as well go put on some hair conditioner.

The decline of web forums

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 16:05:53 GMT

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?

An important thing happened, and we call it Web 2.0. The new generation of services supporting networking, cooperation and higher levels of interaction made hierarchically structured knowledge repositories separated from authorial content obsolete. Today, the content became integrated with interaction to form even richer content. I think three types of services that did most of the kill: wikis, blogs and new types of user interaction. I wouldn’t put chats or instant messaging in the same category, because they were around since ever (f.i. IRC) and they leave nothing behind (at least publicly), making them useless for broader crowd and future generations.

Wikis

Wikis are actually some type of a forum, where people gather content and knowledge. Instead of having knowledge scattered around in threads with comments and replies, all the users are working on the same "article", making it better and better as time and knowledge progresses. Few people know that wikis are not just Wikipedia (which is by the way a great example of human interaction achievement), a lot of companies use the same engine to build their knowledge base and web portals use them to build their web presence.

Blogs

With Web 2.0, people went from anonymity behind nicknames to front row participation and ego building. Instead of participating in forums, millions of bloggers started making synthesis of useful forum threads to short and highly informative blog posts with an interesting side effect - building personal brands. Google’s page rank and other search engines did the rest, making forums less important and good blog posts better ranked and easily found.

New types of user interaction

There was a time when the only interactive thing you could do on the web was writing or replying (perhaps vote on a poll which had nothing to do with a content, at least technically). Today, you can post, view, like, dislike, support, comment, vote etc.. This fact gives users more flexibility on how involved they want to get with the content and the content becomes more informational. Knowledge is not hierarchically structured anymore, it’s rather scattered around the web in forms of multimedia (text, audio, video, etc.), with interaction activities attached to it (likes, comments, etc.). That makes it fun and more interesting, and if it’s good enough altogether, it will get synthesized and rebuilt into another form of information.

I think there is still space for forums on the web, but mainly in the functionality of huge chat rooms. On the other hand, general portals will probably be shifting more to combined approach, without the "Forum" link, but with integrated Web 2.0 services and approaches. This doesn’t have to mean using friends and connections, it can easily be the form of better support for different interactions and focus on participation of users around authorial content. Good news for users, bad news for portals.

An approach to statistics and data analysis

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:32:06 GMT

When information systems evolve, they become greedier for both operational and advanced strategic statistics and data analysis. This need is a part of a natural evolution. The more data you have, the higher potential for extracting information you have. Looking at business environments using IT platforms, that's what analytics are actually all about - getting useful information from usually bad data. It turns out the task of analytical reporting is not so complex as it seems, but you definitely need a set of different skills / people to make it work.

There are tons of different statistical approaches, methods and theories, but it turns out that for average business needs you only need basic mathematics, where the most complex operations are sometimes logarithms. So, if it's so simple, where does the problem lay? Why do information systems often lack analytical support, which can be used for decision making?

In my opinion there are three main steps to consider when trying to make useful statistics and data analysis, and ignoring or underestimating any one of them will make your reports suck.

Data

Data is the king. If you don't have the data, you might as well give it up. If your data is bad or weak, you might consider rebuilding it. But you should know one thing - the better the structure of your data is, the better your analysis will be. Using a flat database such as a text file or an Excel spreadsheet gives you few analytical opportunities. Relational databases, such as Access, MySQL or SQL offer cross-data querying and advanced reporting, but huge and complex calculations can take a lot of time. For those, a multidimensional OLAP database designed strictly for analysis becomes the only option.

Challenges in this step: Technical

Information

The data discussed above defines the scope of potential information you can deliver. In this step, the main goal is simple - you need to know what you want to know. Business needs, process flow, strategic goals or just plain simple amusement are the main factors that need to be addressed. Having someone who is able to recognize these opportunities is crucial, because data is just numbers, but aggregated data - information - is knowledge. It's quite clear you won't be able to get something if you don't know what you want to get.

Challenges in this step: Analytical

Visualization

A picture can tell a thousand words and this goes a long way for data visualization. Even if you can't use charts, you can color information and use measures such as font size to represent another dimension of information or trends. Besides, always keep in mind that less is more, so you should put irrelevant information in the background and punchlines in the spotlight. Check out different chart types, they're useful for different representations and experimenting with them can display things that don't seem there at first sight. Observe patterns. Try to imagine a playground, where information can satisfy your curiosity and while doing it, it also brings useful and valuable results.

Challenges in this step: Creative

If you have the will, you can do all sorts of crazy stuff with statistics and data analysis, but you should know they sometimes take a lot of time. I'm proud my chronolog already has two nice looking children of these activities. The first one is a simple recommendation engine used for content ranking and the other one a set of reports which offer insight into activity and interactions of the chronolog. What can I say, I like to play around, and it may as well be any information system I can get my hands on. Give me the data and I'll give you information.

Backpacking in Thailand

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:34:06 GMT

November was a great month, my yearly vacation finally arrived. To make it something special, my girlfriend and I went backpacking in Thailand. The country is beautiful and diverse, with metropolises and jungles, highways and paradise islands. The people are also really nice and the food is great. Even though it wasn't cheap, Thailand is a place definitely worth visiting.

Our path started in Bangkok. After a few days of sightseeing, shopping and meeting some friends we took a bus north. Ancient ruins, nature and hikes were amazing, but we decided to fly to Kuala Lumpur to do a bit of change in the culture (Malaysians are mostly Muslim, compared to Buddhists in Thailand). Finally, for the grand finale, we stayed on the tropical islands for a week to gather our strength to return to the western world. The map below displays our journey and the pictures display the highlights.

Bangkok

Bankgkok, the capital of Thailand, is an awesome city. With around 8 million inhabitants, it's packed with sights, temples, palaces, parks, markets and busy streets. The buzz doesn't end even during the night, and tuk-tuks are the coolest and most rational way of getting around in the chaotic traffic of the urban jungle.

Sukhotai

Traveling north, we stopped at the ancient ruins of Sukhotai, a great city of the past. Now it rests among the trees and reminds tourists of the large ancestry of empires long gone.

Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is the cultural center of the north and offers travelers a good starting point for many activities, such as adventures, treks, safaris, cooking schools and one of the greatest things we did on our trip, elephant training. These creatures are colossal and beautiful. After a few hours of activities it's hard not to fall in love with them.

Kuala Lumpur

It's becoming obvious that Asia is the continent of the future, but we had to check it out for ourselves. The capital of Malaysia is a modern city with skyscrapers and monorail, but it lacks some of the cool vibe Bangkok has.

Ko Phi Phi

First island we visited was Phuket, but it turned out to be packed with massive tourist resorts. After one day we ran away to Ko Phi Phi, and it was just what we were looking for. A tropical paradise with long-tail boats, white sand beaches, palm trees and beatiful see.

Ko Phangan

Thailand's famous Full Moon Parties are known all around the world, where tens of thousands of people dance away until sunrise. Sadly they happen only once a month, but we were still lucky enough to catch the Black Moon Party and get loaded on buckets of alcohol under neon lights.

There you have it, three weeks of cruising around Thailand. Seeing the people and society there and comparing them to our materialist western civilization made me wonder about a lot of things. Perhaps it's because of Buddhism, perhaps it's because of other cultural or economical elements, but people there seem happy and you get drawn to that. I felt really safe everywhere I went, which sadly can't be said for many western cities. The story of civilizations continues to intrigue.

Made in Slovenia

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:57:42 GMT

Friends tell me I am usually too naive and romantic, but sometimes I just can't help myself being an optimist. Even though Slovenia is one of the most taxed nations in the world, I still envision Slovenia as an emerging country with one of the highest potentials around. Breakthroughs are possible, f.i. Ireland became one of the most successful countries in the EU (second highest GDP in EU!) even though their economic model was hit really hard by the recession. I'm sure Slovenia will do even better when her time comes, so be ready.

Perhaps the greatest competitive advantage of Slovenia is insight, intuition and understanding others. It started with Yugoslavia, probably the only country in the world fully embracing three major religions (Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim). Sadly, that story ended in bloodshed, but some positive heritage remains. With great geographic location, bordering Austria, Croatia, Hungary and Italy, all the major cultures of Europe are influencing Slovenians. By being a post socialistic country with not too exploited capitalism adoption, Slovenia was the perfect playground for new era negotiations between Bush and Putin. Neutral ground between north and south, east and west, understanding motives and interests of many players, small enough not to be a threat.

Cultural diversity and high information flow made some Slovenians outstanding, and the Adriatic see being the window to Europe probably helped too. Quite a few companies were able to produce global success stories, specializing in high-tech products and services, such as IT, technology, aeronautics and alternative energies (more on cool Slovenian brands some other post). Not bad for a country the size of a large city, taxed to the maximum.

Taxes. They work really contra productive, but they're caused by our greatest flaw - our size. 2 million citizens. Everybody knows everybody and projects become political way too soon. Another thing that happens is that the government becomes the only buyer big enough to afford things. Our startup Neolab is developing innovative IT solutions and trying to make it abroad, with some success. Because I understand that building the Slovenia brand plays a really important part in achieving this, I'm blogging about it and doing everything in my power to promote Slovenia (and Neolab, I admit...). Hopefully others will follow and "Made in Slovenia" will have higher value soon. I think it deserves it and most of us probably need it.

Exporting high value-added specialized products and services is what we do best and what we will hopefully be able to continue on a larger scale. This is the strategy Slovenia has to keep and support. Our scientists are amongst the best in the world and can make innovative, creative, useful and modern goods of the highest quality for a fair price. Besides, people here are cool, most of them are faithful, fair, loyal and unconflicting. Come see for yourself, nice people, tasty wine, good beer and beautiful nature will do you well.

The world of the globalized tomorrow will be moderated by the neutral and objective. This is Slovenia's hidden expertise that still has to be recognized, even though we've already been doing it for ages. And because we are too naive, we won't even take advantage of it. We will rather work hard and wait for the indirect, long term benefits. It may sound irrational, but I fully support that approach.

My inspiration for this post is an online civil initiative about development and future of our country that's actual right now by taking full advantage of Web 2.0 (Facebook, Twitter, Noovo, LinkedIn). Thumbs up for that, but we will probably need more than just good ideas. This time my contribution goes for motivation and realization that we have the potential to make it big if we work together and cooperate. Made in Slovenia.

The Dune universe - world's greatest saga

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:26:46 GMT

Many people are familiar with the Lord of the rings, which became even more popular after the movie trilogy a few years ago. It's a typical saga, with novels and stories covering events on a scale of tens of thousands of years. This approach brings fanatical belonging of the readers, because studying generations of people has a huge appeal and insight into life long conflicts causes strong sentiment. The technical focus of LOTR is mostly on mythology, culture and linguistics, but sometimes it comes out too naive. People (except Frodo) are mostly black or white and most of the motives are quite superficial (and sex doesn't exist). After all, it's supposed to be a tale for children. So, in case you would like more complex stuff in your saga, you should definitely check out Dune.

Frank Herbert's Dune is a bit similar to LOTR, the whole plot (14 novels I think) extends for millenia. The story is about planet Arrakis, also known as Dune, which is the only place in the universe that produces the ultimate drug in existence, called Melange (Spice). Spice gives you higher level of conscience and prolongs life. Everybody wants and needs Spice, and the plot built around that is very complete, creative and fun to read. The whole story makes Dune a perfected alternative universe filled with complex political situations, religions, manipulation, psychology and other "adult" themes. It's freaking awesome, and it is known as one of the best sci-fi novels of all time.

The political situation of the Dune universe stands on a tripod between the emperor, noble houses and the spacing guild, which holds the monopoly on space travel. If that wasn't enough, other sources of power also exist, such as CHOAM (the biggest manufacturer of goods), the witches Bene Gesserit (with their breeding program for creating the messiah), the Tleilaxu (genetic specialists), Ixians (technology monopolists), the Mentats (human analytical computers), Swordsmen of Ginaz (superior warriors) and of course, the Fremen of Arrakis (the native people of Dune who live in sietches in the desert and tender the worms). Many players and interests - infinite possibilities of conflicts.

Another interesting thing in the novel is the flow of thought, which is solved really good. The movie (which I don't like that much, even though it's by David Lynch) tries to imitate that, but in my opinion fails quite miserably. The book does it much better, and the main mantra, used by all Bene Gesserit educated is quite inspirational:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Reading about prior generations of protagonists and antagonists and knowing how historical events caused the current situation makes the Dune series one of the best novels ever written. It can keep every sci-fi fan occupied for years, which is the time needed to come through the whole saga that totals in more than 5.000 pages. If you're into that sort of books, you should go for it - and then you will be able to understand why Duncan Idaho is the ultimate.

Slovenia vs. Slovakia - a (football) match made in heaven

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:57:58 GMT

Slovenia and Slovakia share a common problem. They are both victims of identity theft, because they, well, they look the same. They have a similar name, they have a similar national flag, they even have a similar post socialistic "my previous country is now ten countries" story. Luckily, they also share a similar newly appointed capitalistic EU success. Slovenia and Slovakia are the first two transitional countries to enter the European monetary union. We did it two years before. And we won the football match yesterday.

As a part of qualifications for the world cup 2010, a football match happened in Bratislava, Slovakia, between Slovenia and Slovakia. Some foreigners who were watching it, probably thought "what's wrong with these guys, why is a country competing agaist itself?". Because it's two countries, you idiot. Slovenia, Slovakia, don't you see the difference between an "n" and a "k"? Well, no. The truth is, that's understandable, Slovenia and Slovakia look the same. Or is it Slovekia and Slovania?

George W. Bush confused Slovenia and Slovakia once. Other great performances include playing the wrong anthem on political and sport events. Awkward and embarassing indeed.

The story of a country, trying not to be another country, is a bit sad. It influences people, identity and patriotism. Almost everybody I know feels this itch in the back of our country's recognition and branding in the global society. But it's too late (and not acceptable) to change the name or at least the national flag after so many years. Therefore we have nothing left but to make the most out of it. I wonder how Slovaks feel about it.

This unique situation could actually become a competitive advantage for both countries. Hey, we are the only two countries in the world that look the same. Who cares about the other 200 countries, they actually resemble each other even more - none of them have another country that's the same as theirs. Perhaps we are even some lost cousins that went separate ways sometime in history and will be reunited one day as the first same double country in Europe. Infinite possibilities.

After these thoughts I feel better and a bit proud to be a part of this funny situation. Go Slovakia (as long as it's not football)!

Hot on the chronolog - and how it works

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:49:41 GMT

When I first published my chronolog, a few people were making remarks about how it resembles FriendFeed, Twitter or Tumblr. I can't deny that. The influences of Web 2.0 are huge both on my personal and business life, so why should the chronolog be any different? It is a mashup of different web services and it displays information from different sources, so it's a kind of a Web 2.0 stream. But besides that, it's also my own personal playground for testing and developing high level services and functionalities, which will hopefully be cool and fun and make the chronolog interesting for all of us. Demonstration of concept and technology, if you like.

I already have a few of those smart features planned, and I can give you a little teaser already. I really look forward to developing the custom view of the chronolog, where advanced users will be able to do a bit of configuration. The prototype is already half developed, but sadly far from production. A different thing I'm working on is a complex set of statistics and analytics, which should give us deeper insight into the chronolog, it's data and our interactions with it. This one will probably go out next and it actually inspired the one already complete. From this day forward, the chronolog supports Hot on the chronolog, accessible from the views menu top right, which shows the most interesting posts in the desired time period.

A few Web 2.0 portals (specially those oriented in social news or social bookmarking) have recommendation engines, which give users access to information based on their interaction with the system. I would like to try that one out too once, but because I don't have registered users, the chronolog probably won't be the environment. What I can give you now, is the Hot view, which displays the most important posts based on the interaction (views, likes, comments) of all users of the chronolog. A global recommendation engine of some sort. I'm quite pleased with the algorithm I've developed, it looks like it's working, so you can give it a try.

Some of you will be interested in how it works. The core is a really super mega awesomely complex algorithm that gives ponders to different interactions in the selected time span. Well, it's not that complex from the mathematical point of view, but it still pretty smart. Combining these ponders and number of interactions, using a few square roots and logarithms, plus a small modifier for insert date (if two posts are tied, the older one appears "stronger"), it calculates which posts are more interesting and relevant and gives them a score accordingly. Simple as that. Besides, is also able to make that calculation for any time period. You can even hack it by changing the ?d=# in the url to any number of days you like.

When viewing longer periods (months, years), blog posts will probably take most of the top spots, because they are supported with social networking sites and have the most interactions. In the shorter periods (days, weeks), other types of posts will also take higher ranks. We will see if the algorithm works in the longer term too, when more users will be clicking around, but if needed, the calculation will be changed or modified. Oh, I almost forgot about the design touch I added - the importance of a post is portrayed using transparency, which looks quite cool and is a great exaple of using design for function.

The chronolog becomes smart. Hope you like it.

What's hot on the web - Part 3: A peek into obscurity

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:39:25 GMT

You know the drill. The world wide web is a beautiful thing filled with cool and funny stuff. A lot of that stuff gets unnoticed by most of the people, so consolidations are needed. I like weird and unexplainably attractive things, things that are differently funny and geeky. Because we've already went through the classic ones, this part of the series is a bit more obscure. Presenting What's hot on the web, part 3.

The Techno Viking

The Techno Viking is supposedly the only guy who could kill Chuck Norris. The story is happening on an open air party where this guy tries to pickpocket a visitor. Little does he know that around the block the Techno Viking is lurking. Once he get into his element, the dominance doesn't end until the end of the movie.

All your base are belong to us

This one is based on a lousy translation of a video game. The cyber community and gamers found this so hillarious that somebody actually made a song out of it, video included. All your base are belong to us!

local: reporter Andrej Stare drunk

The legend has it that all Slovenian TV reporters are a bit drunkards, because their job demands spending a lot of free time while on the set. One the funniest is a sports reporter Andrej Stare, who magnificently commented on a hockey match between Slovenia and Croatia. Totally drunk, of course.

Hope you had a good laugh. But beware, you don't want to piss off the Techno Viking.

Check out the complete What's hot on the web series.

How Facebook & Co. changed the world

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:53:30 GMT

I'm a bit shocked actually, because my first (branded) Web 2.0 post was about Twitter and not about Facebook. It looks like times are changing and Facebook is not so dominant as it was a year ago. Nevertheless, for now it's still the greatest and in many ways it showed us the way that MySpace wasn't able to show. Even though there is a bit of controversy behind Facebook's beginnings, we have to admit it set new standards in many areas, both conceptually (real names instead of aliases, mini-feed, status updates, people tagging) and technically (open API for applications, great Ajax, useful upload). And while doing it, it changed the world we live in.

Today, there are supposedly more than 300 million people registered on Facebook. That's about the size of a large nation, such as USA. Marketers and politicians didn't take long to notice social networking sites can be great (and cheap) resources for building campaigns, sales and brand awareness. It's not so much about business, the politics part is scary. I'm really interested what will happen when a majority of a nation will make their own elections, decisions or political programmes on Facebook. Will the world stand still? Is Twitter's role in the Iranian elections just the beggining of a new era of virtual governments? Who will control all of that?

Well, we better not get carried away, what I wanted to discuss was the impact of Web 2.0 on us, the ordinary people and our ordinary lives. In three years after Facebook came around (it went open for public in september 2006), the world is upside down. B.F. (before Facebook) we were thinking about how did we ever live without mobile phones. Now we think about how did we ever live without Facebook (or any other clones). Today, I probably know more people that are not on Facebook anymore than people that are still not on Facebook. A weird situation, but sadly, that's how it is. If it didn't happen on Facebook, it probably didn't happen in the real world.

This chain of events is actually quite understandable. You don't need to talk to somebody specific anymore. Instead, you tell it to the whole world and everybody takes just the information they are interested in. It's like having your own small web page, extended with galleries (Facebook already has one of the largest photo databases in the world), microblog (status update), dating portal and a fast flow of data from numerous sources. Great for stalkers, and done 100 times better than MySpace. New people and constant diversity of information keeps you jacked in. Time ticks differently in cyberworld, 10 minutes ago is so yesterday.

I'm happy one habit finally got old. I noticed that when people actually met in the real world, they often discussed Facebook. Luckily, it looks like we slowly went through everything and we will have to find something else to discuss about (perhaps Twitter or Google Wave?). I don't know if this is a trend and we will socialize on virtual socializing in the real world too. But it looks like these are the first steps of migrating to the virtual world. Hell, this post is too, so I should better shut up and go to sleep.

You should know about Dual

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 10:46:41 GMT

Two people are a pair and a pair deserves special treatment. Three or more people are a pack and a pack deserves special treatment. Two people act quite homogenic, as it is a natural form of a (sexual) pair who raises offspring and lives life together. Usually, one is dominant, but in some cases, harmony is possible too. When you add the third person, the story changes completely. Politics arise and people start influencing and manupilating each other, both consciously and subconsciously. I'm actually quite neutral on that, bacause it's probably the only possible way of human interaction. Many proverbs on the subject have been written and you have to admit it's one of the most interesting things going on.

Somewhere in Europe there is a small country called Slovenia. Most of the people don't even know it's there, but those who are a part of it, love it's nature, culture and people. Slovenians aren't obsessed with generals and war heroes, they rather worship their artists, writers and poets. For a country with 2 million people, that's not so hard to understand. Slovene language was only thing that held them together through different times, countries and governments. I think Slovene is beautiful and I'm very proud it's one of the few spoken languages left that still uses dual in grammar.

Dual (as opposed to singular and plural) has been used in different variations by many languages throughout the history, such as Greek, Hebrew and ancient Celtic and Germanic languages. It's still in use in some modern languages, f.i. Scottish Gaelic dialects, Welsh, Breton, but fully functioning as a paradigmatic category only in Sorbian and Slovene. That means that Slovene doesn't use dual only for shaping nouns, it uses dual for forming verbs too.

If you say "we went somewhere" in Slovene, you explicitly tell how many people were involved, because you use a different form of both "we" and "went" for dual and plural. English uses the same verb form for singular too (most cases), and the number can be distinguished either from the noun (using I or we) or with additional explanation. There is no grammatical difference between two or more, only singular and plural exist.

When I first started thinking about this phenomenon, I didn't have an oppinion about it, dual seemed natural for me, even though not using dual appears less complicated. As I've grown mature and started noticing life, people and behaviour, I also started appreciating dual. Today, I'm a fan.

I like to think Slovene uses dual because of politics. So you can easily express if there was politics involved or not without saying how many people were actually there. The truth is that's probably not the case, but it doesn't matter anyway. My only hope is that we will be able to keep this precious speciality as long as possible in this globalized society where English is the only way to go. Or is it Chinese?

The deflation of words - from SMS to Twitter

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 18:52:38 GMT

The information age brought us another interesting shock - the deflation of words. Most of the people surfing the web don't have the time to stick around and read novels. They want information and they want information fast. Sometimes I even lose hope in multimedia, when I don't feel I should watch a 2 minute long video, because 2 minutes is far too much to get to the point. The point should be straight forward and the point should be reachable in ten seconds.

I really try to keep my blog posts around 4-5 paragraphs because I introspectively see how I react to information. A post more than one monitor long does look like it is well thought and scientifically supported. So, if it looks promising, I tag it with "To read". But the problem is I've never actually done it and read it. Instead, I rather look for new, actual and aggregated information.

The concentration of information started with the SMS, when a guy called Hillebrand noticed 160 characters is quite an optimal size for information. About 30 words or a few sentences. It turned out he set the standard for one of the most popular mobile services, text messaging. More than 20 years later, the history is repeating itself, and a concept called microblogging is taking over the world, with Twitter as the most noticable service. Small chunks of dense information that are suited for the sci-fi society we live in, using 140 characters.

This minimalistic approach is moving to commercial (promotional) web too. Using short and strong facts, without too much redundancy is the only way to get somebody to read how good and competitive you really are. It's an art to be able to tell a lot using a few words, but microblogging practice will surely help people to be able to express themselves briefly and effectively.

Is this fact good for culture and literature? Probably not. But it surely is good for information flow and science.

(This post has 1928 characters.)

Stunning Lego applications, creations and art

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:33:26 GMT

Lego started producting the already iconic toy in 1949. Since than, a few variations of the brick have been designed, but all made after 1958 are compatible. More than 50 years of models, themes, worlds, colours and fun for the young and the old. Yup, you heard it right, the old are mad about Lego. Because Legos are cool, Legos are pop, Legos are viral and Legos are really loved by the web society.

A blend of availability, tradition, flexibility, compatibility and creativity stimulation helped Legos become more than a toy. They became a platform, a concept, an artistic medium, and mostly, they became a cult. There are a lot of creative applications and creations around, but a few of them are specially worth mentioning.

The minifig society

Supposedly there are billions of minifigs in the world. Pretty impressive. They come in thousands of types and some of the greatest fans were actually able to make a detailed timeline of the minifigs. The Star Wars edition alone has more than 150 different minifigs, and this poster just makes you want to have 'em all.

Lego photography

There are a few cool pages that combine Legos with photography. If you're interested in that sort of stuff, you should check out album covers in Lego, or this amazing classic photography reconstructions.

Video edits

Perhaps even more popular than pictures, the video edits range from Star Wars videos, arcade games simulations and funny films, such as The Dark Knight trailer. One of the most popular is The Simpsons intro. I've said it before, people have too much time.

Robotics

Since Mindstorms came around, Legos gained eyes, ears, hands and programming logic. This means that things such as a money safe, Rubic cube solver or even the Touring machine (a primitive computer) are possible to build. The only limit is one's creativity and sadly, budget.

Amazing constructions

Artistic and giant Lego sets are being built by many people. Diversified lists can be found here, here and here. Other sculptures worth mentioning are the aircraft carrier and the Space Shuttle. Some other freaks made a 5 million brick boulder, which accidentally crashed into a car. The number of bricks is unconfirmed, because in England they made a 30m tall tower using just 500.000 of them. Below you can see Barack Obama's inauguration.

The Millenium Falcon

The Ultimate Collector's Millenium Falcon (that's Harisson Ford's space ship in Star Wars) is the biggest Lego set ever made. You can describe it in one word: Awesome. 5.195 pieces and a price tag of 500€. Ouch. Still, it is probably every Lego fan's dream.

There you have it, Lego fun for the whole family and all the different tastes. I told you Legos were cool.

Price elasticity of demand - operating systems and Snow Leopard

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:25:49 GMT

A lot of my colleagues from the Faculty of Economics think their study was mostly a waste of time. Too much focus on old, out of date concepts and approaches, too little focus on real life. I can't argue with that, it is a bit old school and theoretical, so it's up to the student to make the most out of the abstract things he learned. But you can't do that before you see the real world. And you also have to put a bit of thinking into the whole picture. Then you are able to see that basic concepts, such as supply and demand are everywhere (not only in economics and business) and can fully explain why the sweets of the most scarce flavour in the box taste the best.

Another interesting concept in economics is price elasticity. To put it in simple words, it explains how people react to different prices of the same commodity. Elementary goods, such as food, are not elastic; if a loaf of bread costs 50 cents or 2 €, the bakers will sell about the same amount, because people need it for living and they will buy it anyway. On the other hand, luxury goods are very elastic. If a basic car would costs 5.000 € or 20.000 €, the people would react strongly to it, and only a few people would buy cars because they would be too expensive.

There's a whole theory behind it on how to find the optimal price for goods. Record labels don't want to see it and the whole record industry is in a crisis, while music piracy is in bloom. In my opinion, I would buy a lot of records, if they would cost 5 € each. In real world, I won't buy many because they cost 20 € each. So, the big question at hand is: would the global record industry sell more than 4 times the number of records they do if the price was 4 times cheaper? I think they would - and if I am right, this would mean that music records are price elastic.

These days we are witnessing a very good example on price elasticity of software and it looks like Apple has done it again. They're offering their newest operating system Snow Leopard for 29 € to users of the previous version (Leopard). Rumors have it you can put it also on the prior version (Tiger), which I hope is true, because I already bought it (it is possible according to AppleInsider). So, at the same time Windows users are struggling not to let go of Windows XP and are sticking to the past, Apple is giving away their new operating system for a price of a good meal and everybody wants it. Pretty smart for market penetration and building customer loyalty.

I wouldn't pay 150 € to go for a new version of an operating system, which is about the regular price of Windows Vista or Mac OS, specially if the current one works. But 30 € completely changes the story. The result is interesting; it caused a demand overflow and here in Slovenia you had to make a reservation and wait for a week to get it. When I went to the store, everybody was buying Snow Leopards. I understand the cult of Mac, but this was amazing and a good example of market supremacy.

Looks like the strategists at Apple know their economics as well as they now their marketing.

At least we have the Discovery channel

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:14:05 GMT

I think television is bad. Besides making you a brainless zombie, watching without thinking, it channels all the bad things on this world into the little box in the living room. Of course, there are also positive broadcasts, but they are still heavily overwhelmed by the negative. The news brings mostly bad news, making mass paranoia and hysteria. Reality shows are making the youth confused and are building a wannabe society. Sure, there are a few interesting serieses going on, a few good movies, but otherwise, it sucks. Thank god for the Discovery channel.

The Discovery channel is one of the most interesting channels we get. The way I see it, the whole watchability stands on two different concepts of shows, clothed into numerous different versions. The real-work reality shows (not to be confused with "reality" reality shows, such as Big brother) and the pop-science shows. We have the Discovery channel (probably) East Europe, so this post may not be up-to-date with the US or European versions, but here are the shows that are cool.

The real-work reality shows are actualy reality show in the most literal meaning of the word. They cover real people, doing real jobs, without (m)any scripts or scenarios. Those that are worth mentioning are American Chopper (a dad an two sons building motorbikes and having a spicy relationship and vocabulary), The Deadliest Catch (Alaska fisherman hunting crabs in hellish environment), Ultimate Survival (someone named Bear going through different uninhabited regions and eating bugs) and Dirty Jobs (a guy trying out how hard and dirty some jobs are).

The pop-science shows bring an interesting overview on how things are made, how they work and what they are. The mythbusters are the best in this category (two geeky guys making weird experiments), their English almost copy Brainiac, Time Warp (recordings of things using a high-speed camera), a few different shows on how things are constructed (How It's Made, How Things Work, etc.), and a ton of documentary shows on construction, cars and technology (Mega Builders, Built From Disaster, etc.).

In some cases there's a thin line between the categories, and I think the best ones are actually those that are able to combine the concepts of both. These shows are at the same time working well on our curiousity, but still keep a contact with our social senses and humanity.

There's an honorable mention, a show that we don't get anymore, which is a bit sad, because it was really cool. Scrapheap challenge, or in it's worse US edition, The junkyard wars. It's about two teams, who have one day to build something using just materials from a junkyard.

There you have it. A solid proof that Discovery channel is one of the best TV channels around. It's fun and it educates at the same time. So kids, don't watch MTV, it just makes you feel bad.

What's hot on the web - Part 2: The classics

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:03:20 GMT

Wheee, the second part of the very cool and funny series What's hot on the web. This time I bring you three more viral things from the beatiful World Wide Web. Hopefully there is enough information in the post to get you up and running, in case you would like to see more.

Literal Versions

We have already noticed that a lot of people have too much time. Luckily a few of those people actually found something useful to do, and so came literal versions or literal music videos. Literal versions are edited versions of music videos where lyrics talk about what's going in the video. There are quite a few of them, but in my oppinion, Total eclipse of the heart is the best one.

Demotivators

Motivational posters are originally intended for schools and offices and work with a motivational punchline that helps people through the day. Well, the cyber community wouldn't be normal if it didn't abuse that to the maximum, thus demotivational posters were constructed. You can notice them by a picture with a thick black border, a punchline and an explanation under it. They are funny, cool and most importantly, there's thousands around the web.

local: Perpetuum Jazzile doing Africa

Perpetuum Jazzile is a Slovenian vocal band that is getting global publicity these days. One of the reasons is their interpretation of Toto's classic hit, Africa. It is just inspiring and awesome, with more than 5 million views already.

Hope you enjoyed the selection.

Check out the complete What's hot on the web series.

Organizing music collections using iTunes

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:32:46 GMT

When I got my first iPod a few years ago as a business gift, I was overwhelmed. The thing was pure cuteness and usability. Then I got a cold shower few minutes later, as I tried to put my mp3s on it. The damn thing wouldn't work without iTunes. Apple's strategy to force software to users is a bit Microsofty, and is in my oppinion one of the worst things the company is doing, getting criticism all around. But It turns out this approach is helping them on their world domination tour that's been going on in the past years, as more and more people are switcing to Apple and Macs.

Switching from Winamp to iTunes got me acquainted to music libraries. Winamp also supports it, but it was a bit in the background those days. iTunes had it in the main and at first I though that's just another stupid thing I had to do for nothing. But the more I went into it, the more fond I was of it. Today I am a power iTunes user and I think my library is a piece of art, with houndreds of hours put into it's organization and optimization. Meta data is very powerful, and having songs classified, tagged and labeled leads to simple and flexible use, after the bigger initial investment.

Here are a few approaches that can help you keep my giant library under control:

Labeling and smart playlists: Using correct labels for artists, genres, etc. and rating songs enables the use of smart playlists. I have one main playlists that combines all songs rated more than 2 stars. I have a few similar which focus on specific genres. These are the playlists I use the most. Their biggest advantage is that I can add new songs to iTunes and after I rate them, the automatically go to all the correct playlists, so I don't need to worry about making generic playlists with listenable songs.
Using album covers: This feature is very cool for browsing album collections. Instead of having to read what's in the library, you just look for a specific album cover. They say a picture is worth a 1000 words and it's true. By using cover flow or grid view, you can quickly and easily find the album you are looking for.
Using folders for playlists: Albums should be organized using folders. In my case, I use a root folder named Albums, which contains sub folders according to genres (Rock, Electronica, Pop, etc.), which contain subfolders according to sub-genres (Classic Rock, Alternative Rock, Indie Rock, etc.). This allows me to easily browse (or shuffle) all albums, if I feel more specific, just albums of one genre, and if I am in a really picky mood, just specialized collection of music from a sub-genre. This structure could be achieved by using smart playlist focused on genres, but then all the singles would also be added to the lists, so I prefer managing this by hand.
Using Comment as a tagging tool: Comments can be used as tags, because smart playlists can be configured to play songs where comment contains a word. This means that the system will work even if you put more words (tags) into the comment field. I use comments such as Replace (this song needs a better version), Label (this song is not correctly labeled) and New (this is something new and should be listened to - because date of adding to library is not correct in all the cases) to have a better overview over the songs in my library, and better choice for listening.
Making advanced logical statements: iTunes smart playlists only work with ALL or ANY of the rules or conditions you apply to them, which corresponds to mathematical OR or AND statements. I can set the smart playlist to contain ALL the songs of the genre pop AND rated more than 2 stars AND last more than 2 minutes. Another possibility is to set it in a way it contains ANY the songs that have a bit rate of less thant 192 OR have a comment that contains Replace (these songs need to be replaced). But you can't combine both OR and AND statements in one playlist.
Actually there's a workaround, but you have to put a bit of efford into it and use a folder as a container. All the playlists inside the folder will be treated between themselves as ANY (OR), but each playlist can be configured as ALL. For instance, if you want a playlist of both best and fresh rock songs that will contain (ALL rock songs AND rated at least 4 stars) OR (ALL the rock songs AND made in the year 2009 AND rated with any stars), you just create two separate smart playlists (one for best, one for fresh), add them to a folder and the folder acts as the complex AND/OR playlist, combining both.

These techniques can probably be used also with other music libraries software and can hopefully make easier and better use of music collections. And if you know any other cool tricks, please let me know.

IT + Web 2.0 = IT 2.0

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:43:32 GMT

Web 2.0 is one of the hottest things around. Everybody is talking about it, and it is revolutionizing the way we work, communicate and enjoy our free time. It is obvious even now that such services will be the main tools of marketing and political movements of the future. Now we have to wait and see how far it goes and where it ends.

It did not take long for executives and technology officers to see that Web 2.0 could also have interesting applications on business oriented environment. Therefore, Enterprise 2.0 was "invented". It represents using new discovered approaches such as tagging, wikis and blogs for corporate goals. It works and I think companies shoud embrace it, because it's modern and effective.

We have taken it to another level, partially because we have become quite obsessed with developing not partial, but wholistict software systems. Web 2.0 is not just a collection of tools for better communication, it is a new concept of interaction, data visualization and user participation which was originaly discovered for one purpose - to amuse users and to earn more money from advertising. Usefulness came with it, and in this case the market economy worked.

Neolab is one of the first companies in the world that is offering business oriented software, fully integrated with Web 2.0 services, such as internal social networking, mini-feed reports, content tagging, cloud visualizations and more. As it is an integrated concept, we have dubbed it IT 2.0. We think that this approach helps both the users and the management with easier use, stronger belonging to the company and richer information than classic information systems.

Hopefully there will be more professional articles available on that topic in the future. It's hard to find the correct equilibrium between academic research and real life development. At this stage It has more and more scientific background each day, and the implementations prove it works. IT 2.0 is born.

What's hot on the web - Part 1: Know your meme

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:54:12 GMT

I am one of those geeky people who are always up to date with what's going on on the web. I surf a lot of recommendation sites, blogs, cool portals, etc. and collect useless knowledge. You could say I am one curious dude. Therefore I often get asked by friends about What's hot on the web.

Well people, there's a lot going on. A lot of bizzare and freaky stuff, online mocking between Diggers and Redditors, narwhal worshipping and girls playing with cups. Some are made epic, some are too boring to make it. The cyber community is making some things viral, and yes, Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird. Too bad that is so last decade...

Here is the first part of hopefully a series of cool internet memes I stumbled upon. Not actually so new, but still funny stuff to see.

Rickroll

It looks like Rick Astley's Never gonna give you up became one of the most popular music videos on the web. Why? Because it became the most important part of a really popular prank, called rickroll. The way it works is that you send somebody a link to a cool video, which turns out to be a really cheesy 80's music video. Backuped by radio, television, basketball games and the geek community, Rick Astley almost got the Best Act Ever award on MTV Awards. He likes it, but hopes his daughter won't get embarrased.

Btw, check out this hot video of drunk girls having a drinking contest.

Snakes on a Plane

Snakes on a plane is probably the most web hyped movie of all time. Even before it was shooted, there were already thousand of blogs, web pages and articles written about the movie. It wasn's a real success, but concerning it was a low budget film, did pretty good. The reason for it's buzz was mostly because of the expectation of main line in the movie, done by the cult actor Samuel L. Jackson. Pretty cool.

local: the Arsonist (Požigalec)

This is a local slovenian internet phenomenon. Some guys were supposed to make a citizen's arrest on an suspected arsonist and were later on interviewed by the news. Besides having a funny southern accent, the story begins with the guy explaining to the news that he tried to steal some guy's bike and noticed that he had a gasoline can. Therefore he got the idea he was the arsonist that did some fires in the area. The funniest thing about it is that he asked the guy "Why do you need a bag if bought a bike?". Well, the thing got so viral that some guys made a reconstruction of the story, a music video and also an online merchandise store. Pretty funny (and weird) stuff indeed.

Stay tuned for the next part of What's hot on the web.

Check out the complete What's hot on the web series.

How Nokia lost it's mobile interface domination and how Apple took it

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:17:31 GMT

When first cell phones came around, almost everybody I know had a Nokia. They were working for years and they had a nice interface. You could do everything with excactly four function buttons: Menu (also Yes, Receive and Hang up call), Cancel, Up and Down. Simple and smart, as less is more.

Nokia is still cool in Europe, but they are having difficulties penetrating the US and were forced to leave the Japanese market. And there is another star rising, and it's called the iPhone. Apple was able to take 1% of global mobile market share with just one high end model. The first generation did not make it to Japan, but they were able to do that too with the second 3G model.

Apple made quite an interesting strategy, as they gave the iPhone the thing they do best - awesome software. Ok, first generations did miss a few basic features, but the usability was and still is superior. All other phones's software feels the same, but iPhone OS feels better. And it uses only one button.

If you look at an ordinary Nokia phone today, it has about ten function buttons: Menu, Function one, Function two, Receive, Hang up, Left, Right, Up, Down, OK. That can be confusing and a lot of people end up not using all of them. Luckily Nokia was able to understand this and started going back to basics.

After their acquisition of Symbian, it looks like things will turn out for the better. The N series looks good and the N97 looks amazing. Other companies were finally able to notice that mobile phones should be fun to use.

There are other players, like Samsung, RIM and Google, who are following the little revolution the iPhone made. iPhone may not be perfect and the best, but one thing is certain. Apple showed us that software and user experience do matter, and they matter a lot.

Michael Jackson's death - this year's biggest business

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:43:18 GMT

We have finally seen it. Michael Jackson's death ceremony. I have seen parts of it, a bit out of curiosity, but I also enjoy his early music (Bad was actually one of the first songs that gave me the shivers) and I wanted to see other artists perform his covers (meh). I am not here to judge the ceremony, but I should mention that I was sickened by all the hypocritical people that were talking on his final event. Yesterday he was a freak, today he is a saint. That was to be expected, as we have seen it in similar situations before.

I have always been a bit of a conspiracy theorist and the idea of him staging his own death doesn't seem that far fetched for me. Today, in a world that we get live coverage of famous people going to the toilet, we didn't get even one clear picture, movie or anything that could prove the body was really his.

Michael Jackson was heavily in debt, we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. It turns out that his death could be worth in that range. Let's check a few lucrative after his death businesses:

The O2 concerts: Michael was supposed to have some 50 concerts in the O2 arena to cover some of the debt he has produced over the years. They sold a lot of tickets, and now, when it's clear that the concerts are not going to happen, not everybody is returning the tickets. They are the ultimate fan relic, to keep or to sell on eBay.
Music and merchandise: After his death Michael became the first artist to sell more than 1 million downloads in one week. Combine that with all other stuff people are buying and you can calculate quite an interesting figure.
The ceremony: Hundreds of millions of people watching, infinite television stations broadcasting. That should top even the previous two.

I would like to point out again that Michael Jackson was one of the greatest pop artists of our time and I hope I didn't insult any of his fans or family with my critical thinking. If he is still alive, all I can say is good work - you got us all. But in both cases I am interested to know who benefited from this outcome and what figure are we talking about, as I am not able to make an estimate. Hopefully it will be enough to pay for all of his debts and let (him and) his family live a normal life.

Introducing the dynamic Home button

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:56:58 GMT

My chronolog is a combination of different information from various web services and is able to display that information in various forms, depending on the the user's interaction. The views of the content can be switched according to one's preferences, so it is a bit more interesting than ordinary blogs and a bit more confusing and challenging for the users.

From the technical point of view, the chronolog knows five different states:

Viewing posts of all types (blog, bookmarks, tweets,...)
Viewing posts of one type
Viewing posts of one category (blog only)
Viewing archives for one month (blog only)
Viewing one blog post

Having a home button (the logo) that brings you to a single page each time would be quite silly and unuseful. Therefore the action behind the home button will be dynamic, depending on the way the user browses the chronolog. This is another interesting feature the chronolog will have and another prototype implemented and observed.

If you will be watching the posts of all types (chronolog view), the home button will bring you to blog posts and vice versa. If you are reading posts of one specific type, the home button will bring you to the chronolog view. If you are watching posts of a category or archives of a month, the home button will bring you to the list of posts you were viewing before going into filtered mode. And if you are viewing a specific blog post, it will bring you to the list you had before.

It is not revolutionary, but the main point is that the use of dynamic (home) buttons could be interesting in other contexts too, such as business oriented software. Most people won't notice this at all, which will actually be some sort of a positive confirmation of well thought user interaction, but those more observant will hopefully find it as a cool detail.

I want it all - the curious case of Microsoft

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:18:12 GMT

There's Microsoft, probably the biggest software company in the world. And there are others. In the past years Microsoft has been trying to expand it's business to pretty much all the markets, faintly connected with it's core business - developing software. Marketing experts could say this is not a good strategy, because it is better for companies to retain their focus and stay specialized in things they do best. But if Samsung can build bridges in South Korea and at the same time make smart phones, why shouldn't Microsoft make iPods?

There are a few interesting new markets Microsoft entered into. But are they profitable enough to let the Windows family suffer because of this expansion? Here are the most significant:

Gaming consoles market: the Xbox 360 is supposed to be one of the best gaming consoles according to independent tests, because of it's high performance and good online support. They even offer some exclusive Grand theft auto content, which was probably the most anticipated game of this year.
Portable media devices: we are supposed to see the new Zune HD in autumn, designed to kill the iPod dominance of portable mp3 and video devices. But is it cool enough to be able to take this burden upon itself?
Search: a few years ago Microsoft introduced Live search, which was the successor of MSN search. A few months ago Bing was launched, and it is actually successfully taking search engine usage and share from Google and Yahoo, at least for now. But is it just curiosity, or is it actually good enough to replace The mighty one?

In the mean time, Windows Vista was quite a debacle and left most of the users longing and keeping Windows XP. We will see how Windows 7 does, but they surely lost a good position against Mac and Linux in the past years. I still think that Microsoft's business suite is the best there is (Office, asp.net, SQL server), but negative attitude can easily travel from operating systems towards enterprise environment and fun gadgets. People want the iPod and the iPhone because it is easy and fun to use, will they think the same about Zune after using Windows Vista?

It is always fun and interesting to check what the stock market says. The following diagram compares Microsoft (MSFT) to it's competitors from different markets mentioned above, Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG) and Nintendo (NTDOY), from the beginning of 2005 until now.

It doesn't look that good, does it (even though the dates and players in the diagram were carefully chosen to support the hypothesis)?

Billion = Trillion: who is the one that can't count?

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:53:07 GMT

There are a lot of cultural differences around the world and between individual countries of the western civilization. On which side of the road should I drive, how hot the weather is or perhaps most importantly - how big this beer is. The reaches of different measurement and interpretation are immense, so why should counting be any different.

How big is a billion? There are two different ways of naming big numbers, and they are called the Short scale and the Long scale. The long scale numerical system was used first, but in the 17th century, when traditional six-digit groups were split up into three-digit groups, short scale slowly came to use. Today, short scale numerical system is in use mainly in English speaking countries, while long scale is used in central Europe and around the world.

I personally prefer using the long scale, as it is mathematically more correct. Actually, I have no other choice, but it seems easy to represent something you were born into.

So what is the main difference? Long scale numerical system uses a word Billion to represent million millions or million square (1.000.000² = 1.000.000.000.000), and a Trillion is a million to the power of three or million billions (1.000.000³). On the the other hand, short scale uses "one more" for every new term greater than million. In this case, Billion represents thousand millions (1.000.000.000), Trilion is a million millions (1.000.000.000.000) etc., so yup, billion equals trillion.

It's an interesting world we live in. And different date formats are a pain in the ass for software developers.

Emoticons - a new form of art?

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:12:13 GMT

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/

I've heard about a trend between urban artists to make sketches using just one line. I think emoticons are acting upon a similar behaviour, as twenty years ago nobody could imagine what a few characters could portray. Design is about keeping it simple and clean. And you can't get much cleaner than using letters, numbers and other basic characters.

An interesting "artistic" application of this phenomena was designed for an advertisement for a weight loss programme. I don't like the overall look, but still it is a creative way of bringing modern techniques into classic advertising. Simple shape, a meaningful story. And the characters look like design, even though they are really just plain simple characters with ordinary typeface.

I can't imagine where this trend will end. I wouldn't be surprised if sometime in the future newspapers, poetry and prose will get more emoticonal, as this approach is very simple for inserting drama-type essence into non-drama based art. Our youth is totally wired, will they wire the real world too as their time comes?

The Chronolog is almost complete

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:58:38 GMT

This weekend has been very productive (=obsessed) and the Chronolog is almost ready. I am very pleased. Now I just have to hope that the coolness of the thing is at least half of the way I see it.

There are quite a few innovative and creative approaches in the beast. The default display is historically oriented (showing posts from the past 7 days), but that changes as you enter a specific mode (blog, bookmarks, etc.). After that you start to see previous 10 or 25 posts at once. The paging that will suport this feature will have to be pretty scary (crap).

Another thing is combining Categories and Tags into one concept. Why would you go for hierarchical when you can go matriculate? And more importantly, you don't need two things that actually do almost the same - cataloguing information.

Besides that you can expect a cloud visualization of both the categories/tags and monthly archives, which should be at least a bit interesting, and hopefully some other cute features.