Stritar's chronolog

5 reasons why Star Wars 7 will become the highest-grossing movie of all time

Thu, 04 Dec 2014 13:51:20 GMT

We’ve finally seen it! And by we I mean everybody. It turns out the thing that can really break the Internet are not a few pictures of a big ass, but a movie trailer that's been anticipated like none before it. And it came with a bang! Even though a lot of people watched the trailer on iTunes (where statistics are undisclosed), the movie already managed to attract more than 40 million views in less than a week on YouTube, beating the previous record holder by miles. This time, it’s all in, Star Wars - The Force Awakens began its journey to become the greatest movie ever. You don’t believe me? Here are five reasons why this will happen.

The original movie’s success

Did you know that when Star Wars came out way back in 1977, it became the highest-grossing movie of its time (according to Wikipedia). Neither did I, but there’s more. If you adjust the earnings for inflation, the original Star Wars turns into the third biggest box office hit in history. The movie was super huge, but we were too young to notice. Actually, most of us weren’t even born at that time, which means this one will appeal to two generations of geeks. But we’ll get to that later.

The 90s/00s sequels didn’t do bad as well in the box office, two of them managed to get on the Top 50 movies of all time list as well. Not a bad starting point for Episode 7.

The original cast

Star Wars 7 represents one of the greatest cast reunions in the history of Hollywood. More than 30 years later (the last of the original trilogy, Return of the Jedi, was released in 1983), everybody’s back in action. Except James Earl Jones, but Darth Vader is dead anyways (and will hopefully stay that way), so no biggie there. Can you even look at this picture and not get excited about it?

This photography of the cast of Episode 7 already became one of the most iconic in movie history. Source: Daily Mail.

It will be interesting to see how chemistry between the actors works after so many years. On one hand, you have the superstar Harrison Ford, on the other hand you have Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, who didn’t manage to make outstanding careers. But if you ask me, the anticipation of the character dynamics makes the whole thing even more intriguing.

J.J. Abrams

It’s too bad George Lucas won’t return to direct the next few episodes, but he was very involved in the making of this movie nevertheless. J.J. Abrams surely is the right choice for the job, he has the spectacle material this movie needs. Of course, this means that the worlds of Star Wars and Star Trek will finally entwine for good, but who cares anyways. The ultimate no-no already happened when Ben Affleck was casted his second high-profile superhero.

Back to J.J.. The trailer he made for Star Wars 7 looks simply fantastic, and based on his other recent achievements, we surely have a lot to look forward to.

Disney

When Disney paid $4 billion for Lucasfilm in 2012, some people thought they must be mad. Think about it again, Disney means business. They're a marketing machine which calculated even bigger piles of money can be made from the Star Wars franchise. As the second largest media company in the world, they also know how to do it. Their biggest box office hits so far include The Avengers to The Pirates of the Caribbean, but in 2015, they're out to take the gold.

The Force is already strong with Mickey - X-wing in Disneyland Paris.

The geekosphere

On friday, the new Star Wars trailer was all over the internets. The geek community collectively orgasmed while watching the 90 second teaser. The cult and fandom that’s present around this scifi classic is enormous, and after the “disappointment" of the second trilogy, we finally have something new to look forward to.

On friday, top three posts on reddit were about the Star Wars trailer. Soon, things started taking their own course. The YouTube trailer received more than 40 million views in less than a week. And it’s still one year before The Force Awakens will be released. There are so many opportunities available to Disney it’s almost ridiculous. With proper marketing, Star Wars could actually break the Internet.

Reddit after Star Wars trailer revelation.

But it’s not only about you. It’s about your dad as well. The original cast will surely appeal to the original geeks who were drooling over Leia way before you were born, while Facebook will help to deliver the message. Our parents are the ones who will tip the scale for the next Star Wars.

The Force Awakens

Almost 40 years after the original Star Wars, the stars have aligned again. Millions of fans are patiently waiting to see how Luke, Leia and Han will combat the Dark side of the Force. Unlike the pale second (first) trilogy, Disney now holds all the cards to create the biggest movie of all time. The target audience is huge, and the means for virality and distribution are better than ever. All we need to do now is to allow Disney to seduce us for a year, and after we are all wet, deliver the promise. The world is ready for the next supermovie.

But for how long? Avatar 2 is scheduled for 2016.

Me vs. IT 2.0 vs. Enterprise 2.0

Wed, 30 Jul 2014 20:41:46 GMT

In 2009, I was very excited to present a few funky things we've been developing with Neolab, at the largest independent IT conference in Slovenia. The world was obsessed with "2.0" back then, and we were determined to join that hype. Facebook was already big at that point, and it was becoming clear they will make a huge impact on the future of technology. Tim O'Reilly wrote a seminal article on the topic, arguing how Web 2.0, the new generation of the internet (and software!), has changed everything.

I was amazed by the potential of Web 2.0 as well. Since my main focus is developing business oriented software solutions, I started fantasizing about the possibilities of integrating those concepts into our (serious) applications. If our clients are buying premium custom software from us, we should try to deliver more features with high added value for them. Stuff that enables co-creation and collaboration. Which we did. And called it IT 2.0.

We wanted IT 2.0 to be much more than Enterprise 2.0. At that time, Enterprise 2.0 meant using mostly third-party tools for social networking, wikis, blogs or tagging, assimilating them into enterprise environments. On the other hand, we wanted to take the coolest concepts invented by social networking, wikis, blogs or tagging, and integrate them into our solutions in new ways. You see, our software isn't social per se, our software's main goal is to solve complex and specific business problems. But we've managed to put a social layer on top of that software, making the term Enteprise 2.0 simply not awesome enough to describe it.

But Enteprise 2.0 is awesome. It's actually very awesome. If O'Reilly defined Web 2.0 in 2005, Andrew McAfee defined Enteprise 2.0 in 2006. He was one of the first who has studied the implementation of social software (such as social networking, wikis, blogs or tagging) into enterprise environments. In doing that, he developed the fundamentals of Enterprise 2.0, naming it SLATES (Search, Links, Authorship, Tags, Extensions, Signals). This concept was later on extended by Dion Hinchcliffe with FLATNESSES (adding Freeform, Network-oriented, Social, Emergence) and the 4Cs by Niall Cook (Communication, Collaboration, Connection, Cooperation).

But social software (like any other software) is usually just a means to achieve something greater. The truth is, implementing Enterprise 2.0 tools into the enterprise isn't enough to make collaboration and open innovation work, organizations need to fundamentally change as well. Enterprise 2.0 enables a completely new way of doing business, walking hand in hand with lean and agile approaches, seeking new opportunities in connecting employees, clients, partners, suppliers and even competition. It supports the new global and connected world. But it requires a new way of thinking and a deep corporate culture change.

Organizational culture (change) is very important for innovation and adaptability, but in the academic field, pieces of this equation are missing. Until now, there haven't been many studies about how organizational culture impacts the implementation of collaborative environment and vice versa. But I'm set to change that fact. And I will soon need your help!

I've finally started working on my master's thesis, which will try to find out if there is connection between organizational culture and Enterprise 2.0 adoption. I have already studied 6 books and 50+ articles on the subject, and will soon deploy the survey, which will combine the OCAI (Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument) and a general Enterprise 2.0 questionnaire. Those who will help me and participate in the study, will get the final report in return, besides a concise comment / advice about their specific organization's situation (the survey is not available yet, please ping me on if you're interested). I'm sure the results will be worth the effort.

If IT 2.0 is about new generations of software and user experience, Enterprise 2.0 is about new ways of managing companies. Those who are able to implement such approaches can win big, but then again, not all companies actually have the opportunity to absorb this transformation. There are many huge obstacles for businesses to go 2.0. Stay tuned because soon, we will better understand why.

Backpacking in Sri Lanka

Tue, 08 Apr 2014 07:11:34 GMT

Almost exactly 4 years later, in October 2013, I went backpacking to Asia again. My wife and I decided to go Sri Lanka, since it is a bit more wild than Thailand, but still not as chaotic as India. For three weeks we've travelled around the country, enjoying the madness of urban cities, mysteries of ancient ruins, beholding the majestic nature and loving the beautiful beaches. This diversified land can offer a lot to a traveler, and you don't need that much money to do a lot of different things. You just need to be prepared for an amazing adventure that this small island on the coast of India can provide.

Jump to:

Travelling • Sleeping • People • Cities • Temples and ruins • Nature • Beaches • Food • Tea • Ayurweda • Our trip

Travelling

Sri Lanka is a relatively small island, around 300km north to south. But this doesn't mean you'll get around fast. The roads are old, the trains are slow. Luckily, there are a lot of things you can see while moving from one place to another.

We've tried pretty much all means of transportation. We've liked buses the most, since there are extremely frequent and cheap (around 1 Euro or 150 Rupees per person per 100km), and you get to meet the locals and enjoy a bit of genuine life. The buses are a piece of art themselves, often filled with kitschy accessories and huge speakers playing local music. There aren't two alike. But make sure you're ready for a roller-coaster ride - the bus drivers are fucking insane, dangerously overtaking other busses and literally pushing smaller vehicles out of the road. The driver sits on the horn, the conducter waves through the window.

A bit of a downside are the bus stations, which are extremely stressful and chaotic, but you get used to them after a few times.Try to avoid the red buses, these are run by the national operator and are a bit older, go for the colorful ones if you have the chance.

We've tried the taxi van as well, it was much faster and comfortable than the bus, and the driver showed us a few things on the way. But the ride was really expensive (around 50 Euro a day), so not really worth the money. Of course, Tuk-tuks are useful as well (not to mention cool), but not suitable for longer drives.

We've had a funny issue with the train. At one time, we've booked an expensive panoramic tour through the jungle from Kandy to Nouwera Eliya, and the train was 3 hours late. The panoramic cart turned out to be not-so-panoramic, the third class (which we took on another occasion) was almost better. Not to mention the train broke down in the middle of the jungle in the evening and another locomotive came a few hours later to tow us to the nearest station. Luckily, it was our station.

So, trust me on this one: use the busses whenever you can, they are one of the coolest, craziest and most authentic things you can do in Sri Lanka.

Welcome aboard the red bus.

The colorful one is the good one.

The stations are filled with buses and loud people.

Let's take a train instead.

Stuck in the jungle much?

Sleeping

It's easy to find a nice place to sleep anywhere in Sri Lanka. The combination of Lonely Planet and Trip Advisor works like a charm, but make sure you bring an extra telephone, so you can install a local sim card, which can help you to contact the hostels easily. You can get a prepaid one for a few bucks and it has enough credit on for the whole trip.

Except in Colombo, where we've booked our stay in advance, we've picked places as we went along. Usually, we looked for double rooms in the range of 10-20 Euro (around 1.500 to 3.000 Rupees) a night with wi-fi, but without A/C (even though it was hot in October, we've survived with the fan). In all cases, the rooms were nice and clean, so if you don't need much luxury, this type of accommodation will be enough for an average backpacker.

Colombo was a bit more expensive, and we've made another excess by booking a beach cabana only for ourselves for one night in Tangalle (both for around 40 Euro a night). Otherwise, our budget sleeping offered very good value for the money.

Speaking of the cabana…this beach house was one of the sexiest things we've done on our trip, but not all is gold that glitters. Since the cabana was open and on the seaside, I've had a bit of a hard time sleeping because of the wind and the ocean. But it felt great to be a king in paradise, if only for a day.

Our room in Fort In in Galle.

King Fern's in Nouwera Eliya was one of the most interesting places we've seen.

Sandy's cabana in Tangalle.

A room with a view - Green Hill in Ella.

People

The people of Sri Lanka are very nice and friendly. They smile a lot and look like they enjoy life. Most are genuinely interested in you, some even want to take pictures with you. Most of them speak English and help you when you are wandering around confused. Opposite to westerners, they don't mind touching each other, and younger people openly flirt. It is very cute when boys are giving girls peanuts and other treats.

The people love their president, whose pictures can be seen everywhere. He is a bit of an emperor, with his brother-in-law running the parliament and a few other relatives on important positions. But he was the one who has ended the 25-year civil war (in 2009), so everybody is just happy to get the chance to live without fear again, supporting this regime.

We've seen a few hustlers, we've even met a junkie in Kandy that approached us with the "I remember you from the hotel" play. These guys usually do Paan, a drug that makes your mouth red and eventually your teeth fall out, but are luckily not that pushy if you ignore them. Another guy wanted to take us a few kilometers too far with his tuk-tuk to earn another buck, while one of them wanted to convince us a bus is not coming. But that a bearable cost for a three week's stay, and even unpleasant locals weren't aggressive.

Even if the people are very sweet, there is one thing that can start getting on your nerves eventually. Everybody wants to sell you something. Food, drinks, ride, accommodation, souvenirs, anything, people constantly approach you, no matter what you are doing. The closer to the beach regions you come, the more of these street sellers there are and after a few weeks, you can get really tired of it.

Taking a walk on the beach in Colombo. Life seems pretty modern here.

Cricket - the national sport - is played everywhere.

The beloved president and his family.

Youngsters flitring on the train. She doesn't seem convinced.

With a generally young population, you can see so many pupils it's almost weird.

Women preparing for a selling session on the beach.

Cities

Almost everyone's trip starts in Colombo, which is polluted city with over a million inhabitants (Sri Lanka has around 22m in total). The city center offers an interesting amalgamation of asian and modern architecture, and there are quite a few things to see around. The colonial legacy can tell a lot about the previous centuries in Sri Lanka.

A lot of people skip Colombo, but I think it's worth the trip. This is probably the closest Sri Lanka gets to India, and there's nothing like being in a carbon-monixide filled rush hour in a tuk-tuk doing slalom between ongoing traffic.

Other cities are very similar one to another (or so different than European that you don't notice the nuances), busy roads with buses and tuk-tuks, small stores filled with tons of merchandise and decorated with colorful signs, hundreds of people on the streets. Perhaps two cities stand out, Kandy, a colorful city in the middle of the mountains (and in a way even more chaotic than Colombo), and Galle, a colonial fortress in the south, where you feel like you're in Europe.

There are a lot of stray dogs everywhere, and they usually don't look really healthy, so we've tried avoiding them. Small monkeys are also a regular inhabitant of settlements, jumping from tree to tree and going through trash. These guys are a bit more cuter that the dogs, but don't seem that friendly. And of course, cows.

We've seen a few slums as well, but the government is trying to replace them with modern condominiums, so its easy to see these two one next to another. In general, there's a strong contrast between the cities and rural areas, where people usually live in simple huts, hidden in tropical flora.

The streets of Colombo.

Stuck in traffic much?

A bazaar in Pettah in Colombo.

This is how a typical town looks like. This is Weligama.

The quiter rural areas.

Temples and ruins

An interesting thing in Sri Lanka are the ancient ruins from around 1000 AD. Our original plan was to go and see a few of them, but ended up seeing only one of them (Polonnaruwa). These things are massive, kilometers wide, and you need a whole day to see everything, even if you rent a bike. Since the weather can get very hot, and the humidity is high, these ruin explorations can become very tiring, so one was enough for us.

There are many Buddhist temples all over the country (one of them supposedly contains the tooth of Buddha), we've seen quite a few of them. Huge statues of Buddha are omnipresent as well, and can be found even in the middle of the jungle.

The ruins of Polonaruwa.

The Cave temple in Dambulla.

People are praying in the Temple of the tooth in Kandy. Buddha's tooth is supposed to be there.

The statue of Buddha in the middle of the jungle near Sigiriya.

Nature

The nature in Sri Lanka is nothing short of amazing. From old forests to mesmerizing plains, from wildlife parks to tea plantations, which are simply beautiful. Not to mention there's a massive rock (hundreds of meters tall) called the Lion Rock in the middle of nowhere (called Sigiriya), and it's one of the most amazing things we've seen on our trip.

It was so calm and easy in Sigiriya, the chaotic madness just disappeared over there. Other cool things we've did was hiking in Horton Plans (and the World's end), and visiting the Uda Walawe national park, where we've seen things such as elephants, buffaloes, alligators, all sorts of birds and jackals. Our driver on the safari was a crazy guy, so we've ended up full of adrenaline and covered in mud.

There is one downside, though. The entrances to parks and historical sites are very expensive. You can pay around 4.000 Rupees (25 Euro) per person for the entrance fee, which is more than we've both spent for staying the night at our regular place.

Kandy, the cultural capital in the central region, is also a good place to explore nature, since they have a beautiful botanic garden, and you can visit a spice garden where you can see how herbs and spices are grown. Not to mention there is a huge lake in the middle of the city.

We've also went snorkeling to a coral reef in a national park called Pigeon Island, which was a great thing to do as well. Which brings us to...

Breakfast with a view over Lion Rock in Sigiriya.

Hiking in Horton Plains was definitely worth it.

Gay elephants in Uda Walawe national park. They have their own private club.

The bautiful Pigeon island.

The spice garden in Kandy.

Nature means nature. Close encounter in Sigiriya.

Beaches

One of the most important things in Sri Lanka are the beaches! Paradise beaches, hundreds of them, scattered all across the country. We've been to Uppuveli on the north and a few places to the south, and it kept getting better and better. Crazy sandy beaches and the most amazing surf spots are a common thing in Sri Lanka, but if you're looking for the most beautiful one, Mirissa would be it.

Before we went home, we've stayed our last night in Negombo, a town near the airport. At that point, we were already so spoiled, that the kilometer long sandy beach with a bit of trash and no palm trees seemed too boring to enjoy.

Even though, there's something about these sandy beaches, where you can drink cocktails and eat beautiful food while watching surfers fade into the sunset over the ocean. I love the ocean. You just can't ignore how strong and majestic it is.

Uppuveli.

Tangalle.

Mirissa.

Unawatuna.

Negombo.

To the surf-tuk-tuk!

Food

I loved Sri Lankan food. It is very spicy, but full of exotic flavors. An ordinary lunch comes with 5 different curries, which will cost you a few Euros in a restaurant (few hundred Rupees). The dishes are usually scarce with meat, but you can still get a beautiful local meat dish Kottu almost everywhere. Things get even better on the seaside, where you can get a freshly caught fish for two for around 10 Euro. Not to mention king prawns and other delicacies.

We've tried to eat in small restaurants (where the locals eat) each time we got the chance. The food is authentic there, not to mention cheap - the least we've payed for a meal was less than two Euro for both. Luckily, they had forks and knives, since the locals usually eat with their hands.

You can get smoothies and lassies (a yoghurt drink) almost everywhere, so you can get a dose of fresh vitamins on a daily basis. We've treated ourselves with one of these almost everyday, but what else can you do in a country where a mango fruit can fall on your head? Eat the most amazing exotic fruit anytime you can. Except papaya. Papaya tastes weird.

However, it's not that easy to find alcohol. There are a lot of bars and restaurants that don't have even beer, but you can compensate for that when you get to the tropical paradise. There's an abundance of everything on the seaside, but the prices also tend to go up a bit as well.

Pick three.

There's plenty of fruit everywhere.

Kottu in the making.

The cheapest meal ever. Both for less than 2 Euro.

Fresh fish. Too bad barracuda isn't that nice to eat.

Tea

One of the things Sri Lanka is most well known of, is tea. It's the world fourth biggest producer of tea, which means you usually get a whole pot of tea with your breakfast. Tea plantations, which are located in the center of the country, are huge and beautiful, and you can't but admire the fact that every leaf is picked by hand.

Tea plantations also mean tea factories, but we didn't have much luck with them. The first one we've visited (Mackwood) was closed for renovation (prince Charles was supposed to visit it in a few weeks as part of the Commonwealth meeting), and the second one wasn't producing while we were there. But we still managed to get the idea about the massive size of the industry.

Even though I am more of a coffee drinker, I enjoyed tea a few times, and I can say it was very nice. I didn't know there are so many types of it, all made from the same plant. By combining different techniques of roasting and processing, this drink comes in around 20 different versions.

The tea plantations.

Tea pickers.

This is how a factory looks like. Too bad it wasn't producing.

One plant, many varieties.

Ayurveda

If you get too tired, you can treat yourself with some Ayurvedic wellness. Besides massages, this includes all sorts of weird treatments such as sauna caskets and oil dripping on your forehead, which are things you just can't usually do. It was ok, worth trying it out, but not really that special. A Thai massage kicks Ayurvedic ass everyday, if you ask me.

Would you go inside one of these?

This is the lab in which they pour oil on your forehead.

Our trip

Our trip started in Colombo, from where we've travelled to north-central regions to Dambulla and continued to Sigiriya (staying there instead of Dambulla was a great choice). We've visited the Lion Rock and the ruins of Polonnaruwa from there, and continued our journey to north-east. We've chilled out a bit on the beaches of Uppuveli, did the snorkeling on Pigeon Island and took the bus to Kandy. After a few days in the jungle we took the train to Nuwara Eliya, which is a great place to do the tea-seeing. In the morning, a driver took us to Horton Plains and dropped us off at the train station, from where we wen't to the place with the most amazing view, Ella.

At this point, we were around three thirds into our three-week journey. After visiting the Uda Walave park, we've continued our way to the south - entering the laid back part of the trip. The beaches of Tangalle and Mirissa were amazing, and the colonial city of Galle offered a most pleasant stay. Our last night was in the west near the airport on the beaches of Negombo.

We have stayed in 10 places in 20 days, and I would recommend every single one of them:

Colombo - Palm Nest
Sigiriya - Lakmini Lodge
Uppuveli - Coconut Beach Lodge
Kandy - St Bridget's Country Bungalow
Nuwara Eliya - King Fern Cottage
Ella - Green Hill
Tangalle - Sandy Cabanas
Mirissa - Calidan
Galle - Fort Inn
Negombo - Dion's

We have spent around 1350 Euro per person in total, out of which:

700 Euro for the plain tickets
200 Euro for food and drinks
150 Euro for sleeping
100 Euro for traveling around
100 Euro for the entrance fees
100 Euro for insurance and other expenses

Here is our itinerary:

This is what you can do in three weeks in Sri Lanka.

Conclusion

Sri Lanka is an amazing country, and I would highly recommend visiting it. It's wild enough to get you running around, and tame enough to let you relax after the chaos. The trip can be quite inexpensive, since even the budget rooms are nice and clean, and you can get around very cheap if you use the public transport. You will get the chance to see many busy cities and laid-back villages.

The people of Sri Lanka are very nice and polite, and there are plenty of natural and cultural spots you can visit. But in the end, you probably find yourself enjoying the paradise beaches the most, hanging out with surfers and other travellers. Good food will be your everyday partner, just be careful not to order too spicy.

In the end, Sri Lanka offers plenty of options that can help you enjoy its authentic life. After all, that is what Asia is all about - discovering beautiful places and fascinating culture.

The Web is becoming just another television

Tue, 11 Feb 2014 15:06:44 GMT

A few months ago, I managed to bookmark my 20.000th link. I always imagined I would be able to say something really inspiring when it would finally happen, but after years of collecting and tagging content on Delicious like mad, proud of the amount of information I've consumed, I ended up feeling a bit empty. Categorization schemes, mashups, systematic repeating of essays and articles, it seems nothing could help me grow anymore. What else can you expect from a passive observer of a world, overwhelmed with unlimited knowledge?

In February 2011, when I saved my 10.000th link, I felt great, full of power. This means I've made around 10 bookmarks per day on average since then, which translates into a lot of read material. But when I reflect on that, I can't bypass the feeling I haven't actually learned that much. Most online content seems recycled and without added value. The feeds I'm subscribed to are all the same, and I don't know how to break out of them. The amount of information out there is simply astounding, making me read everything diagonally. I feel like everybody is just trying to control my attention.

Then I noticed the (social) Web is becoming like television. We are all just drones, consuming unimportant information we are being fed on a daily basis. Passive readers actively choosing sources that lead us to the facts - but how is that different from choosing which television channels to watch? Not only that, we've become advocates of this situation by passing on "interesting stuff" on our timelines, a part of the infinite loop of content creation, curation and consumption.

----

Almost half a year ago, when I wrote these words, I became so depressed I've decided not to publish them. Luckily, I've had enough time to think about the problem and came up with a plan to turn myself around. I decided I need to do everything I can to become a proactive consumer of information (again). Forget social, I'm returning back to search. Web 1.0 FTW!

Together with more in-depth studies of specific topics that I do these days, I managed to achieve something even more important. I started reading books, I've read about five in the past few months. Fiction and scientific. You won't believe the effect this has had on my concentration and habits. I noticed I don't spend that much time on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit anymore, becoming the master of my information intake. By taking time to read / watch more complex work, everyday news finally started to show itself as trivial as it really is.

What we have here now, is just another television, which we passively consume for amusement, without much mental effort. But to evolve personally and professionally (what the Web was invented for!), we'll need to do more. Read books, listen to podcasts, study specific fields, concentrate on individual subjects. Because it's that focus that is crucial for one's evolution. Nobody wants generalists anymore. And believe me, 20.000 "random" articles don't make you that smart anyways.

Reinventing the blog, part 2: The challenges, the opportunies

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:42:06 GMT

After the initial dissection of the most innovative and well designed blogs, it's time to go behind the scenes. We've seen how some of these blogs look like, but there's even more value in understanding why they look like they do. Every good user experience analysis needs to have a clear overview of the goals and good insight into the problems of the situation, and I will try to outline these by using my blog as an example. A lot can be deducted by monitoring the basic Google Analytics reports.

Even though generic blog challenges and opportunities may not exist, I think that most blogs probably share around 80% of these goals. And just to be clear, by blogs I don't mean corporate blogs with their specific requirements (sales, leads, conversions), but modern online magazines, originally (and still) called blogs, even though they are actually becoming mainstream media. Therefore, this analysis can work for most online publishers, but I'm doing it mostly to help me understand what I need to do to reinvent my blog again. It's pretty simple: getting and retaining traffic. All other requirement are derived from these two.

Main goal: getting traffic, increasing engagement

The main goal of every website is to get traffic. For traffic, you need great (or at least good) content, something with added value for the users. What you do with that traffic, is another story. Sell things, sell ads, sell yourself.

There are primarily three different sources of traffic you can receive: direct, referral and search. You want all of them, and each component is a result of different activities. Getting direct traffic means you have a strong brand. Getting referral traffic means you have great writers / influencers which help you get backlinks to your blog. Getting search traffic means you have a great technical team and SEO (CMO and SMO) optimized site.

You want a well-balanced stream of traffic to your blog.

The other important goal that websites have is keeping the traffic on the site, which can be done by stimulating user engagement. Helping things happen after you get people to your blog. You want users to spend as much time as possible with you, navigate through many pages, and hopefully give you some feedback - leaving comments and sharing your posts on social media. Some blogs want other actions as well, but these are probably the most obvious ones.

Increasing social media activity

Social media is emerging as one of the most important referral sources. But lately, it's becoming a noteworthy factor for search engine rankings as well. That's why blogs are trying hard to integrate social media widgets into their content, some even go beyond the standard tweet / like / + 1 buttons. Help people share, there are many benefits from it, both direct and indirect.

The social activity on my most visited post. These figures translate into more than 10k unique users.

Lowering bounce rates, increasing time on site

Most blogs have very high bounce rates - people tend to read a single post and leave the site. That is why designers and information architects are trying to do everything to keep readers on their site, hoping to persuade them to read another article. Some are trying too hard by adding too many related posts, others are playing with many interesting ways of driving readers to the next page.

My current bounce rate is more than 80%, with average visit duration just above 2 minutes. Something that needs to be improved urgently. I am sure this will be one of the most significant challenges I will face when developing the next generation of my blog.

Improving these bounce rates and time on site is one of my highest priorities.

Treating every page as a landing page

The time when people visited the homepage and navigated further from there are over. Today, specially because of social media, every page is a landing page and needs to be treated as such. We are consuming content in a different way, we don't browse for content anymore, the content finds us. That is why we need to design every single page as the starting point for our visitors.

At this point, less than 10% of traffic to my blog comes through the homepage. Which means designing great post pages is becoming more important than designing the homepage, since every page needs to become a hub for further navigation.

Building loyalty and credibility (branding)

Besides keeping users on site, it's also important you get users back to the site. As your brand and reputation evolve, it gets easier with all of the traffic components, but you can achieve that with only one thing - great content. Of course, nice design and user experience help, but you can't bypass this simple fact: you need something with added value to the readers. Only then you will get loyal users and only then your blog will thrive.

Even though most focus is done on gaining new readers, you mustn't forget about returning ones.

Allowing a mobile-friendly experience

We are living in a mobile world and more and more traffic is made by mobile devices. This number is closing in on 20% on my blog, which means optimization for mobile visitors is becoming something that you can't ignore.

Mobile operating systems are on the rise.

Combining it with the funky new UI elements

In my previous post, I outlined the interesting new user interface elements my favourite blogs use. Now we can map these elements with the above mentioned five challenges and opportunities, which will help us understand the requirements behind the innovations.

	Social media	Bounce / time	Landing pages	Branding	Mobile
Unconventional navigation		1	1	1
Fixed (floating) menu		1	1
Responsive design		1		1	1
Big key visual before text	1	1
Advanced key visual (gallery, video)	1	1		1
Abstract, teaser, subheading	1				1
Suggested content within limits		1	1		1
Custom social media integration	1			1
Polished content (wrapping, quotes)	1	1		1
Custom typography				1
Infinite scroll		1			1
Pinterest-style homepage		1		1
Integrated content and navigation		1	1	1
Total	5	10	4	8	4

It's pretty clear each of the elements has at least one specific goal that it's trying to solve. Some of them will surely become a standard in the future.

Conclusion

What a modern blog is trying to achieve in 2013 is pretty clear. Get more traffic, make users spend more time on the site. This hasn't changed in decades, but the behaviour of the users has. Only those that will be able to adapt to the newly-formed situation will survive.

The most important paradigms that have shaped the past years are the social and mobile era, which have revolutionized the ways we consume content. We are online all the time, with many devices, and there is so much content everywhere, it's overwhelming. Our attention span is becoming very limited, and all of above mentioned challenges are focused in trying to capture it.

I decided it's time to redesing my blog again, and by understanding what (and why) the market leaders do, my task will surely be easier. I hope you find my analysis useful, but please feel free to add anything I may have forgotten in the comments.

Check out the complete Reinventing the blog series.

How Facebook and Twitter are messing up Slovenian journalism

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 19:56:08 GMT

Before I proceed with this rant, I would like to point out that I strongly believe in social media. I think it can do magical things, hell, we've already seen it has the potential to change the world. But that's just me, a person consuming information, deciding what's real and what not, riding those waves that I like. The media - they should try harder - it's their job to report the truth. In the past few weeks, we've encountered a few slips from the mainstream media here in Slovenia, feeding us with bogus information they've copied from the (social) web. I know it can be hard to track everything that's going on, but still, double-checking a few things and sources wouldn't hurt that much. And since Slovenia is in a quite critical stage at this point, with a fucked up financial situation, austerity measures, protests and everything, this makes it even more important for journalists to do their job properly.

Case 1: the major mayor situation

Those that are acquainted with the current situation in Slovenia, know that we currently have two major protest venues. Maribor, who started it all, and whose protesters have already succeeded in persuading their mayor Franc Kangler to step down (and they aren't stopping there), and Ljubljana, whose activists are protesting more against the Slovenian right-winged government lead by Janez Janša, and no so much against the capital's mayor. You should know that Ljubljana's mayor Zoran Janković is an interesting person, one of those guys that's a bit shady, but since he has done so much for the development of the city, the general public still likes him (but not for much longer it seems).

In a similar fashion as the other protests (who are currently happening on a weekly basis), there was one protest in Ljubljana organized using Facebook and other social media channels, targeted specifically against the mayor. This event had hidden attendees, and their wall was covered with posts such as "10.000 confirmed guests", "15.000 confirmed guests" etc. There were a few of us that laughed at this, but this didn't stop the radio and television from reporting an expected record amount of protesters on that day, based solely on that Facebook event's wall posts! The result: a few hundred people, and some of them had a transparent "Thief, we love you".

The cached version of the event against Zoran Janković - with 15k hidden attendees. The event is no longer available. Spotted by @loudandwicked.

Case 2: the bogus response to the anti-corruption commission report

Today, another interesting thing has happened, and we still need to see how it will turn out. The national Commission for the Prevention of Corruption released a report saying both prime minister Janez Janša and Ljubljana's mayor Zoran Janković have more money that they were supposed to have (in hundred thousand euros). When this happened, Janša's SDS party's parody Twitter account with 30 followers at that time tweeted that this report proved the commission has finally dug into the corrupt communist hole.

The tweet that got mistaken for an official statement.

When I saw this tweet, I instantly checked the profile, since the tweet seemed very unbelievable, concerning the fact their leader is also inside the report. I instantly knew it's a bogus account, but this didn't prevent the Slovenian Press Agency from putting this tweet as a quote inside one of their news (no longer available), and from there on it was instantly picked up by other media as well. We are talking about one of the most important Slovenian news sources!

The citation of the tweet, copied by demokracija.si from STA. Spotted by @miharejc, amplified by @multikultivator, read the the thread.

Time for real journalists to shine

There are probably more cases like this, and it needs to stop! Social media is a wonderful tool for providing additional information about something specific, but as we've seen in the two cases, it often can't be the primary source for the news. Journalism needs to go a step back, and provide credible information from trustworthy sources. Otherwise, there won't be much truth left for our descendants, since too many people will simply have the power to make things up. But everything's not bad - situations like this could provide clear distinction between real journalists with original sources, and those who do nothing else but copy others. Something we critically need in this age of data abundance.

Occupy Wall Street and Other "Revolutions" as the Ultimate Reality Shows [Repost]

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 12:11:17 GMT

This post was originally published in November 2011 in a special two part series transatlantic blog post about Occupy Wall Street, on Nick Taylor’s thetwohalves.com, which is no longer available.

The situation isn't peachy. The global economic system is collapsing, the middle class is disappearing, and financial institutions have taken control of the fate of many countries and corporations. People are frustrated and want something else, they want a predictable and stable future. Hence the global Occupy Wall Street movement has been born, supported by various public figures and activist groups such as The Anonymous. Fueled by the success of the Arab Spring, these people are demonstrating against the domination of the rich 1% (or the ultra rich 0.1%), hoping to achieve a better world built on equality, opportunity and optimism.

When history looks upon the events that unfolded in 2011, it will probably view them similarly to 1848, when the Spring of Nations took place in Europe. But this time it's a bit different, it's a bit more theatrical. We're watching it live, and participating in it real-time. Everybody is in it, one way or another, the technology allows it, the people and the media amplify it. Even if you are just an observer, you pretty much know what's going on. People are squatting the streets, the police are trying to prevent it (violently), the corporations and political elites ignore it, some people support it, others don't.

These days, everyone can be a reporter. And most activists are. Equipped with laptops, tablets and smart phones, backed up by social media, thousands of tweets, blogs, pictures and videos are broadcast to the Web each minute. Uncountable number of actors, cameras and commentators make this event bigger than Big Brother, even bigger than The Truman Show. Occupy has become the ultimate global crowdsourced reality show happening non-stop, every minute, every hour, for days, even months.

The fascinating fact about this story is that you can choose the channel you want to watch. You can go directly to the source, to the people who are living it. You can consume it on the secondary level, where television and print media report their own, perhaps biased versions of what's happening. You can study the higher level interdisciplinary implications, such as these great Twitter visualizations of Occupy Wall Street or the Egyptian revolution. The Web is the playground with infinite toys.

But it's up to you if you want to get involved and contribute to the critical mass of this movement. Everybody can be a part of it, even if you're just watching or sharing information from the coziness of your living room. Perhaps you've finally been awarded with the opportunity to change the world. Probably not, but there's always a chance. And if the world won't change, you can at least participate in the show that will go down as one of the greatest reality shows of our time. Are you the 99%?

Check out the complete Occupy Wall Street series.

Is social media empowering social media?

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 14:41:08 GMT

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

But what does this mean if it's true? That there is no share-worthy content out there and social media has nothing to talk about except cats, zombies and social media?

I believe it's rather the opposite. Ever since second generation social services came around, and Facebook became Twitter (allowing asymmetric relationships), we've discovered it's not just about how many people you know, your message, if it contains added value, can be amplified and distributed very far away. And since everybody's trying to sell something anyways, people began to study how their presence and stories can be optimized, how their reach can be extended. I've seen it a many times, people who come on Twitter with a specific message, but then inevitably become "social media experts" and start tweeting about how to tweet right. Others are planning the best times to publish on Facebook, hoping their posts will get as many likes as possible. Social media marketing can be homemade, and since there are so many people interested in this topic, there's simply a lot of quality content about it.

Social media enabled people to speak up, enabled them to be heard. It seems Andy Warhol was right, everyone is a celebrity these days, but this doesn't happen randomly, it's rather the consequence of a strategy, planned or unplanned. That's why I'll make another bold statement: it may look like social media is empowering social media, simply because we're closing in on a future, where everybody will inevitably become a social media ninja. Or are we there already?

Targeting non-vegetarians with veggie food? Well played, Spar, well played.

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 20:04:44 GMT

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

Spar's new Veggie products have an interesting twist. It's a vegetarian line, targeting non-vegetarians. When the lovely Gwyneth Paltrow, who is not a vegetarian, but likes veggie, tells you that, you might as well think, hmm, she might be right. Why should I be a vegetarian to eat a meatless meal? I like my vegetables, so eating vegetarian on few occasions actually isn't such a bad idea. Which is fucking genius. Spar just made their potential client pool 20x bigger than it was, and their original target group probably doesn't mind it at all. There's a chance they will actually feel proud that meat-eaters will be copying their lifestyle.

"I'm not a vegetarian, but I like veggie." Why haven't I thought of that?

I love to comment on simple and effective campaigns like this, even though I'm not a marketing expert. That's why I'm not sure if this type of approach has been used before or if it even has its own name from the Mad Men times. Anyways, I think it's brilliant, and I will definitely be thinking about how to use it in other scenarios. Taking a minor group with specific requirements, creating a product for them, and then selling it to a larger group with the "why not" approach. Infinite possibilities, while the one presented probably has the most potential of them all. Well played, Spar, well played.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

Tweet my Foursquare check-in, and I'll change your relationship status

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 17:05:01 GMT

Why? Because changing your relationship status on Facebook is so last year. Because all the cool kids are on Twitter and Foursquare. Because you want to discover all the possible ways of saying something. Because you like to play. Because a tagged picture just doesn't cut it anymore. Because you like to speak ambiguously. Because you want to leave people in the dark. Because you want them to read between the lines. Because you don't intend to make it a big deal, but would still like to tell the world. Because that's simply the newest way of doing it. Tweet my Foursquare check-in, and I'll change your relationship status.

There aren't that many relationship status changes on Facebook as there once were, at least in my world. People probably work around it, make their relationship status private, change it, and then make it public again to bypass the mini-feed and avoid too much buzz in their timeline. Don't know why, but I guess having too many birthdays on Facebook made people crave for a bit of anonymity. Attention - good. Center of attention - too much.

Photos were the next step, where two random people accidentally appeared tagged together, preferably only a part of their body (feet), with a beach or some other scenic situation in the background. An implicit relationship status change is way more interesting than the explicit one. Some get it, some don't, the puzzling bit makes it more spicy. What does this picture mean? Will anybody dare to ask?

All good, but obsolete. Here's what happens today. The cool newly appointed couple travels to an exotic place far away, or a romantic spot too significant to be mistaken, and tweets their mutual check-in. Something that undoubtedly signals a thing. Most people notice, but not that many flinch. This is usually followed by an Instagram picture of the other person, which confirms the previous assumption, and the second person retweets it. At this point, the relationship status has pretty much been changed, even though it's documented only by a few tweets somewhere very far away down the timeline. And from there on, people who are supposed to know, know.

True story, I've already seen it a few times. Loving the way how people and culture evolve in the social age.

What's hot on the web - Part 7: The greatest metameme ever?

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 20:49:02 GMT

By now you've probably already noticed Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" is a pretty amazing song. It's actually one of the most played songs ever on YouTube (currently on 17th place with around 260 million plays), and already has plenty of great remixes and variations. One of the covers that is really worth mentioning is the performance by Walk Off The Earth, where five people play this song on one guitar.

This great cover already has more than 120 million plays itself, enough to get its own parody by The Key Of Awesome. This funny adaptation of the cover has more than 7 million views, and the puppet interpretation of the adaptation almost 400 thousand. But wait, there's more. A few other guys, inspired by the parody, converted it into a Tetris theme song version, with around 50 thousand views, and a parody of the puppet version of the parody version exists too. Enough to create one the the greatest metamemes in existence, and to make it to What's hot on the web series.

You'll enjoy this, and don't get too confused.

The original

Views: 259,894,229
Published: Jul 5, 2011

The cover of the original

Views: 121,555,950
Published: Jan 5, 2012
Inception level: 46.77 %

The parody of the cover of the original

Views: 7,524,547
Published: Feb 8, 2012
Inception level: 6.19 %

The puppet version of the parody of the cover of the original

Views: 396,868
Published: Feb 8, 2012
Inception level: 5.27 %

The response to the parody of the cover of the original

Views: 49,580
Published: Feb 16, 2012
Inception level: 0.66 %

The parody of the puppet version of the parody of the cover of the original

Views: 642
Published: Mar 18, 2012
Inception level: 0.16 %

Pretty impressive stuff, isn't it? Man, I love the interwebs.

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

Queensday in Amsterdam, the greatest party in the universe

Tue, 08 May 2012 17:35:48 GMT

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

The whole Amsterdam city center, a few square kilometers in size, becomes a massive traffic-free festival, crowded with people dressed in the Dutch national color - orange. Most bars set up their own sound systems outside, and almost every bigger square gets a stage. A variety of music for every taste can be heard everywhere, even though electronic dominates (no wonder the Netherlands has so many good DJs!). But what makes Queensday completely different from other festivals, are the famous canals in Amsterdam. Boats loaded with dancing people, some with their own DJs, are slowly cruising the countless channels, making this event extremely dynamic and fun.

Queensday is happening during the day, from the morning until the evening. The Dutch seem to not care too much about their canabis "legalization", since alcohol is the key party ingredient. Heineken, Grolsch and Amstel are sold everywhere, in bars and on the streets by civilians (usually for 2 euro for a can, since it's legal to sell things on this day without tax). Concerning the fact it's a drinking holiday, the party is surprisingly peaceful. This was my third time and I haven't seen a single brawl yet! The Dutch are an awesome nation, and their energy transfers to tourists instantly.

It's fascinating Queensday in Amsterdam is not as well known as you would imagine - most people I know did hear of it, but not that many know what's happening there. The greatest party in the universe, that's what! So trust me on this one: clear your plans for the next April 30th, find your accommodation a few months in advance, fill your car with a few friends, prepare to get dressed in orange and set your stomach for Dutch beer, because Queensday is definitely one of the things you should put on your bucket list.

The Amsterdam city center becomes packed with people

One of the big stages, there are too many to mention

Check out these smart installations

Since the best party happens on the canals, they sometimes become overwhelmed with traffic

Let's do a little singalong

The traffic next to one of the bars was almost too much

Night's coming, and the party's over. Who will clean up all this mess?

The Silicon Valley tour, part 8: Lessons learned, time to reevaluate

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:01:36 GMT

It's been about month since I've returned from Silicon Valley, so I've had plenty of time to think about what happened there. This time I went out of curiosity, hoping to get the idea of how things work in the global center of technology. The next time I will be there for real business, approaching the situation more systematically. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are a great place to visit for profiles such as myself, so there surely will be a next time, when a wiser version of me will be able to do some serious shit. And I'll be wiser also because I've learned my lessons this time.

Ideas are worthless, but execution also isn't all it takes

When I started being an entrepreneur, I thought The idea was everything. While innovation may be important, it's mostly worthless by itself. No matter how good or revolutionary your idea is, hundreds of people probably have a similar idea at the same time. As Oren Michels puts it: "Stealth mode is stupid, execution is what matters.". Ideas are worth nothing if they're not executed properly. But wait, we've done a pretty good job with Twenity, but that still wasn't enough to make it abroad. It seems execution isn't enough as well.

At this point I think the hardest thing to do is the next step, putting the product on the market, making it recognized. At least that's where we are now, that's the obstacle we are currently facing. But I can already predict that the next hardest thing would be to find the investors, and the next to scale the business. Idea > Execution > Marketing > Financing > Scaling is a complex lifecycle, and you have to control every element before you can say you've made it. That's why you should try (and fail) as many times as possible. With every new project you do, it will be easier to dominate the prior steps, allowing you to focus more energy on the next ones.

Competition is fierce, but the market is big

The (Seedcamp) startups I've met on my trip really do some seriously crazy shit. Some of the things were so awesome I've almost lost faith in being able to do something similar. But I managed to somehow get back in the game. Neolab may not be cutting edge (yet) on the emerging fields such as mobile, HTML 5 or responsive design, but that's really not that big of an issue, since we make things that do what they're supposed to. That's the Execution phase, but luckily, the Market has the capacity to absorb many things, if approached properly. Face it - there will always be companies who do a better job than you, but it's the Market who'll decide who makes it or not.

I attended a Salesforce conference for a few hours (thanks Davorin!), which attracted thousands of visitors. In case you don't know them, they are the leading provider of Software as a Service CRM solutions, offering a service and a platform for other developers. Their product is really awesome, but that doesn't mean similar products can't find their own market. Researching on this issue, I found a review of the 10 best known SaaS CRM solutions, all of them obviously able to survive, even though Salesforce dominates this segment. And I'm sure there are hundreds, if not thousands more that are able to coexist at the same time on the huge global markets. Which brings me to my next point:

Highlights from a massive Salesforce conference

User experience is the new competitive advantage

You need to find your Unique selling proposition and competitive advantage. Most of the above mentioned Seedcamp startups found it in superior user experience. Take something that works, and make it work even better. Today's users are quite willing to migrate to a new product / service if it turns out to be better than the current one. A great example of this philosophy is vox.io, which offers a similar service than Skype (online calls and chat), but simply does it better. And by better I mean using new innovative approaches to make something more simple and intuitive to use. The user experience segment will only become more important and challenging in the future, since new ways of interactions with software are emerging (touch, voice, thought?).

vox.io's chat with embeddable content proves chat can be reinvented

Selling and pitching is ok

When you mention Sales, many people get the impression of a door-to-door salesperson trying to sell you books. Or company phones ringing with people who make it hard to say no to. These things give sales a negative connotation. But it seems that's a cultural thing. In San Francisco, everybody is trying to sell you stuff, everybody's pitching all the time. When you ask somebody "What do you do?", the person is already showing you their product on his/her iPhone. Maybe not for the actual sell, but just to get some decent feedback. You shouldn't feel bad about trying to sell something, that how the system works. Just make sure that something is worth selling.

One of the parties at vox.io's. Everybody was pitching.

You're nothing without the contacts

I admit I was a bit naive this time. I hoped the fact me being a blogger and a representative of two startups would open a few doors, but this turned out to be wishful thinking. It's true I did manage to find a few contacts on the spot, which enabled me to do great things (such as visiting the technology bluechips and the Internet archive), but my way to the influential blogs was closed. I heard that they receive a few hundred submissions a day, so you need to make sure your pitch is awesome and you have backdoors to deploy it. Do your homework, the next time I take on a similar adventure, I'll try to schedule as many meeting as possible in advance. I've finally found a reason to pimp up my LinkedIn profile, and I was lucky enough that:

The Slovenian (startup) scene is alive and kicking

One of the most fascinating things that happened to me was the chance to meet the Slovenian diaspora in Bay Area, and the startup scene around it. Thanks to a few individuals, such as Jure, Tomaž and Andraž, a lot of things are happening around Stanford University and vox.io's San Francisco headquarters, and everybody is very welcoming to the new generation of Slovenian immigrants and other startups, trying to make it abroad. Thank you for your kindness, I feel Slovenia!

The Slovenian diaspora meeting at the Stanford University

Foursquare is the ultimate travel guide, so get a local data plan

Forget maps, Foursquare has become the ultimate travel guide if you're looking for companies, tourist attractions or happening. That's why you'll need a local data plan, which costs a few bucks a day. Pretty much everything is on Foursquare (besides, physical addresses are often very hard to find online), and trending venues can point you to the events worth visiting. I've never used Foursquare in such a way, and the critical mass of users reached around here surely provides massive value beyond the game.

What now?

That pretty much sums it up. This trip was a great experience, but it's time to get back to the drawing board. Rethink my strategies. Redesign Twenity's user experience. Reinvent Neolab's business model. Stay in touch with the people I've met. Find new contacts for the next visit. Adopt new technologies. Research new markets. Think global.

Well, at least I won't get bored.

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

Volkswagen. Das Auto. Simply brilliant.

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:57:59 GMT

You know when car manufacturers try to market their products with meaningful slogans? "Today. Tomorrow. Toyota.", "Seat. Auto emoción.", "Ford. Build for the road ahead.", "Citroën. Créative technologie.", "Volvo. For life.", "Audi. Keeping ahead through technology.", "Škoda. Simply clever.", "Porsche. There is no substitute.", "Mercedes. The best or nothing.", "Hyundai. New thinking. New possibilities.", "Cadillac. Creating a higher standard." and similar? I'm sure you do.

These words try to capture the essence of each automotive company, but at the same time unwillingly determine which of them will be perceived similarly. Some try to be technology driven (Toyota, Audi, Citroën), some try to be luxurious and irreplaceable (Mercedes, Porsche, Cadillac), some try to be the rational choice (Škoda), some try to influence emotion (Seat, Citroën), some try to look ahead (Hyundai, Ford) and some try be long lasting (Toyota, Volvo). You have many choices about who you want to be when you're buying a new car.

When presented together, you can see that these slogans are no so different from each other, since it's hard to go over the top with just a few words. But there is a car brand that managed to do just that. I don't own a Volkswagen or have plans to buy one in the future, but I can't help myself - this is simply awesome:

Volkswagen. Das Auto.

"Das" works great. It sounds rough and manly, and it's unmistakably German. The German economy is relatively healthy compared to other countries in Europe, and the quality of German engineering is known worldwide. "Das Auto" or "The (German) Car" symbolizes all of that and much more.

This slogan, even though more simple than all of the above, actually delivers the same the message as all of them combined. Technology driven: checked. Looking ahead: checked. High quality and long lasting: checked. Rational choice (combined with Volkswagen or people's car): checked. And if you have a fetish for German products, like many cultures do, you can check the emotional and luxury component as well. All of it packed in two words that tell everything: Das Auto. I want one.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 5: Visiting the technology giants

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 05:15:13 GMT

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

Apple

I know a person working for Apple, so I was able to visit the famous 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino and eat lunch there. Taking pictures inside was strictly prohibited, but the visit was very worth the while. And since I'm a big fan, this was something that had to be done.

1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino: Apple headquarters

Facebook

Facebook recently moved their headquarters from Palo Alto to Menlo Park. I took a cab there, hoping I could get at least a bit of insight and some pictures, but since the place is still "under construction", I was escorted off the property by security. Trespassing much?

Facebook's new headquarters in Menlo Park

Google

Google turned out to be one of the most welcoming companies on my trip, but this fact had a lot to do with the Seedcamp sessions happening in the Googleplex on which I've participated. Located in Mountain View, this giant campus is very impressive.

Google's Googleplex, Mountain View. For more photos, please visit my post about Google and Seedcamp.

Square

Square managed to become one of the hottest new startups around, set out to revolutionize mobile payments and already employing 200 people. Located in San Francisco, their offices are something you have to see for yourself. I wish I could, but like with others, I couldn't get it. But at least they were very nice about it.

Square headquarters reception, San Franscisco

Twitter

Twitter is one of my favorite online services, so I was really looking forward to talk to a few people there, also because of Twenity. While Nick and I did manage to talk our way past the security desk, our trip ended at the reception. We filed a request, but nothing came out of it. But like on Square, they were very nice. It seems they share a similar corporate culture, since both companies were founded by the same person, Jack Dorsey.

Twitter headquarters reception, San Franscisco

Bottom line

The bottom line is: you are not that welcome as you would like to imagine. Something similar happened to me while I tried to visit the technology blogs located in San Francisco. They also required a contact to get in, so no luck there. So, if you're planning on doing something similar, make sure you do your homework first, try to ping a few people or find a contact form on their website, perhaps you get accepted. Otherwise, you'll end up being just a curious tourist like me.

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

How movies and television (almost) ruined my experience of traveling to American cities

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 05:08:16 GMT

In my life, I've traveled to two American cities on different occasions: New York and San Francisco. When I got there, a funny thing happened - it was nothing like I expected. Actually, it was a total buzzkill! I was filled with great expectations, but the cities displayed themselves in the plainest way possible. I can't believe how ridiculously common everything looked! When you travel to exotic places like Asia or Africa, you're in for a bit of a culture shock, and that's already fascinating enough. But cities in the United States, well, they're not that different from European cities, we're part of the same civilization anyways. Just cities like any other.

I blame Hollywood! Movies and television (even photographs on blogs and in magazines) have always been trying to present something in an idealistic, almost unreal way. Showing things that aren't there, hiding things that are, highlighting a specific point. And since a lot of films and shows are happening in New York and San Francisco, I was being fed with this idealistic image of great places with amazing detectives ever since I was a child. But these things aren't for real, for me, the experience was totally different than I imagined. What will happen if I manage to go to Miami one day? Will it feel like a tourist resort somewhere in Europe and not like a totally cool place, the way I think of it now?

Probably not. As it turns out in the case of New York and San Francisco, these cities do have something very special to offer. The churches may not be as old as in Europe, and the streets may not be as crooked, but it's the cosmopolitan vibe and fantastic atmosphere that makes them what they are. A few days after you get to know your way, you start to feel it. It's everywhere around you. You slowly go along, and you find yourself thinking: well, this actually wouldn't be such a bad place to live for a while. And you start to enjoy it, meet a few people, go to a few parties, start to love it, everything's great, but then your trip ends and you're back home. Sitting in your living room, watching a movie or a show happening there and all you can think is: man, New York and San Francisco are even more awesome than on TV.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 4: The streets of San Francisco

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 10:29:22 GMT

Even though San Francisco is technically not a part of Silicon Valley, it's still one of the biggest technology hubs of the area, besides being the place where I'm situated while I'm on my Silicon Valley tour. It's an interesting city that is slowly finding its way under my skin. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed at first, perhaps my expectations were too high, but that's becoming a thing of the past, I'm starting to like this place a lot. San Francisco is one of the most open, liberal and easy-going cities I've seen so far, which is something that probably had quite a bit of influence on the general development of this region.

I love visiting cities, since they are packed with people and various cultures, like enormous ant farms. While San Francisco may not be as big as you would've imagined (comparing it to New York which I've visited a few years ago), it's still very diverse and full of surprises. After a few days of getting used to it, I think I finally found just what I was looking for: a beautiful cosmopolitan metropolis that won't leave you indifferent.

Remember the TV show from the 70's, called The streets of San Francisco? I remember it existed, but can't really recall much of it. Nevertheless, it's still a very suitable title for one of the most fascinating things I've seen so far (no shit sherlock): the streets of San Francisco, ranging from wide avenues in the city center to cute little streets of Chinatown. Buzzing with shops, people, smell of marijuana, street artists and shouting preachers, it's almost weird you still feel safe pretty much everywhere. And to let you know what I'm talking about, I've prepared a special gallery focused just on the them. Enjoy the show.

A performer entertaining people on Market street, one of the main roads of San Francisco

Senior citizens playing chess. Right next to them, a game of street dice was taking place.

The peaceful South of Market, where I live. It kinda feels like the countryside.

The colorful scene of China Town

One of the few cable car lines still working. Looks familiar?

The busy downtown

Flashy nightlife in North Beach (Little Italy). You can see the Transamerica pyramid in the back.

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 3: The magnificent Stanford University

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 03:21:33 GMT

There probably aren't many institutions associated with Silicon Valley the way Stanford University is. Its affiliates and graduates played a major role in the development of the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, which would later on become known as the Silicon Valley. The spirit of entrepreneurship, technology, science and research is felt everywhere, and Stanford University will surely be one of the most fascinating stops on my Silicon Valley trip.

Stanford University can only be described as the American educational dream. At least the way Europeans imagine it, thanks of pop culture and television shows such as Beverly Hills 90210. The perfect mixture of easiness and seriousness is manifested in the campus itself, which is filled with amazing parks and glorious squares and buildings. It's beautiful, but also tempting for a person like me, who is still playing around with the idea of being a student for a few more years.

We managed to spend some time with Jure Leskovec from Slovenia, who is an assistant professor there. His research is focused mostly on data mining and network analysis, very fascinating fields that I'm very interested in too. He gave as a tour of the campus and took us to the Institute of Design, an inspiring place where all sort of crazy things are researched and developed. Later on he proudly presented his lab, which was sponsored by Google. A great-looking place indeed, I hope he didn't notice me drooling all over it.

Stanford University - the mother of all knowledge, located right in the heart of Silicon Valley. Seeing it helps you understand why this region is miles ahead of anyone else in technology, and definitely makes you want to study there. It's simply magnificent.

The Oval: a beautiful park, located in front of the main entrance from Palo Alto

The view on the campus from the Hoover tower

One of the beautiful streets

Arches are practically everywhere

The Institute of design: some students programming robots

The Institute of design: results from a few intense brainstorming sessions

Jure Leskovec's lab, where he and his students do their magic

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

I feel sLOVEnia. I really do.

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:25:27 GMT

Not that it's the best slogan ever. I always preferred "Slovenia, on the sunny side of the Alps", which was somehow forgotten / lost / stolen in the mean time, but "I feel" it's still much better than the previous "Slovenia invigorates" we've been seeing. Each slogan tells a story, but together they tell another, wider story, a story of a nation looking for its identity in these confusing times of globalization and recession. But we may not be as confused as it seems, these past weeks have shown there is much determination around. Much love, displayed in the huge amount of support and sincere wishes I received after we've launched Twenity. I felt sLOVEnia, finally!

Even in the making of Twenity, people were helping us, commenting, blogging about it and lending us their Twitter accounts for testing. The launch went great, the whole wwwh community and others took Twenity for its own. We've made contact with successful Slovenian startups (more on them some other time) and exceptional individuals, all prepared to help and support us in any way they can. Everybody's curious about what's happening and where we are going. And quite a few think Twenity could be it.

But why the surprise? Well, even though Slovenians are very capable, they are traditionally also a bit protective and envious, not really wishing their neighbor would succeed with something or have a bigger car. We often lack the ability to find unity (as displayed by the current political crisis in the worst time possible), but at the same time wish we could stand united the way some other cultures can. But it seems new values have finally come around, backed up by ideas that Slovenia could truly be the next Silicon Valley. Ideas brought by a new generation of technology entrepreneurs, experiencing them on their own skin in San Francisco.

Tomaž Štolfa from vox.io said that the entire IT sector in Slovenia couldn't form a corporation as big as Apple or Google, and he is more than right. We shouldn't compete between ourselves, 5 mobile operators are more than enough for 2 million people. We should think big, and technology is where I FEEL we can make it, it's where i recognized LOVE and wider thoughts. I see capable people everywhere, and it's overwhelming. Together, we could do something special, bypassing the current political and economical fuckup. And I know you feel it to. Thank you for that.

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Crazy about beer? Visit Brussels.

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 15:04:17 GMT

Brussels is really not your typical tourist destination. Sure, it has Atomium, amazing squares, tiny streets packed with restaurants, great palaces and gothic cathedrals, but sadly lacks some of the personality and the wibe cities like London, Paris or Amsterdam have. Neverheless, the capital of the European Union still has a lot to offer. The twice fried potato chips are simply awesome, but there are two more important things that could make your visit worthwhile: beer and chocolate.

The Belgians have more than 100 breweries producing 800 different kinds of beer. Most of them make strong beer (6-8%), but that's actually not that bad when you get used to it. Another cool thing about it is that they always serve beer with the appropriate branded glass. So, if you're into drinking different beers each day or each round, look no further. Here a few highlights from my beer discovery run in Brussels.

A nice beer menu

A pub with more than 40 beers on tap

Each beer gets its own glass

Kwak beer - the fanciest glass of them all

A beer shop

Crazy about chocolate? Visit Brussels.

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 15:03:31 GMT

Belgium is famous for its chocolate, and they produce 22kg of it per person a year. There are more chocolate shops in the old center than you can count. The chocolate is expensive, but it tastes at least as good as it looks. So, if you’re into specialized pralines and extra dark chocolate, look no further. Here are a few highlights from my chocolate discovery run in Brussels.

A typical chocolate shop

Making chocolate to entertain the customers

A variety of pralines and truffles

A chocolate elephant

Trends of 2010, according to Facebook, Google and Twitter

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 07:42:29 GMT

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

#	Google (points)	Facebook (points)	Twitter (points)	Total (points)
1	HMU (10)	Chatroulette (10)	Gulf Oil Spill (10)	iPad (21)
2	World Cup (9)	iPad (9)	FIFA World Cup (9)	World Cup (18)
3	Movies (8)	Justin Bieber (8)	Inception (8)	Justin Bieber (16)
4	iPad and iPhone 4 (7)	Nicki Minaj (7)	Haiti Earthquake (7)	Haiti (13)
5	Haiti (6)	Friv (6)	Vuvuzela (6)	Oil Spill (10)
6	Justin Bieber (5)	Myxer (5)	Apple iPad (5)	Chatroulette (10)
7	Games on Facebook (4)	Katy Perry (4)	Google Android (4)	Inception (8)
8	Mineros / Miners (3)	Twitter (3)	Justin Bieber (3)	Nicki Minaj (7)
9	Airplanes (2)	GameZer (2)	Harry Potter (2)	Friv (6)
10	2011 (1)	Facebook (1)	Pulpo Paul (1)	Vuvuzela (6)

I've only left out "HMU" (Hit me up) and "Movies", because the first is an expression, and the second is a generic term. Hope you like it, see you around in 2011.

Are we on the verge of a full-scale cyber war?

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 08:15:15 GMT

The whole world is talking about WikiLeaks, and the drama has reached its peak with the arrest of Julian Assange. The leaked diplomatic documents are obviously a major thing, something that could change the world as we know it. The main battleground of this conflict is cyberspace, where troops of different armies are already fully ready for combat. WikiLeaks.org is currently offline, being a constant target of attacks of all sorts. But the civil initiative is striking back, putting hundreds of mirrors online (even Slovenia has one!), and hacking the bank that closed Julian's account. Even the good boy Twitter is behaving weirdly, denying accusations of censoring #wikileaks as trending topic.

We've seen similar cyber battles before. The Anonymous (who are also defending WikiLeaks) had their fun with the Church of Scientology and Google had its showdown with China. But WikiLeaks is a probably a few levels higher. I always said that internet could be the main tool of the next revolutions, because information travels really fast and it's almost impossible to prevent it from spreading once it's out. But the problem with the Wikileaks situation is that it may be too much for our society to handle. Diplomacy was exposed, which means the current political situation, already in a weak equilibrium because of the upcoming shift in global power, will struggle to digest the information presented by WikiLeaks. And there's more to come.

All of this is probably history in the making, because we have never seen an event of this sort going so mainstream. And while we wondered if the blind woman's prophecy about World War 3 starting in November 2010 was about the Koreas, we might have missed the point. This could be the start of a civil revolution or even a real war, in which governments would surely have problems identifying hackers and double agents inside their ranks. I have mixed feeling about it myself, it's simply too overwhelming. But the general reaction of people, now matter how dangerous and foolish the revelation may be, clearly shows disappointment and lack of belief in the current "democratic" system. Are you ready for a new world?

Working in Cape Town - Part 2: The culture shock

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 08:16:24 GMT

My month of working in Cape Town is over, and I'm fully back to the cold and wet reality of Slovenia. Needless to say it was an amazing ride, packed with ups and downs, and after writing about my first impressions about a month ago I'm slowly ready to present the final objective review, together with the highlights of my trip. The first week I was there was a bit of a struggle, as I was slightly overwhelmed by the culture shock. But after that I managed to adopt the situation and have grown to admire and love Cape Town. Today, sitting at home, I can say that South Africa is a beautiful country with amazing landscape and nature, but at the same time full of cultural contrast and racial inequality, a constant reminder of the things that happened in the past.

One thing you get used to in Cape Town are beggars, sadly all of them coloured. They have their regions, usually in the form of a traffic crossing, where they sell magazines to standing cars or amuse people for change. Every day I was going to work I passed a few of them, sometimes giving them cigarettes or some change. These were the nice guys – I also met a few more arrogant, one of them threatened to take my wallet if I don't give him more money. That situation managed to strengthen the bitterness of the first days of my stay, but luckily resolved in my favor. People are adoptable beings, and seeing people sleeping on the streets where I lived also became something perfectly ordinary.

Beggars spending their day on the streets

A beggar I met on my way to work every day

Most parking lots, houses and neighborhoods are constantly being watched by armed security, and some of the estates are surrounded with walls and other types of protection. They resemble a personal prison, but the crime rate is high, so these precautions, as weird as they may seem, make sense.

Houses are protected with walls and barb wires

There are a lot of "informal settlements" or townships in the vicinity of Cape Town, and I really wanted to visit one of them out of curiosity. At the end I was taken to a more "commercial" one for lunch, which was still a very interesting experience for the European taste. The meat we had there tasted great, and our car was well cleaned. Almost a perfect lunch, but in the end, the car cleaners sadly got into a fight about who will get more money out of the job.

The township of Imizamo Yethu

The car cleaners inside the township

When you travel around the world, visiting different cultures, you are usually prepared to confront a different world. But South Africa seems western enough to make you feel like you are in Europe, but the actual culture is so different it can be a bit shocking at first. I hope I won't insult any of my friends down there with this post, but I really wanted to present this point of view to my friends back home. Besides, I believe times are changing for the better for South Africa, which is also shown by the people themselves – most of them are not resigned to the situation, but actually want to make something better out of their lives. And where there's a will, there's a way!

Check out the complete Working in Cape Town series.

Working in Cape Town - Part 1: First impressions

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 15:33:35 GMT

I managed to be lucky enough to get invited to Cape Town to work on a project for a month. Neolab has been developing an information system for a client stationed here and the results are quite satisfying, both for us and for the client. Therefore they decided it would be best if I came around, so we could work on the system together, while at the same time plan new, advanced features to come. I must say this is one of the greatest projects we've ever did, and I really look forward to implementing the social IT 2.0 features into the system in the future. Clients back home don't seem to recognize the real potential in those services, so it's really satisfying to get real feedback from a client on the concept.

Cape Town and South Africa are beautiful, the landscape is simply amazing, even though the flora resembles the European Mediterranean a bit. It's currently spring time, so this is actually my second trip in spring this year, and first ever to the southern hemisphere. Speaking of the southern hemisphere - I was actually disoriented for the first few days here, subconsciously thinking north was south, which is a fact I find really interesting.

The city of Cape Town is located around Table mountain, a great landmark of the city, where the Devil and the Dutchman often have a pipe smoking competition. The main city center (called the City Bowl) is surrounded with other mountains, while the suburbs and slums behind them stretch for miles. I am located inside the City Bowl, and the office I work at is within walking distance, so I can enjoy the real wibe of the city every day, as good or bad it may be.

View over Table mountain from our office

I live in a building called Lulu's house, an interesting place filled with interesting people. I share the house with a few interns and other travelers from all over the world, some of them have been living here for months. It's really been wonderful to meet all these people and share different views on life, even though I spend most of my free time with my hosts. Meeting these people made my wonder about my connection with Slovenia and the lack of traveling as a student.

Lulu's House, where I live

I was actually a bit shocked about the general cultural situation at first, the racial mixing seems to be working, but you can still feel the post apartheid influences and segregation. There are many beggars, most of them African, and the other day one of them threatened to steal my wallet if I don't give him change. An awkward moment, but I managed to talk my way out of it, hoping to have as little similar situations in the days to come. South Africa still has a long way to reach equality, but it looks like it's well on the right track.

Cape Town street, where I live

The food is nice, even though most of it would tend towards sweet. But I already got accustomed to that in Thailand, so no problems there. Meat is obviously the main component of the diet, both in meals (preferably roasted or as they call it, braaied), as in dry meat snack called Biltong (which is great). The beer is OK, but it's the wine that deserves a special mention. It's really really amazing, so I'm still thinking of a way to bring as much of it as possible back home, even though we have some very nice wines of our own.

A nice meaty meal

These are my first impressions of Cape Town and South Africa after about 10 days since I've been here. The city is actually quite growing on me, and I didn't even have the time to do a safari, shark-diving or many other things you can't do in Europe. So what seemed like a great deal of time when I got here could actually be over really fast, thanks to a lot of work during weekdays and a lot of crazy stuff to do during the weekends. A most delightful and useful journey indeed.

Check out the complete Working in Cape Town series.

New York in spring - a photo story

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 15:58:03 GMT

This spring I was taken to New York for my birthday. I've have never been there, but this great birthday gift finally gave me the chance to discover and feel this huge metropolis. It's needless to say it's an urban jungle packed with variety of culture and people, living a much faster life than that in Europe. The city is impressive, but you usually get aware of that after you are back home. But then again, that's also the perfect excuse to go back for more. A half year after my trip I can say New York is an amazing city, with too many places to mention, and not enough places to rest. Here a a few of my impressions from the capital of the world.

Skyline

New York's famous skyline is surely one of the most recognizable in the world. Observed from the rooftops or from the ground, it's something you can't get tired of.

View over South Manhattan from The Empire State Building

View over Central Manhattan from the East river

Streets

The streets of New York extend from avenues packed with locals and tourists, to small and culturally diversified streets of Soho and China Town. After a few days of the madness you can understand why Brooklyn is the place where most of the people want to live.

One of the avenues

Times Square at night

The peaceful roads of Brooklyn

Buildings

There aren't any real old building in New York, such as we are accustomed to see in Europe, but the shear massiveness of the constructions easily compensate for that fact.

The Empire State Building

The Chrysler Building

The Brooklyn Bridge

Transport

We did most of the travel on foot, so you can get the best impression of the city. Subways are appropriate for long distances, where you usually get entertained by different performers. And of course, you have to get a cab sometime just for the kicks.

Walking the streets of New York

Mariachis on a subway

A cab for the rainy days

Food

From hot dogs to inappropriately fattening burgers, the food variety in New York goes far beyond the local offer.

A hamburger meal, worth 1.700+ calories

Korean do-it-yourself barbecue

Fun

There are lots of things you can do in New York, from museums to shows, from shopping to partying. After all, it's the city that never sleeps.

Little league in Central Park

T-Rex robot inside the Toys "R" Us store

Mash helicopter in the Museum Of Modern Art (MOMA)

Paul McCartney's bass guitar in Hard Rock Cafe

New York is a place worth visiting, and I will definitely be coming back. It's not that expensive to live there, but additional things, such as fees and tickets can be quite pricey. But at the end of the day, that's a small issue if you do decide to go visit New Amsterdam. The most influential city of the world.

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 pretty much 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.

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.

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.

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 against 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)!

How Facebook & Co. changed the world

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:53:30 GMT

I'm a bit shocked actually, because my first (brand oriented) 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 programs on Facebook. Will the world stand still? Is Twitter's role in the Iranian elections just the beginning 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 manipulating each other, both consciously and subconsciously. I'm actually quite neutral on that, because 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 opinion 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 behavior, 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.)

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.