Stritar's chronolog

Be an apprentice. Evolve as a manager.

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:22:18 GMT

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

The truth is, I don't feel that good when I'm telling people what to do, I don't see myself as a superior who sets the goals and awards or punishes people based on their results. At the same time I fully recognize this is something that needs to be done one way or another, otherwise, inefficiency. I must admit I did advance on the field in the past years, since I'm trying hard to learn how to do it. Slowly. And to my great surprise, it seems one of my latest ventures will unexpectedly help me evolve as a manager as well. As you will see, I happened to find myself on the other side of the story.

After many years, even decades, I'm finally an apprentice again! By dedicating multiple 10.000 hours to system architecture, database design, development, (digital) marketing, design and user experience, I've done or heard about pretty much everything that is associated with the fields of software development. That's what I do for living, and even if I embark on something new, I always have enough initial knowledge to prevent me from being an apprentice. Now I understand this fact made me miss out on a few very important realizations that come from being one.

My grandfather has left me this really cool car. A Yugoslavian Zastava 101, built in 1978. She hasn't been driven in about 20 years, but now, the time has come to bring it back to life. My girlfriend's uncle happened to be a car mechanic for 20 years, and he was specialized in repairing Zastavas. Lucky bastard me! He was very happy to help me out, and in the past weeks, we have spent a few session in his garage, coming close to making the beauty run.

I wanted to be there when repairs happen, to help and to learn. Which makes me an apprentice car mechanic. Swiping the floor, cleaning up spark plugs, screwing and unscrewing stuff, holding things aside, moving the flashlight, operating the car jack. I even managed to disassemble the wheels and brakes and felt amazing about it. My teacher is very patient and I don't feel bad at all for being ordered around and doing all the small things. I understand this is my role in this specific project, and I love playing it.

I did this. I will also have to put it back together.

I learned so much already, not only about cars and engines, but about management as well. The most important one being that people don't feel bad if they're ordered what to do, rather the opposite. They need to know why things are happening and how we will get there. It has nothing to do with someone being something more than the other, it's just a person's role in the specific situation. Perhaps those managed will be the ones who will give out orders in a few years, who knows. But today, I'm the one who is expected to do so, and it's becoming clearer, how. It's a bit ironic that I learned that by fixing up an old car that was waiting 20 years for me to take care of it.

Funny, how things are interconnected, how everything is everything. I probably wouldn't perceive the whole apprentice experience the way I do now if I wouldn't be where I am now, but what's even funnier, is that I can imagine having the same epiphany who knows where as well. I was ready for this, this needed to happen. We evolve every day, and sometimes, the next steps are achieved under very weird circumstances. That's why you and I need to do as many crazy things as possible. Being an apprentice somewhere to become a better manager somewhere else? Why not. Life is like a box of chocolates.

One of the most important things ever written

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 12:51:28 GMT

Every once in a while your read something that takes you to another level. Something that can change the way you've been thinking and doing things for years already. Which means looking for ways to optimize everything, drilling yourself, studying every day of the year, gathering knowledge, battling procrastination and low energy, looking for new ways to grow. Lifehacks whenever possible, fixes and improvements that come on a daily basis. And then one day your find out that you've perhaps been doing it all wrong. Not possible? Let me tell you a story about a great idea.

tl;dr: The article.

You've probably heard about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where people need to fulfill their primitive requirements, like food and intimacy, to reach higher needs like self-actualization. Classic psychology. Which is perhaps also doable the other way around.

A few days ago Salim Virani wrote a great post about the perceived causality between self-improvement and self-confidence. We usually think we need to improve ourselves first, to make it to the next step. Well, he made me believe it's rather the opposite. The problem these days is, at least in the technology startup environments, that we are all hyper pumped up do crazy shit everybody drools over, while the competition is fierce and global, tight schedules and stress are everywhere, most clients expect you to overdeliver things, better, cheaper, faster. A never-ending story, sucking every bit of blood you have, leaving you empty. Which makes you not evolve as much as you would like to, both professionally and spiritually.

But wait, what if we try to self-actualize first, could that help us find the energy for self-improvement?

Read the article now! Yes, forget about how to do this and how to improve that, you've been doing it all wrong! You've read tons of shit like that, just like me, and what happened - nothing. You are still the same. No matter the technique, you can't change how things are, you can't be happy at work if you're not, you can't force yourself to do things you don't want to do.

From this day on, I'm doing it the other way around. Focusing on the things that make me happy first, believing other things will magically become more pleasant. Because this guy is right, I can see the way self-confidence can help me towards self-improvement. I will do all the things I really want to do besides my job, and those things I hate about my job will become a piece of cake, since they will be downgraded to just another activity required to reach the higher goal of finding my self-confidence and self-actualization.

Now that I think about it, I feel I've been intuitively going into that direction already, but now that I'm fully aware about the science behind it, I'm going all-in. Which means more fun, more blogging, more crazy prototypes, I've also decided to start working on this idea I have for a boardgame. Just because. Not really giving a fuck if these things actually make sense or if they will be financially feasible. I need to start enjoying life, I need to satisfy my urge to create, and confidence and growth will come. Thank you Salim, for discovering and pointing out this amazing perspective on life.

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?

Putting 'people who look at you' to your Facebook profile would be the smartest thing to do

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 10:50:34 GMT

Are you one of those people who are wondering how Facebook decides which friends they put on your profile? I admit I am, both out of programmer's curiosity and of course, there have been rumors that those individuals are the ones who look at your profile. While LinkedIn offers this "who looks at your profile" insight to its (premium) users, Facebook is still very mysterious about it, denying this is how this particular algorithm works. But there is a simple reason I don't believe them: if I would be Facebook, I would design it exactly like this.

EdgeRank

Facebook uses EdgeRank to calculate the connection between two people, determined by the amount of mutual friends, interactions, tagged photos, attended events and other parameters in a time period. Besides other things, the EdgeRank influences which posts get displayed in your news feed. It seems Facebook is saying that a similar algorithm is used for the friends on your profile, but is it really?

The exploit

Some time ago, someone managed to find a way inside the EdgeRank results. This guy noticed that Facebook caches the list of your friends, together with the level of proximity you have with each one. This stored part of the social graph helps search and other lists on Facebook to work faster and be sorted better. He was nice enough to write a script and made it public, so everybody can see who their Facebook BFFs are. The results looks like the real deal, and it's actually quite fascinating that Facebook hasn't patched this potential abuse yet, it's been available for almost a year.

Bottom line: the list of friends in your EdgeRank and the list of friends on your profile are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike each other.

Comparing my closest friends to those that are showing up on my Facebook profile

Why bother?

Facebook needs to constantly drive your engagement, and they have infinite data about you. They are trying to seamlessly integrate their experience into every pore of your life and make you even more connected. They are saying they can predict when hookups and breakups will happen. Who do you think they would put on your profile?

It would work

Adding "people who look at you" to your Facebook profile would act as the poke that never got clicked. The most basic (inter)action, something that wants to lead to something bigger. The invisible act of someone longing for engagement. Potential connection, potential partnership, potential relationship. The beyond EdgeRank scary social experiment, which holds infinite possibilities, positive and negative. An almost godly algorithm. Why would anyone even think of doing it differently? It simply doesn't get much better than this.

I would do it, I believe Facebook would do it as well, but even if they did, it's pretty clear why they can't tell us. This feature would work only as long as we wouldn't really believe it's being used. That's why you need to forget about all of this and simply enjoy your virtual life.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 7: A few exciting new business models that actually work

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 17:28:22 GMT

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

Mobile payments and Square

While Square may already be mainstream in the States, something like it is far away from being used in Europe, not to mention Slovenia. Square is focused on mobile payments, and is currently offering three different services:

a credit card reader that you can plug into your mobile device
an iPad register app for merchants, supporting invoices, payments and inventory
an app for paying with your smartphone

Square is on fire, and there are tons of places in San Francisco where you can use it. Electronic payment industry leaders such as PayPal are already looking for ways to conquer the same market.

A place that accepts all major credit cards and Square

Personal chauffeur and Uber

Uber can only be described as taxi on steroids, bypassing the dispatcher. Ok, it's actually a chauffeur. Using a mobile app, you make a request, and one of the drivers answers it. After that, you can see where the driver is, when he will pick you up, how your driver looks like, and get a direct link to call them. A guy in a suit driving a Lincoln picks you up, takes you wherever you want, and after it, you just exit, without paying. You get an invoice on your email, together with the map of the route, and the fare gets deducted from your credit card. It's a bit more expensive than a cab, but still, a pretty awesome service, that will be expanding to other countries soon.

With Uber, you get picked up by a Lincoln like this

Carsharing and Zipcar

The next generation of rent-a-car is called carsharing, and it's offered by Zipcar. No agents, just your card that you use to unlock the car you've rented. Everything happens online, where you make a request for a car, get directed to a designated pick-up area, and the car is already waiting for you there. Petrol is included in the price, and if the fuel tank drops below 1/4, you just use their credit card to top it up. Results: rent-a-car has never been easier, cheaper and less stressful.

One of the Zipcar pick-up places. They are everywhere.

bonus: Co-working and NextSpace

Co-working represents shared offices that people from different startups and companies can use. Besides being cheaper than renting your own office, you also get a chance to spend time with other people, share knowledge and ideas, which is something I found out to be invaluable. NextSpace is an established co-working space in San Francisco, with more than 175 members and packages ranging from a few hundred dollars monthly for a desk to around a thousand for a complete office. Something similar is already happening in Slovenia, so if you are interested, please visit coworking.si.

Tables, offices, conference rooms. All available with NextSpace.

Conclusion

Some of these business models might not work as well outside the curious and tech-savvy culture of Silicon Valley, but they can still help as a demonstrator of things that can be done and an announcer of things to come. Let's face it, in technology, Silicon Valley is still miles ahead, so if you're looking for trends, the smartest thing to do is just to go along with it.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 6: A trip to the Internet Archive

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:28:09 GMT

Those that have read my previous post about visiting the technology giants of Silicon Valley, might have gotten the idea that organizations around here aren't that welcoming to strangers. Well, that might not be entirely true. One of my stops in San Francisco also included a visit to the Internet Archive, a foundation that is trying to preserve all the information our civilization possesses. And they were more than welcoming. Besides giving Andraz and me a full tour of their headquarters, they've also invited us to one of their staff meetings, where the Archive's members and volunteers present their activities and results from their specific fields.

The Internet Archive is located in a former church in San Francisco, so there's more than enough room for all the people and hardware. Two main projects are currently taking place; one is the Wayback Machine, which makes snapshots of websites throughout history, and the other is the Archive, which represents systematic digitalization of movies, music and books, manually done by its members. A never-ending task that can only be done by activists who genuinely want to protect the knowledge of mankind, and you can contribute to the effort as well.

During our tour, 2.5 petabytes (that's 2.5 million gigabytes!) of data was mentioned, but I'm not sure if that's just one of the projects or both. This data is well protected, with mirrors all over the world. Impressive stuff, good enough to currently make archive.org the 223rd most visited site in the world (according to Alexa), get to the front page of The New York Times, and receive various prestigious awards.

One of the most fascinating stops of my Silicon Valley trip was indeed educational and inspiring, and it got me thinking: If there's a modern Library of Alexandria in the making, this would be it. Thumbs up.

Internet Archive's Headquarters in San Franscisco. It goes well with the logo, even though they came here only a few years ago.

The staff meeting, where members from various fields presented their achievements

Everyone that is an employee for more than 3 years, gets its own figure inside the church

Brewster Kahle, the chairman, passionately presenting the Archive's servers. There is no air condition, since heat is used for building heating.

The irony: since consumer hard disks are cheaper, they buy those and get rid of the casings.

This is how scanning of videos, microfilms and books looks like

Are we there yet?

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

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.

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

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.

Apple has enough money to buy Slovenia's entire yearly production

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 22:00:34 GMT

Apple is currently hot like a chili pepper. Its products are well accepted, their sales and revenues are growing, and their stocks are going sky-high. A few months ago Apple even managed to dethrone Microsoft as the largest technology company in the world and ~~second~~ third largest according to market capitalization (behind Exxon and PetroChina). Their yearly revenues are currently around $65 billion, which is a lot, and that figure is even more interesting if put into perspective.

Slovenia is a small country in Europe. It has around 2 million inhabitants who almost manage to live in peace. Its GDP in 2009 was around $24k per capita or $49b in total. We are so small that our neighbors are making jokes about it, but we are still a proud nation of capable people, who try hard to make it. Speaking of small - nowadays it's not that unusual for large corporations to have bigger revenues than a small country's GDP, but if a company has more money than a country's GDP, well, that's simply ridiculous. But Apple now sits on more than $50 billion (11 billion in cash + 14 billion in short-term marketable securities + 25 billion in long-term marketable securities), which means that it's actually capable of buying the whole yearly gross domestic product of Slovenia.

Apple obviously won't do that, but eventually it will have to do something. There are speculations about them wanting to buy Facebook (estimated value 33 billion), focusing on mobile payments, and many others. It will be interesting to see what happens, but I'm almost sure Steve will do the right thing. The company is very healthy, the demand is high, so it should be a piece of cake. Just take a look at these interesting facts or the figures below, which display the case of Apple vs. Slovenia. I guess we truly are small.

	Apple	Slovenia
Full name	Apple Inc.	Republic of Slovenia
Established	1976	1991
Capital	Cuppertino	Ljubljana
Government	~~Monarchy~~ Empire	Parliamentary republic
Leader	Steve Jobs	Danilo Türk
Population	49,400 (2010)	2,054,199 (2009)
GDP	$65.225 billion (2010)	$49.217 billion (2009)
GDP per capita	$1.320 million (2010)	$24,417 (2009)

Source: Wikipedia, Apple

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

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:43:10 GMT

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

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

Medical

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

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

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

Neolab India
Industry: Medical Equipment
Design: 3 points

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

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

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

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

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

Average score for Medical: 3.9

Pharmaceutics & Biotechnology

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

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

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

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

Neolab United Kingdom
Industry: Pharmaceuticals
Design: 1 point

Average score for Pharmaceutics & Microbiology: 3.8

Marketing, Web and Design

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Average score for Marketing & Design: 6.8

Technology & IT

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

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

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

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

Average score for IT: 6.7

Other

The special case from Thailand is working on construction projects.

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

Average score for Other: 4

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

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

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

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

The awesomeness of the Facebook Like button

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:46:07 GMT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE (27.5.2011): Ever since Facebook started with the unification of the Like and Share buttons, this behavior seems to have vanished. But it was fun while it lasted.

UPDATE (1.11.2011): Silly me. The behavior is still there, but I've started posting to Facebook using an url shortener, which messes up the global like count. I guess it's a trade-off between better measurement and more likes displayed on your post.

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

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:23:31 GMT

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

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

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

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

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

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

Arthur C. Clarke envisioning the World Wide Web in 1968

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:10:06 GMT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slovenian grocers going for Web 2.0 design

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:12:48 GMT

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

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

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

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

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

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

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

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:43:18 GMT

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE (26.10.2010): At the time of this post the movie This Is It was nowhere to be seen, supposedly grossing 260 million.

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.