various picks

Paul Graham: Maker´s Schedule, Manager´s Schedule – and why they don´t go well together

Umair Haque: The Nichepaper Manifesto

Journalists didn’t make 20th century newspapers profitable — readers did.

…

Nichepapers, in contrast, do meaningful stuff that matters the most. The great failing of 20th century news is that monopoly power became a substitute for meaningful value creation. At root, that’s the lesson that newspapers are learning the hard way.

Vanity Fair: Palin’s Resignation: The Edited Version – interesting to see what can be made with some editing of a poor speech.

Cory Doctorow in the Guardian: Chris Anderson’s Free adds much to The Long Tail, but falls short – thoughtful critique

myMoleskine – make your own pages: MSK

Web Worker Daily: 10 Useful Thunderbird Add-ons for Almost Everybody – a lot of things I yet did not know about (but so far have not looked for as well)

LifeHacker:  The First 10 Free Apps to Install on a New Windows PC – you could argue about some picks, but there is also a lot of must-haves in the comments

Cloudy summer

I admit it, posting was on hold for quite a while due to heavy workload and summer vacation. Now again some links about one of the topics I am interested in.

The Datacenter as Computer is a must-read for anyone interested in the topic, written by Luiz André Barroso and Urs Hölzle of Google. And it is easy to read (it took me just two afternoons on the beach…). Download the PDF here.

Michael Manos of Microsoft on their Datacenter vision: Our Vision for Generation 4 Modular Data Centers – One way of Getting it just right . .

The AWS blog is always worth stopping by to see what is going on at Amazon. Good stuff from July 13:  Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and CloudWatch Resources

I believe Jeff Barr (who is also writing on the AWS Blog) is collecting links on AWS and related tools as awsbuzz on delicious. Recommended to follow.

Arstechnica:  Google reveals plans for Chrome cloud synchronization. This is not really surprising, isn´t it?

And Google is beating on the bush with “Going Google” and migrating away from e.g. Lotus Notes. I believe this is just for Mail and Calendar, not for Applications. Make up your mind yourself.

Kindle 2

xkcd.com:

I had the same thought.

Peter Kafka in Media Memo on All Things Digital commenting on Jeff Bezos pitch lately in “The Daily Show” with host Jon Stewart:

That is: For some folks, the ability to download books over the air, store a gazillion titles on a single device and have a “freaky” voice read them aloud to you are compelling reasons to shell out $359 for the gadget. For skeptics like Stewart, it’s hard to see how Amazon (AMZN) has improved upon the ink-and-paper book, which uses technology that has worked pretty well for several hundred years.

And cnet Crave on Designing the Kindle 2:

“One of the great things about Kindle is it doesn’t ever get hot,” Amazon Vice President Ian Freed said in an interview at Amazon’s downtown office here. That’s important, Freed said, given that the company has one main goal with the Kindle–making the product as invisible to users as possible when they are reading.

“The most important thing for the Kindle to do is to disappear,” Freed said. That was the goal with the first device and was also a key factor in deciding what would go in the sequel, which started shipping on Monday. There are the obvious factors, like the thinner, sleeker design. But there are also things like an improved cellular modem. As a result, Kindle users will find themselves out of range in fewer places to get updates or buy a new book.

Well, for us Europeans it is anyway not yet available. I will have a look at it, when it comes over, but for the time being I like my dead tree library.

Bunte Mischung

so, noch ein paar Sachen in deutsch…

Der SpON erklärt, wie das neue US-Einreiseformular funktioniert. Und hier ist die ESTA-Seite in deutsch. Ist denn jetzt das grüne Formular, von dem ich regelmäßig 2-3 brauche (ja, bin auch einer von denen, die in das Feld für das Geschlecht immer die Flugnummer – oder umgekehrt reinschreiben) endlich weg?

Wenn der Preis stimmt, könnte das mein nächster Computer sein: Dell Mini 10, auf der CES in Las Vegas im Januar angekündigt. Ansonsten halt ein Samsung NC10, von dem man vielerorts gutes hört.

Ivan Blatter von imgriff.com fragt: Was sind Deine 3 liebsten Hilfsmittel? und bekommt interessante Antworten.

Die Karrierebibel mit einem klasse Tip (nicht, dass ich den brauchen würde…): Arbeitsillusion – Wege, wie Sie möglichst beschäftigt aussehen:

Gut, sicher, klar, die Zeiten sind gerade nicht die besten für Arbeitnehmer. Kurzarbeit, Zwangsurlaub, vielleicht sogar Kündigung – das sieht nicht gut aus im karriereoptimierten Lebenslauf. Was also tun, wenn die Arbeit immer weniger wird und die Chefcontroller mit dem Rotstift durch die Flure wandern?

Nun, eine Alternative ist: Sehen Sie möglichst beschäftigt aus. Engagierte und fleißige Mitarbeiter landen schließlich nicht so schnell auf der Streichliste. Und wer die Attitüde eines Leistungsträgers pflegt, sichert nicht nur seinen Job – er tut auch was gegen die Langeweile, wird aktiv und kreativ. Kurzum: Das bisschen Show muss sein – und macht Spaß dazu.

Holger Schmidt, der Netz-Ökonom der FAZ, mit einem sehr guten Artikel über Twitter: Das nächste große Ding im Netz

Oliver Jungen bespricht auf fazjobs.net “The Big Switch“, das neue Buch von Nick Carr: Arbeitsplätze nur noch für die Internet-Elite?

Guides to better presentations

I have mentioned a few times (and have him in the blogroll) the blog of Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen.

He is incredibly inspiring, especially when pointing to (and analyzing) presentations. If you haven´t yet, go and read his latest book:

For me, this was an eye-opener. Too bad, the present company template for presentations we have to use does facilitate better presentations only to a limited extent.

Another good book that might help in creating better presentations (and that is not bashing the tool for what the users do with it) is Clear and to the Point.

Stephen Kosslyn presents 8 psychological principles that you should apply in order to make your presentations better. Though Powerpoint is mentioned on the title, this applies to all presentation programs.

The 8 principles:

• How do I connect with my audience?
  • The Principle of Relevance
  • The Principle of Appropriate Knowledge
• How can I direct and hold attention?
  • The Principle of Salience
  • The Principle of Discriminability
  • The Principle of Perceptual Organisation
• How can I promote understanding and memory?
  • The Principle of Compatibility
  • The Principle of Informative Changes
  • The Principle of Capacity Limitations

Also recommended to read, albeit not as inspiring as Garr´s book.

Ross Brown gives feedback to a presentation he has received that did apparently not followed the hints and guidelines from either one of the experts above (via):

Your ransom-note-like use of multiple fonts and sizes on each slide led us, the viewers, to identify not with the content but with the feeling of being trapped and held hostage, our freedom being contingent on our ability to appear to understand your many indecipherable charts and graphs. With this quick nod to Stockholm syndrome, we began to feel for you as our captor and, eventually, as our fellow prisoner.

Beware of such presentations!

Sunday Mix

Sorry, been too busy in the last weeks. Will see if I can improve on posting frequency, too many things pile up. But here we go:

New York Times (registration required): Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time True, so true.

Waferbaby asks people “What do people use to get the job done?” Insights from John Gruber (daringfireball.net), Alex Payne (Twitter) and others. Interesting.

Dare Obasanjo discusses an important difference: Platform as a Service vs. Utility Computing.

1. Utility Computing: In this approach, a vendor provides access to virtual server instances where each instance runs a traditional server operating system such as Linux or Windows Server. Computation and storage resources are metered and the customer can “scale infinitely” by simply creating new server instances. The most popular example of this approach is Amazon EC2.
2. Platform as a Service: In this approach, a vendor abstracts away the notion of accessing traditional LAMP or WISC stacks from their customers and instead provides an environment for running programs written using a particular platform. In addition, data storage is provided via a custom storage layer and API instead of traditional relational database access. The most popular example of this approach is Google App Engine.

His conclusion:

As it stands today  platform as a service offerings currently do not satisfy the needs of people who have existing apps that want to “port them to the cloud”. Instead this looks like it will remain the domain of utility computing services which just give you a VM and the ability to run any software you damn well please on the your operating system of choice.

However for brand new product development the restrictions of platform as a service offerings seem attractive given the ability to “scale infinitely” without having to get your hands dirty. Developers on platform as a service offerings don’t have to worry about database management and the ensuing complexitiies like sharding, replication and database tuning.

An important distinction if you ask me and a clear crossroad if you want to go into cloud services.

If you want (or have) to enable a web-application with offline-capabilities, Google Gears is often the tool of choice. Eduard Martini gives some good insight on O´Reilly InsideRIA: Google Gears—A Great Tool to Enhance Web Applications. Recommended.

Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst at Forrester gives a great overview of the Social Network Industry on his private blog:  Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Jan 21, 2009

And Nicole Simon explains why LinkedIn will fail in the german market: Linkedin taking the traditional approach in Germany and why that will fail (as usual)

Most of the time, they just make a translation and try to tell everybody how awesome they are everywhere else, as if this is enough.

Jason Scott: Fuck the cloud:

So please, take my advice, as I go into other concentrated endeavors. Fuck the Cloud. Fuck it right in the ear. Trust it like you would trust a guy pulling up in a van offering a sweet deal on electronics. Maybe you’ll make out, maybe you won’t. But he ain’t necessarily going to be there tomorrow.

Yeah, you should know where to place your bets. And backup is not for the fainthearted only, also real men do backups (off the cloud, in this context).

Dare´s take: Asking “should we trust the cloud” is like asking “should we trust horseless carriages”

We all love HAL, our friend from 2001: A Space Odyssey from Stanley Kubrick. Find the HAL project here.

Looks like the new POTUS is not hesitant to use juicy languange. Find some examples here, from an audiobook that he read in. (via)

Whoever wanted to know how David Allen gets things done, here a movie on Youtube (via):

Tabbloid. Converting personal feeds into a personalized magazine. Free. From HP. Not tested yet, though.

From the TPI blog: Quick Savings AND Minimal Operations Risk? Try Facilities Management Outsourcing

TPI has also a german blog now, from the office in Frankfurt.

Garr is great to find (and comment on) extraordinary presentations. This time:  Bill Gates at TED 09: How do you make a teacher great?

TED is the best and most inspiring conference series in the world, if you ask me. Fantastic speakers, great presentations. Awesome.

Tim Ferris explains how to learn any language in three months. Interesting approach to attack the challenge.

Cool Tools and more

The more gadgets you carry, the more loose cables fly around your bags. One solution is shown over at Chiefhomeofficer.com: Cables astray no more

Customer satisfaction surveys anyone?

Phun is a free game like 2D physics sandbox where you can play with physics like never before. The playful synergy of science and art is novel, and makes Phun as educational as it is entertaining.

(via)

SkypeKiller claims to be able to remotely kill Skype installations in corporate networks. Anyone having experience with this tool?

ThinkGeek with a hacked FlashDrive for the Uber-Geek that has everything.

HomeOfficeVoice with 7 simple steps for a Clutter Free Home Office. How much would I love to get there (at least almost…).

Twitter moves closer to Google Friend Connect instead of going the open way. (via) We´ll see what that means. Maybe on the MBC09 this week – and no, I cannot be there due to some obligations I cannot turn down.

Another free mindmapping tool, yet to be tested: XMind

Ben Casnocha on Caitlin Flanagans writing, especially her piece in the December 2008 Atlantic. I have two girls, so this is at least interesting for me.

10 Inspiring Last Lectures and Commencement Speeches Everyone Should Watch. Quite good ones, actually…

I guess no one has a clue yet how Twitter wants to make money from his service, but they are going to hire a Product Manager. Probably they should have thought earlier about that. Related, it looks like others have figured out how to make money off Twitter. Over at Scoble: “Tumblr’s CEO brainstorms microblog monetization“. Probably now it is more important than ever to have the monetization right early.

Need to understand flowcharts? Here it is:

Lifehacker with the Most Popular Free Windows Downloads of 2008

Cloud Computing Corner:

1. How to set up Amazon Cloudfrom to work with S3. ´Nuff said.
2. A Beginners guide to running JumpBox on Amazon´s EC2 service (via)
3. Cloudfront Management Tools (via)

Seth Godin: How to send a personal email. Priceless:

Just because you have someone’s email address doesn’t mean you have the right to email them.

Google has released Blog Converters. (via)

Scoble on how you have to socially network in case you are laid off. Ok, from an US perspective, but a lot holds true also in Europe or elsewhere.

I am traveling quite a lot, so always interesting to see how others do when it comes to packing. WebWorkerDaily:  How Travel Veterans Pack For a Trip

Worth to read as well is the list of things that Tim Ferriss has learned and loved in 2008.

The TOP 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors. Yes, that might be the 25 most dangerous, but do we believe they get eliminated?

Stunning: Earth, observed. From the – probably – best picture blog in the world.

This is courage: The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart

Mobility Packs of german bloggers (in German):

• Nico Lumma
• Konstantin Klein (bluelectric.org)
  
• Jens Matheuszik (pottblog)
• Thomas Gigold
• Sven Rohweder (rowi)
• Andreas Turm (Wortwerkstatt)

Shocking. Matthew Alexander on irrogation techniques and  torture in Iraq (via)

• in the Washington Post
• in Harper´s Magazine

Interesting. Russ Juskalian in Columbia Journalism Review interviewing Clay Shirky.

How Newspapers tries to invent the Web. But Failed. Jack Shafer in Slate. Recommended.

In case you didn´t know: How to burn a Windows 7 .ISO to DVD

Leo Babauta (ZenHabits, Power of Less) interviews Tim Ferriss (4 hour workweek). Take the time.

From the Personal MBA blog:

Here are the three best resources I’ve found to explain what’s happening in the financial markets – they make great “Friday Reading”:

• A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis by Jess Bachman
• The End of Wall Street’s Boom by Michael Lewis
• Inside Wall Street’s Black Hole by Michael Lewis

NY Times (now only for subscribers/registered users): The End of the Financial World as We Know It (via)

Charlie Rose interviewing Malcolm Gladwell. (via)

Balsamiq Mockup helps to create application mockups in minutes. Even more interesting than the tool is the commercial success of the creator, described here. Fan-tas-tic. (via)

Jahresende-Links

So, jetzt zum Jahresabschluss die gesammelten Links der letzten paar Wochen. Sorry, aber wegen zu vielen Reisen vor den Feiertagen und PC-Abstinenz über Weihnachten etwas verzögert:

Nicht ganz neu, aber passend zur aktuellen Eskalation im Nahen Osten: Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War

The present article proposes an evolutionary psychology based model of social prediction, particularly for wars and related social disruption such as riots and suicide bombers.

Frankfurt Story – Danke Robert, gut davon zu lesen, bin ja schliesslich in Frankfurt am Main geboren…

Wo ist das Geld geblieben? – Eine Spurensuche bei der Zeit

The benefits of a monthly recurring revenue model in tough economic times –  Jason Fried von 37signals. So wahr.

Palamida: In a Time of Less, Do More with Open Source: Top 25 Open Source Projects That Will Help Trim Development Budgets (via)

70 Tools Freelancers Rely on Most – auch was für euch dabei?

Und dazu Web Worker Daily: 6 Free, Open Source Resources for Web Workers

Die Jungs und Mädels von EDS sollten´s eigentlich wissen, zumindestens aber eine Meinung haben: How Will Cloud Computing Affect the Information Technology Outsourcing Marketplace? (via)

Endlich mal erklärt 😉 : But What Exactly “Is” Cloud Computing? (via)

Stefan verweist auf ein Paper zum Tema XML Performance. Lesen!

Das Wall Street Journal: Outsourcing: Not Immune to the Downturn, But Holding Up – gibt ja sicherlich noch eine Menge, die Outsourcing primär als Mittel zur Kostensenkung sehen. Der “Do my mess for less”-Ansatz geht aber schnell in die Hose, aber manch lernen eben nur durch Schmerz.

A B2B Recession Survival Kit: Three Not-so-painful Tips for Thriving in a Miserable Economy:

• Survival Strategy #1: Cut the waste.

• Survival Strategy #2: Harvest the “best practices” of other companies.
• Survival Strategy #3: Ask customers what they want.

GMail Blog: SMS messaging for chat – wahrscheinlich (?) bis jetzt nur in USA

Stephen Fry reist mit leichtem Gepäck 🙂 : Gee, One Bold Storm coming up….

Ein paar Takeaways von Nick Carr:

• The trailer park is the computer
• So much for the Googley Treats

Elliotte Rusty Harold: You cannot trust the cloud (via)

Traditional payware like Oracle, Perforce, and Microsoft Office had lockin issues, but at least you controlled the software. Vendors couldn’t (usually) shut you down just because they decided your app no longer fit their business model. Cloud vendors can, and you have little to no recourse when they do.

Boring meetings? Get a canary…

Royal Pingdom: Google Apps SLA loophole allows for major downtime without consequences (via)

Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive

Not quite what I had in mind. Oder wie es sich anfühlt, bei Flickr gefeuert zu werden.

Lehman-Chef Richard Fuld: Der Mann, der die Welt in die Knie zwang (via)

The 10 Coolest Open Source Products Of 2008 – inclusive Identi.ca/laconi.ca (via Cem)

InformationWeek mit dem CTO of the Year: Werner Vogels von Amazon. (via Dave). Gratulation!

Drei Posts von Garr:

• 2009: The year of “the designful company”

• Moving to higher ground: Lessons from the art of jazz (part I) – das Buch kommt auf die Wunschliste

• 10 rules for making good design

10 design rules to keep in mind
(1) Communicate — don’t decorate.
(2) Speak with a visual voice.
(3) Use two typeface families maximum. OK, maybe three.
(4) Pick colors on purpose.
(5) If you can do it with less, then do it.
(6) Negative space is magical — create it, don’t just fill it up!
(7) Treat the type as image, as though it’s just as important.
(8) Be universal; remember that it’s not about you.
(9) Be decisive. Do it on purpose — or don’t do it at all.
(10) Symmetry is the ultimate evil.

Robert Scoble polarisiert ja recht häufig, trotzdem (oder gerade deshalb) zwei Posts von ihm:

• Does Microsoft have a speed problem?
• Guy Kawasaki says outrageous things about Twitter

Alex Payne von Twitter:  How I Use TextMate

Dare kommentiert einen Artikel von Jeff Atwood: The Myth of the Open Source Business Model Sein Ergebnis:

There are basically three business models for companies that make money from Open Source software, they are

1. Selling support, consulting and related services for the “free” software (aka the professional open source business model ) – RedHat
2. Dual license the code and then sell traditional software licenses to enterprise customers who are scared of the GPL – MySQL AB
3. Build a proprietary Web application powered by Open Source software – Google

As you scan this list, it should be clear that none of these business models actually involves making money directly from selling only the software. This is problematic for developers of shrinkwrapped, consumer software such as games because none of the aforementioned business models actually works well for them.

For developers of shrinkwrapped software, Open Source only turns piracy from a problem into a benefit if you’re willing to forego building consumer software and you have software that is either too complicated to use without handholding OR you can scare a large percentage of your customers into buying traditional software licenses by using the GPL instead of the BSDL.

Peter Thomas in der FAZ über Tilt-Shift-Objektive: Wie scharf ist das denn. Dazu den hervorragenden Post von Benedikt Hotze über Architekturfotografie mit Kleinbildkamera und Shiftobjektiv

Brent Simmons über Browser CPU usage:

The thing is, web developers should test their pages for CPU usage the same as app developers do. And anytime a page is idle, CPU usage should be at 0%. Same as with any other app.

eWeek: IBM Virtual Desktop Bundles Lotus, Ubuntu Linux to Freeze Out Microsoft (via)

Phil Fersht: Emerging from the rubble of 2008: BPO has a breakthrough year

Charles Miller: My 2008 end-of-year tech stock tips. (via)

A comment thread on a blog post I can no longer find a link to saw a rosy future for Microsoft because they spend nine times as much on research and development as Apple. There’s the problem. Microsoft pour R&D money into multi-touch interfaces and come up with a table that is relegated to tech demos and gimmicky election coverage. Apple put R&D money into multi-touch and produce the frickin’ iPhone.

Of course, Windows 7 will fix everything. We’ve never heard that before.

So, das solls mal gewesen sein. Bleibt nur die Frage, welches Netbook kleine 10″-Laptop ich mir zum rumspielen gönnen soll. Muss ist eine große Platte (160+GB), Aufrüstbarkeit auf 2GB RAM und eine gewisse Robustheit. Los, wer kann was empfehlen?

Tech, Economy and more – in english and german

The End. Michael Lewis on the end of Wall Street as we know it.

Google is also tightening its belt: Google Gears Down for Tougher Times, see also here: Google Cost Cuts Take The Company Away From Its Engineers

Quite some short-term actions:

• A sense of urgency about diversifying the business, which means new priorities include display ads, mobile ads and enterprise software.
• Non-revenue generating products will starve if they’re not killed altogether. Project the company is just “fiddling with,” Schmidt told the WSJ will get “will get “naturally smaller as people get plucked off.”
• Reigning confusion. One Google  current operations manager told the Journal: “It’s not exactly clear where that bottom line is now. I don’t think they know that either.”
• Dispirited engineers. Google no longer belongs to the dreamy engineers and it’s going to make them feel bad. Quoth the Journal: “Some engineers complain they can no longer tap the employees and machines they need to develop their ideas. This is no small issue among elite programmers, many of whom joined the company for the chance to work on such projects, according to current and former employees.”
• Cramped quarters. Google will close offices in Dallas and Denver.
• Shutting off services. Search sandbox SearchMash, virtual world Lively and Google Page Creator will soon be gone. Google Audio Indexing and Google Notebook could follow.
• More grunt work. Google wants to “significantly” cut its 10,000 its contractor workforce and somebody has to pick up the slack.

possibly related: 10 Resources for Beginning Freelancers

I mentioned already twice reviews of Malcolm Caldwells Outliers. Garr has a look on Malcoms presentation style. Spend the time, it´s worthwile.

This is just fantastic. Queen Rania of Jordania in her acceptance speech explaining why she has launched her channel on Youtube, Letterman Style. Awesome. (via)

BTW, Joi has married today. Congratulations and all the best for you!

Honestly, I get a bit tired of all the “Green Computing” meme going around. And while I like basically the concept, I do not like the notion used in this particular context, but the new Lotus Domino attachment and object service (DAOS) looks quite interesting. (via and via).

Und noch ein paar Links in Deutsch:

Spreeblick mit ein paar Ergebnissen einer Studie über das politische Verhalten von Migrantengruppen im Internet: Migranten im Netz

Ein Interview mit Henning Kagermann im Handelsblatt: „Die Welt wird anders aussehen“

Do´s and dont´s auf der Weihnachtsfeier im Büro: Eine folgenschwere Party – aber das wisst ihr ja schon 😉

Ich gehe auf die re:publica’09 vom 1.-3.April 2009 in Berlin. Das Thema: Shift happens

2008 Latest Edition – Did You Know 3.0 – From Meeting in Rome this Year

Links on a grey Tuesday

Looking outside the window you get the impression today that it is already late afternoon. But its only 14.45. Early December, after all.

Two examples why it is always worth to have a look at Garr´s PresentationZen:

• Kinetic typography used to present The Girl Effect

• Kinetic typography: more examples

Lifehacker on GMail´s Canned Responses: Which Emails Should You Standardize?

The year is coming to an end and many salespeople have to make their budget. Vinnie on Top 10 Stupid Salespeople Tricks – a Rerun. Consider yourself warned.

Erick Mack and David Allen are preparing their Lotusphere session. Interesting to listen to the Podcast: Listen in as David and I discuss Notes and Lotusphere 2009

Blogger Obiutary: Doris Dungey, Prescient Finance Blogger, Dies at 47

The Aardvark no longer speaks. (via)

Joel Spolsky on his style of leadership: How Hard Could It Be? Recommended!

Wired: How Gadgets Helped Mumbai Attackers

Coding Horror: Tending your software garden

I had mentioned Dave´s post on listening lately, but there is more: Jay Rosen in an interesting thread on Friendfeed, where journalists argue why they do not listen to users. And Dave again: If you never listen you never learn. Full ack.

WebWorkerDaily reminds to take the Time to Think Twice About Free.

Powers of Empathy. Read the post and figure out, whose words are looked at. (via)

Looking to 2009: Phil Fersht chatting with Peter Allen of TPI

Another post by 37signals on their use of Amazon EC2: Using the EC2 environment for fewer moving parts

Und noch ein paar für die deutschsprachigen Leser:

Selbsttest – Welche Bürotypen nerven Sie? (via)

Alle Jahre wieder: Der verflixte Resturlaub