Iranian lawmakers approved the bill over Iran's nuclear activities. This will be huge issue in the months to come, and if Bush wins US elections a lot of various pressures could come to the addres of Iranian ruling class.
Therefore, european diplomacy is this time ahead with the plans for negotiations before State Department starts to dig deeper in their own fashion ;)

``the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran is required to make use of scientists and the country's facilities ... in order to enable the country to master peaceful nuclear technology, including the cycle of nuclear fuel.''

Today I 've started reading Timbuktu Chronicles. Africa is blogging, the voice is heard.

China's cool

Now, who would that thought, China's central bank today raised interest rates for the first time in 9 years.
The implications for this decision could be seen in commodity markets all around the world.
As of now ( thursday, 18.30 croatian time - 10.30 am in US ), gold is down , oil is down, Alcoa ( aluminium maker ) is down.
But dollar is UP !
The reason goes that commodity prices ( oil, silver, platinum..) are rising for many months because of the China's demand for their booming economy.
But related to China, this news ( Yuan peg) could be of the most interest in months ( years ) to come.

Blogger users can make podcasting

Finally, there's an interesting solution for the people who can't alone make feed enclosures ( RSS 2.0 ) for the purpose of Podcasting. SmartCast is announced by FeedBurner three days ago( provider of smart feeds ).

If you're a Blogger publisher and you want to create a podcast, create items that point to your audio file (mp3s or torrents or whatever) in the link element, and then use our service. SmartCast will do what's necessary to make this feed podcast-able!

It's fantastic solution. Look what these folks at FeedBurner done further, they've set up podcasting community at del.icio.us bookmarking service.

Vauuu, although elitist by many counts, podcasting is fast web virus that is spreading before some basic question like copyright, bandwith are answered.

Podcasting is stupid name and it is confusing those who think that this is only for iPod users ( Apple connected) , but it's not, as Jake Ludington made excelent tutorial on how to podcast with Windows Media Player and some other MP3 player.

Little James Bonds

Few weeks ago there was a story in croatian papers about british secret agents ( MI6) exposed in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia.
It's those little secret spy "power games" that foreign secret services are doing here in the Balkan to gain infuence and promote interest of their country. But they were trapped into conflict.

MI6?s over-riding objective is to protect and promote British economic and political interests in the face of greater economic penetration by its rivals. The Croatian Embassy in the US reports, for example, that the US, Germany and Austria each invested approximately one billion US dollars in Croatia between 1993?2000, whilst Britain invested only $US102 million.

Is there a need to say that some of the most wanted criminals charged for war crimes in the Balkan wars are still on the large despite all these services operating in the region .
A lack of political will ?

Me-To-Me copyfight

Interesting read about the latest push to tighten copyright in digital age. LawGeek blog has a great article about so called INDUCE drafts.
The author mentioned "Me2Me" apps.
It's a strong opinion:

Me2Me technology, however, would be much much harder to outlaw. Many Me2Me uses would arguably be fair or non-infringing uses. For instance, they tend to be private uses involving only family or friends. Many would involve use of media legitimately purchased by both the sender and recipient of the content (i.e. oneself). Thus, under current copyright law, it would very difficult to outlaw any of them. It would also be difficult to chastize them politically in front of Congress.

Today, I am in a great mood for bashing the president of the United States. Tadaaabooom !!
No political correctness please, no, not this time !

Yes, " lovely" George is again at the spotlight. George, God here ...
The world is watching, polls for the American elections are showing tight possible outcome, and we can't surely say who'll be the next US commander in chief.
But the world is clearly against Bush the Greatest- the candidate ;))

The world don't want american dollars as a reserve currency for their needs.
So, in the end, idealogy won't matter but economic reality and social change.
We are not there, yet. But in the meantime we should watch elections parade.
I am guessing, this year US election could be as well decided in the court after the process called RECOUNT.

The old ( and silly) US electoral system is in a tight race poised for another scandal .

Otaku mobile TV

How many times should I repeat to those folks from business skycrapers ( mobile communication companies ) that I don't want TV on my mobile phone. Said that, I mean that, I'll do that.
It's so silly idea and I just can't figure it out why industry insiders are pushing blindfolded these concepts ?
I really can't understand. Am i missing something ?
It's so simple .
This article is so so so so so ( one more time: soooo ) stupid and I am laughing like a mad :)))

For example, when the BBC made its first colour TV broadcast in the summer of 1967, producers and writers came alive to the possibilities of the medium. 37 years later and the mobile phone industry is embracing colour screen technology. Colour screens have had the effect of shifting the perception of the mobile phone from being a tool for voice calls to becoming an entertainment device, and are a key driver in the purchase/upgrade cycle for handsets.

Oh my, oh my...the sky is falling :)) Don't you know that "color screens are shifting the perception of the mobile phone industry" ....:)))))

SMS as a cash cow

Look, at smarthphone blog, great, great article about SMS, and how telecom operators earn money with SMS cause , you know, it doesn't cost them much.
The article tone seems to be appropriate one ;)

SMS really costs nothing, once there is a GSM network in place. SMS is like software - create it once, sell it a thousand times, no costs-per-item involved. So if you pay the telco 8 cents per SMS, they pretty much earn 8 cents per SMS.

Podcasting buzz

There seems to be much noise these days around blogosphere about podcasting. Truly great way for distributing audio content over web. How to...

But for some time it won't be for Mr.Everybody with a lots of bandwith and hosting storage.

At this early stage it's only expensive and have very little add value in my opinion. It 's one of those blogosphere hyped fads. Still, thank god, one should not have iPod to make podcasting and the iPodder sofware is born.
But RSS with enclosure is here to stay.

Podcasting obviously has it's fans who will show all possible applications and plug ins for the practices of distributing audio content over web ( not mobile networks ).

My question is however, how to pay for the bandwith and hosting files as an ordinary web user ?
I think commercial institution will make the most of these concepts of podcasting as the way of distributing their audio content to the end user in on -demad fashion.

It's easy to put ads that way , too.

Again, there will be need for some web based services who will aggregate available audio content and make it easy to navigate for average web user.
Issues about copyright should be resolved before it can be adopted by some mainstream content producers.

And the real "party" could make mobile operators when they offer audio streaming for storage rich mobile devices in the future, and it'll have more broader impact than podcasting. ( recently news are pointing in that direction )

But still, what about battery life ? ;)) What about content producing for a Mr.Everybody and make it accesable to anyone on mobile phone ? Web is more useful for the distribution than mobile networks .
Not yet clear to me.

Social web space for music

It's a kind an interesting social networking hub for music listeners called LAST FM. Today found out about this web service. Here's FAQ.

Didn't try it much, but it enables to connect people with similar music tastes. As far as I can see, members have to build profile and name their favorite tracks and artists so they can be accesible for others ( you can put small icon signed as Personal radio on your blog or web site that will deliver over MP3 player your picked tracks to the visitors who want to listen ).

I can imagine how music critics could use this feature on their personal weblogs/web sites or any music related web space.
Why not recording labels to use this social component for discovering new music and founding what goes and what not ( having in mind aggregate tastes for specific music generes ), or using it like a hub for customer loyalty ?

Last.fm is in beta and it seems they are starving for cash ( they are paying licencing fees ) , so their goal could be subscription service.
And it does not play well for dial -up/modem connection.
It's a toy for western broadband societies :))

Rojo's way of navigating web

Since yesterday I've been playing with the new web service Rojo. It's web based RSS news reader with social netwoking features included and the reputational system possibilities.

Nice thing , but so far have no definitive conclusion.
I'll work on it in days to come.

Above all, would like to thank Thomas for the invitation . Rojo is fresh web service, still in beta , and works invitation-only.
I can give few invitation to those who would like to have it.

This service is still fresh, having in mind it's only few days ago announced during one of the sessions held for Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

Film festival

Zagreb Film Festival is under way.

ZAGREB FILM FESTIVAL is a competitive festival that presents and awards new film authors wit their features, short and documentary films, and the FESTIVAL OF THE FIRST establishes the value of debutants' achievements in various areas of creative expression.

Bush's edge

Today, Croatian daily, Jutarnji list, in their foreign politics section concluded " Kerry won all three debates ".
So what ?

I still don't believe Kerry is winning. This latest Reuters/Zogby poll says the same.
The wishes are not the reality, unfortunatly !
In my humble opinion , I think that undecided voters are the key for Bushs victory along with the results in those swing states. The economy is equally important but as US consumer data shows it' not used in debate effectively, and democrats didn't played that well.

Undecided voters are more inclined to vote for Bush. The republicans are more supportive of their candidate as the poll shows ( 89 % of them ) , and the democrats are not so strong behind Kerry ( 79 % of them ).
In this historical voting for US ( and the world I belive ) weights security fear of world wide terorrism that could be, in this post 9-11 world, decisive for the candidate who shows streght in those issues ( although Bush didn't use it 100 % )

Many are aware that Kerry can't pull US substantialy out of global war the Bush administration started. Many are aware , in case Kerry wins, that the foreign politics will be only more sophisticated and not so agressive in cases like building alliances. But, the war goes on.

In case Bush wins, there will be unstopable plans for their ''War on terrorism '' fought on their terms.
Better said, the world will be place of action and reaction to these facts ;))

Dossier Oil

Lately, my favorite subject is OIL. I have been writing and reading much about oil issues. I think It depends a lot on the current war for oil resources that has begun since 2000 with the Bush's and Cheney's entry into White House.
Cheney is today most informed and the most influential person on Earth, he said many times how severe consequences could be if world runs out of oil very fast which is now the case ( demand for oil is booming , and only China's economic slowdown could bring some relief)
Let me quote Cheney's speech to the International Petroleum Institute in London in late 1999:

'By some estimates,' Cheney stated, 'there will be an average of two percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three percent natural decline in production from existing reserves.' Cheney ended on an alarming note: 'That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.'

Peak oil theorist are delighted to quote these sentences. I think these theorists are right in a essence but wrong and naive about reality.

It's game, pure and simple said. Although, peak theorists are right that proven world reserves and the dynamic of extracting new oil is lesser than general public is aware ( Royal Shell corrected their reserves estimates down this summer ). What would happen if there's correct accounting of underground and above-ground oil ?
Crash, and seriouse economic reset. It's just a game, and nobody expects it'll happen. That's not even option because it would set up prices at correct value having in mind supply and demand, and the realistic price of oil at current situation would be at about 182 dollars for a barrel.

Financial wizards are starting to wake up to this reality and world's ( foxy ) hedge funds were buying oil futures contracts like crazy for about a year. Oil costs today 80 % more than at the beginning of this year.
The prices of oil will probably break 60 $ for barell this winter but will come down next year although not under 40 $. But nobody knows this things for sure.

Around the world still echoes BBC report from the conference in Berlin this summer.

How will you pay to run your car? How will you get the children to school? How will you heat your house? How much will transported food go up in price?
How will we pay for plastics, metals, rubber, cheap flights, Simpson's DVDs, 3G phones and everlasting economic growth?
The basic answer is, we won't.

Their reporter painted very gloomy picture of the world addicted to the economic growth and western lifestyle as we know it, and with the expections of the new technogies to change the world for better, who is suddenly challenged with high energy costs.
But seems that an old ingredient of economic prosperity will at least for the moment sometime in the future slow down these dreams.

Although I have not finished thoughts on this subject I will stop. Too long article.

10th

Oracle Croatia celebrates their 10th year of existence . They've opened new offices yesterday in Zagreb. "Special" guest was, as reported, Oracle vicepresident for EMEA region. His talk was pathetic as far as I can judge :)
He said so many pathetic sentences about Croatian accession to European Union..bla...bla...''We are part of the Europe already..'' and that sort of things.
Still, Oracle grew up as an respected medium enterprise in Croatia who's main asset is their 40 domestic experts, and the network of 90 partners .
Last year company growth rate was 35 %.
Marin Tadic, CEO Oracle Croatia, said employees are having remote connection for every desktop in the company, and the company is aggressively using VoIP telephony.

Lada Adamic talks about blogspace

Seems there are some really serious blog researchers of croatian heritage. During my google sessions discovered Lada Adamic , a research scientist at Hewlett Packard Lab.
She'll be speaker at Accelerating Change 2004 in one of the sessions at Standford University in early November.
Her presented work will be "Implicit Structure and the Dynamics of Blogspace"
Lada has personal homepage, and she's got to be nostalgic about Bol ( it's a beautiful croatian island ).

SoftCOM -cruising technology conference

SoftCOM conference has started yesterday , 12th year in a row. I was looking for news articles in croatian media and nowhere to found them.
Media coverage is apsolutly zero !

I wish I could be there on a ship ( named by Marco Polo ) while cruising on the adriatic coastline between Split- Dubrovnik ( Croatia ) and Venice ( Italy ). But I'll have to stay in the office :(

It's exciting to have technology conference on the ship. Although, it's more academic and research oriented conference .

I have been looking at the official web site and seems there'll be many interesting events on board. Commitee board is strong this year. Atendees are Naohisa Ohta, Sony Corporation, Japan, Alex Gelman, Panasonic Research, USA , Roch Glitho, Ericsson Research, Canada and many others.

SoftCOM 2004 will provide an open forum for communication and information technology researchers and engineers to discuss new and emerging systems, services and their applications particularly with emphasis on the ?soft? aspects and technologies.

Though, I don't get it , what's here ''soft'? :)
Would love to here firshand accounts from these symphosiums . There will be presented research papers about future wirelles systems.

Am I too much curious ? :) Yes, they are telling me this all the time .
Nevertheless, why croatian technology news sources are so shy when it comes to presenting such an event ?

They are first when it comes to covering IT news in the world and printing a press release of some obscur company who just offered great discountes for - bluetooth headphones :)
Oh, and why should I supposed to worry about all that ? :p

Still, a ship...See...Venice ( yes, dirty chanels in Venice )...but clean and too expensive Dubrovnik :)

Croatian blogosphere shows influence

Blogosphere in Croatia is only 5 months old but it starts to show its impact very fast.
Latest incident is breaking story for croatian blogosphere . BLOG.HR is on their fits.
Sandra is a teacher ( elementary school Zagreb ) and the author of a blog on croatian blog service BLOG.HR and recently she was blackmailed by his employee because she wrote about injustice in her school.

Few days ago Sandra used useful feature in blogging service BLOG.HR which gives possibility every blogger to forward her/his story from blogging post editor to the editors of Blog.hr service.

Sandra's story was posted on the main Blog.hr page and soon reactions and comments started coming in. Everyone wanted to express and show support for Sandra's writing and her actions.
Later, Sandra erased those comments under pressure and blackmailing by the head of stuff of above mentioned elementary school ( these are saved from Google cache and posted on my Wiki page) .

What she wrote on her blog to actually pissed off the head of stuff of her school ?

She said that condition in her teaching room were very bad and awful ( she even posted picture ) . The rain and cold comes in. Then she's confessed that she gave her own money ( aprox. 500 $ ) for the building's adaptation. No support she get from the head of school and her collegues who were trying to isolate her. She becomes the black ship in the school among stuff.
On her blog she posted open letter to the head of stuff in which she expressed her sharp views for bad conditions and working with kids in such an environment.

The head of stuff ( director ) was described as someone who laught on all these Sandra's efforts and even called her " nut" and of very "bad psychological health.''
The open letter she put not only on her blog but to the info panel in the school. Parents of classroom's kids were also notified on numerouse meetings.

What's more, her collegues found out for her blog and started to copy her blog posts among themselves, and some of these posts were of very intimate content.

The hole story culminated on Wednesday afternoon while she reported on her blog that she got treats from the head of stuff because of the truth she posted on her blog.
The blackmail was, either blog or her job in the school. The stakes were high.
As all said above, editors alerted croatian blogosphere and support from other bloggers come in. The injustice was in the air and all had started to ask questions for what could be possible legal grounds for quiting Sandra's job.

Next day, the blogosphere found out that the head of stuff gave up firing her ( obviously he was aware of the blogger's storm and reactions ) but Sandra was blackmailed that she can work further only that she should DELETE "dangerous'' posts and she should discontinue writing her blog.

The editors of BLOG.HR service ( myelf included ) offered Sandra every help she'll need. Obviously, she expressed her view of not going further with scandal but to possible give up current blog and open another anonymous sometime in the future. It's her decision and it should be respected.
She saved her job for now , but nobody's sure what's coming next.

No doubt this story shakes up croatian blogosphere ( and possible will be picked up by croatian media which expressed interest lately for the blogging phenomenon ) which is still in early phase and immature.

Some quick facts about Croatia and our blogosphere:

- 4,3 million inhabitants
- 1,3 million internet users
- about 11.000 blogs ( first croatian blog tool is only 5 months old)
- 76 % mobile phone penetration rate

UPDATE

Sandra shut down her blog after all. It was her desicion.

The Google saga

Fidelity, world's largest mutual fund , owns 16 percent of Google.
Now, this news comes as surprise to me. I am still sceptical about Google financial future, and won't put much hope for a long-term perspective ( Google is in my view still too shy about explaining their business, maybe one day ) although I think it's great company with constant inovation flow.
The second news from Google says that they launched yesterday a beta service to search web via SMS .
It works only in USA for now :((
This is great idea and I already wrote about something similar more than year ago asking myself why we don't have that kind of possibilities here in Croatia, since is well know Croatia has very deep penetration od mobile phones in every day life and croats are crazy about sending and recieving SMS ( short message service ).
As far as I know , no other search engine in the world has tied up searching web service with SMS.
Since I write about Google I'll check my news reader about other news regarding Google Inc.
And here's what I found, current news about Google ( above news excluded ):

Google launches Google Print

The Cost of Page Rank

Gmail adds Atom feeds

Use your Gmail account as online hard drive

First ranked news on Google News is- blog ( for the first time)

Google faces employee retention challenge

On/off

As I already wrote, I've done some changes for this blog. The title of the blog isn't anymore "Zec Online Dnevnik", but now stands for "Zec Online Journal". Naturally...No big deal, yeah.
Default languge isn't croatian anymore but broken english because of reasons I already explained.


Today, I made complete overhaul regarding language of this blog. Sidebar is now newly organized, and all links are translated in english.
Only basic elements and links should stay. So, it's nothing so much new. Some of these links are on my blog for a long time.
Detailed explanation for better organised sidebar:

changed section "who and what";

Google box: searching older posts and web;

xml/rss button for reading content via RSS feeds:

blog optimization for reading on mobile devices;

finaly, after almost 3 years of blogging , picture is up;

contact information;mail and quick chat feature;

Photo/mobile blog or journal/gallery

web bookmarks;

my micropublishing efforts for focused content;

latest syndicated news from mainstream sources and blogosphere;

blogroll ( only not current and up to date )

latest articles;

archives from 2002 to 2004.;

disclaimer

Today I looked at my blogger profile page and saw an interesting number, namely, user stats counts blog posts and the number currently stays at 989.
This week I'll write 1000-th article for this blog.
I expect more to come :P

Snap

From Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco comes fresh and exiting search engine SNAP.COM

Bill Gross, famous IdeaLab boss announced this new web searching service that challenges the best search engines in the world.
PC Mag has a coverage.
Do not forget he was the one who actually invented context advertising within Overture company, and later on Google build advertising business model very similar to Gross's.
Now, he's back.
I played a bit with SNAP, although it seems very powerfull , interface is cloacked and confusing , slow and not so clean.

Evan's message

Imagine where I found this news?
During regular inbox checking , in my gmail account's sidebar !
So, Evan Williams is leaving Google team. Evan was co-founder of the most popular blogging service in the world, namely Blogger.com.
This news comes to me as surprise . Is he outgrown Google now when he cash out Google options ?
Eweek has a story. Even wrote about his departure on his blog.

Williams is a well-known figure in the blog-tools industry, regularly speaking and attending conferences on blogging and social software. He wrote that while he is interested in exploring a new Internet startup at some point, for now he plans to take time away from the hustle and bustle of the technology industry.

I can remember Evan's role from the beginning of my blogging odissey. I used to read his writing, thoughts and ideas. He wrote his blog pretty short and not so regular. I think he hadn't have RSS feeds for long time on his blog.
I think that his ideas and work helped very much for why blogging is so popular in some parts of the world, and the simplicity as a strategy for building simple and usefull blogging tools was partially voiding star for croatian blogging service BLOG.HR we introduced this May ( Myself included ) .
Evan co-founded Pyre Labs, provider of web hosted service Blogger and blog hosting called Blogspot. Other co-founders were Jason Shellen, Matt Haughey, and Meg Hourihan
Inovative story about blogging come from a small apartment in downtown San Francisco but soon team almost tear apart apparently because of some ego issues.
Here's story of how it all started confessed by Meg Hourhian.
Later on, in early 2003 , Google bought Blogger team and become blogger company with plans to tie up their marketing programs with living( blogging ) web.
In may this year Blogger had revamp , almost at the same time as we launched BLOG.HR service here in Croatia .
It's interesting to compare growth of popularity here in Croatia and the history from 1999 and 2000 US experience. Blogging culture is in very early phase here, about year 2000 ( comparing to blogger.com growth ).
Since we are very small country, growth generation and general popularity of blogging is very fast and very hyped.
Next year we could expect more mature situation with blogging here in Croatia .

Mobile fetish

Danah Boyd , US technosocialogist and blogger, make interesting cultural observations about Sidekick ( HipTop ).

Why people love it and what makes Sidekick so appealing among American youth. Keyword is feedback. The company behind this product is Danger.
Every product manager should read this story. But there's alternative story to these glamour stories, one that's different.
T-Mobile managers are already familiar with sidekick. T-Mobile pushed this mobile gem in US and was successful selling story.
CNET had a review.

Newsmastering with style and no hassle

The latest trend ( if I may say so ) in blogosphere names reBlogging.
One uses reBlog open source software to streamline interesting rss feeds found in your RSS reader.
The credit is given to original author who's blog posts are reblogged.
It is great way for focused content ( community interest) , just in style of a great Newsmaster ( a new profession emerging :))
Unmediated blog is one of this type of blogs. Sexblog is one of reblogged blogs as well.
ReBlog was developed by Micheal Frumin for Eyebeam R&D

Oil blues

Oil prices broke today magic level of 50 $ a barrel in New York futures market. There's almost certanly continuouse trend of higher oil prices.
Some may argue it is not oil shock, but it's definitive goodbay of cheap oil.
Indeed, by some historical benchmarks, notable oil crisis in 70's, current oil hike isn't as severe.
Many experts and so called "experts" ( me ) ;) now are trying to explain causes and glitches for current situation on oil markets.
IMF said in an official report that higher oil prices are likelly to stay during this decade.
Any prolonged situation of high prices could and will cut economic growth.
Really great article about these issues found in newspaper The Independent written by Bill Robinson who is director of economics at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Croatia eyes space

Croatian blog Mracni again covered this story as it happend.
SpaceShipOne successfuly reached space and win Ansari X- prize. Congratulations !
And here's explanation why ( croatian ) this flight acctually matters.

video :
SpaceShipOne u svemiru

news

Florida Today, BBC News

MMS not for all

No wonder for Croatia. MMS services aren't as popular as SMS services . Well known fact.
But for Britain...Seems they have same problems with tehnophobes. Many people posses mobile cameraphone but very few are using it everyday.
The Inquirer writes photomessaging needs a kickstart.
According to the Autumn 2004 Mobile Phone Report 36 percent of british cameraphone users have never sent a photo message. That's a growth year on year of very slim percentage ( last year this figure was 27 percent).

Part of the problem lies with education. Only 11 per cent of handset owners regard themselves as technologically savvy while nearly one third (29 per cent) are technophobes who shy away from the latest innovations.

Nokia corp: In hardware we belive !

Nokia won't sell ringtones, games, and other graphics anymore.
They are focusing on core businesses, and realised they can't compete with network operators on this segment.
Few years back, Nokia pushed multimedia services as a showcase of things to come. Club Nokia was hub for all those activities.
But these market segment is to small and in money terms-insignificant for them. Now, they give up.
It is estimated by analysts that fragmented market for ringtons globally is about 1,5-3.5 billion a year.

The service has been alternately as a huge future income generator or as a serious stumbling block to good operator relations.

Oil fight

www.vecernji-list.hr

There seems do be an open fight between croatian goverment and croatian state oil company INA.
Today, croatian television HRT broke the news about new price hikings on INA's gas stations. The rumor was that suggestions were made about new calculation for gas prices and were sent to Banski dvori ( Goverment's headquarter ).
Goverement officials are denaying that such a letter existed. Notable, Andrija Hebrang, croatian minister , said in an interview for HINA " he's not aware of any official letter ''.
But Vecernji list in tomorows edition writes it could be fight between various interest groups in which they try to gain positions for their goals in this almost unescapable situation. Main target could be Mr.Dragicevic ( CEO of INA ) .The world markets are dictating market prices for oil.
In this situation , croatian goverment few days ago asked INA to stop raising prices and suggested INA should lower its profit margins for targeted prices on gas stations.
In respons, if this rumors are verificated, INA made clear and pull decisive move to block state interventionism.
But, do have in mind, croatian goverment owns 75 percent stake of INA and hungarian company MOL owns 25 percent+one share.

Space Ship One

Personally, I am not great fan of nothing which comes with attributes "space".
But I am fan of aeroplanes and flying. Few days ago I found out what X-prize Ansar really is.
Mracni blog , a croatian blog, covered this story eagerly waiting for history to be made in front of our eyes.
Then I look around and found it very fascinating indeed.
BBC covered this story very well.
Virgin boss has really serious business plans for making commercial space flight - a reality.

Blogosphere knows already

Today, I saw inflow of new readers on this blog. Then , later on I figure out reasons. Drax blog informed its readership about default language change on my blog. I had switched from Croatian to English.
Thanks Drax !
I am curious know, how many croatian blogs are there and have english as primary language for the content and writing ?
I know there are some on blogger.com, and livejournal.com hosting platforms, but they are somehow unknown in general here in croatian blogosphere.

Crash or slow dead ?

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > A Seismic Shift Under the House of Fannie Mae
Interesting article in today's New York Times. We can read about current investigations of Fanny Mae accounting practices.
It's a big financial company by many parameters. Therefore, in case of any seriouse financial scandal, the US economy ( and world's economy ) could face itself with slowdown and many people could suffer as well( homeowners )
But still, it' s huge and complicated task to understand all these facts surrounding Fannie Mae business.
Basicly, Fannie is publicly traded company but it's investors have protection in case of losses that could be covered with taxpayers money.
Their main job is to buy mortgages from Banks , so that Banks can lend the money further.
It's called securatization of debt.
But the trouble is that Fannie Mae used derivatives ( hedging tool ) to shore up their financial positions. Derivatives are risky business, and sometimes it can get out of control ( specially, during volatile periods in the markets ).
The reasoning goes that Fannie mounted losses during the bear market on Wall Street ( from 2000-2003) regarding derivatives positions.
Therefore, they used aggressive accounting techniqe to hide this things out of public.
Many insiders talked about derivatives during various public sessions but it was very hard to prove and very hard to break the silent wall of Fannie Corp.
Because of a very important place in the US business financial system, Fannie's problems could make disruptins far wider than many think.

Soros's message

GeorgeSoros.com
George Soros has a message. Again. This time he's deeply partisan.
He thinks GW Bush should come down the Trone.
Hungarian born rich asshole is philosoph and philantropist. Oh, he's finance wizzard as well. We all know that.
And I wonder how many people know what is open society idea all about?
I certanly don't and I don't care :p

PhotoStory: how to make a violin - IPIALL Stradivari

PhotoStory: how to make a violin - IPIALL Stradivari
Making a violin . Nice explanation. Violin is not dead.

Who could forgot Poland ?

Not so much benefits out of so much sacrifice !
Poland buys today expensive oil . Just like any country on Earth.That was not the promise of Iraq picnic adventure. Things turned ugly since than.
If oil isn't much needed gift, what's next possible compensation ?
I am not from Poland.

Micro Persuasion: City Hall Insider Blog Puzzles LA Mayor's Office

Micro Persuasion: City Hall Insider Blog Puzzles LA Mayor's Office
Croatia is waiting for this type of whistleblowers. It's well know how anonimous blogs can be great tool for insiders to spit out dirty and covered secrets on the web as a public space.
Steve Rubel writes about LA city hall blogger that features post ranging from rumours and gossip to job listenings.
Just for the note, croatian local election are to be possible covered my croatian blogosfere, but I wouldn't be so optimistic it'll have any impact on election results.

A New Kind of Light

A New Kind of Light

Roland covers New York Times story about light chips ( an old article ). It could be future sometime by 2007 for offices and buildings.
Currently, chips are powering famouse displays on Times Square for example, Nasdaq sign is one of them.
I wonder, Las Vegas if survives few more years , could be big customer :)

Zec Online Dnevnik: Changes?

Zec Online Dnevnik: Promjene/Changes ?
By "blog this" feature.
From this day on, minor ( or somehow ) big (? ) change will take place here at Zec Online Dnevnik. My pseudo-name for blogging here will stay Zec, and those who know me and have contacts with me have full knowledge of who I am
( my real identity ). So, it's never the issue here.
I am starting to write this blog in english. The desicion starts as of today.
Not sure yet whether it'll be pure english -worded blog or coctail regarding blog language. Croatish, somehow :))
Obviously, it depends a lot on my mood and inspiration. Yes, and time !
There are few reason for this sudden change.

First, my english skills aren't as good , and blog writing could be incentive for learning .

Second, it's about challenge ,too. I was more than one year ( and still am ) part of a great team of people ( Dario, Anderlon ) who invented, founded and run the first croatian weblogging service BLOG.HR since May 2004.
And my personal satisfaction lays in the fact that these Zec Online Dnevnik blog provided inspiration and ideas for young and clever web entreuprenuer Dario Markus who contacted me in the summer of 2003, for helping him set up first blogging tool in this part of the world.
And we did it . BLOG.HR is great success here in small Croatia and the culture of blogging is born.

Third, it's about possible communication with ''outside''(foreign blogosfere ) which I was part since early 2002 but language was obviouse barrier for meaningfull communication.


And, you reader ( if there are some ), please be gentle toward my writing and english grammar. I'll try to correct mistakes but It won't be hurdle for my further writing no matter how bad it could get.
Just for note, my first foreign language was allways - german.
Of course, every advice is welcome, but I'll be free to move on after that.

One more thing. Is there someone who's interested in writing ( blogging on english ) with me this blog ?

Please, if so, drop me a line in mail: dalibor [at] gmail [dot] com