Quick innovation

Brain Reactions is a small web tool but does amazing things in a very simple way. Yesterday I become aware I missed to look more closely into it.

It creates, enhance and impoves quality of user inputed ideas. Brainstorming sessions, you know.

Shortly, create an idea in 3 seconds, invite people to come and add their 2 cents to it ( or they'll come from aggregated page ) , later rank those ideas and you get nice idea pool generated by users and the best ideas on top.

Nice way to get ideas, advice and answers , but there's need to be network effect ( critical mass of users when offered as web service ) to make it really useful.

Otherwise, If you do it on the intranet, it could work without these effects and be great way for product evolution.

User interface and navigation is very simple and straightforward. Ideas could be very easly organized into categories and labels ( or even tags ).
Many other add-ons are possible and could be created on top of basic functionality like user's statistics etc.

BETA web services from The Museum

The world of permanent beta services on the web aggregated and called The Museum of Modern Betas. Nice try :)
''About'' page says

The MoMB is a site dedicated to listing web-based applications on a beta trip.

Interesting article wrote Dario about the Web. Congrats Dario, you really nice summed up what's going on.

Check this betas when you'll got time. Some of them could be inspiring for small modules on our project.

Podzinger looks promising audio search

Podzinger is the first search engine with right approach to finding audio/podcasts files via keywords, IMHO. Powered by BBS ( company made first router ever, pioneered VOIP etc.) speech-to-text technology and you can either listen to the full podcast/audio file, or click on the time indicator to fast-forward to just the piece containing your keyword.

That's cool. Up to the point you want listen. That's users control and brings value to this type of search engine.
Take radio shows and other content for example.
With every keyword and little help of RSS you can make your playlist of spoken words and phrases and track it. Just like with Techorati you can do the same for audio, at least in theory.
I see many other services are possible for data retrieval with this approach of mining audio data on the web.

It could really make an easy way for marketers to find ''niche'' audience with Long tail approach.
Podzinger has obviouse intentions with sponsored search in the future. It's still in beta.

Web audio production could have instant benefit , and search engines will be your FM or AM at the end of day ;)) Remember promise of on-demand content ?

Croatian VIDI Web Awards

Sad day for croatian Web. The ceremony of VIDI web Awards is fiasco. I just checked who are this year's winners and I couldn't disagree more ( ...with some of them, but selection in general is poor, or is it choice ? ).

Is it just me or...No wonder, the jurry was consisted of journalist that are not so much web savvy and follow the recent trends.
Oh my, have they failed to select winners in news category, to mentioned only one gig.

My friend from Zagreb told me, some people in the today's ceremony expressed deep dissapointment over these awards and organisers are telling this is the last time for VIDI Croatian Web Awards. Namely, they are too costly.
Or I would add, not representative !

Amazon inovates search engine industry

I am amazed by the innovativeness of Amazon's subsidiary Alexa. They released Alexa Web Crawl which enables ordinary people or startups to build their own powerfull search engines for very little money.
Wired and BBC got the story fast.

Something BIG is coming to search industry. It could have far-reaching effects for many businesses on the web.

Alexa claims that developers, students and startups will be given inexpensive access to an industrial-scale web crawler -- the same technology used by industry giants like Yahoo (Yahoo Slurp) and Google (Googlebot).

Amazon is doing very innovative stuff, indeed. Last month they opened beta version of Mechanical Turk which could bring some other implication for the web with ''webshoring''.

Who would expect Amazon will go into all this ?
Case study for Alexa Web Crawl is Musipedia, an interesting search engine where you can search melodies whisperin or playing short samles of music.

MSN Search to pay users

Bill Gates makes bold statement , according to Wall Street Journal ( Via Netzeitung ).
He said that they will earnings from search engines ads share with users. No details are given.

Finally, my source is german web news site. My resolution for new year will be to get back closer to german language and read it everyday.
My first foreign langugage is german, not english.

Speed of light in the city

Nice to see how's the feeling of traveling with the speed of light. Impossible, but still simulated in the lab.
Look at this tour through the streets of german city Tubingen.

The future of HTML

Ed Dumbill from IBM wrote about the future of HTML . His view is that HTML is not very good language for building web pages. At least the best we have at this moment.
There was a progress...

HTML's ease of learning and the view source capability for browsers has bootstrapped the Web's popularity in an amazing way. The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) involvement in standardizing HTML has ensured that Web browsers all implement the same dialect, more or less. The emergence of CSS, and the corresponding growth of standards-based Web design as best practice has also averted HTML chaos and led to a better Web experience for users and developers alike.

As I understand, the point is making user interface more dynamic and enabling browsers to more closely work with web based apps and systems making seemless experience.

Ajax method is only one solution, but as Ed states, it's not standardized. Browsere vendors ( like Mozilla and Opera ) are wanting more. Their proposition is HTML5 or Web Application 1.0 and Web Forms 2.

Many of these future enhancements are already , at least conceptualy, in use on the web with JavaScript combinations.

W3C has the ball to bless.

Quick fix

Installed JustBlogIt .
Blogging from Firefox's right click. It's faster for quick writing.
W.Bloggar is doing trouble on my system so I stopped using it.

Old speak

I disagree.
Lurking Loic's wiki about the event in Paris ; LesBlogs conference.

Did I said that I disagree ?
Here's what I read in the main session of the wiki, and I'll be short in my comments:

* definition: what is this new state of mind ?
* How does it challenge the corporate world ?
* How does it change the media landscape ?
* How does it bring more democracy in politics ?
* How does education evolve ?
* What are the tools used and how we can all best benefit from them
* Where we are going in the near and longer term future
* the_european_blogosphere a collaborative work from 50+ bloggers to describe the
European Blogosphere and best cases
* european_startups_and_initiatives around Web 2.0 and social software

New state of mind ? As a long time blogger I can't see that. Do you ?

Challenge corporate world ? Who ? Blogs ? C'mon, I don't buy it. We are corporate world, we want ''wage per hour'', and have time for our hobby- blogging ;) I certanly need that time - more ( lately , busy-blogging ).
It will change PR practices from time to time, and make corporate faces more responsive and open, but in the crisis, they will hit you with common PR speak.

Change media ? Slow, but not blogs ( and other interactive web forms, I'll be damned, I'll write to state that as such, not alone blogs... )
The current media companies are clueless, applying old media strategies looking to find new dynamics, and my thought is that they will find that and make it ''theirs''. Yes, yes, no more ''we the media'', it'll be natural. Murdoch knows that new strategy, and soon it'll have econonomy of scale in attention economy of new born media consuption.

Democracy ? No, but self-serving groups, and interest groups- yes. We still lack of seriouse integration of social software and public sector.
I often see how many in the western world don't realize the difference between public and privat sector. They are preaching about social software from private sector perspective, which is nice for building apps and infrustructure but completly mission impossable for real tasks and needs of the citizens.

Education evolve ?
Yes, it is evolving, I use blogs, podcasts, reading RSS english feeds and learn english I wouldn't otherwise ;))

European start up activity is dead. Be honest. We have immitators, clones and wholesales distributors. There's very little technology inovation. Maybe we should look at Eastern Europe start ups.

Now, that would be something.
Hidden web is just around your european corner ;))

Bonus conference tip, very amusing article over at Robert's blog about Mena's corporate speak :))
Maybe we are all assholes. Or at least, we deserved to be called like that :)

Many-Times-Stop internet space

It's no secret I am often angry how croatian blogosphere , nevertheless still immature , is out of radar and percived with ignorance on daily basis in the outside world ( world's blogosphere map ) and what blogs in Croatia have achived since 2004 in terms of information sharing, citizen journalism, community building, density and attention of the users.

Today I read the praise ( qoute: "Claiming a youth audience three times larger than MTV in Sweden, two times larger than the entire readership of all of the Swedish evening newspapers combined and more members logging on daily than the total number of young Swedes watching almost every television show, Lunarstorm has become an accidental media titan here." ) for very successful swedish youth site LunarStorm.se, even Howard Rheingold wrote an article about the community site for the Feature. I asked myself, what's the math behind LunarStorm ( users, page load etc. in relative terms comparing it with the internet use in above-mentioned countries).

UPDATE 30.11.2005 Thomas Crampton apparently wrote as well about LunarStorm.

Lunar Storm is impressive indeed. Sticky community site for those 15-25 age. But they don't seems to grasp that there are other examples here in central and eastern Europe with many similarities and success. Not to mention citizen reporting boom.

Although I often speak with foreigners and try to explain them, I have a feeling that they think I'm some fucking salesman doing my daily pitch or web shark with advertising 1.0 in mind.
Well, wrong pals ! I wish you could read croatian and see it for yourself and not reading my boring half-english :)

I will compare croatian blogging community site www.blog.hr with swedish LunarStorm.se community site.
My point is that in relative terms, applying web economics and some conventional wisdom, Blog.hr is contributing to more density and attention of users at one point in cyberspace and then swedish LunarStorm , and all that with much different path as a successful operation and different time horizont.

I call it Many-Times-Stop-Community. Just like portals used to be ''hub''.
LunarStorm is highly profitable and revenue vehicle with corporate structure, employees, professional support, paid services, marketing budget etc.

Blog.hr has only formal organisation ( it's sister site of Monitor.hr news portal, one of the four biggest news portals in Croatia). Not even one employee, no help desk, no marketing since day one, no paid services.

Free. Web based and hosted blog tool in its purest and simpliest form, no added services like email, social networtk tools, private messages and advanced features like trackback or domain mapping.

Just four dedicated people, and only one who is doing daily administration and that name you should write now- Dario Markus, 19 year old - the most talented internet entrepreneur in this part of the world , no matter what some critics would say. I know what I am talking.

Let's do some math. You now, like comparing how much , in relative terms , costs oil in the US and how much in Ghana ;))

Start with something simple, random number of internet users logged in.

Lunar Storm - random nbr.of users online: 37.000 on November, 28th 2005.
Blog.hr - random nbr.of users online : aprox. 2.000 on November, 28th, 2005.

If we compare it to number of internet users then we get value of 0,72 percent for LunarStorm in relative terms to the number of internet users in the country, and we get value of 0,19 percent for Blog.hr in relative terms to the number of internet users in Croatia.

That's 2,5 times more for swedish site. Fine. But, now, take in the account internet penetration rates relative to the population. You get a picture where internet usage penetrated swedish society exactly 2,5 times more than in croatia.
That means, if we apply relative number in above values of random internet users currently online we get the value of exactly the same. 0,19 or 0,72 in the opposite direction.

I based my calculation and information for internet users, and population from Google source, here are data for Sweden and here are for Croatia . ( Source: Cia Factbook )

Keep in mind that Sweden has very advanced internet infrastructure and much, much cheaper prices for internet access for years ( liberalised market for web access and many telecom multinational corporations , and not to say word or two about its business growth and strength ) .
The telecom market in Croatia just started to be more open and more cheaper for average user.

Let's look at montly pages impression.

LunarStorm claims as of February 2005. : Aprox. 1 billion
Blog.hr claims as of November 2005. : Aprox. 15 billion

See the difference ?
If not, look what Google thinks with its results
LunarStorm.se by Google : 74.400 as of November 28th ( it has been online since 2001.).
Blog.hr by Google: 1.920.000 as of November 28th ( it has been online since May 2004.).

Let's look at daily visitors.

LunarStorm claims as of February 2005. : Aprox. 300.000-400.000 users daily ( that's wide rift )
Blog.hr claims as of November 2005. : Aprox. 105.000 users daily and growing

No need to apply relative numbers here, just use conventional wisdom. Let's say, Blog.hr is among 3 top sites in Croatia by daily visits.

I'm tired writing and doing math for this essay ;)
I hope you get a picture.
I'll work later on this article and try to make more of it.
It's little simplistic view and without consideration of some other aspects of these two community web sites.

Blog.hr begun, as I said, in May 2004. LunarStorm.se started in 2001. Blog.hr has diverse community of users in the age from 15 to 65. LunarStorm is dedicated to audience between 15-25 years.
Not to forget, croatian bloggers write blogs with other tools ( specially, those more techo savy ) : Blogger, Livejournal, MojBlog.com, WordPress, MT and other blogging tools, but 95 percent are using Blog.hr site.

Although, very late to the party, it's pure mainstream in Croatia. Newspapers are discovering stories with Blog.hr users. The users are doing amateur reporting and citizen journalism in its full strength, with pictures too.
And Blog.hr still needs a lot of features that are waiting in the pipe like tags, RSS reader, MMS picture galleries, private shops for selling used goods, social networking cards, offline meetings etc. The potential is huge.

That's it for now. Hope to improve this article and enforce my point of views with more details in the future.

Belive it or not :) But, let it be heard.
My intention was not here to play game ''my is bigger than yours'' but to illustrate the differences and similarities.

Blogging in the Enterprise

Recent findings and statistics about blogs in the ( US ) enterprises. When will someone make study for croatian enterprises ?

Clearly, US is fertil ground for ideas related to blogs in the enterprise. The source of latest , seems very relevant, study is made by GuideWireGroupe for iUpload.

The headline statement is that as many as 89 percent of US companies currently blog or plan to start in the near future.
They do it for internal and external communication. 63 % of those for internal use are for knowledge sharing, and 44 % said they blog for internal communication.
61 % of those for external use are doing it for PR and marketing purposes.

The adoption rate is higher among smaller companies and those with fewer than 100 employees and with the revenue less than $ 100 million.

On top of that, more than 30 percent CEOs have blogs, and they blog because of greater transparency to customers and stuff and a channel of daily communication.

Still, I doubt this percentage for CEOs blogs is realistic, because according to Millward Brownfor study made for Burson - Marsteller and PRWeek, of 131 CEOs surveyed about 7 % had a blog.

About Google Base

Late to the party with Google Base. I think, just like they are late to the party with Google Reader, at least for those advanced users of net. The other will probably use niche products.

Base is nice for their index, lot's of content could find its place there. But, it not finished product yet, there's no added value for the net users , for example would be nice to have Google Base Badge, just like Flickr has for pictures to be displayed on the blog / web site, so I could offer some items on my blog I have for selling .

I don't think that Base is treat to Craigslist or EBay at this point of time, at least not from the users point of view. But, there's tremendouse power Google posses and could take a piece of ads cake.

The evolution of service could bring Google edge later on, with users input about imperfaction.
Why's Google UI so...how sall I say, not-interesting at all.

Sharing one cold evening

The evening in Zagreb was interesting, a lot of nice people, Joi's session , but way too cold weather outdoor for my taste.

Sergej from croatian SAP made a video of the session, and Dario posted gallery and wrote a short story on the main Blog.hr site.

Ouch, I came home about 1.20 am from Zagreb. I drove 25 kilometers under the snow, and before that for about 1 hour riding on the train to Koprivnica.
And early in the morning back to work. Tough day.

Joi Ito in Croatia

As far as I can remember, I am reading Joi Ito's blog since 2002.
He's in Croatia for few days. I hope to meet him tomorow in Zagreb since I will be there with my team from Blog.hr, croatian blogging service which will incorporate Creative Commons license for its users.
First , Joi opened session in Dubrovnik for an annual croatian academic conference, and tommorow he'll have session Economy of sharing at Novinarski dom Zagreb.
I feel he's like my long not seen ''blogging friend'', only he doesn't read my blog ;)) I think we would have a lot to chat once we meet.

Visiting Plitvice Lakes

Gone to Plitvice Lakes, croatian national park. I need relaxation.
Have you read what National Geographic wrote the other day about Croatia ? Destination of the Year ? Nice.

Plitvice are amazing place for sightseeing tours. The music of water and nature.
Well, some pictures are worth for upload ;))
Or read about national park Plitvice Lakes here.

Pic 1.



Pic 2.

Quick comments on the latest

...that caught my pure attention and interest...

AMAZON'S CREATIVE BLOOM
Amazon.com is innovating. Brand new services Amazon Upgrade and Amazon Pages. It is truly consumer service and more valuable then Google Print and all other digital book scanning initiatives. Just think, Pages services offers you to own portions of the book, and Upgrade give you ability to look at your book from anywhere online/somehow your bookshelve is allways with you.

OPEN SOURCE ON A HIGHWAY
Invades the enterprise, says Forbes.com. God Bless mr. Boyd ( and his bike ) with whom I had pleasant talk few years back about Floss solution for companies here in Croatia. He opened my eyes, somehow.

ADS FOR THE NET'S ERA RADIO SHOWS
Finally Fruitcast, the publishers of focused radio net shows ( often called Podcasting ) have gotten way to earn money ( or support, if you prefere ) for their efforts . It's a Fruitcasts's concept. Very smart ! Probably this service will be bought and copied in the future.

Silent and tired, but ON !

It is been my fault for not writing much.
Silent again and with reason , here on the site. Busy, again, busy !

My day job is pretty demanding lately. Lot's to do in my spare time. But I have been researching and reading a lot. So not completely out of blogosphere .

Short summary of some latest news around me:

- researching business press issues ( digital publishing related ) in and around Croatia, still, I see, how we in Croatia are lacking of inside knowledge to current trends in digital publishing, content and media, how we dont follow best practices on the web for the ventures , in summary, we lack KNOW-HOW, ( if they ever ask for giving advice to them ( to whom it goes ) , it'll cost them many times more than they got chance when they refused first time, my time is costly ;)
- making brainstorming with Dario about enhanced version of Blog.hr,
- having been in contact with Kemal Mujicic Kemo, blog traveler around Croatia, making for him visit blog cards ( still not delivered to him ),
- the days are shorter , my mood is lower and my body exhausted,
- got new dress equipment for my football team, we are very successful and improving, my legs are in better shape and condition and I am satisfied with my capabilities,
- found out that I need to attend more of cultural events
- I've been busy compailing business plan for my new hobby venture
- my blood pressure is still too high, need to lower daily coffee doses
- I do rare podcasting ( need to make a new one )
- I am laughing at out local politicians, so stupid decisions ( since I am , so to speak , insider in my local community but silent officer that doesn't rock the boat ;)
- got my new mobile number by Tele2, new mobile operator in Croatia, but still not using it, it's so called ''golden number'', easly remembered,
- today make up new name for my future band, it's great catchy name and I am very pleased with how it sounds,
- my digital camera is broken

Google lost direction

From the first glance of Google Reader demoed today, I felt this is deep, deep beta version for one Google service. Google Reader  makes bad user experience. I haven't seen yet on their portal so weak and unprepered service ( yes, now they are acting portal-like ).
That's part of their strategy to announce the crowd at Web2Con - something, just not to be left out. Silly, I think.
I wonder whether there were some laughs on behalf of mighty Google.
Netvibes.com  is something more better, only lacks powerfull search module and some customization abilities.
Really surprising to me today, how company that aims to organize information of our World and Time ( quoting their mission statement)  can miss with RSS technologies so much.

Swik and LiveMarks

Swik.net, made by Alex Bosworth ( SourceLabs ), had a revamp. I already wrote about this neat site on ZOJ.
It looks fresh and straightforward.
Open source projects could have wikis, tags and blogs on board. Like to see two ''quick buttons''. It will lead you to some random project or latest edits.
One suggestion, if I may so, sort the directory by letters.
Somehow I realised I am using another web app made by the same author, namely, LiveMarks for checking those  popular bookmarks on del.icio.us.

Confession to make

I must confess, in deeply personal manner,  that my blog post are depersonalised since I began writing this blog in english. No more private parts and silly wording and pictures. Someone would said ''thanks god!''.

 My main preoccupation was commenting stuff from other media and opinions. I hope it'll change soon.
Oh, yes, soon. That's the word. Action is needed.

Now when blogger has ability to host pictures I rarely use it. True, my digi cam is broken currently, but there's a tone in my archives.
I hope to post some soon.
And what about podcasting ?
 It's so freaking time-consuming or I don't have inspiration. That's it.

Toxic blogging

Something's wrong.
Spammers are in front of the Zec Online Journal gates.

My last article got 9 comments. Hadn't have so much comments on my blogger blog since 2002 ;)
And all of them are spam comments.
Folks, I don't like it.

ZDNet UK has an article about toxic web. Spam and fake blogs are rampant these days.

Retail telephony

OpenWengo softphone should be clear winner among softphones in the future.
It is supported by Neuf Telecom, a french VOIP -to-PSTN carrier and worldwide community of developers. The concept which could bring more ''fruit'' so smart companies.

The main difference, for example, related to Skype or Gizmo is that it talks SIP , the source code is GPLed ( general public licence ) . Only the codecs are part of the problem which could be clear up with advent of free audio and video codecs.

Which brings me all to the old news that Skype was bought for 4 billions. Well, someone was smart and wise ;)
Let's suppose that softphone platforms are commodities. Is there a future for some sort of branding telephone services as a value added service ? Your favorite retailer or bank could provide you with telephone services in the future. Manufacturers of variouse devices could sell you device with telephony feature ?

Just some thoughts. We need still to get there. Best with open-sourced codecs in mind. Am I missing something or is it possible right now?

By now, Google Print is innocent

Having looking at the news that Google is sued by some authors, I run onto one really, really stupid story. Preston Gralla wrote, in my view, misleading article about whole issue over Google Print service.
I responded to Galla's article in the comment section. Here's my comment republished:

I have a web site, blogs etc. Everything's included there, I mean my essays, pictures and stuff are under copyright by default.
The law enables that. Fine.

My medium is internet and not paper books as in case of those authors. Since internet is in play, it's public place indexed by search engines. One of those search engines is Google who crawls my content and makes available when matched with some keywords for the internet searching. Yes, Google makes money enveloping these searches with ads.

So, Google figure it out to how to crawl content from other medium ( Books, remember ? ). He offers only small portion of the book's text and that's ''fair use'' . Still, no ads there yet, but could be in the future and links to publisher will be valuable as well. I presume only.
But, there's screem by those who are by intellectual property laws protected that this is bad behaviour and takes money away from their pockets.

Wrong, and misleading.

It actually makes for some of them branding, free word-of-mouth marketing, higher sales of their books and higher visibility.
The books are digitalized very easly these days, just like any piece of text.

So, stay current or die on the shelves ! Oh, acctually, suppose that some ot these, once famouse authors, are again in the spotlight ( imagine that) and interested because millions of people can access snipets of their work ( and locate it ) via some keywords and be interested to have copy of that book on their shelves.

Now, that's what I call ''value". Easy found book . I thinks that's the point. Google Print locates book I might be interested in. Insert the logic behind ''long tail'' concept ( I wonder why Amazon didn't started such service before , it has something similar ) . But, that could as well bring me to impulsive buying of books that are ''cat's in the bag'' !

Maybe Google Print will become some sort of public service, and use their power to make commercial service onto something related, although I doubt :))

Netvibes- MyWeb 2.0

Something on the latest web frontier is following>

netvibes.com

It's a personalized homepage I like so much.
It has AJAX-ed interface and works very fast. RSS feeds are the center of informational content .
Netvibes was started by small french team last week. They made it much better then MS with Start.com and Google with its personalized homepage.
This is truly amazing example of Web 2.0 concept ; web as a platform.
Netbvibes.com has a blog and wiki to get insight on the latest development.

I've been busy lately so light posting ahead. But netvibes.com is something I need it to announce.

Odeo claim again

Odeo claim again. See last article about troubles with my RSS feed . Finally I got Odeo channel and according to instruction will claim it via this post.

Episode # 4 : Odeo claim

My Odeo Channel (odeo/388dde5a19e88c70)

Odeo claim channel

SPEECH

Title : Odeo button up | Click to listen |

File size: 428.29 KB
Length: 0:18
Format: mp3

My Odeo Channel (odeo/388dde5a19e88c70)

Just made some some changes and added Odeo subscription button. It's a green button on the right.
The channel will contain my audio blog shows posted here as well. I recorded short piece of audio today to claim my channel over at Odeo.com according to the instructions from their help file.

The Odeo team responded quickly as I asked them for help few days ago.
I saw in my logs someone searched for croatian podcast. Well, this is one, but not regular :)) I tried to make a podcast show once a week.

SIDENOTE: It seems Odeo channel doesn't add my mp3s.
The problem could be del.icio.us feeds I submitted ( it's without enclosure support ). And what's the biggest irony I found out, Blogspot ( Blogger ) atom feed doesn't have valid XML code when one has pictures included inside posts.

Not even my Feedburner feed validate ! Pictures inside post guilty again. Therefore it is rejected by Odeo system, it says the link is broken. But my del.icio.us feed took it as valid, unfortunatly, I realised del. feed doesn't support enclosures. What should I do ? Ah, complications.

UPDATE:
Thanks Tim for your suggestion and help, yes, it works with the link you said. It is supported feed by Odeo and made a channel. I will claim that channel again.
For those who eventually subsribed to my old Odeo channel, here's a link on a new one.
My delicious podcast feed changed as well.

Web OnDemand Lifestyle

Having read Kottke's hypothesis about WebOS.
If it is still far away from integrated reality, then why not check this out; ePlatform claims it is digital lifestyle generator. Call it as you like.
After all it doesn't have those weird widgets :))

It has everything web trendy in itself.
I didn't try to use it so I don't have experience with the service. ePlatform is still in beta. Don't know who's behind a service .
Maybe some undercover operation by Kottke's start-up :))
ePlatform doesn't offer much mobile service which is not so ''trendy''. Come on, at least location aware instant messanger with local classifieds and buddies :) Or WSIWG editor , he, he...

Post-modern eyes

Again, let's do link-blogging for a while. Quick thoughts too.
I like that way of publishing on the web . Hadn't done a lot lately. Remember french chef that are eating only cheese and some quick stuff ;))

It works that I spot some link, news, talk, feed and quickly have something to say without to worry about ''the big picture '' or ''the whole''.

About mashing things up wrote Rodrigo. This is a trend that is present for years . We live in postodern society. The rules are copy & paste, rip-burn-mix !. Remember brit-pop ? Oasis ? Prodigy? That was only the start.
We take some old stuff and with new eyes do something truly beatiful. Say rss feeds. Isn't that begun with Pointcast debacle and some old concepts from Netscape ? There's so many things we can find in the past and with new eyes make a difference.

Remember what one friend said to me: '' You see, Goethe hasn't have notebook with GPRS card, mobile phone with a cam and wasn't connected to so much people ''. We laughed ! By the way, he's the the living legend among croatian writers and knows what is he talking.

Copylinksation

Someone is publishing and displaying my del.icio.us RSS feed ( or just some links- shared interest ? ) over at Novina.com.
The links are aggregated in the left sidebar of the page under IT section. Many links I bookmarked yesterday were up early in the morning on Novina.com.
Can't comment on the site, because comments are disabled.
Grandpa, I wish you you could see this, I'm IT- Destilator right now :))

At the first glance it's a web log and the author is ''gaba''. Seems to be another croatian blog and looks promising. It's tech-log. Good to know there are many more promising blogs. Good news aggregator ( Croatian oriented ) can be found on novina.com

Probably one of the lurkers/ invisible readers here on ZeOnJournal.
I removed del.icio.us aggregation links from my blog some time ago.

So, finally, there's some feedback ;))
Zec Online Journal says hello to Novina !

Blinkx crawls my web audio feed

SPEECH

Title: Blinkx crawls my podcast feed [ LISTEN ]
File size: 1.2 MB
Length: 0:48
Format: mp3


As of today , Blinkx crawls my podcasts. I submitted today over at Blinkx who has a lot of buzz lately, apparently Murdoch's News Corp. mulls buying start-up audio/video search engine. If you are podcaster ( posts audio shows on the net) , you must be in their index.

I am not one of those very productive podcasters. This is only my second official podcast here on Zec Online Journal ( My first was here). Previously, I've done experiments with audio format and published few audio shows on the net.

I find difficult for average internet user to produce meaningfull podcast, cause it requires resources such as time and inspiration. Since I'm working full time and do much in part-time, I can't have all of these all the time. And I'm more of the ''text type blogger'' then ''audio type''.

To all potential listeners of these short audio escapades: my english isn't perfect so don't cry foul :))
I'm working on it. The plan is to practice more and more. Have in mind, my whole days conversation is based in croatian language so my accent can't be shiny english :)

Hope, my audio shows will be more interested in the future, and I'll try to be topical with audio content and acctualy craft it around some predictiable themes, like for example Audio News From Croatia. Could be of potential value to the Croats around the world, if done right, I guess ;)

The newest web audio show is on the go...

Google for your home

Google Inc. expands search product portfolio.
The Google Mini software - enhanced version is out. Small and medium companies are main target .It should help them searching digital documents on their websites and intranets. I wonder how the sale's going :))

Basically, it's a software that founds 220 file formats and 100.000 digital documents. It costs $ 2.995.

Costly sport ! I don't see myself buying into that ;) Google Search Appliances has its logic for implementing inside big repositories, organisation or data clusters. But Google Mini ? Can't find much market for this thingie.

The US Department of Defense knew about Al Qaida cell in 2000.

Associated Press writer was in a position to see documents in the US Defense department that were classified before. It's related to the September 11th attack.
The documents mentioned military intelligence unit known as "Able Danger'' who was esthablished with the purpose to identify potential al-Qaida operatives for U.S. Special Operations Command. And they did it. It was year 2000., one full year before attacks and they found out:

Able Danger identified Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi as members of a cell the unit code-named "Brooklyn" because of some loose connections to New York City.

Let's remember that The September 11th Commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell. Now, asked about it, Mr. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana said

"Had we learned of it obviously it would've been a major focus of our investigation."

The Commision spoke with military personnel during investigation, and it seems that officals could recall Able Danger story, but can't remember The military said them about Al Qaida cell and connections. So, military was silent on that part in front of offical investigators.

Does that mean The September 11th commision should arrange reviews of their conclusions and findings? Some 9/11 widows think so.

Latest evidence is pointing out on the fact that some officials inside Defense Department had a knowledge of Al Quaida cell in the US way back to 2000.

The latest revelation came last monday when Goverment Security News run a story that was later picked up by New York Times.
Congressmen Weldon is very vocal about the issue, and spoke this summer with local newspaper in Pa., and spoke on the Congres floor in July.
Weldon's sorces are former defense officials who worked for Able Danger team in Florida during 2000., and speak on the condition of anonimity. Weldon briefed representative Hoerkstra, the Michigan Republican.

The information about this development wasn't allowed ( DIA units ) to be shared with law enforcment agencies ( FBI) . They could be shared technicaly, but as Weldon says ( R-Pa., vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees) , ''Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally so information on them could not be shared with law enforcement ''.

FBI hadn't got information about the group at that time ( 2000. ). Why this piece of information wasn't forwared since the members of the cell were in the country on the visas and were not ''US persons'' ?

Whom was the information on the cell delivered ? They knew (DoD) they had to deal with potential enemies, so they must be put under some form of surviellance.

If FBI hadn't traced four young men of islamic descent during 2000. and 2001., then who did ?

FOLLOW UP:

Taipei Times Taiwan reports
The Times of India
St.Petersburg Times
Brad Blog
Deseret News
Asbury Park Press
Newark Star-Ledger

Apply this to the ''old'' world

I wonder, what one gets mixing hacker's philosophy , global value chains, and Creative Commons licences .
Things to remind us of productive collaboration via this story about manufacturing Danish beer . The recipe of the beer is free for sharing and modification under CC .

As some bright minds of the world recently discussed about creative explosion not seen since industrial revolution.
Quote>

Just because something is created by anyone with a net connection and some sort of know-how, existing outside of formal, does not make it any less accurate or useful, say the digital thinkers of our times.

"For the first time since the industrial revolution, the most important means and components of core economies are in the hands of the population at large," explains Yale Law professor Yochai Benkler.

Yuan's slow devaluation

The news of the month is that China today ends yuan dollar peg. It's not as broad as some expected but instead very gradual move.
Having in mind political and economical consequences , this is one of the most important events for the global financial markets this year.
Will see how far chinese policy makers will go.
This quote is very telling:

"It's just a gesture. The question now is whether there will be continuing speculation that China may revalue even more," said Ben Kwong, an analyst from KGI Asia in Hong Kong.

Web 2.0 roses

These two sites were unknown to me.

Start.com - Microsoft is experimenting with ''personal web'' concept.

PixelPass.com - Allows hight valuable bloggers to recive micropayments.

Let's talk about Start.com first. Nice ajaxed web app, surprisingly agile team from Microsoft and seems they are onto something. Not completely unseen but could be powerful and nice service in the future.
Search is main component as far as I can tell. Oh, rss reading too.
I am playing only few moments and immediatly write my thoughts here.

After writing search query, Start.com scans web, news and rss places. My first query was '' Croatia''. The response is good and the results are relevant. Now I can choose to look at recent news and rss feeds only with ONE click !

Amazing, the buttons for subscribing to some rss feeds about Croatia is at hand, instantly .
Left pane of the site gives me opportunity to categorize these feeds . Woh ! I got deja vu now ! I't's exactly what I thought about croatian rss feed service ( potential ) for average internet users.

Up to the point.
I can't write any more. I discovered my legos :))

Later more on that.

P.S
When this service comes out in beta , Feedlounge will be somehow obsolet.
I think this is web based rss reader for the masses. Yes, Start.com.
They need to put social bookmarking too. MS team has a blog from the START.com ;))

Read and come

Beautiful article in today's New York Times about Croatia , its islands and tourism in general.
Great to see again such praise for my country in NY Times online edition.
Let the magic roll and words blossom ;)

Nowhere is the tourist board's touted "Magical Croatia" brand more fitting than on Hvar, where they give names to the wind but not the streets, where children are said to fly and the richest man in the world has to wait for his latte during fjaka, when the island tucks in for its afternoon siesta.

True. Must see.

Aerial images and maps

To me, as a non-american, exploring US from above ( satellite and aerial photos, not driving maps) is more useful using Microsoft's partnership Terra Servers then using Google Maps. Far better, faster, simple; just more to the point. Google can have all blog evangelism of the world ( and those APIs , community and buzz ), but I'll stick to Terra Server database when closely watching some streets :)).
It works for me just as many others. Map my words ;)
Or, shall I say, combine those ( Examples for location: Terra Servers and Google Maps ) two services.

Swik- a collaborative space

As a someone who has experience as lecturer for high school students ( law subjects ) and a long time blogger, I find truly fascinating Swik- combinations of user editing which are using concept of wikis, tags, rss and blogs to enable truly collaborative enviroment for groups who may learn with strong emphasis on searching and adding relevant content.
Swik is doing brilliant job.

OK, Swik's content is related to highly geeky themes, but similar concept could be made for any other subject and topic, or community interest.

Electricity ''pipes'' to deliver high speed net

Google has invested ( besides media titan Hearst and bankers at Goldman Sachs ) in broadband-over-powerline company. I wonder why smart money is chasing these technologies ? I heard somewhere that the biggest value of those systems lays in their ability to efficiently manage power grids. Not delivering broadband.
As CNET wrote about the deal for delivering such a service:

Under its relationship with most power companies, Current runs the service, bills the customers and collects 100 percent of the revenue. Power companies, in return for use of their grid, receive payments from Current.

Another broadband-over-powerline partnering project is located in northern Texas.

UPDATE:

IBM enters BPL deal as well. Interesting.

Our internet, your internet

True, what Joi Ito, japanese blogger, said about ''internets''. I like his thought that average individual doesn't notice internet ( web content ) outside of their country.
Quote:

I would say that the average individual probably doesn't really notice the Internet outside of their country or really care about content not in their native language.

How true; there are numerouse examples where local markets and cultures dictate what web content ( especially which web service ) user will prefer. I mean, does Yahoo, Amazon or Ebay can deliver ( no matter how strong brand they have ) succesfull web service into emerging economies ( Russia, Poland, Hungary, Croatia ) ?
I doubt so.
Very clear to me when speaking about Croatia. As I wrote, before, for example, we had numerouse service available on the web for auctions, but neither of them had successful service and users hadn't care.

They prefer barter trade but with other means, like special ad papers and web editions of these papers to exchange things, and not to ''auction'' things.

But in the end, I don't think such behaviour will hinder proliferation of ideas and global voices on the internet.

Sell or not to sell T-mobile US

When I heard a rumor early this week that T-Mobile plans to sell its US arm , the very first thought that came was skeptical by nature.
Why would they do that ? Deutsche Telekom to sell the most healthier part of their business? No way, I said to myself, just like many analysts and investors.

According to their 1st quarter, the growth rate was 40 %.
The market share of 10 % in US, very healthy subscriber base, and positioning in the youth market. These are all strong DT fundamental in US.

So, the cited reasons in the rumor were that Deutsche Telekom will face huge bill for upgrading its network to 3G ( the investment could top 10 billion ) , so that the released fonds will be used for buying european assets. Sort of strategically rewiring.

The expections are, according to this very same rumors , of at least $ 30 billion for the eventual selling price.

But I doubt german institutional investors would be happy with above mentioned price. It 's still less when having in mind DT entry on US markets with the deal of buying Voicestream at the high of dot com inflated market prices.
Satisfied or not, the financial reality sets market value for the asset price which could be lower in the future.

The question addressed to the management of DT could be are they in the know of something that markets haven't yet figure out ?

If so, there could be strategic deal to get rid of that asset while it's still can obtain such a high price.

But, at least for now, there's no buyer for T-mobile US arm. Vodafon , as potential buyer, declined immediatly such a rumor.

Human brain doesn't work like computer

The Cornell University study concludes that human brain doesn't work like computer. Instead, the mind works like a dynamic continuum.
People can't be programmed like PCs. The mind is more than just a order of 0's and 1's. Even though the humanity likes to call brain ''human computer'', newly released studies aren't on that path. Still, some projects , just like IBM's Blue Brain Project, are under way with a goal to map the brain and unearth its secrets.
It's close to possible that human brain will stay secret to all of us forever. Every human is distinct for itself. In the name of science and health, further scientific research of brain is needed, but it's hardly to expect its complete mapping .
The above mentioned project conducted by IBM engeeners is distinct from all trials befores because it is using raw power of supercomputers and not laboratory studies.
But, at the end, IBM hopes to find how, by the latest theories, brain rewires itself, so that they could use and apply this logic to the new generation of supercomputers.
Qoute>

And it is not just brain research that will benefit from the Blue Brain project. The latest theory is that brain circuitry is in a complex state of flux, the brain rewiring itself every moment of its existence. If the scientists can crack open the secret of how and why the brain does it, the knowledge could lead to a revolutionary new breed of supercomputers. Such computers could make today's supercomputers look like lumbering analog calculators!

Jajah takes on Skype ?

Newly released software Jajah, for making phone calls over the Internet, aims to gain market share in crowded VOIP industry where Skype dominates. The Austrian based team released last week desktop client available for free downloading which installs onto users PC and enables to make calls between PCs, PCs and landlines, PCs and mobile phones and to SIP phones.

Jajah marks itself as revolutionary web phone whose users can call their buddies on Skype and some other Internet telephony networks .
Some say it's important to have interoperability between VOIP providers but it should be done with consent of participants to safeguard security and privacy issues.
Jajah has many standard features in their software client such as audio and video calls, text messaging, chat, call on landline phones with applicable fee.
Communication expert Robin Good thinks it's killer application for Internet telphony, but some skeptics call Jajah team responsible for unprepared release and advise more work should be done to make a significant impact in the crowded VOIP space.

Skype is the most popular program for making phone calls over the Internet with almost 40 milion users around the world.
In the past few years Internet telephony gain on popularity curbed by wider acceptance of broadband Internet acces and prove that it can lower communication cost for international calls.

Ring my another webphone

Today again in telephony mode. Ever heard about Gizmoproject? Now it's time. It's project backed by Michael Robertson ( The founder of MP3.com, Lindows... ).

The other article is great to read, it's about VOIP fraud, courtesy of Voxilla.

Jajah webphone

Jajah is a killer phone software. I feel it ! If it works just like Robin Good says, it's my pleasure to have calls over Jajah . At the moment, I am still downloading Jajah so haven't tried yet.

Skype was pain in the ass, it drained my resources, bandwith over dial up, voice was distant. The community on Skype is most valuable, and seems that Jajah is interoperable in terms of buddy list.
Must look at Jajah rates for calling on regular phones.

Can't wait to ring my home phone. There are 5 minutes free prepaid.

UPDATE:

Thanks to the Jajah team for contact and warm response. I know they are surprised with the adoption of Jajah and are busy handling the whole operation. Thanks for your additional explanation. Now, I am more convinced that good people are behind these project.
My review of Jajah expect sometime in the future. Currently , I am busy.

Apple +Intel Inside

R.Cringley thinks Intel and Apple are posed for merger. The reason : Microsoft.
Interesting speculation. Apple announced this week that it will use Intel processors, starting 2006.

Super feed cheating

Google is super star on financial markets in US. Impressive indeed. But what then ? Take a look at this - SuperFeedSystem, new type of software available for automatic publishing and syndicating content ( via rss format ) , found over at Svakodnevica blog
How will that fit with various ad programs on the web like Google AdSense etc. ?

Lessons about nuclear weapons

Robert McNamara: Article in June's edition of Foreign Policy.

Robert S. McNamara was U.S. secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968 and president of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981.

The crucial words are here:

If the United States continues its current nuclear stance, over time, substantial proliferation of nuclear weapons will almost surely follow. Some, or all, of such nations as Egypt, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Taiwan will very likely initiate nuclear weapons programs, increasing both the risk of use of the weapons and the diversion of weapons and fissile materials into the hands of rogue states or terrorists. Diplomats and intelligence agencies believe Osama bin Laden has made several attempts to acquire nuclear weapons or fissile materials. It has been widely reported that Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, former director of Pakistan’s nuclear reactor complex, met with bin Laden several times. Were al Qaeda to acquire fissile materials, especially enriched uranium, its ability to produce nuclear weapons would be great. The knowledge of how to construct a simple gun-type nuclear device, like the one we dropped on Hiroshima, is now widespread. Experts have little doubt that terrorists could construct such a primitive device if they acquired the requisite enriched uranium material. Indeed, just last summer, at a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry said, “I have never been more fearful of a nuclear detonation than now.… There is a greater than 50 percent probability of a nuclear strike on U.S. targets within a decade.” I share his fears.

Intro podcast

Title: Short intro to my Zec Online podcast [ Listen now ! ]
Length: 0:21
Format: MP3

Description: Acctually, not my first podcast. Nobody knows here in Croatia I've put some of my audio files into RSS 2.0 available format long time ago, but nevermind...I don't expect someone will make big deal out of it. My ego is happy without any media attention. Who cares! Those in the know will...well, know !

Just a short voice intro, let's hear how it sounds. It's my pure real-life voice without any sound effects. The background music is Morcheeba.

Stay audioblogged....

Notes

Some quick reminders on the news I left behind, I need to read them more carefully. Later.

Another RSS format for mass adoption>
Yahoo and its media RSS.

The talk Simon Waldman gave in Seul:

Slashdot:
Internetwork start up companies.

Celebrations

This news got me into deep thinking in the afternoon :D
Here's what happened:

Doctors had to be called to separate the bride and best man after they were caught in the act during a wedding in Croatia.

The couple were trapped together by a muscle spasm after a friend of the groom walked in on them as they had sex in the toilets.

Oh , boy, someone won't get married so soon :-))

Finishing my thoughts about podcasting/audioblogging

My thoughts regarding ''podcasting'' or audioblogging aren't finished.

Lately, I've been exploring above mentioned subject . It was sometime in October / September last year when I heard about podcasting during Web 2.0 conference . The meme spread like a wildfire since than , mainly good-old-techno -hype and mainstream press furiously got on the board ( latest news are that ABC and NBC introduced podcasts ). And all that even we had mp3 files available for downloading for years.

But hey, more people got MP3 players that it was ever before. RSS is here, broadband is ready, little laziness about automatic downloading via podcastcher. Perfect ingrediends for another exciting thing.

I was skeptical. We heard sentences like ''move on blogging, podcasting is here''. Crap. There was even revolution on some minds. Crap. One doesn't exlude other in this case. They say ''it's TIVO for radio''.
Oh, very lean technology indeed, just not much people need to use it.

The biggest crap, IMHO, is when I hear people saying ''podcasting is synonim for audioblogging''. Far from true ! Audioblogging is posting audio files on your web/log/site ( can you make distinction; posting your simple voice-talk recording within template driven page with simple commands and interface for doing so ).

Podcasting is producing audio files/shows/broadcasts ( in MB sizes ) enveloped with RSS 2.0 distribution mechanism including music mixes, effects, screenplay, concept etc ( can you see distinction how is this richer, harder to make, just not simple and for average user) .

Here's why.

I remember very well how it was when I opened my first ( text ) blog over at blogger.com. It was fast, instant and published in a second. I could do edits very fast and they were simple. It was all that simple. Nice user interface helped a lot. Write, bold, add a picture and publish onto your free blog space under choosen subdomain.

The process of creating audio file and publishing on the web requires some resources. Knowledge comes at first.
Here how it goes creating and publishing podcast:

- create audio file with audio editor (desktop app), learn how to do it if you do not know
- don't make fool out of yourself and record crappy file :))
- convert that file to MP3 format
- assume you have a storage place on the server to host these files ( yes, I know about Our Media, Lybsin, Internet archive )
- open your FTP program and transfere mp3 files on the server
- assume you have blog/web site with RSS 2.0
- post it on your blog with short notice, and relevant links on the mp3 file
- optional- have enough storage space and available bandwith, and be prepared for slashdotting effects to pay all your hosting bills.

Too many processes, too many handlings and too many knowledge and resources ( bandwith, storage ).

Where are web based audio editors for creating mp3 files ? Where's simple user interface ? Where's javascript generation of ''badge'' as a choice to link podcast list on your domain of choice ( remember how Flickr has badge option so I can paste as a list of my pictures on my blog of choice for quick showing- granulation and transfere is important here) ?

Conclusion: Podcasting isn't convenient yet. It is not synonim for audioblogging as some implied. It's not popular among average internet user ( it's elitists, broadband is still lagging for most people ) and everyone doesn't have need or purpose to do so few times a week. But it's fun. It saves time for listeners sometime .

It's good for learning, music discovering, creativity triving, info junkies, presentations and relevant content will show up .

Audioblogging should be simple, web based, modular, and transferable. Podcasting should be just as it is, but needs to invent simple interface and accept open standards.
Podcasting won't create craze about mp3 players and have in mind that mp3 players compete with mobile phones sometime in the future. That's where I see opportunities .

Only then, eventually, audioblogging and podcasting will come closer . But who cares !

Why suddenly ''No'' ?

France is voting today about EU constitution and is ready to say --No--.
An excelent article about EU constitution and why is it not much different from Treaty of Rome ( 1957 ) , why is it worth to have such constitution and say ''Yes'' explains Paul Reynolds - World Affairs correspondent for BBC News website.

Saudi Arabia awaits new ruler

What is the state of oil prices in financial markets ?
I've looked for it after reading BBC report for the health condition of Saudi King Fahd.
Latest news are telling that markets aren't jitter about possible Saudi Arabia power swap.
US summer season drives prices up, according to agency news reports.

Some say the rush on oil is over and one should stay away from oil investing.
For commodity markets, there's apparently an opportunity for sugar and cotton in the following years.

Podcasting your blog content

These two software pieces translate blog/news content into ready podcasting files : Talkr and Speakwire to remember as a solution text-to-podcast.
Does someone has experience using it ?

Odeo will try

Article to read about simplifying podcasting. Time for Odeo.
It needs to be really simple.

Podcasting and individualism

Thinking today about podcasting and audioblogging. Then mix up radio. Internet and radio are different. Let's see, one has a mp3 player. It's a deep individualism ( only you can hear files , not other around you) , It's a democratic process by nature ( you don't force people to listen what you're listening and likes ) .
Even when there is proliferation of mp3 players, how do you set up mass audience for podcasting ( from the view of producer ) ?
You don't.
The answer should be ''Long tail'' approach.

Audio homework

Integrating podcasting concept into education is a brave and inovative act. Canadian professor might be one of the first who will ask the students to make another audio files as a education task. Bring your MP3 player and learn. Wooh.

Via I Love Radio. Org

Personalized Google, again

The Google Lab shows how personalized page should look like. To me, it looks very poor. Like they are trying to bridge time-to-market with services that Yahoo and MSN already done.

Soic, your mail was blocked

My friend Soic from Zagreb read my blog about month ago and send me an email . I replied but seems the message wasn't delivered to him because of some strange server issues at his part of the chanel.
So, Mr. Soic, if you are reading these lines, drop me another mail to make it work better this time.
Hope to hear soon !

Hedge funds on german

I had noticed over at del.icio.us nice link that points to coverage in today's german newspaper Die Welt dedicated to hedge funds. These are heavy weight ( and heavy unregulated ) financial entities that are moving every day a lot of money in the capital markets all over the world.

One identity, one person, all the web

Another distributed identity system called OpenID. It should be something decentralised. I didn't play much, but I'm posting this as a reminder to try it in the future and look how it works.

I am annoyed lately by the constant need for logging when using various services on the web. Would be nice that web could have more simple and secure systems for identity and authorisation. It seems to be utopia for some time, or I 've missed something ?

To be ''Seamless'' in digital world

What they were talking about ?
Chief technology officers of Microsoft, Sony and Yahoo gathered for an evening in Sillicon Valey to discuss technology development of the coming years.

Groupware for small teams

What to choose when looking for open source groupware app ?
The place I am currently looking is OpenSource CMS site with demo showcase of every app.

I need small, flexibel, modular and useful app for managing small teams over the web. Groupware app will be web based workplace, central point of interaction between team members.

It's only one small piece in the puzzle of so called ''virtual company''. If possible, why not.
After then, I'll be looking for outsourced solution for accounting and finance reporting.
After that...who knows.

Ontology hype

Is it the same mistake done few years ago comparing current onotology hype to DMOZ projects and other directory mantra.
Sorting relevant internet content into structured logic is a bit avanturistic, IMHO.
I liked this part:

One reason Google was adopted so quickly when it came along is that Google understood there is no shelf, and that there is no file system. Google can decide what goes with what after hearing from the user, rather than trying to predict in advance what it is you need to know.

Shirky posted long article about something very simple and clear to me.
The main principle for the state of the web is people's need for , what I call, ''private web for all '' .
My private web, my private context and information and resources that I need in a given time. That's it.

Erogs

According to some japanese bloggers, there's new craze about so called ''erogs'' in Japan.

Chinese way

Google heads for China. Why so late? Apparently, they got operational license and opened some job positions. Reuters has a story too.

Open source license: KPL

Another open source license is considered in India. Cnet reports.

"Let me tell you my dream: Today, India is a net taker in the open-source community. In four years, I want the world to recognize India as a net giver, and that is entirely possible" he said.

Google browser is in the lab

Google is testing Google Browser.
It seems they are testing this product as some word could be heard around in the blog space.

Norway hates oil

Interesting economic agenda, taxing on cars in Norway. Suppose they are country with chaotic living distances, it comes as surprise to me. It's very rare among oil exporting countries.

These policies have resulted in one of the lowest car-ownership rates in Europe and fuel-efficient Volkswagens and Peugeots far outnumber big sport utility vehicles on its roads.

Asterisk GUI

Asterisk is great IP solution but it doesn have simple user interface. Therefore, numerouse companies are building user interface managers for handling complex Asterisk PBX solution.
Here are some of these companies>
IPSwitchboard
Third Lane Tech
Bicom Systems
Coalescent
Switchvox

.travel domain in an industry directory

I am starting to ask myself following question: How latest introduction of .travel domain names will erode Google's ( and web advertising industry in general ) industry of paying contextual ads ?

You ask why ? Very simple.

I happened to discover following sentences on the official web page operated by ICANN's accredited company Tralliance Corporation ( who will be contracted for selling those .travel domains ):
It's about targeted search engine ( Global industry search engine ):

Is the .travel Directory a search engine?
It is more than a search engine. A search engine is as valuable as the data that is available to it. The prevalent consumer search engines are reliant solely on web site data, which is incomplete, changeable and chaotic. The .travel Directory will have data detailing all products and services that are being offered and such data will be provided by the travel businesses themselves. This data will be accessible through a custom-made taxonomy or controlled vocabulary, developed specifically for travel Industry. Tralliance's extensive industry data and indexing technology will enable sophisticated search capabilities to deliver very specific information to each query.

The selling of .travel domains hasn't started yet. It begins around early June. But what's interesting to me in the whole story is a goal of the .travel directory that will be very targeted, operated on non-commercial terms.
The importance of travel industry all around the world is tremendouse and will be interesting to see how the ''attention'' competion will start. How those brands will be satisfied with the service of such a neutral search engine ?
But, look at that what Tralliance Corp will do with its directory for travel industry:

Consumers will not pay for access to your directory information, nor will Tralliance charge industry members for order of placements in the list of responses from a search query.

What ? Business Week cited in their article some older data ( but it shows some indications ) :

The travel industry is one of the largest buyers of advertising on Google, which reportedly pulled in gross revenues in 2003 of close to $1 billion -- mostly from online advertising sales.

Significant or insignificant for targeted advertising in the long run ? I think there will be present need for the sponsored search and visibility on general search engines because that's where the action is ( an ordinary consumer ).

Open source

Finally someone said something like this: Open source is just another licensing model.

Move on !

Tired of the blogging, RSS, Wikis in general. Try to find new challenges. I need new area for digging . Move on Zec !

Busy

I am busy right now and off this blog for some time.
But, I will be back >)

Surprise or maybe not?

Croatian tenis players shocked US public by leading in Davis Cup match for the second day in a row.
Ljubicic Ivan is in a excelent form these days.

An issue?

Many in Croatia played down following news.
This could become really an issue in the future if it doesn't starts to be explained right now.

Igor Mandic of the past, welcome on board

What happend in croatian blogosphere lately ? Blog.hr is something really amazing and I shall say one more time for those that can hear. Blog.hr project is global story !

Igor Mandic, well-known croatian critics wrote a column about blog authors the other day. Wow, respected columnist who has a name but hasn't have a clue about future.
He trashed them and of course, missed the point completly.
I recommend him to read opinion piece in Wall Street Journal.

Blog spamming is anoying

Blog spam is getting bigger. I noticed today I got few alerts in my inbox showing new anonimous comments here on the blog. It's spammer's comments targeting older posts.
I saw today that Jeremy Zawodny is posting about Web Spam mini-session over at Yahoo place in Sunnyvale that will be held and organised by the people behind Technorati.
It seems it'll be more talk about so calle "no follow" atributte.

The Queen of Blogosphere

Associated Press ran an interesting story about Mena Trott, cofounder of Six Apart ( the biggest blogging company for burning cash into thin air ) , who seems to be just one of the many narcisist ( or shall I call it ambitious ) floating around blogosphere.
Interesting facts to read on the sideline of the blogosphere .
The qoute says all

"We realized pretty quickly that we wanted to influence the future of blogging," Mena Trott said. "We would have felt terrible if blogging became something big and we ended up only being a footnote."

How true

Today's quote:

"Information wants to be free, but it costs a lot to create it. That's where value and cost comes in,"

said Scott Marden.

Mobilecasting

Hello my mobile phone in year 2007 !

It's just terminal. A piece of silicon or plastic box with personal look and feel , nice colorfull screen and add on jackets ( to plug my accoustic guitar sometimes, just joking ;)
It's a cheap device, it's people's mobile phone.

You interact with your phone, at least so loud when you'are alone :))

How do you do ?
Thanks, fine, and you ? Here's what it ( Your mobile digital assistant) recommends to you today ; dial 1 for audio, dial 2 for video, dial 3 for text projections. Think of it as an Amazon recommendation engine.

Splash...splash, roll out list and move your fingers over menu. If you don't like what you see, just create alert to the network for the content you are interested in and the alert should come down to the phone when it finds it( okey, let's not pretend, it should be power of the magnitude like Mobile Google ;))

Mobile phone has a storage of at least 20 GB. Strong battery life over 3 days after heavy use of mobile media.
The mobile phone cost is less than $ 200 . ( Flexotronics and MS )
It has streaming mode that allows access to various type of content ON DEMAND, with flat rate pricing or free content .
I need to have mobile operator that doesn't block ports. I need to have option and free will on my hands to install any application I want , let's put Skype for example on my headset , so, when I would move with my Wi-Fi enabled mobile phone in hot zones to be able to make calls over VOIP.

All the data on my phone must be enabled "to move around ". From my mobile to TV, mobile to PC, mobile to mobile, mobile to carriers network, for free and seamlessly. All my media files should be synched easly and have full backup and unbreakable security ( too much to ask ? )

My mobile phone should stream live feeds from web cameras and security cameras if need it. Take this for example, I have an appointed meeting with my friend in the coffeehouse and I want to check and connect over the public camera installed in the coffehouse and see who's there.

It's all other's content that is pulled/beign pushed to my phone. But wait a minute, I want to make MY CONTENT, I want to generate some content and show it to the world. I need the small digital mobile house, storage space and bandwith for which I pay as a bundled service to the operators/providers ( that provide acces or content ). Great, now I can connect the content to my blog content ( could be using LifeBlog or any other open source app with the same purpose ).

Now, I am making my media, and do I want this content to be licenced or free ? Tough question indeed !

To be continued...

For what and why not?

I have not read better article about broadband such as this. Early adopter and geek tells his story about the broadband usage and personal experience with fast internet.
Really interesting look at high speed internet world. Still, who would not like from time to time to have a faster web connection . It is the same as getting better TV signal , when you compare it to TV medium
But, demand is very slow and the pricing is very dumb all around the world for access to " web pipes ". So, it's not all in the broadband.
People are still trying to figure how to use it effectively and...healthy.

Web entreprenuership - The restructuring phase

The internet is in a big evolution , I belive. I am focusing on business perspective here.

A lots of great apps, software and services but very little earning margins for those who made it happen. Is it again the argument about the lack of scarcity in web era which I like to preach people ?:))

The things are moving abroad ( I am not in the US but in Croatia, Europe) , and seems getting off US/North American centric view on internet business and e-commerce . The rest of the world is catching very fast. India and China and Asia in general. Sillicon Valley is losing second powerfull pillar ( outsourcing...). I think we ( in Croatia ;) will be wittnessing Venture Capital money going off US and North American Internet firms ( or at least in those with strong international operations ). It won't come here in Croatia. At least , not now ;)
Today's news I randomly saw aren't reliable argument for that. But wait, let's look at some of today's internet related news.
Ebay troubles with growth, Shopping.com is down on margins, CNET drops...
And who can deny Amazon report for their last quarter?
Where's the money in internet business tommorow ? Maybe somewhere out of US.

Powerful forces are at play. Cash out those Google options or stocks:))