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.