After reading another great press release I think I now know what “Web 2.0” means. Up until now I was convinced that if you asked 10 people what it means, you’d get 10 different answers. Turns out all the tech guys have it wrong, tho. You see, it’s all in the pronunciation. It’s not “Web two-point-zero”, it’s actually “Web two-point-oh”. As in “Web two-point-OH-MY-GOD WE’RE, LIKE, TOTALLY COOL”. Don’t laugh.
It just dawned me that on the web, Germany must be to the UK and US what China is to the rest of the “real” World (at least in the perception of the rich western countries): copycats. Cases in point: Frazr vs. Twitter, StudiVZ vs. Facebook, a dozen del.icio.us clones vs. del.icio.us. Seriously, the (visible part of the) German startup scene is making a sad impression. Pretty much each new German site I see is more or less a carbon copy of a successful UK or US site.
Dear old people of Nippon, thank you. It is only because of you that I am still the one and only Yahoo!/Google search engine result for the term Gerontomageddon. Sincerely yours, Carlo
Dear Perl community, I just wasted 15 minutes of my life trying to figure out how to get the index of a particular element in an array. Turns out I have to write a for loop to walk through the array. This is insulting. Seriously, it’s 2007. If at this point in time you’re still defending your beloved language and/or using words like “elegant” or “quick” when describing Perl, you’re bat shit crazy.
So I have 100 invites for this new site called Spock.com. In a nutshell, I see it as Wikipedia + search engine, but just about people. It’s an interesting approach. For a general quick explanation, feature list, a few screenshots and all around overview, see this TechCrunch article. The interesting thing is that it’s not a social network, but more of a meta- hub that allows you to find, tag and describe yourself and/or others.
Wir haben heute Yahoo! News 2.0 gelauncht. Gratulation an alle beteiligten Kollegen. :) Die Site hat viel Neues, vor allem eine schickere Präsentation und (hoffentlich) weniger Bugs. Es gibt noch ein paar Ecken und Kanten, aber die schleifen wir auch noch zurecht. Anschauen! (Ich hab auch ein wenig beigesteuert (Video-Importer), aber das war der kleinste Teil.)
The other day I met Justin Timberlake at a bus station here in Munich. That was quite bizarre, he was just standing there, apparently waiting for the bus. At first, I wasn’t sure whether it was really him; just a guy in a shirt, jeans and a jacket. I glanced at him a couple of times, the man looked a wee bit pissed, but not too much. You know how it is—you look at someone, wondering whether your mind is playing tricks on you, or whether you’re going crazy, because what you see is highly improbable.
The other day I talked about our impending doom, but Madrid wasn’t totally bad. In fact, I had two great nights there. On Monday, after I’ve arrived, my esteemed colleagues and I went to a little tapas restaurant whose name I forgot. Too bad, because it was rather spiffy. Nice food, great wine, much fun. We actually walked there from the office, so I managed to get some quick glimpses at the city.
After giving Media Temple a go for a few months regarding hosting this little blog on their much-touted plan/platform, I’ve decided it’s definitely not worth $20/month for me. Seriously, it’s just a wee blog, nothing big. In fact, it’s mostly a plain vanilla Wordpress setup. Nothing special there. And also I don’t get many visitors, so I was surprised to see the site to awfully slow. What gives? On top of that is the SSH access responding at glacier speeds at any given time; very underwhelming, too.
It’s funny, highly entertaining, and dripping coolness. Go watch it.
A few days ago, the company sent me to Madrid, Spain, for a summit. Madrid was nice. I’ve met a lot of friendly people, co-workers and random passersby alike, taxi drivers and dancers (more on that later), and made some observation which lead me to believe our attempts at saving the climate are futile. In short: from what I observed over the course of three days, along with what I’ve seen during our days on Teneriffe, Spain’s collective consciousness doesn’t seem to give a damn about energy conservation.
Vor ein paar Wochen wurde ich fürs Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin interviewt—es ging um Avatare und die Leute dahinter, i.e. um die Charaktere, die Menschen in Onlinespielen spielen. Heute wurde es veröffentlicht. Hendrik, der auch interviewt wurde, hats sogar ins Print-Magazin geschafft, ich war anscheinend zu hässlich und kam “nur” in die Web-Ausgabe. Aber hey, das passt schon. Was ich etwas schade finde: ca. 90% von dem, was wir gefragt wurden und was wir gesagt haben, haben sie nicht verwendet.
A week ago I was doing some home improvement. Well, I tried. And failed. In a spectacular way—the carpet cutter slipped and chopped through the back of my thumb. For a split second I had a clear look at my joint, then it got messy. Well, Dana got me to the ER – not after saving my life, tho! Standing upright next to the stairs (upper end), I lost consciousness for about 30 seconds.
Das Internet ist wie eine externe Version dieses total wahnsinnigen Teils meines überaktiven Unterbewusstseins, der mir dauernd ungefragt lustige Filmschnipsel, Zitate, blöde Songs und uralte Gags auftischt.
After many hours in the lab, spent on creating timelines and elaborate flow charts, I am proud to present you, World, my “Evolution of Digg.com”. I’ve manage to condense it into a few short lines, too: Late 2004, Digg.com created ➔ “a fun site!” ➔ gains momentum, becomes useful ➔ single spammers appear, some fools, too ➔ OMG it’s spammed, lots of fools ➔ unbearable ➔ totally useless ➔ PRESENT DAY.
Wir haben heute einen Baum gepflanzt im Garten. Einen Fächerahorn. Juhu!
Huh, so I’ve been tagged by Frank. Splendid. :P I’ve used to read quite a few magazines in the day, mostly to feed my habit (PC gaming, back then); a remnant of happy times past, when I was a kid. You see, I grew up in Eastern Germany, and while I had no problems or real shortcomings there, I never really had the chance to buy computer magazines of any sort (programming, gaming etc.
I have to admit, I really like my new setup. tail -f carlo.log for the “real” blog posts and tail -f carlo.tumblr for the random sillyness and interesting bits and pieces I come across. It works out well and has some advantages over writing a Post-It post every now and then. It’s more …direct. So I think I’ll keep using/maintaining it. Remember, it has a separate RSS feed.
Es wäre total dufte, wenn ich nur einmal ein Produkt bei Euch kaufen könnte, ohne daheim direkt feststellen zu müssen, dass es kaputt ist. Das passiert mir in den letzten paar Wochen bei Euch andauernd. Beim letzten Mal war es dieser schnieke FM-Transmitter für meinen iPod, der nicht funktionierte, heute ist es dann der tolle Funkuhrradiowecker, der mich hier in den Wahnsinn trieb. Danke dafür. Aber das kann ich Euch auch morgen persönlich sagen, wenn ich das an sich coole, aber leider funktionsunfähige Gerät zurückbringe, um mir Ersatz zu holen, den ich mir im Laden vorführen lasse.
I’ve started a tumble log the other day. I consider it an experiment; first of all, Tumblr is an exquisite service with a whole lot of potential. It serves as an extremely easy and comfortable tool to link all the new doodads, gimmicks, funny pictures and clever quotes I find on the Intertron. And secondly, all the cool cats are doing it already, so there. Thus, for the time being, I will do what Hendrik did and deactivate the daily automated splicing of my new del.
Good entertainment. They’ve painted some grand pictures there; I’ve enjoyed the visual style. Loved the presentation; the fighting scenes with the slow/full motion switches were very well done. Featured strong women, always a plus. Wasn’t as visionary as the hype wanted me to believe, but it has most certainly set a new high in action cinematography for me—it’s as much a visual milestone as The Matrix was back then. (Other than that you can’t compare those two flicks.
Jedi Stamps. Apparently the “Jedi Shipping and Mailing Master” wants the collective opinion about the stamp you want to reign above all others. Really. [via Darth Vader] Late to the party. ADS kids, listen up! What can I say, yes, me too. I still don’t fully get Twitter—I still don’t understand the total awesomeness everyone is so excited about; or the working business model behind it, for that matter. We gots mail!
I am amazed how on some days a song can make you grin like an idiot and even boost your confidence, while on other days the same song doesn’t do anything. The human mind contains strange mechanics and some weird code. By the way, the song triggering this musing was Captain Sensual by Groove Armada.
Quote of the day. Today by Beryl. Wise words, for those of you who don’t know or may have forgotten: Do not pour your heart, soul, and life into your job. When the job goes sour, you may have nothing left. That said, I really like my job. But it’s not my life—and that isn’t a contradiction. Schöne Worte. Dana über das, was ich tue—programmieren, gern auch kreativ.
Last night, while looking around our living room, seeing all the furniture, the floor I put in, the wonderfully big windows, and my wife sleeping on the couch, I realized that I’ll probably never find a finer place in the world.