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"Infodrome, in 1999 door detoenmalige regering ingesteld als denktank op het gebied van..."

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:23:32 +0100

“Infodrome, in 1999 door detoenmalige regering ingesteld als denktank op het gebied van deinformatiesamenleving, ziet in zijn eindrapport Controle geven of nemen driemaatschappelijke krachten die bestaande instituties onder druk zetten:deterritorialisering (globalisering, waardoor onder meer nationale wetgeving onderdruk komt te staan), vernetwerking (vervanging van gescheiden organisatiepatronendoor netwerken van onderling afhankelijke actoren) en vervlechting (vervagen vanscheidslijnen tussen bijvoorbeeld publiek en privaat, werk en privé).”

- Raad voor Cultuur - Nota ‘Mediawijsheid’

Now we are faced with the daunting task of wrapping our minds around the Palin memoir Going Rogue,...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:02:00 +0100

Now we are faced with the daunting task of wrapping our minds around the Palin memoir Going Rogue, appearing atop a bestseller list near you. Millions of copies will be sold of a book written by someone who can’t write, intended for an audience that doesn’t read, about the thoughts of a person who doesn’t think. God is dead.

ginandtacos.com review of Going Rogue

"Tired of media saying that the internet is isolating people. Try being a geek before the internet."

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:36:57 +0100

“Tired of media saying that the internet is isolating people. Try being a geek before the internet.”

- Marco Arment (via toldorknown)

Spotify.fm 2 Beta released

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:27:00 +0200

Spotify.fm has been entirely recoded to be clearer, easier to extend and to be more interactive. The recode was a long process, because not just hacking something together (as it was) but really making it stable (for the long term) takes much more time. I’d say there’s about 2000 lines worth of code here, not including the framework. The site is currently in beta since some error handling is not yet done smoothly and the site has not been thoroughly stresstested.

In any case, besides being more stable (no more weekly artists or RSS bugs), these features have been added:

New, clearer, design
Clean URLs that are easy to bookmark or remember
Last.fm similar artists search + RSS
Similar artist search link next to every release
Search Spotify’s newest releases by artist or album
~~Export your favourite artists’ albums to Spotify~~ <- Unfortunately, this does not currently work with the Spotify client!
Front page links Pitchfork’s album reviews to Spotify’s latest releases
Blog feeds
Remembers your last.fm name (cookie)
Links to the relevant Last.fm pages
Your weekly artists, recommended artists, tags and similar artists are cached, so that each week the site remembers more artists (say, it remembers your recommended artists from a month ago)
New Spotify releases are added quicklier
RSS feeds are cached to cope with badly designed RSS readers
Follows the Last.fm API TOS (as far as I can discern), unlike many other Last.fm services (unfortunately, this means that, to comply with max. requests policies, the amount of artists/tags a user can view every hour is limited)

"Art may explore the limits of the nasty things humans are capable of doing to eachother. Artists,..."

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:29:00 +0200

“Art may explore the limits of the nasty things humans are capable of doing to eachother. Artists, who breathe, bleed, and shit like the rest of us mortals, may not.”

- Squashed: Morality, Art, and the Artist

On a scale from heaven to hell, I am a hell-class procrastinator. i’ve searched all my life...

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:19:50 +0200

On a scale from heaven to hell, I am a hell-class procrastinator. i’ve searched all my life for a way in which I finally match up intent and action. I notice that I just do not know the way. I do know what is not the way, so far. One way that is not the way is making a fuss over it.

Beginning of a realisation: I do not know the solution but I know that there are a lot of things that I know that are not true. Instead of searching for the solution for procrastination, I should focus on unlearning everything existent in my work and life habits that I cannot confirm to be true. Perhaps in there lies the way.

I’m starting to wonder if you have to be able to be content with ‘good enough’ if...

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:17:22 +0200

I’m starting to wonder if you have to be able to be content with ‘good enough’ if you want to be a functioning perfectionist. Doesn’t the kind of judgement that leads to good decisions come from being able to rationally judge quality? I notice that the one thing my perfectionism does is ruthlessly kill that sort of rationality.

Spotify.fm - Spotify&Last.fm mashup

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:34:04 +0200

I totally forgot to post about this.

A few days ago I released my newest project: Spotify.fm. This tool will show you the latest Spotify releases for your favourite artists (retrieved from Last.fm). Not just the 50 most listened to, but all of your favourite artists from the past six months. This is invaluable (to me) for finding new music to listen to on Spotify, and if artists I like get added to the site.

Other sites were either slow, had a layout I did not like, or stopped updating, so in my not so humble opinion it’s the best Spotify+Last.fm service currently around.

It supports RSS feeds, and soon will support searching for new releases by tag, recommended artists or similar artists.

If you’re in love with Spotify as much as I am, and use Last.fm, be sure to check it out.

aTumble (tumblr app for Android) 1.6.8 review

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 15:18:00 +0200

A while ago I posted a tiny “review” of aTumble, a small tumblr app for Android. Since then the author has added or changed some features, and I think it’s time for a review of the changes and a more expansive review of the application. I haven’t used it in a while so I don’t remember everything that has changed. Still, here goes.

aTumble is a small ($0.99) application for the mobile Android OS that attempts to make viewing and posting to Tumblr easier. Its featurebase is small, but that should be no problem if the features are well-polished. Currently, you can view the dashboard, your own Tumblr posts, and write/delete posts. These things are not polished, and I will detail the problems and good things in the list below. I hope it’ll come in useful to the author or someone else. Do note that for $0.99 this isn’t that bad of an app.

- The dashboard function is nice but slow. After a brief but puzzling ‘rendering…’ message, it shows about 10 of the latest dashboard posts in a nice layout which does leave me wondering what’s wrong with the speedier layout technique used in the “My Tumblr” screen. Loading more posts takes quite long or does not work at all. Too much eyecandy, too little speed and functionality.

- aTumblr 1.6.8 has added like and reblog functionality in the dashboard. The ‘like’ functionality is inline and pretty nice, as is the dashboard post expansion after a hold-click (the delay could be shorter or it could indicate something could happen and it should expand if you click on the ‘x notes’ link). The reblog feature is less polished, it just sends you to a login form at tumblr.com.

- Good changes since last time: the new post layout has been fixed on cupcake and there’s nice multiple tumblelogs support.

- Still no post editing, while that seems to be the most important missing feature (more important than ‘liking’, I presume) and the most requested one.

- If one starts writing a post, but changes from the post window to another part of the app, the post is ‘forgotten’, without a warning message. One of the nice things about Android is that mostly every app remembers state. Anyone used to this could easily lose their work.

- When you use the application for the first time you get (smartly) presented with the settings screen. However, once the necessary login details are entered, there’s no indication for what the user should do. it looks like an intro screen, but the user should press back to get into the main app. This is unintuitive.

- Android integration has improved. When trying to share a page in the Browser, aTumble is one of the options, nice (could it be possible to use the Title as link name?). Same for the Youtube sharing option, though only as link. There’s still some lack of integration: for example, there’s no sharing option after having taken a picture.

- Nitpick: unlike in about 99% of the input forms in Android there’s no auto-capitalisation.

The website of the application states: “aTumble is an Android application that allows you to quickly an easily post to your Tumblr account (sic)”. If that’s the core function - it does just that, indeed, and that’s fine. If it wants to be more, it’s going to need some polish.

Feel free to contact me if I’ve got anything wrong.

"I do not think the compiz behavior is wrong, just hard to understand."

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:16:00 +0200

“I do not think the compiz behavior is wrong, just hard to understand.”

- Travis Watkins, unintentionally summarizing in one line why linux usability sucks

Talk of swine flu might have been hysterical, but it was necessary. - By Anne Applebaum - Slate Magazine

Tue, 19 May 2009 23:31:36 +0200

Talk of swine flu might have been hysterical, but it was necessary. - By Anne Applebaum - Slate Magazine:

To which the correct response should be: So what? Before “that panic was ridiculous” becomes the conventional wisdom, let’s be frank about it: Where infectious diseases are concerned, panic is good. Panic is what we want. Without panic, nothing happens. Up to 500 million people will get malaria this year, and more than 1 million of them will die, mostly in very poor countries. Yet there is no fear of malaria in the rich world; there is no hysterical media coverage, and thus there is still no satisfactory prevention or cure. By contrast, designs for preventions and cures for swine flu are already, after a mere two weeks of hyperattention, well on track.

For those as annoyed by GNU inconsistencies as me

Tue, 19 May 2009 22:37:24 +0200

If ‘find’ throws “unknown predicate `-regexptype’” at you, it’s because it’s -regextype. Do ignore that the regexp argument is -regexp. Might escape you, as it did me, if you’re very very tired.

aTumble for Android ($0.99) "review"

Wed, 13 May 2009 18:49:00 +0200

My thoughts: It looks like it does whatever it’s supposed to do, but its features seem meager. No post editing, no hooks into Android, and the post screen layout is slightly messed up on Cupcake. Right now there’s little benefit above Pingdroid and its smooth tumblr/twitter/facebook/gazillion other services combination. A separate tumblr app only makes sense if it has smooth Tumblr integration. Dashboard viewing, private posts and tags are a start but I’m thinking editing posts, drafts, image linkthroughs etc.

The Development Dilemma: Can parking tickets explain why poor countries are poor? - Reason Magazine

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:57:04 +0200

The Development Dilemma: Can parking tickets explain why poor countries are poor? - Reason Magazine:

RCPS is foreign aid targeted at employing young men—the most likely to take up arms in times of famine—and providing food to rural families, which are the most likely to kill off helpless old grandmothers and aunts when food is short. RCPS is humanitarian aid, but it aims at prevention rather than cure. Whenever rainfall patterns indicate that famine is ahead, donors send money to head off violence before it starts. And because rainfall cannot be controlled, dictators cannot manipulate it to win a larger flow of foreign aid. Fisman and Miguel believe that Botswana’s long record of strong economic growth has been safeguarded by a domestic drought relief program. The idea may or may not be workable on an international scale, but it certainly does not lack ambition.

Republicans try to take back the word "universal."

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 01:52:20 +0100

Republicans try to take back the word "universal.":

Since when do Republicans use the word universal to describe their health care policies? And what—if not government-sponsored, single-payer, socialist health coverage—do they mean by it?

"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it..."

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 01:38:38 +0100

“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.” ”

-
Robert A. Heinlein (via Brigno) (via shadowfirebird)

travors: Excessive Ping Pong celebration (via adambobrow) :’D

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 01:37:45 +0100

travors:

Excessive Ping Pong celebration (via adambobrow)

:’D

It's time to kill the idea that newspapers are essential for democracy.

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:19:11 +0100

It's time to kill the idea that newspapers are essential for democracy.:

slateinbrief:

Most newspaper stories aren’t about government, and other organizations will step in to fill the investigative role.

The Magic Behind Amazon's 2.7 Billion Dollar Question - OR: how to write an article based on a premise that's awful bullshit

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:44:18 +0100

The Magic Behind Amazon's 2.7 Billion Dollar Question - OR: how to write an article based on a premise that's awful bullshit:

In 2008, Amazon brought in $19 billion, of which 70% came from media products, such as books, movies, and music. It’s not an accident that these products also make the best use of the reviews feature. As we’ve watched Amazon customers make purchases on the site, we can clearly see that promoting the most helpful reviews has increased sales in these categories by 20%.(One out of every five customers decides to complete the purchase because of the strength of the reviews.) From this, we can project it has contributed to Amazon’s top line by $2.7 billion. This is a case of a simple question - asked in the right way at the right time - that can have a dramatic affect on the success of the organization. Simple, subtle design once again proves it has great magical powers (and, in the right circumstances, very lucrative ones).

The above paragraph is all the proof the article contains that Amazon’s “was this review helpful to you” question has been responsible for almost 15% of all their profits. Insane.

"It is individuals who have rights, not religions."

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:35:25 +0100

“It is individuals who have rights, not religions.”

- Canada’s representantive to the Human Rights Council, in response to a non-binding resolution condemning “defamation of religion” as a human rights violation.

(reblogged from dailymeh)