Merry Christmas!

(Image courtesy of Dr. Hemmert)

Another year comes to an end, and it’s been a good one. So I say Thank You to all my friends and readers and to everyone who I met and had a good time during this year.

May the blessing of Christmas be upon you! Enjoy the holidays and have a good start into a new year called 2010.

Millennium Falcon Bed

via starwarsblog.starwars.com

Looks great, don't you think?

15 Awesome And Inspiring Offices

via theroxor.com

Bohemian Muppet Rapsody

Tips for using Google Wave in client projects

The media hype around Google Wave seems to fade a bit, and since invitations to the service spread, people start looking for practical applications.

What's getting clear is that Wave isn't a replacement for email as the Google I/O premiere presentation suggested. Because Wave's more of a mix between web chat and collaborative document editing, it's more likely to replace my team chat on Campfire some day than it's going to replace Google's own GMail.

Will Kelly tried Wave for a bit of client collaboration and posted his findings on 6 Tips For Using Google Wave On Your First Project. To the people that want to try Google Wave with a client, he suggests:

1. Set suitable expectations.
2. Do a dry run with a Wave.
3. Take control of your Waves.
4. Use folders and tags.
5. Consider whether to use live editing or attachments.
6. Have a Plan B.

Since Google Wave still is a preview version, I'd be careful using it for serious project work. The service still has got many rough edges and misses some extensions and gadgets to add useful functionality. But if your team or some of your clients are open for some early adopting, give it a try! It's fun!

(BTW, if you've been sitting under a rock over the last days and/or noone shared an invitation with you so far, I've got some left. Just leave a comment with your email address if you'd like one.)

Business is not only about the model

I just came across Johannes Kleske's recommendation

and so I took a quick look at the web site of his recommendation, "Business Model Generation". The header says:

Because I highly trust Johannes' book taste, I immediately ordered it. But after going through the PayPal transaction process, I got:

What's the lesson here? Business model is only one part of the equation. The most important part, though, is business execution.

Your claim and your message may be as great as it can be. If you fail at delivery, you're out. (Not that I didn't have to learn this the hard way myself.)

I hope that I'll get the book anyhow and its content trumps their transaction handling.

The Day The Routers Died...

Another use for Evernote: Collect conference material

Before I'll leave for DrupalCamp Vienna on Thursday night, I'll have some preparations left to do. Where should I gather all the stuff — the hotel confirmation, the train reservation, links to places in Vienna I'd like to see? While many items land inside my email inbox, there also are website snapshots and other documents. And then, there's the material I'll collect at the conference itself: photos, notes, slides etc.

It's great timing that Michael Gray just published his article,
How to Use Evernote to Create the Ultimate Post Conference Reference Guide.

Although I'm already an Evernote premium subscriber, that's a use case I haven't thought of until now. But of course: Evernote will willingly store all the stuff I drop into or email to the notebook "DrupalCamp Vienna" that I just created. With my iPhone, I can shoot snapshots of presentation slides with my iPhone and have them made searchable through the Evernote text recognition mechanism. I'll even be able to record sound snippets to transcribe later. This really makes sense.

Thanks for the tip, Michael!

TheFunTheory.com: Piano stairs

Inside Rackspace

This short clip takes a peek into the Rackspace Hosting headquarters. They've just opened the 120,000 square foot second phase of their headquarters facility within a former shopping mall in San Antonio.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mZcuY0I_yQ&hl=de_DE&fs=1&]

(via DataCenterKnowledge)

Bio-Diversity

via niemann.blogs.nytimes.com

This play with words and leaves a smile on your face.

Sales Guy vs. Web Dude, Part 4

No comment

via schimana.net

Bottle Bank Arcade

Mr. Shut-up

Procrastinators Unite!

via bingen.soup.io

2009 Halloween Class Video

Storytelling

Small causes

Like every self-respecting Mac user, I upgraded to Snow Leopard as soon as Amazon could deliver the package. Since then, I'd been having the worst WiFi experience of my life.

Every few minutes, the Macbook got disconnected from my home network and would reconnect after about 30-60 seconds. Of course that put an end to successful Timemachine backups to the NAS and to fulfilling evenings in the World of Warcraft. But most annoying were the little problems:

• iChat dis- and reconnecting regularly.
• Music played over Airfoil to the Airport Express in the bedroom breaking up every few seconds.
• Marco Polo telling me that there's no evidence of a home network and therefore switching to mobile operation; just to switch back a bit later.

Marco Polo is an utility that checks some predefined rules to determine my working environment and changes system settings accordingly. For example, if a certain monitor is attached or if a certain WiFi SSID is visible, Marco Polo would change the default printer and deactivate the screen saver password.

Everything pointed to Snow Leopard as the cause of my problems. After all, the problems started with the upgrade and the computers running Leopard still had fine WiFi reception. On Google, I found a few other people having similar problems, but there was no indication of a serious bug.

I played with the WiFi settings of my router. No success.

I adjusted the router's antennas and removed devices that could jam the signal. No success.

I purchased an Apple Airport Extreme base station, replacing the WiFi part of my router. No success.

Finally, last sunday, I was working on the Macbook when I noticed that WiFi was working okay for quite a while for a change! But there were some applications that hadn't been started at login time. And as soon as I manually started Marco Polo, the WiFi dropouts started again.

WHAT? THE? FUCK?

Yes, not running Marco Polo any more solved my WiFi problems! Connection to the base station: great. Music transmission to the bedroom: back to normal. WoW performance: fine.

My explanation, purely speculative: When Snow Leopard came out, people found out that Marco Polo's WiFi network detection didn't work any more. But soon, one user put out a patched version that closed that gap. And it looks like that patch somehow disturbs the WiFi driver, causing the dropouts.

Weeks of anger and despair could have been avoided just by quitting a simple application. Into this blog post I put my hope to save another desperate Snow Leopard user's money and mental health.

Stufen

Wie jede Blüte welkt
und jede Jugend dem Alter weicht,
blüht jede Lebensstufe,
blüht jede Weisheit auch und jede Tugend
zu ihrer Zeit und darf nicht ewig dauern.

Es muss das Herz bei jedem Lebensrufe
bereit zum Abschied sein und Neubeginne,
um sich in Tapferkeit und ohne Trauern
in and're, neue Bindungen zu geben.

Und jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne,
der uns beschützt und der uns hilft zu leben.

Wir sollen heiter Raum um Raum durchschreiten,
an keinem wie an einer Heimat hängen,
der Weltgeist will nicht fesseln uns und engen,
er will uns Stuf' um Stufe heben, weiten!

Kaum sind wir heimisch einem Lebenskreise
und traulich eingewohnt,
so droht Erschlaffen!

Nur wer bereit zu Aufbruch ist und Reise,
mag lähmender Gewohnheit sich entraffen.
Es wird vielleicht auch noch die Todesstunde
uns neuen Räumen jung entgegen senden:
des Lebens Ruf an uns wird niemals enden.

Wohlan denn, Herz, nimm Abschied und gesunde!

(H. Hesse)

Das ultimative Produktivitäts-Blog!

http://productiveblog.tumblr.com/

Sources for presentation images

Recently, I gave a talk about "Effective Presentations", giving a short overview how to prepare and hold presentations that offer a concrete gain to the audience.

I mentioned Presentation Zen and slide:ology, my favourite books about transferring insight via presentations, and how they advocate replacing bullet-pointed text by images.

Just in time, Smashing Magazine posted an article about sources for presentation images, so I'll simply spread the link to my participants.

Kompendium zum Internetrecht aktualisiert

Animating architecture

This is a joke, right?

MacZOT has found a new business model: ripping off inattentive users.

Pressing questions

(via @hessi)

Orwell was an optimist

Twitter: "Vielen fehlt die Medienkompetenz"

Das 1×1 für Führungskräfte und Manager

Video-Einladung zum Webinar "Getting Things Done"

Monsterslayer

via blogs.taz.de

Die gute Tat der Piraten

Internetsperren

Another adventure of Simon's cat

Do you poken?

When the hype first started, my answer was "I don't think so". But last week, two coworkers sported their new gadgets and as the resident certified social network addict, I couldn't help but join the movement. Now, my Poken profile grows while the wave is rolling through the company.

37signals as an example for working in a virtual team

Different nutrition suggestions on Twitter

Tab Mix Plus Beta For Firefox 3.5

Why You Need to Fail

Don't meet, work!

On his blog Remarkable Leadership, Kevin Eikenberry cited an interesting study result in his article "Leadership and Meetings": Almost no manager expects productivity to drop if meetings got banned for one day a week. About half of them even think productivity would increase!

In the OfficeTeam survey, 150 executives were asked "How would employee productivity be affected if your company banned meetings one day a week?" The results:

• No change: 46% (blue)
• More productive: 45% (green)
• Less productive: 7% (yellow)
• Don't know: 2% (red)

My subsequent question would be: "So, why do you think those meetings don't add value, and what are you going to do about it?"

Meetings have the purpose of fostering efficient communication. But just coming together in a room to talk doesn't cut it. That's the time, money and drive sink we all dread. As always, you have to do things right to reap the benefits.

Brian lists the most important things you should take care of to stop the waste by ineffective meetings:

• Have clear desired outcomes for every meeting that are communicated before hand.
• Use, and follow an agenda (that is focused on those desired outcomes).
• Hold people accountable for the action items.

So, there are two documents that are crucial for effective meetings: an agenda, sent to everyone in advance, and the meeting minutes (complete with action items and deadlines), sent to everyone after the meeting.

And hey, if you make your meetings really effective, you can have that no-meeting day anyway!

Mac Mini as a baby monitor

via tuaw.com

Lauren Hirsch: What do you get when you combine a new parent on maternity leave with a love of gadgets and Apple products? Why, you get "baby monitor overkill!"

Right.

How to get the customer off your back

Customers become a nuisance whenever they develop a tendency to cling. Suddenly, you find yourself spending a lot of time in meetings and phone calls that you'd rather use for working on your tasks. It doesn't matter if you're a freelancer working for several companies or if your customers sit in the same company as yourself, you'll eventually experience the contact-hungry client.

How should you deal with that need? The request "Excuse me, but could you please leave me alone and let me do my work?" doesn't seem very effective.

Gitte Härter over at unternehmenskick.de gave that situation a second look and switched to another perspective: that of the customer. She found out that often a heightened need of communication comes from insecurity. In detail, she lists the following causes for insecurity in a professional relationship:

• The customer doesn't yet know you.
• The customer made some bad experiences.
• The customer himself is insecure.
• The customer likes to chat.
• The customer wants to dominate you.
• You invoke the feeling, that you're insecure or maybe understood something wrong.
• You failed in posing enough of the right questions, maybe even regarding the core issues that you need to understand to deliver the right solution.
• You seem to walk in another (your own?) direction.
• You failed another time in the past.
• You don't respond promptly to phone calls or emails.
• You're generally too silent.
• You communicate too vaguely.

Over the years, I learned that customers abhore a communication vacuum. So, if you don't communicate the customer expects you to, oftentimes they will take the lead and make you communicate. Unfortunately, this will never be as effective as if you established a steady and controled information flow in the first place.

Gitte has the following suggestions on how you can take the lead and position yourself as a professional partner:

1. Create trust. -- Be present, pose the right questions, show genuine interest in your counterpart. Get all the information necessary to deliver a good job. Also, dare to give honest feedback; for example, explain the customer if his ideas don't hit the spot.

2. Make clear that you'll get in touch when it's time. -- You'll rid yourself of control calls as soon as your customer can trust that you work on their issue and will get back to them when questions, showstoppers or delays occur. Make sure you do! Send short receipt acknowledgements, deliver status reports or give a perspective on when you'll follow up.

3. Be the boss in your area. -- Your customer gives the order and has the say on goal and conditions, but he isn't supposed to interfere on your area of expertise. Stand your ground.

4. Lead the conversation. -- Never be passive in a conversation. Lead the dialogue, show you're efficient. Get to the point. Don't get lost in endless discussions or waste your time in useless chitchat.

5. Summarize what you agreed upon. -- Everytime you talked (or emailed) about something, at the end summarize the relevant points and what each will do until when.

6. Acknowledge "good" behaviour. -- A customer delivers all information in time and doesn't question everything? He leaves you especially much freedom? Tell him about your happiness about his behaviour: "Working with you is great: you send everything so quickly and you're open to my suggestions -- thank you!"

7. Always meet deadlines. -- Always. Meet them without exception. So make them realistic. If there's a rare emergency, inform the customer immediately.

So the summary is: Oftentimes, it's not the customer, it's you. Drive or be driven.

Imagine Leadership

Free - The past and future of a radical price

I just downloaded the audiobook version of Chris Anderson's new book from Wired.com.

"Wir sind nicht die Partei der IT-Nerds"

Electrical security

via gallery.wormulon.net

With "security" meaning "It's secured that this fuse will not blow".

Freelancers do it out of passion, not for the money, right?

OpenNMS: Pants optional

 I'm all in favour for checking out OpenNMS as our new system
management tool. They're as crazy as we are. :-)

The Most Epic Twitter Client Ever

Piratparkplatz

http://cruisersblog.de/archives/1000-Piratparkplatz.html

 So eins will ich auch haben!

Architect FAIL

via archdaily.com

WTF? The whole building just toppled?!

Die Ideen der anderen

How to disable journaling on a HFS+ volume

Netzsperren - "Ihnen ist egal, was wir denken" | ZEIT ONLINE

Jörg Tauss tritt aus der SPD aus und der Piratenpartei bei

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A great Jazz choir performing Toto’s “Africa”, preceding it by an acapella rain storm.

[Fun] Calling all women -- this one's for you

http://www.funfacts.com.au/calling-all-women-this-one/

Beware the periodic wrath of women.

[Fun] Calling all women -- this one's for you

http://www.funfacts.com.au/calling-all-women-this-one/

Beware the periodic wrath of women.

You're not leading when...

Reading some of the many books on leadership that are out there, you get a picture of how it should look like when you're leading. But are you also aware of how it looks when you're not in the lead? You better are, because your subordinates certainly do.

Jon Ferguson made an insightful list in his blog article

You know you are not leading when...:

• You wait for someone to tell you what to do rather than taking the initiative yourself
• You spend too much time talking about how things should be different
• You blame the context, surroundings, or other people for your current situation
• You choose not to speak the truth in love
• You are more concerned about being cool or accepted than doing the right thing
• You seek consensus, rather than casting vision for a preferable future
• You aren't taking any significant risks
• You accept status quo as the way it's always been and always will be
• You start protecting your reputation instead of opening yourself up to opposition
• You sleep a little too sound
• You procrastinate to avoid making a tough call
• You talk to others about the problem rather than taking it to the person responsible
• You don't feel like your butt is on the line for anything significant
• You think what you say doesn't matter
• You ask for way too many opinions before taking action

In short: You're appointed the leader, so act like one. You'll not be judged on your preparations but on your results.

Just watched the new Star Trek

Because Carolin participates in the YCW meetup with Amalia, I can spend the weekend on my own. After cleaning the apartment and doing some laundry, I spent the evening at the movies.

I haven’t been to a cinema for almost two years and Star Trek was the best choice to end that time.

The film brought many smiles to my face. I’d like to thank J. J. Abrams for an entertaining movie, Leonard Nimoy for gracing the movie with his dignity and Chris Pine for a convincing portayal of a young Kirk, Shatner-style.

And thanks to my love Carolin for the courage to spend the weekend on her own, in a tent with a baby that needs a lot of care, giving me the opportunity to go out without a bad conscience.

Shooting closeups with the iPhone

If you've tried to do short distance photos with the iPhone, you know that it can't focus any more if the item is only a few centimetres away. I noticed this shortcoming when I had the idea to photograph all my collected business cards and make them searchable in Evernote. Their OCR just couldn't make sense of those blurry letters.

But I've found a solution. The Griffin Clarify case not only protects my iPhone from hits and scratches, but also adds a lens that I slide over the camera window when I'm going to do closeup shots.

With the Clarify, I've got rid of all business cards. I now can search for a name on Evernote and get a sharp photo of the card back.

Goodbye Rolodex. Hello iPhone.

I am a Geek

geek, n.: A person who is interested in technology, especially computing and
new media. Geeks are adept with computers, and use the term hacker in a
positive way, though not all are hackers themselves. A person who has chosen
concentration rather than conformity; one who passionately pursues skill and
imagination, not mainstream social acceptance. (Wikipedia)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCq6E6tnQKg&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Dear fellow geeks, join the Society for Geek Advancement!

Untitled

Now, criminals even steal the police’s work!

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Now, criminals even steal the police’s work!

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This video makes you feel stupid.

Mountaineer Leadership

In his German article "Was ich als Führungskraft durch Bergsteigen gelernt habe", Rainer from the HaFAWo blog ("have fun at work and life"), describes how the lessons he learned as an alpinist can also be applied to his work as a manager:

1. Know your goals and their nature, for your job as well as your private life. (= Define your goals.)
2. Have a map and learn to read it right. (= Have a vision.)
3. Have a compass. (= Have reliable orientation points.)
4. Make sure to start at the right time to avoid time-dependend dangers. (= Have good timing.)
5. Expect the worst and be ready to handle it.
6. Be prepared regarding your shape, food, clothing and equipment. (= Have everything ready you may need.)
7. Know your skills and with how much of the impossible you can cope. (= Know your limits.)
8. If there are problems ahead, you maybe have to resort to teamwork. (= Have a supporting team.)
9. When problems arise, you depend on your equipment. (= Have reliable tools and know how to use them.)
10. You should know when to turn your back on the mountain and postpone summit victory. (Admit defeat in time, try again later.)

Thanks for the great analogy, Rainer!

Untitled

This video makes you feel stupid.

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I call it cube of productivity. And I want one.

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I call it cube of productivity. And I want one.

Leadership tips

In "Ten Top Tips for the Innovative Leader", Paul Sloane gives valuable recommendations to everyone who wants to be more of a leader than just being some levels above in the org chart.

He recommends:

1. Have a vision for change
2. Fight the fear of change
3. Think like a venture capitalist
4. Have a dynamic suggestion scheme
5. Break the rules
6. Give everyone two jobs
7. Collaborate
8. Welcome failure
9. Build prototypes
10. Be passionate

Many of his tips remind me of the concepts explained in "First, Break All the Rules", a great leadership book I read recently (and have to review here ASAP). And looking at the fifth point, this doesn't seem like a coincidence.

Especially the first two points resonate with me at the moment because I'm going to undertake a big change effort myself with my department.

Thanks to Paul for his great summary of important leadership qualities and practices!

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Die ganze pseudo-bürgerrechtsengagierte Hysterie von Pseudo-Computerexperten, man müsse um jeden Preis ein “unzensiertes Internet” verteidigen etc. - vgl. www.ccc.de -, fällt für mich in die Kategorie: juristisch ohne Sinn und Verstand und moralisch verkommen.

Dr. Hans-Peter Uhl, CSU, auf AbgeordnetenWatch.

Die ganze pseudo-betroffene Hysterie von Pseudo-Politikexperten, man müsse um jeden Preis die “vordergründige Sauberkeit des Internet” verteidigen etc. — vgl. www.bundesregierung.de —, fällt für mich in die Kategorie: technologisch ohne Sinn und Verstand und moralisch verkommen.

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Die ganze pseudo-bürgerrechtsengagierte Hysterie von Pseudo-Computerexperten, man müsse um jeden Preis ein “unzensiertes Internet” verteidigen etc. - vgl. www.ccc.de -, fällt für mich in die Kategorie: juristisch ohne Sinn und Verstand und moralisch verkommen.

Dr. Hans-Peter Uhl, CSU, auf AbgeordnetenWatch.

Die ganze pseudo-betroffene Hysterie von Pseudo-Politikexperten, man müsse um jeden Preis die “vordergründige Sauberkeit des Internet” verteidigen etc. — vgl. www.bundesregierung.de —, fällt für mich in die Kategorie: technologisch ohne Sinn und Verstand und moralisch verkommen.

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How Mac rumours become news — and maybe facts. :-)

Panikmache in den Medien: "Alle starren auf den Tod"

http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,622856,00.html

Krisenforscher Mathias Kepplinger über die Jagd nach Superlativen und Geltung.

Wählt dich jemand, den du öffentlich verhöhnst?

Im Artikel “Wie man eine Generation verliert” erklärt “Die Zeit”, wie Politiker die Verdrossenheit junger Wähler weiter steigern, indem sie ihre Anliegen einfach nicht ernst nehmen:

Im Internet gibt es viele Proteste gegen die geplanten Kinderpornosperren. Politiker haben für die Kritik nur Verachtung übrig. So verprellen sie ihre künftigen Wähler.

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Inspiring project for globally produced music: http://playingforchange.com - From the award-winning documentary, “Playing For Change: Peace Through Music”, comes the first of many “songs around the world” being released independently

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Inspiring project for globally produced music: http://playingforchange.com - From the award-winning documentary, “Playing For Change: Peace Through Music”, comes the first of many “songs around the world” being released independently

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“Much show, few facts” — a critical look at #zensursula.

Germany’s family minister Ursula von der Leyen thinks that secret website blocking lists maintained by federal police are a serious measure against child pornography. This news programme takes a critical look at her agenda and policy. 

(via Johannes Kleske)

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Eine lustig-anschauliche Erklärung, wie (wenig) die von der Familienministerin vorangetriebenen Sperren funktionieren. Lego hilft beim Lernen. :-)

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“Much show, few facts” — a critical look at #zensursula.

Germany’s family minister Ursula von der Leyen thinks that secret website blocking lists maintained by federal police are a serious measure against child pornography. This news programme takes a critical look at her agenda and policy. 

(via Johannes Kleske)

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Into the woods!

New read: Leading Change

After listening to the audiobook version of John P. Kotter's "The Heart of Change", I decided to also read his book "Leading Change". Kotter is an expert on change management, i.e. the management and leadership skills to lead an organization and make the necessary changes to adapt it to new situations and implement new strategies.

I've read chapter 1, "Transforming organizations: Why firms fail", and I'm hooked. Kotter explains what errors are common causes of failing change efforts:

1. Allowing too much complacency
2. Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition
3. Underestimating the power of vision
4. Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of 10 (or 100 or even 1,000)
5. Permitting obstacles to block the new vision
6. Failing to create short-term wins
7. Declaring victory too soon
8. Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture

Looking at some of the organizational changes I was in some way part of, I can see instances where most or even all eight of those errors were made -- with the appropriate results. I want the changes I'm about to undertake to be a better success, so I'm curious what Kotter has in store in the following chapters.

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Into the woods!

Sleep in, be more productive

Finally, there is proof that it’s better not to wake me too early. A scientific study shows that people who get up later in the day are able to stay productive longer: 

If you allow them to live on their preferred schedule, then they can outperform the morning types.

Please don’t call before 1pm tomorrow. :-)

A look into a Google datacenter

Following up to the recent entry about Google's custom server chassis, in this video we get a glimpse into one of Google's datacenters where those servers are in operation.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs3Et540-_s&hl=de&fs=1]

Again, Google does it their own way by using separate containers with the necessary infrastructure built in instead of having different rooms for all the racks. The data center building itself delivers power and cooling. I guess it's because of the more modular structure that allows replacement of a complete server "room" why Google chose that approach.

Sleep in, be more productive

Finally, there is proof that it’s better not to wake me too early. A scientific study shows that people who get up later in the day are able to stay productive longer: 

If you allow them to live on their preferred schedule, then they can outperform the morning types.

Please don’t call before 1pm tomorrow. :-)

Google's homebrew server chassis

At this year's Efficient Data Center Summit, held April 1st 2009 at Google's Mountain View, CA campus, Ben Jai, Google Server Platform Architect, displayed one of the servers they deploy in all of their global datacenters:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J139Aelaf0g&hl=de&fs=1]

While there probably are many other well-known ISPs that use custom-built servers, I find it interesting that Google goes as far as to add a 12V battery to every server to replace the traditional large UPS systems normally used in datacenters.

WordPress comment count

This statement corrects all the comment count in WP posts by querying every posts actual comments:

UPDATE wp_posts p SET p.comment_count = (
    SELECT count(*) FROM wp_comments
    WHERE comment_post_id = p.id AND
       comment_approved = 1 );

WordPress comment count

This statement corrects all the comment count in WP posts by querying every posts actual comments:

UPDATE wp_posts p SET p.comment_count = (
    SELECT count(*) FROM wp_comments
    WHERE comment_post_id = p.id AND
       comment_approved = 1 );

Oh yes, Techcrunch is so right.

[www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/1...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/apple-your-mighty-mouse-sucks-please-fix...)

The Mighty Mouse is in my opinion the proof that even great hardware manufacturers have product failures.

Blog Relaunch

All those sick days (of the last three weeks, I've spent two in bed) had one advantage: I had time to tackle some things.

One of those things was consolidating my old Serendipity blog and the current one, running on Drupal, into one Wordpress blog. I wanted to switch from Drupal to Wordpress because WP is more focused on blogging and there are some features (e.g. trackbacks, remote blogging via XML-RPC) that Drupal doesn't do as well.

It took me about 12 hours of Perl hacking to write a converter that reads posts and comments from a source database (Drupal or S9Y) and writes them into a destination database (WP). So, all posts since 2004 including their comments should have made their way into the new blog!

Let's see if the new possibilities help me in writing posts in shorter intervals. Of course, that's what I've been telling myself for weeks now. ;-)

Tweenbots

[feedproxy.google.com/~r/oreill...](http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/oreilly/radar/atom/~3/YpcjizorWqo/tweenbots-cu...)

Sometimes, cute and simple trumps expensive and sophisticated.

I’d like to have this experiment myself. Those robots are just too cute.

And Robert Scoble

On Friday the FriendFeed founders Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit debuted a radical redesign of the product for about 15 journalists, technologists, and Robert Scoble.

Steve Gillmor on TechCrunch

Got myself a Buffalo Linkstation

Installed my first NAS system over the weekend. The Buffalo Linkstation Live 1TB seems nice, it even comes with TimeMachine support. WiFi instead of USB seems sluggish, though.

I just started my first tumblelog

From time to time, there are some random things I'd like to point my friends to. So far, I've either posted them on Twitter or in a short entry on my blog here.

A few days ago, I took a look at Tumblr and decided to start my own seperate tumblelog. That way, I can focus my blog here on the more elaborate entries.

So, if you're so inclined, take a look and subscribe to the feed of Associative Disarray. It should be fun!

Communicate to lead

Communication is (finally) one of my most important topics at work. Steve Roesler recommends to “add these four thoughts to your leadership communication kit”, and I can’t emphasize his points enough:

• Never assume that anyone knows anything.
• The larger the group, the more attention needs to be given to communicating.
• When left in the dark, people will fantasize their own reality. Do you want their fantasy to trump your reality?
• Effective leaders are obsessed with accurate, frequent communication.

The Performance Antipattern

You're developing a new web application? You want it to run fast?

The Highscalability Blog tells you what not to do.

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A train station is where the train stops. A bus station is where the bus stops. On my office desk, I have a work station..

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Mit Twitter erreicht man die wichtigen Multiplikatoren im Internet. Diejenigen, die das Web gestalten statt nur mitzulesen.

Manager-Magazin: Ratlos, planlos, kein Interesse

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A train station is where the train stops. A bus station is where the bus stops. On my office desk, I have a work station..

Unknown

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Mit Twitter erreicht man die wichtigen Multiplikatoren im Internet. Diejenigen, die das Web gestalten statt nur mitzulesen.

Manager-Magazin: Ratlos, planlos, kein Interesse

Poor people

http://wakeuptiger.blogspot.com/2009/04/story-of-poor-family.html

An insightful story.

Miracle man

You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.

Miracle Max, “The Princess Bride”

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Yep, that’s me.

Little Red Riding Hood

An Animation telling the fairytale “Little Red Riding Hood”. Inspired by Röyksopps “Remind me”.

Twitter starts OAuth beta test

For a long time now, many websites providing a service to Twitter users had to use those users' credentials to get access to their profile, messages or to post tweets in their name. For example, I've given my credentials to TwitPic, Twitterfeed, Remember the Milk and Skitch.

Many people are quick to give away their username and password -- and as many learn the hard way why that's a bad idea. When Twply, a service emailing your "@name" replies, first promised "Your password is safe with us. No worries." and then sold on eBay for $1200 after one day, a lot of people that had given up their username and password there were left wondering what the new owner would do with those credentials.

In software development, the underlying structures of best practices are called "patterns". Using one's username and password on a service to get access to another service has many bad implications and is therefore called an "antipattern", a practice that should be discouraged.

Finally now, the Twitter crew has done its homework and is testing OAuth, a protocol to give one service access to another service in your name without revealing your password.

I'm sure that this move will make even more Twitter support services appear, and now you don't have to do a multi-day due diligence period until you gather the courage to enter your credentials outside of Twitter any more.

Tauren Birthday Cake

My birthday cake, made by Carolin with 39 candles and a hand-drawn Tauren.

Rackspace leases new data center

Since Rackspace Hosting is running out of floor space in their primary data center, they had to decide between building a new location and to buy or lease existing data center space.

As Data Center Knowledge reports, they chose leasing:

The company considered building additional data center space in its new headquarters facility in a former shopping center in San Antonio, but later indicated that it believed it could save money by buying or leasing instead.

Finally, the company decided on expanding by leasing a data center in Auburn, Virginia, because this "will enable it to serve customer demand more quickly and cost effectively than if Rackspace built its own facility".

Like after the first dot com bubble, there's unused data center space at many places because companies decided (and had to money) to build big. In the current economic situation, though, it seems wise to buy or lease that existing space instead of incurring huge new building costs.

A short look into LiquidWeb's data center

Hosting provider Liquid Web (Michigan, USA) has been building a new data center to provide 50,000 square feet of data center space and additional office space. Infrastructure director Chris Strandt and marketing director Travis Stoliker give a short look into the facilities:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwHzK6xxQ3I&hl=de&fs=1]

Nothing shocking when you're used to our data center. I'm curious if my employer will let us do a short walk-through when we get a new one somedays.

(via Data Center Knowledge)

How we can imagine more than 4 dimensions

We are able to experience only the three spatial dimensions and often consider time as the fourth one, even if we can't imagine a fourth coordinate axis perpendicular to the other three.

How we can use our grasp on those first four dimensions to extrapolate to up to ten dimensions is explained in this video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvgwR9ERCBo&hl=de&fs=1]

If you've still got some brain juice left on a sunday evening, enjoy!

And if your head doesn't spin after watching it, visit the corresponding blog Imagining the Tenth Dimension.

Google Mail gets offline mode

I tried so many email applications, but none could actually beat the productivity I operate my GMail account with the original web interface. My only gripe has been so far that I wasn't able to access my email when there was no internet connection. On the train to and from work, for example.

It's not that Google didn't have the tools to solve that problem. Google Gears is available quite some time and I use it extensively with Mindmeister.

Today I found on the official GMail blog that the Google engineers really are working on an offline mode for GMail. It's still work in progress and only available over the labs menu. This feature enables you to use GMail offline, and it also offers a "flaky connection mode" where it uses the local cache but tries to synchronize in the background.

Who needs a desktop application with internet connection when you can get the internet on your desktop?

I have a new superpower

I discovered I have a new superpower. I call it "parent vision" and it lets me see every sharp edge, wall socket and other dangers to a crawling toddler in a fraction of a second.

What's not so super is that it's the fraction of a second before her hand or head touches it.

New german law criticized as start into surveillance state

In an official statement, the german "Gesellschaft für Informatik" (GI), Germany's biggest association of IT experts, states that the new "BSI law" probably is a progress from the draft of 2008, but still has deeply rooted flaws. (BSI is short for "Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationtechnik", the federal office for information technology security.)

What troubles the IT experts most is the fact that each and every communication with federal authorities will be completely monitored, which they regard as the first step to a surveillance state. "GI demands free and uncontrolled communication of all citizens with federal authorities as warranted by the constitution", the paper announces. Personal information won't be sufficiently secured by the proposed law, so effective restrictions must be put in place, GI concludes.

By criticising the "BSI law", GI joins other voices that fear an increase in stately surveillance and in the risk of unauthorized access to personal data, for example Peter Schaar, the german federal data privacy commissioner.

I regard it as highly necessary that all parts of german society raise their voices against those attempts at collecting more personal data with neither valid reason nor the technical and legal means of protecting them. Join the protest!

(via Heise Newsticker)