Reading List

Published 11/15/2008 in books and marketing. 1 Comment

A regular reader of Chiperoni.org has suggested that I add a book list.

Yesterday I stopped by at the uni library and browsed thru the marketing section. I picked up “How Customers Think” by Gerald Zaltmann. And some pages caught my eye. The 10′000 feet view.

four challenges

Ways to find original ideas and get out of the customary, surface-oriented thinking about consumers:
for fleeing our worn cognitive hampers

He describes the Titanic Effect here:
the titanic effect

Another book I browsed thru is:
“Marketing-Erfolg im Internet” by Martin Blatter-Constantin. It stood out of the crowd ‘cos it offers nifty black and white icons in the left column. And I liked the fact that it talks about personas from the beginning.

anna analog vs achim digit vs dane digital

Other books I brought along for reference purposes, include:

  • The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott - a recommended read; I wrote a couple of blog posts here and here.
  • Marketing your Business, A Guide to Developing a Strategic Marketing Plan by Ronald A. Nykel - no opinion yet.

Last in today’s list is “The Marketing Mavens” by Noel Capon:
marketing maven

Text Snippets Circling Around

Published 11/11/2008 in Photos, africa, tech and ubuntu. 0 Comments

Pêle-mêle off the top of my head:

Learnt yesterday:
The number of English-speaking Internet users is decreasing, currently at about 35% of total number of Internet users.

Shared yesterday:
Who writes about African technology developments? From the list, I follow White African, Afrigadget, and sometimes Google Alert points me to IT News Africa.

Photo processing software for Ubuntu:
I’m currently MacBook-less (there are plans to change this very soon), but in the meantime I’ve installed Ubuntu 8.04 on an Acer Aspire 5920. I tried upgrading to Intrepid Ibex, but I couldn’t get my LAN connection to work. Something to do with the MTU count. And I encountered 2 bugs during the install:

  • package update-manager 1:0.93.32 failed to install/upgrade: ErrorMessage: SystemError in cache.commit(): E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1), E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
  • package ubuntustudio-menu 0.9 failed to install/upgrade: there is no script in the new version

So I went back to Hardy Heron. Cost: most of my Saturday. Learning effect: priceless.

I’ve been scanning the Internet for Linux photo processing software, besides Gimp, Picasa and F-Spot. ‘Cos so far Canon’s DPP has not been ported to Linux. I guess I could use it via Wine. But between you and me, I’m just looking for a good excuse to get a new MacBook. Beyond that DPP (still) lacks a good straightening tool.

I tried BlueMarine ‘cos it sounded promising, but I quickly gave up. Not usable.

There are a couple of commercial tools to consider:

In the end I tried Raw Therapee and downloaded Qtpfsgui for HDRs. Both of which are free and look promising at this stage.

Screenshot

BTW, this blog post is good example how I can trick myself into writing a longer text. Initially, I just wanted to write a few Tweet-like text snippets, a summary of various small items circling around in my head. Pêle-mêle off the top of my head.

Please feel free to comment. I would be very grateful for any Ubuntu tips and tricks, etc.

The Fabric of the ‘Net

Published 11/8/2008 in General and blogging. 0 Comments

Kevin Marks picks up the recent meme on blogging being dead/old-fashioned/out-dated. He says:

Blogging…

has become part of the fabric of the net

See these blog posts and articles:
Nick Carr: Who killed the blogosphere?
The Economist: Oh, grow up!

Some things don’t change, though. Old and dying media still feel the need to criticize blogs and the authors for not being critical or original enough. Or whatever. Articles like this show a lack of understanding. A recurring theme in old media vs. new media. I write about Google, iPhones, new MacBooks and the US election ‘cos these topics have become part of my life. I’m reflecting. Collecting. Writing. Sharing. Remembering. Learning. Trying out new technology instead of sitting on the sidelines and waiting until it gets mainstream. I’m not a news site. I don’t have a budget. I don’t earn any revenue.

Hope

Published 11/8/2008 in General. 0 Comments

Post-US-election note to myself: Hope is a powerful force.

My mind is jumping here, but…

I’m reminded of this text snippet in a widespread and recognized book of poetry:

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.

Getting up at 4 o’ clock in the morning to study for school may lead to great things.

Drip by drip

Published 10/29/2008 in General. 2 Comments

For future reference:

Marketing is never about a hammer hitting plate glass.

It is almost always about the accrued power of a thousand drips, drips that accrue, drop by drop until they overwhelm the status quo and break through, starting a flood.

The first drip is very exciting, of course. Everyone lines up to cheer.

It’s the last drip that’s lonely. Most of the time, everyone has long left the building, lost interest and moved on to celebrate some other first drip. The penultimate drip gets criticized… are you still working on that?… that’s not so great… is that it?… but then, the drip that comes next, the last drip, proves once and for all that you were doing the right thing all along.

I could write a long blog post on this.

I could sing a reggae song that has the same message.

Opening .MHT Files on a Mac

Published 10/27/2008 in mac and tech. 0 Comments

I regret deleting Windows Vista.

Last week I was sent a .mht file. And now I’m searching the Internet for a solution how to open this proprietary Microsoft file (my perception, but according to Wikipedia it is actually a proposed standard).

MS Word 2004 for Mac said something like this “is not a valid archive”.

I found this forum entry at Mac OS Hints.

The GraphicConverter way didn’t work for me. Only a small graphic file displayed. The rest of the content did not display. BTW, I’m not too fussed about GraphicConverter anyway. Maybe you use GC, if you only want to extract the images…

Convert & Modify

I’d recommend the Stuff It Expander way:

  1. Get the free version of Stuff It Expander and install it.
  2. Drag and drop the .mht file to the Stuff It Expander. Stuff It will create a folder with the same name as your file. Within this folder, there’ll be several files with the endings 00, 01, 02, etc. The first of these files is usually the .html file, while the following are image files.
  3. Add the ending .html to the file labeled 00 and open with your standard browser… é voilà. Funziona.

phpinfo().mht Folder

Another (probably simpler) way is to get File Juicer.

The easiest way to read .mht files is to install Opera on your Mac. Open the file to see the contents directly. No further renaming or converting required.

Opera browser: Home page

Executive summary:
Best Tool = Opera for Mac

On Following Tweet Streams

Published 10/26/2008 in marketing, tech and tweet. 0 Comments

I recently talked to Persillie on the difficulty of following people’s tweet streams. Esp. if you have a limited time budget and can only tune into Twitter every so often.

For example, I follow Kathy Sierra’s stream at Twitter. You can see quite a few of her 140 character statements in my Twitter Favorites.

Re: “PR is Dead?” meme–PR has same issue as UI design: it’s NOT something you can slap on afterward. Must be baked into product.

“Job happiness” should not have a single point of failure… but too often it ALL depends on your current boss. Bad managers REALLY suck.

Things Smart People Do: Martin Fowler (software dev pioneer) said he went to a ‘passionate users’ talk *because* he “doesn’t like the topic”

Powerful template 4 learning: “I will do Project A, to ‘force’ myself to learn Skill B” rather than “I must/will learn Skill B” @hrheingold

PR/marketing should fail when it’s about “getting word out”. If they’re about helping “users kick ass”, we’re good. Less pitch, more teach.

I see a huge overestimation of the importance of “social” in marketing/PR or product dev in general today.

etc, etc…

The difficulty arises when other Twitterers ask questions and Kathy responds. I don’t see the question and it gets much more difficult to follow.

Twitter is like a cocktail party. The music is so loud, sometimes you only hear parts of the answer.

Are there Twitter tools that help with this? The only tool I can think of is Twitter Search (formerly Summize).

Regarding passionate users, see this video of the talk that Kathy held at the SF WordCamp 2008:

Techniques for Reviewing a User Interface

Published 10/24/2008 in marketing and tech. 1 Comment

I like this quote:

The GUI is the only contact the user has with the application.

that I found in this presentation:

which I found while surfing thru my Sitemeter stats.

An obvious fact. Yet…

When talking to software developers, I often hear complaints about the quality of code (especially if somebody else programmed the app). While I understand that wild, unruly code creates maintenance problems and is more error prone, I would expect the same care, investment and commitment on the GUI level. At the very least.

See also Leah Guren’s presentation at In Other Words on “It may be GUI…“.

Blogging is so 2004

Published 10/23/2008 in General, Photos, blogging and flickr. 4 Comments

LOL at this Wired article!

Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.

I agree with the author. Blogging is so 2004. For the record: I installed WordPress on this server in September 2004. Time to pull the plug.

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr instead.


(BTW I’m still the top entry at Google for Boring Flower Snapshot)

be bold, be strong!

;-)

BBC on Fish Farming in Zomba

Published 10/23/2008 in Malawi and africa. 1 Comment

Recommended reading:

BBC’s James Morgan on fish farming in rural areas of Zomba district, Malawi.

It’s a perfect circle. “Or what we call an integrated agriculture-aquaculture (IAA) system,” says Joseph Nagoli, of WorldFish. “This isn’t high input fish farming. This is simple and sustainable.”

Handmade in Switzerland

Published 10/23/2008 in swiss. 0 Comments

Cross-reference:

Mlle A. points to online marketplaces for handmade products in Switzerland.

Strategic Technologies for 2009

Published 10/20/2008 in tech. 0 Comments

Stumbled across this 5 seconds ago:

1. Virtualization
2. Business Intelligence
3. Cloud Computing
4. Green IT
5. Unified Communications
6. Social Software and Social Networking
7. Web Oriented Architecture
8. Enterprise Mashups
9. Specialized Systems
10. Servers – Beyond Blades

Will be interesting to watch how this evolves.

Portes Ouvertes this weekend

Published 10/17/2008 in General and basel. 0 Comments

Last minute pointer:

Kunstschaffende aus Basel und der Region öffnen alle zwei Jahre an einem Wochenende ihre Ateliertüren, um einem interessierten Publikum Einblick in ihr Schaffen zu gewähren.

Portes Ouvertes is happening this weekend. Various Basel artists are taking part. A great way to see how artists work.

Hat tip: Martin Gyger, who is also taking part.

Yesterday’s fave

Published 10/10/2008 in General. 0 Comments



From Riehen to Grenzach Wyhlen

Published 10/8/2008 in General and flickr. 1 Comment

Here are the snapshots of the second architecture tour that I took part in:

We cycled from Tinguely Museum in Basel and stopped at various points in Riehen and Grenzach Wyhlen.

Heard about Hans Bernoulli and his Garden City idea to provide improved housing for the working class as well as a patch of ground to grow vegetables and fruit. The wooden houses he built in the Landauer Quartier are apparently still in a good condition. The lease for the Landauer area will expire in 2012 or 2013. And already there are prototypes what this area could look like (mostly high rise buildings and blocks).

We saw how a small Riehen house from the 1930s was renovated to accommodate for an aging family member in need of medical care and special attention.

Next, we cycled up the hill and stopped at a couple of Riehen villas before rolling across the border to Germany.

One building that really stood out was a brand-new gallery/studio building in Wyhlen by Gerner Gerner Plus, an Austrian architectural office.

The last building of the day was a private house designed by Askari Architekten from Lörrach.

It was interesting to listen to the owners and architects. It seems that if you really want to build and invest, you also need to become a lobbyist and persuade local authorities and politicians.

Appfrica Interview on MTN Uganda

Published 10/7/2008 in Malawi, africa, blogger, marketing and tech. 0 Comments

Just a quick note to point to an interesting interview with an official of MTN Uganda at:

Appfrica: Interview With MTN’s Erik van Veen - Part 1

These points caught my eye:

(…) revenues per user, are very low in Africa by international standards, and require a low cost operating model if the Operator is to be profitable. If you look at East Africa, new customers joining the mobile category spend about $4 per month – that is not a lot!

(…) I see Asian, especially operators from the sub-continent, playing a bigger role in Africa as they have been able to survive in cut-throat, highly competitive, low tariff environments in their home markets.

(…) And then you have to deal with the cost of doing business in Africa. Infrastructure and productivity remain major hurdles that add costs to the P&L. Our own success, relative to other companies in most African economies, has backfired on mobile operators in Africa, where governments see these as an easy source of tax income. In East Africa, excise tax (read luxury tax) has been institutionalized within the mindset of financial ministerial policy on tax. Uganda has the 2nd highest tax burden on mobile services in the world, Tanzania 3rd. Just think about it – in Uganda we hand over nearly a third of the cost of every call to the government. What a shame!

It is a short sighted initiative that is impeding growth of the ICT industry.

Very interesting read!

Quick side notes:
There was a recent article that Malawi is considering to add (or has already added) a 10% tax on all airtime. I can’t find the Daily Times article online any more (note to myself: make a screenshot next time) See this Daily Times article.

There’s also White African’s catch phrase to keep in mind.

Architecture Tour “Birsstadt”

Published 10/5/2008 in General, Photos and architecture. 0 Comments

As seen previously on my Flickr stream, I stumbled across this poster:

quoi de neuf

I took part in two architecture tours this weekend organized by Architektur Dialoge as part of the Les Journées de l’Architectures.

Birsstadt

I’ve uploaded a couple of snapshots of yesterday’s tour through Basel-Land. It was “off the beaten track” and lots of fun. During the tour we got a sense of the upcoming challenges as the various municipalities continue to grow and expand from a city planning point of view.

Today’s tour will have to wait til tomorrow…

z’basel

Published 10/3/2008 in General. 0 Comments



Tagaroo and other links

Published 10/2/2008 in General, Photos, blogafrica, flickr and tech. 0 Comments

Pêle-mêle off the top my head:

In my daily reads, I stumbled across a Wordpress plugin called Tagaroo. It reminded me of Zemanta. I haven’t tried it out. But I guess the interesting part is that it is being sponsored/developed by media giant Thomson Reuters as part of the Calais project.

As usual I’ve been taking lots of snapshots. Faves of the week include:

peek

the wiring

Oh and yeah, I know what this year’s Christmas card will look like:

christmas card 2008

I tried out some night photography which was a lot of fun. Found out that I’ll need a good, lightweight tripod to pursue this more seriously.

The Swiss consumer magazine K-Tipp published the results of a chocolate degustazione.

Resultate der Degustation

I downloaded hours of video podcasts on CSS.

African bloggers in Amsterdam:

Picnic 08 (an annual tech. conference held in northern Europe) had a special Africa track called “Surprising Africa“. There’s a short video featuring the speakers here (via tweet).

55:33 minutes about YouTube

Published 9/24/2008 in General. 0 Comments

An anthropological introduction to YouTube:

via Adventures in Teaching and Learning

Zemanta

Published 9/19/2008 in africa, basel, blogafrica, blogger, blogging, marketing and tech. 0 Comments

I am learning a lot from the African blogs I am reading…

App+frica recently wrote about useful web applications for bloggers in developing countries.

In his list he mentions Zemanta:

Zemanta, which just scored a new round of funding from Union Square Ventures, is a huge time saving tool. It’s a browser-side plug-in that scans the context of your blog posts (even as you’re writing it) and offers up a ton of time saving shortcuts like related links, photos, wikipedia articles, blogposts and suggested tags. With the click of a few buttons it can help you format your post in a way that normally takes hours! For instance, if you’re writing an article about Google, Zemanta will find recent articles about Google from other blogs, photos, logos and more.

It works with all the major blog platforms including Wordpress, Livetype, Blogger, Drupal and more. When I had an abundance of time (and internet) I would usually just do all those things myself but Zemanta speeds up that process significantly.

Zemanta analyzes your text and then searches the web to suggest related articles, photos, tags. For some texts, the results still need tweaking. But this is a cool tool and a sign of what’s coming.

Thanks App+frica for sharing. I hadn’t heard of it before. And I live in a so-called developed country.

Mulanje

Published 9/16/2008 in Malawi, Photos, africa, blogger, flickr and wordpress. 2 Comments

I just surfed through lots of cool new photos in the Malawi group on Flickr.

Including these photos of Mulanje mountain by Lisa de Vreede:

Mulanje

Mt Mulanje

Useful CSS and WordPress Links

Published 9/16/2008 in tech and wordpress. 0 Comments

For future reference:

Useful links on CSS and WordPress which I know I’ll lose if I don’t write about them here in my virtual notebook.

Freeconomics

Published 9/16/2008 in General and marketing. 0 Comments

Interesting background article, for future reference:

We can start with a simple user question: why would we ever pay for anything that we could get for free? When anyone buys a version of something they could get for free, what are they purchasing?

From my study of the network economy I see roughly eight categories of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could be free.

In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them "generatives." A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold.

Source: Edge: BETTER THAN FREE By Kevin Kelly. Via Appfrica.

Useful Mac Tool: Skitch

Published 9/13/2008 in General and mac. 0 Comments

It’s been one year and one month since I moved to Mac. And in line with the underlying concept of this post, I’d like to recommend a Mac OS tool which I find very useful:

Skitch

If you have a look at my Flickr stream, I tend to post a number of screenshots to collect ideas and illustrate blog posts. Skitch is great for this.

I found that Skitch is more intuitive than Apple’s Grab. By default Grab creates TIFFs, which I find more cumbersome to handle and an overkill for quick notes.

I like the Skitch annotation features (text, arrows, circles, squares). This helps to interact with external contractors much faster. And I can easily send the screenshot via Apple Mail.

I post to my Flickr account directamente without a detour to Flickr Uploader. And Skitch keeps a history of recent photos and screenshots, which I can easily drag to a desktop app like Powerpoint.

A productivity tool to consider!

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