Danny-fr: Wakey Wakey & Brutal Opinions

My friend is going to jail for 18 months... For using her flashdisk. HELP NEEDED.

2011-08-24T23:09:00.001-07:00

I won't tell her name here. What you need to know is that my sweet Balinese friend, who likes kids and crafts, has been sentenced to a jail time of 18 month for, basically, having used her flashdisk.

She works in Bali, in a small painting and craft shop.
What they do is, they build picture catalogs from examples taken in magazines or on the web, and commission them to painters on customers orders.

Last year, she thought she could start her own business, and built a small website using some of her shop's references.
Keep in mind, these references don't belong to anybody in particular, they are just the result of some image search.
But apparently her boss didn't appreciate, and asked her to close the website.
Which she did.

It wasn't enough. Maybe Mr. Boss smelled good money, and he sued her for unfair competition.
Time passed, and many parties got involved.
It didn't take too long to find out there was no harm done business wise, but hey, you gotta get the money a way or another, so Mr.Boss sued her again, this time for illegal copy of digital material.

That's were things got really wrong.
See, worldwide, the law is already blurry when it comes to digital material... but in Indonesia it's even worse. First of nobody gives a damn, then the law stops at the basic anti-piracy jibber-jabber.

You can consult it online, and if you speak the language, what you will read there is asinine.
"Any data accessed without explicit permission of the owner is considered accessed Illegally", that's what the law says.
Which is funny since you don't see any definition of "permission" and "ownership".
In Indonesia, it seems, browsing the web is illegal.

I am not a lawyer, but looking at the fact with some common sense you can see that a person not contractually tied by an NDA (or, actually by any kind of work contract) copying from a computer accessible to anybody, not protected by a password or any other means, files that are obtainable everywhere on the web, and using them in a way that was never meant to arm and did not cause any arm should never be legally worried, in any country.

There is something very wrong behind that sentence, especially since you consider that the murderers of three Ahmadi, in Cikeusik, earlier this year, received between 3 and 6 month of emprisonment.

Please look again.

Using a flash disk: 18 months
Murder: 6 months

As I am writing these lines, I am not sure of what will happen next, my friend had a very tough time, was involved in a pretty heavy bike accident just before being dragged to court.
She told me once she would rather die than go to jail. In another context, I wouldn't worry, but today she is emotionally exhausted, with not a dime left in her pocket to appeal, and about to be robbed 18 month of her life.I am worried she might attempt to arm herself.

This post is a cry for help. If you are a journalist, a fundation, a lawyer, please spread the news, help her appeal or take her case pro-bono. Help her and undo something very, very wrong.

You can contact me on on any of my social account, or via nojailforflashdisk[at]gmail.com , she needs all the help we can muster.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Add Google +1 button to any site in 4 easy steps with a bookmarklet

2011-07-22T01:35:00.001-07:00

Here is a very quick trick to add the Google +1 button to any site you visit by using a bookmarklet.
So far I have tested it on Firefox and Chrome without problem.

1. Copy the following code

javascript:function go(){var d=document;if(window.top==window.self){var oH=d.getElementsByTagName('HEAD').item(0);var oS=d.createElement("script");oS.type="text/javascript";oS.src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js";oH.appendChild(oS);var oB=d.getElementsByTagName('body').item(0);var oBu=d.createElement("div");var oBuS=oBu.style;oBuS.position="fixed";oBuS.zIndex="10000";oBuS.top="25px";oBuS.left="15px";oBu.innerHTML="<g:plusone></g:plusone>";oB.appendChild(oBu);}}go();

2. Manually add a new bookmark

In Firefox, you can do that either via the bookmark manager (Bookmarks -> Organize bookmarks->Bookmark toolbar) or by right clicking on the bookmark toolbar (make sure 'load in sidebar' is unchecked).
In Chrome, the fastest way is to add any page as a bookmark and click 'edit' when the confirmation pop-up comes out.

3. Paste the code in the 'location' field (Firefox) or 'URL' field (Chrome)

4. Give it a siny name and save the bookmark

Now any time you click on this bookmark, the +1 button will appear on the top left corner of your page.

Note: This post is a follow up to my previous post "Add Google +1 button to any site with this GreaseMonkey script".

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Add Google +1 button to any site with this GreaseMonkey script

2011-07-21T22:10:00.001-07:00

Yup. Now you can add yourself, from your browser, the Google +1 button to all every site you visit.
It's the very fisrt version, and it needs much improvement.
I'm thinking of triggering it from a keyboard shortcut and adding some more features.

If you don't know how to use it yet, just check out the tutorial I wrote here, the steps are the same :)

Here is the little bugger, just for you guys:

_______________________________________

// ==UserScript==
// @name           PlusOneEverything
// @namespace      PlusOneEverything
// @include        *
// ==/UserScript==

if (window.top == window.self)
{

var oHead = document.getElementsByTagName('HEAD').item(0);
var oScript= document.createElement("script");
oScript.type = "text/javascript";
oScript.src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js";
oHead.appendChild( oScript);

var oBody = document.getElementsByTagName('body').item(0);
var oButton= document.createElement("div");
oButton.style.position = "fixed";
oButton.style.zIndex = "10000";
oButton.style.top = "25px";
oButton.style.left = "15px";
oButton.innerHTML = "<g:plusone></g:plusone>";
oBody.appendChild( oButton );
}

_______________________________________

I'll turn that into a Firefox extension soon. Stay tuned :)

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Google+ : Will maim Facebook, Twitter, destroy RIM and Kick our Collective Asses

2011-07-20T04:27:00.001-07:00

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner has been quoted in the Business Insider, stating that users won't find time for Google+.
It would stop at that, I would call him a fool. But then, later in the article, he mentions that, for Google+ to work, another social platform will have to fall. Let me tell you who will fall and what to get from it.

Let's start with the cool stuff: video, chat, mobile, and yeah... the circles.

The circles are one of the smartest dumb idea I have seen so far: A graphic version of Facebook lists. Nothing innovative, it's just easy to use.
You hear, Facebook? E.a.s.y.

Video and chats come next, while FB chat is heavy and erratic, Google serves us with their excellent implementation of the XMPP protocol we all know via gTalk. On the interface level, the chat is not intrusive and actually lets you CHOSE when you want to discuss. And it does it with video.

Where it surprises: 'sparks' and 'incoming', or the end of friending.

Sparks are a good way to get the information you need based on your interest, while 'incoming' will show you the streams of people who're following you but you're not yet following.
These features are already powerful when looked at individually, supported by the Google's long experience in feed reading and struggles with privacy and/or data relevance. When combined, they simply mean the end of Friending. Which is not a bad thing.

Where it bites: integration.

Google has everything: Search engine, e-mail, chat, apps, browser, calendar, maps and places, news reader, document viewers and more...
Now, that would be really stupid not to take advantage of all this pre-existing material, right?
What you can be sure of, is that Google+ intends to become a full fledged OS and Web integrated platform, stretching from enterprise integration to social gaming.
Just take a minute to look at their already killer notification system, accessible from their search engine or from gMail, you'll see what I mean.

Where it hurts: mobile

One circle to bring them all and into the darkness bind them.
One little mobile application, a framework to link G+ to android apps and there you go, you've got yourself an all in one solution.

Facebook and Twitter: punched in the face.

You don't need friending on Twitter, but the looking for relevant data is a brain torture. You like your good old Facebook, but not only it's getting more crowded with adds everyday, it also gets more complicated and, come on, it's so 2007.
The truth is, Google+ has the potential to do everything Twitter and Facebook do, but better, with a cleaner interface and all the additions listed above.

The coutdown: RIP, RIM.

Research In Motions has been launching betas of his social framework for BBM for a while now, and we're not seeing anything consitant yet.
This is too bad for them, since they don't have anything to offer save their 'exclusive' enterprise and messaging services.
Their primary mistake was trying to do it alone, sticking to their own closed systems and proprietary hardware. While they were trying to reinvent the wheel with the Playbook and their new not-so-innovative-anymore social feats, they jumped-in way too late, with too little to offer. Google just went around their strategy and did the exact opposite, offering a comprehensive app suite available for everyone.

I don't see them getting out of that situation unless they do something drastic, such as opening BBM or porting it to other platforms.

Collective Asses given a life lesson:

Trial and error. That's about it. We've been repeatedly laughing while pointing at Orkut, Wave and Buzz while big G was jubilating, watching the critics pile up in the shape of a nice how-to for there future product.
My skeptical self still believes (as, apparently, they do) in the 'wait and see' approach, but G+ is adding a million users a day and has a surprising level of maturity for a product so new. I see a huge success, cake for everyone.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Password: Choose and Remember.

2011-07-19T00:54:00.001-07:00

Yeah yeah yeah.
I just stumbled on a Yahoo! article (in Indonesian) calling all internet users to arms, with a strong password as their weapon.

So, all along the article, they beat around the 'please do not use 123456 as a password' theme and leave it at that. Good one, Yahoo! I still have friends who never ever remember their passwords.

Chosing a strong password is good, but how the heck are you supposed to remember " h4Xxx0|2l337fgalFUb@r30" ?
Hint: you're not.

But here, I am going to give you a trick that will make you feel like you have some sort of super power:
I am going to make you remember D4nFr&&Bl0g11.

Just follow the rules:

Pick a name you're sure to remember, nickname or pet name : Dan
Pick your family name, or a second nickname in relation with the first one: DanFr
Pick a random separator: DanFr&& (and)
Pick a word that has someting to do with the site you're using: DanFr&&Blog
Add the date (birhday, year of creation, last 2 or 3 digits): DanFr&&Blog11
Replace all vocals with numbers: D4nFr&&Bl0g11

Why you will remember?

Because the password is separated is two parts: your name, and the context. You won't forget your name unless you had that many beers, and the context will be pretty obvious. Now, if you're not an used to the technique yet, you can still write down the template somewhere safe: NameOtherNameANDx2ContextYear.
Oh and yes, you can actually read it aloud: Dan Efer And Blog Eleven :)

I know it looks a bit complex, so here is another way to make your passwords hard to guess for both machines and humans alike, with passwords such as: donkey123&&098yeknod

Pick a word you like: donkey
Add the 3 first digits on the second keyboard row: donkey123
Pick a random separators: donkey123&&
Add the 3 last digit on the second keyboad row, backward: donkey123&&098
Add the word you just picked, backward: donkey123&&098yeknod

Why you will remember?

Because the password is symmetrical. You type the same thing twice, but after the separator, you type it backward ;)

Why are these passwords safe?

You can create your own rules and rely on the templates
They mix lower case, upper case, numbers and special characters (neither machines nor humans are good at guessing all that)
They use words that don't exist, limiting dictionnary based attacks
They are long enough to discourage even a computer

You're still desperate?

If you're in search for the simplest solution... try that: &wakeupgrababrushandputalittlemakeup&.
These are the lyrics of a song you love, plus a couple of special character to frame them, like a nice picture in your mind.
It's not as strong as the first two methods, but that can do for an emergency ;)

Keep safe!

(picture source: http://www.worldofantiques.net/74.jpg)

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Decide!

2011-07-15T23:09:00.001-07:00

It's pretty easy to give advices but...
...are you really sure you are actually walking in your own footsteps before advising someone else to do so?

This post is the copy of an answer I have written on Quora, quite a while ago.
Except when migrating, I don't usually move my content from a platform to another, but this very text is somewhat special to me.
This very text is an advice I did follow before relaying it, and am still following by now.

It works wonders.

The question was:

Is it better to make bad decisions versus not making any decisions?

Here is the my answer:

My late mother would always say: "A walking idiot will always go further than a sitting genius."
What I've witnessed in my long, rich and wise life (cue recorded laughter):

If you don't make a decision, life will make one for you, and it's not sure that you'll like it.

If you make a good decision, in some cases you'll never know it's a good decision since you can't try out the other possibilities.

If you make a bad decision, you'll get some experience out of it, at least you'll know, for instance, that "hold that beer for me and look at that" is not the right end of a thought process.

If you make an informed decision you will, at least, be rewarded by knowing that you did your very best, which is the most you can do in life.

If you make an uninformed decision, you'll experience the thrill of the unknown, or the disappointment of knowing that no, that's not the way you fold a parachute after all.

Also, see it like that: if you're in a car and come to an intersection where you either have to turn right or left, if you wait too long you'll end up going straight and crashing into a wall.
Even if there is a wall at the end of one of the roads, your probability of crash is 100% if you don't decide, and 50% if you do.
In conclusion, to my mind, it's better to decide.

Tried and foolproof.

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

Be Good To Your Industry: Pay the [right] Price.

2011-06-08T22:21:00.001-07:00

I have been working in the web development industry since 1999, I kid you not.
During all these years, nearly everything has changed except for one: greed.

That was true while I was working in France and is a fact here in Indonesia: companies want "cheap internets".
Actually, when it comes to IT they want cheap everything, from their system admins to their online campaign.

The results of having a cheap sysadmin, pirated softwares, amateurish websites and apathetic marketing are a virus-ridden network, non-existent customer service, and a below average brand image.
The corollary of these results... is a technical/strategic bottleneck that can ultimately translate into a total failure.

Of course you could think "Well ok, if a company choses price over quality, it's their problem, let them fail".

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that.

When a majority of companies in an industry ends up preffering money to experience, the whole industry suffers, and on a larger scale, the whole economy, and there is why:

'Cheap' is given the wrong meaning.

When it comes to workforce and services, cheap usually means that you will pay less for less value.
What it should mean is that you will pay less than the actual value, that is, pay less for the same standards and quality.

Why is this difference so crucial?

Say you are looking for a graphic designer. If you are willing to pay less for less value, you will attract a crowd of less talented/productive/reliable candidates. These flaws can come from a lack of experience, and anybody has the right to a first job, so theoritically there shouldn't be a problem, right?
Well, there will be a problem if you keep on doing it: you will demotivate the more talented candidate, who will either drop their prices and deliver a lower quality work or find something else to do because their current occupation just doesn't pay the bills. Oh, and the inexperienced ones you started with... they will leave you once they've learned enough, and join the 'talented and jobless' club.
Their little brothers and sisters and cousins will see how disappointing it is to do such a job, and as another side effect, will spend their precious education money on something else.

And one day, you'll hear yourself say: "I don't understand, I can't find a good graphic designer" and "Why are all middle sized companies' websites looking like they were made in 2000?".

This, is true for any kind of workforce you are going to need in your industry, and for any industry as well.
The popular saying goes "If you pay peanuts, you'll get monkeys"...

How I see it is: "If everybody pays peanuts, there will be nothing left but monkeys".

And if you still don't believe me, try to find a good plumber in Jakarta.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Hijab and France: The Huge Misunderstanding

2011-05-06T07:20:00.001-07:00

East and West.
Enough.

I read it everyday, on various forums, on Twitter or Facebook. I read the total lack of understanding of other's cultures and religions.
We know where it leads.

What infuriates me the most is people, from any culture and religion, propagating downright misinformation about places they've probably never been to, and practices they've never tried to know better. Muslims are child abusing barbarians, Americans are fanatic war-mongering Jesus freaks, French smell from their pits and forbid religious outfits.

I won't talk for my America, since I've never been there.
But I can talk for France, since, yes, I am French.

Background: The (overcome) fears of France

Europe has a long, long history of war agains its eastern neighbours. France, most particularly, has had to repel invasions from mostly everywhere, and it accounts for the Umayyad caliphate as well.
France's fear of invasions, thus, takes roots as far back as... well, France itself.

The other fear of France is religion. Any religion. During the revolution, we went as far as chopping many heads, belonging to the royalty and clergy (the king was considered as appointed by god) to get rid of the oppressive establishment. Church and state were then separated much, much later, in 1905, and it's enough to say that religion didn't leave the room without a bang or two.

Nonetheless, France, as a secular state, does not comdemn any religion in particular.
Islam is the second most practiced religion in the country, and a French Council of the Muslim Faith has been created in 2002 despite being controversial and considered as going against the secularism of the state. Mosques are of course not as common as churches ( it makes sense, historically), but more than 2000 are scattered all over the territory.

Background: Misunderstandings

First of, when France looks outward, France is as stupid as the rest of the world, and only swallows what the media and politics feel like babbling at any given time. Terrorism here and there (we had our share too), extremism here and there, well, you know the drill.  The truth is, every religion is complex, with denominations, groups, sects, extremists. Disagreements can arise between/within denominations of a single religion, and they only mean confusion for the outsider.

The other problem comes from an even more broader issue i.e., the immigration from north African muslim countries. In the past, I daresay French government handled the issue very, very badly giving these communities minimal means of integration. The result is not pretty: several generations later, a great many immigrant descendants suffering from an identity crisis.  Their environment is prone to rather high levels of criminality and even if religion has nothing to do with it, it's still a strong common denominator amongst immigrant descendants from various north African countries.

What irritates French, is the presence, within these communities, of people who openly reject the country they were born in, sometimes do not speak the language and will not make an effort to go further into integration. They are a minority, a 'vocal minority' comparable to the Jakartanese expats who publicly appear drunk and drowning in prostitutes.

The association is quickly (and very wrongly) made. People are people, everywhere (see my earlier posts about expats).

What does the hijab has to do with all that?

It all began with a custom.  In Indonesia, I won't eat with my left hand.  In France, I won't get inside a room with my head covered. School teachers are especially irritating with that, but however much I love my bowl cap, well, I had to remove it while in class. Enters the vocal minority. The Hijab won't be removed, it's a religious symbol.

More recently, the same thing happened for the Burqa. Nobody will care whether you are wearing it for religious or other purpose, but in France, it is not the custom to hide your face in public. May it be with a helmet, a balaclava or a gas mask. We need a face on your ID papers, we need to see who you are when you enter a bank. As simple as that. Vocal minority again. The burqa won't be removed.

Tell me a better way to enrage a whole country than saying "I won't adhere your customs, because, in your secular country, my religion forbids me to." Here, you have it. Two hits with one stone.

So you have it, in France:
- Any visible religious signs are banned from schools.
- Any way of hiding your face is forbidden in public places.

Have you noticed the 'any'?

The French government did screw up, though, during the introductory phase of these laws, mixing secularism, security reasons and, in the climate of fear I described earlier, measures agains 'the invasion of extremism'. This is not only a bad PR move, this is total nonsense and I deeply disagree with that last argument.  
They should have adopted a much more direct approach: when in Rome, do as the Romans.

However, the law stays the same for everyone and is not limited to muslims. I won't get in a school wearing a cross in a necklace or a yarmulke and I will get in trouble if I refuse to remove my helmet when I enter a bank.

What's the conclusion?

France is scared of terror and religious totalitarism when, really, they should start sorting the mess with their immigration and do something to improve the immigrant descendants communities condition; The government won't gain any respect from them if they are not respected first, but the politic entanglement is such that they won't grow the spine to do anything, and prefer give in to panic. As an answer to their own panic they meet the same kind of ignorant behavior spreading like a plague: "France doesn't like Islam", which is outright wrong, 2000 mosques are there to prove it.

We saw where this kind of behavior leads, we know what happens when politics start mixing with religion at an international/intercultural level (see Afghanistan). It leads to violence, it leads to death. Not trying to understand a culture, inbound or outbound, is a risk of death, massive in wars or slow and sad inside.

But hey, efforts are being made, on both sides. So there's still hope :)

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

Latest RIM news: BBM 6.0 Social Platform, API Secrecy and 4G PlayBook

2011-05-03T01:08:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, at the Mobile Monday Indonesia conference, was given a most interesting presentation about RIM's next step in BlackBerry Messenger's development, encased in some Playbook promotional speech.
Here: first hand report and reactions.

RIM is taking on pretty much everybody at once, from Facebook to Nintendo.

What was in the beginning a simple platform dependent messaging app is turning into a social platform on its 6th version.
Rumors of RIM opening BBM's API have been heard since the Bali Blackberry Devcon, confirmed since then in Poland and now in Indonesia.

Right after the devcon, I suspected them to take a shot at the social everything, and what's been said yesterday confirms my thoughts. BBM will soon be able to:

- Allow users to invite friends to play games, use BBM ID as a game tag.
It looks like Y!M for desktop but more importantly, like online gaming services untill now exclusive to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, with in game chatting features and achievements.

- Make it easier to share all kind of content
Nothing has been explained in details, but I foresee a revamp of BBM groups, where more several more types of files can be shared and accessed with more ease than now, and where more members are allowed. It would also be a good thing if these groups didn't slow down the phone up to comatose state.

- Be used on other platforms
This is only a rumor. When I asked about a confirmation, I was answered "we can't tell you that yet". Which, I guess, means yes. How will it work, I don't know. What I know is that I am ready to pay premium to use it on any device that's not a BlackBerry (or Nokia).

It's pretty interesting now to see that, in the gaming niche, RIM's direct rival is de facto Nintendo, since they are the only ones to offer the same type of 'social gaming' and persistent ID on mobile platform. I have discussed the potential of the API opening in a previous post. Mostly, this is a chance for RIM to become a major actor on the social/community based market.

RIM made a genius move, amongst major bloopers.

- Genius: get the market where it actually is.
From the mouth of Johan Kremer, head of Alliance for SEA at RIM : "We didn't build BBM 6.0 only thinking of Indonesia, but also South America". Acknowledging the market and responding to users's needs. Isn't that beautiful.

- Major Genius: bypass the local bottlenecks.
Indonesian users will be soon able to buy apps from AppWorld through premium SMS.

- Sorta blooper:
Announcing things several month in advance and going back two steps when asked about their development (I am talking about the API) is probably not the best way to communicate. I also don't understand the way they propagate the news about BBM 6.0 through conferences instead of being more open about it.

- Major blooper:
Staying mute about the cross-platform compatibility features of their next products. RIM has already implemented an Android virtual machine (sort of) on the Playbook, we see where they are going. Stop playing hide and seek and tell us what to expect.

The Playbook: A joke to be corrected in the near future.

Kremer brought a Playbook with him, making sure he wore special pants to conceal it in his extra huge pockets.
He demo'd it for a while after the show, and I wasn't impressed at all.

The device had to be re-booted before demoing it
There is no 3g support. How am I supposed to use internet if I'm not near a wifi hotspot?
Way too much BlackBerry tethering (bbm, contacts, calendar)
No physical keyboard support, limited accessories support
A version of the PlayBook supporting 4g features is planned for the near future: buying now is a ripoff.

Conclusion: I am patiently waiting for a BBM app for android. RIM is making efforts to penetrate the Indonesian market, but the stiff communication and the lackluster hardware can't convince me to keep faithful to the brand. We'll see later this year if it changes.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Osama Is Dead, Now What?

2011-05-02T00:41:00.001-07:00

Apart from a brand new wave of Internet memes implying that Obama is mightier than Chuck Norris, what OBL's death means to me really is lots and lots of quesions.

What people really knew about OBL?

If I am to refer to his wikipedia entry, apart from his short biography and his family tree... not much.
I have been reading here and there that he was controlling enormous funds, that he was the thinking head of Al-Quaeda, that nothing would be coordinated anymore without him.

I'm not so sure about it. Let's face it, we don't know much, appart from these:

He fought in Afghanistan
He was wealthy
He was vocal

He was certainly a flag bearer, and the voice of the movement, but he certainly wasn't the unique source of founding, and I personally think that there is not chance that his involvement in the strategic decisions of Al-Qaeda was as big as we think. Terrorists are not idiots, and they wouldn't put their most valuable fighter under the spotlights, or at least, not without serious backup.

Will it be more than a milestone?

We've seen leaders fall since 2001, allegedly tied to Islamic terrorism, I am thinking of Abu Musad Al Zarkawi and Abu Ayyub Al-Masri and of course, Saddam [insert controvery here].These are clearly steps forward in a war against terrorism.

It still leaves the topic open: what terrorism, exactly?
I haven't heard much about the FARC factions in Columbia, not that they do as many damages abroad as islamists do, but that would be nice to include them in the lot, they are not exactly good guys either.

I have taken a look at the Wikipeida entries for terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2010 and counted the victims (both injuries and casualties), in order to see what was the progress of the 'war effort'. I got surprised.

Year 2002: ~3400 victims

Year 2010: ~5300 victims

Mind you, the numbers could be badly reported and it includes all terrorists attacks worldwide, not just the ones from islamist groups.
It does confirm my thoughs, though, that Osama's death will only be worth the chase if the numbers of 2011 take a drastic dive.

Who will be the next enemy?

Ayman Al-Zawahiri seems to be a good candidate, since he's already been designated commander of Al-Quaeda, and apparently has more support than the late OBL.

What now?

To this day, while the media tend to point as Al-Quaeda as the ultimate terrorist group, we tend to forget the existance of a huge number of other organizations, mostly local, that don't get the same amount of press. These groups don't need huge funding, or heavy military organizations, they sometime operate at very low costs (with lighter bombs or pipe bombs) and can have a very high influence in their area.

The pressure on the US, resulting from their campaigns in the Middle-East tends to focus our eyes on international actions of terror, whereas terrorism takes its roots in unhealthy economic and politic climate, poverty and lack of education. The effort is real, but it is doesn't hit home (literally).

Shall we be afraid?

No.

Fear and panic is what feeds terrorists, together with attention and violence.
The rational response should be to keep on living our lives and prove them that we do not need them, their ideology, their help or whetever they pretent to offer, we do not need them in our religions, nor in our politics, we just do not need them, at all.

Congratulations, though, to the US, since their strike have undoubtedly helped in controlling the fear and bringing some most needed hope.
Just, don't forget: it's not over yet, and preventing the spreading of that evil begins with help and tolerance rather than with guns.

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

The Reason Why I am Singing Like A Madman On Youtube

2011-04-26T04:09:00.001-07:00

For fun.

No, seriously, in the beginning I was doing it just for fun, it made my gamer self laugh. Even if I dearly hate the sound of my own voice (Morgan Freeman, teach me, please). Also, I'm a really bad guitar player, so there. Just.For.Fun.

But there is more to the story.

It happened almost by accident. Found myself displayed for the public to see, and I couldn't stop it since I wasn't the one uploading the video.
For those who don't know (all of you, probably), here it is (trauma ahead, you've been warned) :

To be honest, when it got the first views, I wasn't really happy I was scared lifeless and quite depressed.

But then I read some of these comments on twitter and around:

His video got my grandma laughing so hard she got a cough - @leetabulat

I've not watched it for one minute and I can't stop laughing - @nchuNurindah

My little sister won't stop singing it! -(Friend on YM)

And I though... ok that's not many people, but I'm actually making people happy? Man that's great!

So that's it, I have decided to go further and give a million rupiah to a charity I'll reveal the name of when I get there, if I get a million views.
What's in for me? Nothing. I'm not sponsored, I'm not a brand. I'm just thinking that if that video can make people laugh and feel better, it deserves a chance to be known, and if it helps people too, it's two hits with one stone(d singer).

Call me narcissist so I can kiss myself, but that's really what I'm thinking :)

Oh, and I'm available for autographs. XD

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Today only, I'm glad I'm not Chinese.

2011-04-13T22:02:00.001-07:00

Or Japanese, or Korean...or Vietnamese...

Why so?

Today is my birthday.

I usually don't make a fuss about it, but it's been seven years since I haven't celebrated it and this year it comes with several funny little perks.

I was born on a Thursday, today is Thursday. Once cycle ended.
I'm 28 years old, 28 is also a cycle.
28 is my lucky number (when I feel like having one)
28 is a funny number

Still, nothing about Chinesedom yet, but I'm comming to that.

Thursday is the 4th day of the week
this day is the 14th.
This month is the 4th month
28 is 7 times 4, or twice 14
If we fetch it even further, this year, 2011, can be seen as 2+0+1+1, 4 again.

Still not getting it?

In Chinese (or other languages from nationalities listed above), the number 4 sounds like death.

This year, and particularly today, were I Chinese (and supersticious), I would spend my next year looking at the sky, hoping to dodge the proverbial falling piano (well, I'm in Indosia so make it an anklung ).

So voila, inflamatory headline for a numeric prank, forgive me, but there, look at me grinning.

Big big thanks to @acidive, @varidia, @septianandre, @sudaasli, @younithaanggra, @debby_zhang, @pamelahalomoan, @rezade, @perlninja, @thrandurilion, @putriutiee for their wishes!

Now let me go and order some pizza for the office buddies, I think I'll order 4.

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

Appearance does matter. Stat.

2011-04-10T23:11:00.001-07:00

I used to think, naively, that appearance didn't matter at all.
After all when you really can perform, what's important is the result of your work.
That's a logical thought, one that makes a lot of sense.
A thought no one should deviate from... in a perfect world.

I've been playing with my looks for a while now, so much that my hair has aquired sentience. In my line of work, which doesn't include much public speaking, if at all, I can take the freedom of proudly harboring, at work, a blonde streaken mohawk and a pink t-shirt.

When it comes to communicating to a wider public rather than a keyboard, though, a little experiment I did with a certain pair of sunglasses showed me that things are completely different.

See for yourself, the difference with and without.

Now... I remarked several things while wearing these:

I can't do eye contact
I have to smile the whidest grin ever to show that I'm agreeing or happy
The said smile makes me look like an angry wholf
People look at me a quickly look away
I am given more seats in the bus than ever before, and it goes with a body language indicating fear, yes, fear.

To put it simply:

Where am I going?

Well, think: such a little detail as a pair of glasses can change the behavior of people all around you. What if your face were a website, what if the glasses were a feature, and add, a video? Something you would think innocent, but would definitely change your audience's behavior?

A popup means spam, background music means amateurism, flash splash screens mean you're stuck in 2002... maybe not to you, but to your visitors, whom are either born in the internet era or using it since long enough to know the patterns, it will make the difference.

Be open to critics, show your work before publishing, make closed alpha and beta test, and you'll know if you look killer or look like one.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Fresh Quotes

2011-04-07T01:04:00.001-07:00

Fight yourself, win and lose and come back with the bruises.

Empty your wallet, throw away your jacket and see what's left.

Your shoes:leave them behind; your feet are made to stand the walk.

Fall and get up, you'll know how it feels.

Run backward if it brings you there.

Look at your sun, not at their stars.

Make all the mistakes, once.

Take your own hand.

You.

Are.

Your.

Own.

Fucking.

Achievement.

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

What PR all over the world can learn from a rural Indonesian policeman

2011-04-06T00:37:00.001-07:00

On the 29th or March 2011, was uploaded on YouTube what's about to become one of the biggest viral video in Indonesia.

Briptu Norman, from the province of Gorontalo (population +- 1 million) instantly got internet famous.
To date the video has a total of more than 500,000 views.

Of course, things being what they are, we all expected the this talented lip-sync artist to be punished for turning the good name of the local police into a mockery,
On the 5th of April, the press was officially informed that, in spite of the overwhelmingly positive reception of the video, bridagier Normal was to receive due disciplining.

Today, 6th of April, the sanction received by the prancing policeman came to pucblic knowledge. Here you go:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we were all expecting him to be set on fire while flogged with a spiked paddle dipped in vinegar... But there.
This, is a superb PR move.

The Indonesian police doesn't have what you'd call a good reputation; all in all they are mostly reputable for receiving extra bribes to make the ends meet at the end of the month.
Their reaction here proved that they both have a good sense of humor and some real common sense, bringing them one step closer to the people.

Norman's superiors did everything right:

They understood the context of the video
They monitored its reception on the Indonesian web
They took in account the public's reaction
They issued a response that took everybody by surprise, taking a stance diametrally opposed to their reputation

To PR all over the world who still think that censoring message on a facebook page is the best way to control a brand's reputation: take lessons from brigadier Norman and the police force of Gorontalo, Indonesia (population: +- 1 million).

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Walking down the dragon's back

2011-02-23T21:14:00.001-08:00

It was a dream.

I was in the mountain, in a jungle, in a village. All of these.
I had been living with them for a while, I knew them and they knew me; we had, since a long time ago, accepted each other.

And that noon, as the sun was high and burning, I was lead to a clearing at the start of a steep, short, downward path.
That was where the passage ritual was performed.
Vested with no more than a short cloth covering us from the waist down to our thigh, barefoot, we gathered around the way, and they explained me.

You are now about to become a man, following out tribe's tradition. You will simply have to, along with our young ones, walk the path, from end to end.
Just walk, do not run, do not jump.

I saw the first boy walk forward, and only then I noticed that the ground under him was paved with stone scales similar to a giant snake's skin, pointing toward the entrance, slightly lifted... and sharpened.

My turn came and in engaged myself, stepping on the scales.
As I went down, they bit into the sole of my feet. Lightly at first, leaving no more than shallow scratches.
But the further I went, the deeper they dug into my flesh, thanks to the steepness of the path.
It was a dream, that bears repeating, but I remember the pain as if it were real, digging, sharp, lancing up to my calves.
The last steps were a torture. Blood spilled from my feet when I finally managed to step out.

Then they told me

You felt the scales hurt you, and you know now that the last steps are the most difficult.
Yet you carried on, endured its whole length.
You just walked down the dragon's back. You are now an adult.

I woke up hurting and feeling my feet, with the dream still vivid in my mind, and regretting that I was back in my bed and missing the cheers of my fellow tribesmen.
But hey... as every morning usually greets me, that one said: welcome back to life, stand up and keep on walking down, to grow up.

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

Nokia-Microsoft Partnership: Why So Serious?

2011-02-11T02:38:00.001-08:00

I just finished reading a related article on Mashable

Once you read the article past the title, you will find some points that are interesting if you go over their marketing garble.

- "As of April 1, Nokia will have two main business units: Smart Devices, led by Jo Harlow, and Mobile Phones, led by Mary McDowell."
- "MeeGo will be an “open-source, mobile operating system project.”

Here we are witnessing the separation of church and state, it could work.

Symbian OS is one of the main reasons why Nokia is seen as 'your dad's phone', and keeping its core to aliment the cheaper mobile phones that made possible for Nokia to sell around 100 units in 2010, while coming back to a the innovation-oriented strategy that made their success, sounds like the right thing to do.

It could result in a hardware that's not a total waste of potential like the n97 and launches on time unlike the N8.

Nokia has been buying market shares like crazy in Q1 and Q2 2010, and it started plummeting, not because of Symbian, not because of the N8 or the iPhone, but because it just had to happen. They wouldn't have been able to keep with their pricing policies at the time, and they chose to fire their CEO and opt for a more sustainable strategy, can't blame them.

They are still leading the market, far from being doomed, and they could surprise us in the month to come.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

The Call To Arms Of A Nobody

2011-02-08T00:16:00.001-08:00

There is no religion here, there is no moral.

Just cold, biting irony.
While in Egypt, hundreds of thousands march against oppression, here the soil of Indonesia is stained by the blood and ashes of the innocents and their homes.

I saw what they did, thanks to the Internet, I saw them hammering the neck of a bloodied, lifeless corpse, screaming the name of a god they betray with each word, each move.
The same breath that claim to detain the truth exhaling foul hatred, inhaling the blood's vapor and savoring a vengeance on behalf of...of what, exactly?
Small men, you know nothing, you see nothing and you dwell in anger toward what you don't know. You're scared and violent, mindless stampeding herd.
I ask you, what do you know of the truth, what truth is so brittle you need to carry it at the end of a stick?

And now I am calling you, Indonesian fellows, in which my faith held since the first time I set foot on your land.
By law, I am bound to silence when it comes to politics. I am a foreigner.
Look at me and see if I care.

I am calling you, who in 1998 toppled a regime in the name of your freedom.
That bloody cadaver, half prostrated, hopeless and barren, is one part of that tolerance you cherish, dead and still beaten on.
Open your eyes, open your mouth, act.

"What is this, a foreigner calling to arms? The nerves!"
No arms. I am calling you to ostracize violence. I am calling you to call, yourself, to those who might not see.
I am calling you to watch what they did.
Bear the sight, cry, heave, but don't close your eyes.

Look. Understand. God in not there, the truth is not there.
Just a group of people taking away dignity, lives and freedom.

I am nobody. But you might as well hear that call.
Because tolerance can be preached by everyone.
Ostracize violence, together, so no one can ever get scared of thinking, talking, or praying.

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

Did My Best Friend Just Scam Me From London?

2011-01-27T20:49:00.001-08:00

This morning I received an email from a very dear friend.

The email:

"

Dear,
Hope all is well with you? sorry to bother you at this time, please I need your urgent assistance, I had a trip to United Kingdom yesterday for a program, and I was attacked last night by some robbers on my way to the hotel and they took all my money from me, including my phone, right now I don't have any cash on me and I need to pay for a return ticket and make arrangement back home. I want you to kindly assist me with £750 (GBP) or any amount you can afford to help me, I will pay you back when I return. I had to walk down to a public cafe to quickly send you this mail as I do not have access to any phone.
I will be waiting for your urgent response.

"

She is a music reporter, so she tends to travel a lot. We hadn't been talking for a little while and the story is completely plausible.
After I replied, I received another mail containing this:

"

Thanks for the mail and concern, I am somewhere in London at the moment and I have lost contact with everyone ever since the incident took place. I am still not in total control of my self and the bad news is that, I cant access a phone at the moment.

"

That's where common sense came into play. My friend is smart, way smarter than that. If she's in a hotel, she can use the phone there, she can call the police, the ambassy, she has a twitter account, a facebook account, she cannot have lost contact with anybody at all.

Passed the knee jerk reflex of helping a friend in need, I smell fish and give a try to her BBM, which I should have done in the very first place. She replied.

"

I know, my email has been hacked

"

It's sad when you have to doubt your best friend's words. And it's sad when you are rewarded for your lack of trust.
But that's the reality of things, especially on the internet.
So, one more time, I'm giving you a checklist here, in case of doubt.

The anti scam checklist:

Doubt everything councerning money
Call your contacts on their phone
Check their social media account as well
Ask for proof of identity, something personal
Use common sense
Never communicate sensitive info online

Happy I didn't fall for it, happier if you don't ;)

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

3 Instant Messaging Scam You Won't Fall For Anymore

2011-01-24T22:25:00.001-08:00

Ever received a weird message from one of your friends mentionning some bizzare malfunction of your instant messenging service business plan or claiming to have uploaded pics of you poledancing with a lobster?
That's a hoax.
Here are three patterns you can learn about, so next time, I swear, you don't fall for it.

1) Facebook/Twitter/Yahoo!/YourDog/BBM is going to shut down

I you have used an IM service for more than a couple of month, you have already seen this one.

How it usually looks like:

The big boss of your favorite IM service woke up this morning and decided to commit corporate suicide
He took the decision to close/charge for it's star service because it's not making enough money/their servers are full/they are fed up of being rich
Unless everybody forwards the message they are reading right now

Ask youself:

The smallest number for an IM service I know of is about 33 million users worldwide, and that's BBM. , Twitter must be around 200 million now, Yahoo! has around 250 million users, Live Messenger more than 300 million and Facebook 500 million.

All these service have more users than many countries have inhabitants.
We're not all supposed to know about these numbers, but look around you, isn't literaly everybody you know already using them?
Why would they close the gold mine? Wouldn't such a decision make the news, be documented?

Oh and yes, why would the CEO of Big Fat Internet Company bother sending you an...IM for something that important, instead of caling a press conference and making it a headline on the first page of their website?

Because it never happened, the CEO/Message/Broadcast/Cake is a lie.

What if you do what they say?

Someone, at one point, will come to your office with a fully loaded chicken launcher and chase you around untill you collapse.
Seriously, chain messages are pointless and everybody will end up hating you for relaying them.

What to do?

Don't forward, and tell the contact who forwarded the hoax to try and think about it for two minutes. And to never do that ever again. Ever.Again.

2) Hey is that you in that terrible picture/video ?

This one is a bit trickier. It usually comes via a legit contact, is not a broadcast and provides you a link to check what terrible deeds you have been immortalized doing. Man these blackouts are annoying.

How it looks like:

- A contact has tagged/seen you in a photo/video

- What you did is often either terrible or wonderful, or both

- The links points to a website you never use, or worse, it's a shortened URL full of crunchy garble

Ask yourself:

What have you been doing lately? Do you really pass out that often that you don't remember who takes your pic and puts them on totally unknown websites hidden behing completely incomprehensible urls?

If week long hangovers are not your favorite hobby, there are hudge chances that message is a scam.

What if you do what they say?

You're in for a whole lot of trouble. Sometimes these links are just there to attract visitors to badly coded, ugly ad-ridden website about poultry dating and the likes.
Most of the time, a virus is patiently waiting for your click to turn your computer into a scam broadcasting zombie machine.

What to do?

Do not, under any circumstance, click on the link.
Copy-paste the message and send it to your contact, followed by the questions "Did you just send me that?" and, to be extra sure, a more personal question such as "How many Swiss cheese can I ingest before turning into a dafodil?".

You'll know wether the answer make sense. If not, your contact is infected already, advise her to use a better anti-virus and to stop clicking on random links.

3) Just a random link

I won't develop here, the scams use the same methods as the photo/video links, they are just too lazy to ellaborate: A legit contact sends you a random URL without any other information.

The consequences are the same, you'll end up infected or redirected to avianDating.info

Again, same method, check with your contact: Did she really send you that?

Bonus advices:

Just because I'm a good guy, here are some bonus tips when in doubt:

Never give away your password, websites never ask for it
Never give away any sensitive information (bank account number, phone number...)
If you believe the contact is legit, use the phone
Never forward a message when you're asked to
Use common sense (would your mother send you a link containing " \/iag|2a" ?)

Hope it helped. Forward this blogpost to 400 of your contacts or your dog will get his car stolen.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

RIM to open BBM's API, take on Yahoo!, Google, Apple.

2011-01-14T01:12:00.001-08:00

For those who don't know, an API is a kind of middle-man interface between to programs, so they can communicate with each other.
For instance, a Facebook app for iPhone and the Facebook website communicate via Facebook API.

RIM announced during the last Devcon Asia they would open Blackberry Messenger API later this February.

Here is why I think it could be game changing:

Let's start with some facts and figures:

The key features of BlackBerry services are push email, integration with enterprise services and instant messaging
BBM offers features pretty similar to social media services (photo sharing, calendar, etc...)
BBM is used by more than 33 millions users worldwide
RIM, by now, ties with apple when it comes to the amount of sales (behind Nokia with ± 14 millions units end 2010)
The brand is available from approximately 565 carriers and distribution partners in 175 countries

Now with the crystal ball.

A daring bet

Where will the new users register, and how?
Through BES (paid) only, that would mean they would allow a one way only communication, potentially discouraging potential buyers who would have opted for their products for the IM service.
Making it free would mean even more potential loss, and the possibility for the BBM protocol to fall into oblivion.

Both methods are risky. Why taking this risk?

RIM could be the new Yahoo!

If now yahoo claims to have around 260 millions users, we all know where they're at.
Their innovation strategy toward the public as a disaster, and they are resting on their main services awaiting an epiphany that might as well never come.

RIM, though, is in a similar situation as the early Yahoo!, with a powerful e-mail service (even if only push) and a fast growing IM protocol, but with the enormous advantage of being already well implemented in the mobile market and enterprise culture.

So yes, RIM could very well be the new Yahoo!, leading IM and e-mail for the next decade.

RIM can take on Apple and Google, frontally.

RIM can go where Apple and Google can't.

On the mobile market, they tie with Apple and best Google, that's no secret already.
But when you think about it, they have an advantage on one decisive aspect: the social factor of their user base.
Google has been desperately trying to get social with the failed Wave and Buzz experiments, and Yahoo! as done... practically nothing about it.
RIM has integrated many social features in their messenger already, statuses, media sharing and commenting, message broadcasting, and, of course, groups.
That is to say, BBM user base is social-media ready by nature, and already has a platform.

What could they do with it?

At that point, everything is but speculations. But there are some possibilities:

Opening the API in an OAuth kind of way (single shared log-in for several services) would provide a centralized and portable ID to access multiple services. Data monitoring, from that point on, looks like a logical source of revenue/information.

Setting up a persistent social platform based on BBM features has a lot of potential.
With their e-mail client, RIM has shown its expertise as an content aggregator, and with such a user base the occasion is golden for them to become both a provider and a connector in the social media field, especially since they already have a whole ecosystem ready to sprout around it.

2011 promises to be very exciting.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Coconut Banging bad taste

2010-11-11T03:01:00.001-08:00

I know, I know, Colbert is a nice guy, he's just putting himself in character, he's just joking.

It seems that some people are happy that the Indonesian minister of communication regularly brings the country into the spotlights by the force of ridicule and inanity.
He does deserve being mocked. Plenty.
But to me, those writing "Grow a sense of humor" makes mocking the whole Indonesia over the mistakes of one person looks okay.
It also makes spreading, humorously or not, the word that Indonesia is backward look ok.

And seriously, I don't like that.

Indonesians are stupid/lazy/naive/backward... How many time I've heard it from the mouth of expats? Enough to want to punch.
No, Indonesia's reputation is not that good abroad.
Taken from the Fark thread about the controversial handshake here we can read pearls like: "While Christians do seem to be stuck in the Bronze Age, Muslims are still stuck in the Stone Age." The thread then directly swerves to conversations about radical Islam. That's where it goes.
Then, I perpetually hear Indonesians compain about how they are exploited by foreign companies, about how the country's riches goes away. The same kind of educated people that goes about growing tougher toward an armless joke. You don't see a dissonance there? I thought that a country who's people are usually looked down upon by others didn't deserve racist jokes... or is it just true for some parts of the world?

Finally there is this slight timing problem. Irruptions, earthquakes, floods... It would have happened 6 month ago I would have ignored.
I'd chose another time to make a racist joke. Even in character.

Yes yes, I get it, everybody should be tuned to American comedy shows.
Everybody should know that Colbert is in character.
As a matter of fact, not everybody does.

But hey, you guys have much better standards. You probably studied abroad, and you can afford cable TV. And too bad for the coconut banging TKIs or something...

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

5 (more) terribly annoying behaviors on Twitter

2010-10-28T01:27:00.001-07:00

Earlier in this blog I've told you about things that irritate me on Twitter.
And, surprise I'm getting back with more.

1. The tunnel vision self-advertiser

Still human but barely so, they have one thing in mid. ONE.
They have achieved a ghost written e-book about the marvels of the gag reflex, and now they are going to let the whole world know about it.
They have developed a near-godly ability to relate any topic to their product, and whatever the cost they will do it to advise their marvelous
e-pamphlet on the virtues of dried crab neck whenever you feel happy, suicidal, or your car broke down.

Block, choke with recycled e-paper.

2. The bloggers

140 characters are not always enough to express what you mean.
14.000 characters are still not enough for them.
They are the TL;DR kings of the TMI land, and will, not once, sir, not twice mam, but systematically, flood your timeline with novelettes about
every single frame of their morning floss ritual.

Block, report for spam, poke in the leg with a hot needle for ever extra character.

3. The jokers

I'm inappropriate and often offensive.
But when it comes to be downright infuriating, I'm a baby compared to them.
Everything is laughable, everything is funny. They probably spawn from places such as /b/ (don't go if you don't know), and are always happy to bring the fun back in your agonizing grandmother, the last natural disaster or your sexual orientation.

Block, invite them to a lawyer-only rally and watch them melt in lava-hot lawsuits.

4. The dirties

Here I quote " @porkknuckle ;) RT: @killmenow #ouch #Iknewit RT: @vampireunicorn Totally #mommy #eyebleach RT:@killmenow http://too.short...(snip)"
You really want to have a part in that. You know you do.

Block, force them to pay for the eye surgery they just brought on you.

5. The liberated army of sexual innuendoistas

Men and women who think sexual liberation equals tweeting about their genitals every other minute.
They usually try being smart about it and lamentably fail while letting all of us know about their renewed excitement for all the alphabetic variations of the F-word.
They are not exhibitionists either, which make them totally unworthy of any interest.

Block, compliment them about the quality of their content, quoting them aloud, in a public place, preferably a church or a kindergarten.

Anything I missed?
I could turn it into a comic if you had an idea ;)

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: Zompire

2010-10-25T00:45:00.001-07:00

Well, we're near Halloween, this edition is the 13th, so, yeah, zombies, vampires and Robert Pattinson would be the creepy thing to draw I guess.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: Captain Pork Jam

2010-10-20T21:38:00.001-07:00

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

NGOs and IT: Hate, love and money relationship

2010-10-18T21:15:00.001-07:00

So, I have a good Friend, who works for an NGO.

And of course we talk. And of course, we chat through IM.
And funnily enough, my friend's connection drops more often than mine, even when I'm using a simple EVDO modem.

Since all good geek is curious, and since I tend to try being one, I asked whether the source of the problem was known.
This lead to that, and I got to know more about the standard policies of that organization.
I have, in the past, been an ardent defender of NGOs, especially the smaller ones, but what I heard left me pretty nonplussed.
Here is why:

Local: bad.

There are, where I live, various local ISP offering diverse professional solutions and, as long as we forget about wireless broadband, offering broadband under USD 500 per month.
Of course they are using one of these solutions, but it doesn't seem to be good enough for them, and they are using a secondary secure connection, from all the way to Europe, costing them more than USD 3000 per month.

That's pretty expensive for a VPN if you ask me. Yes, the data are precious, but I wonder why a standard VPN implementation is not enough to protect it? Is Wikileaks after them?
To add some spice to the sauce, their technical support is located abroad and the operations in case of trouble are monitored...by phone.

Standards are better, it's a fact. By why don't they let local organizations implement their procedures, when they can actually do it well, is still a mystery to me.

Expensive: good.

Closed source commercial database. Less than 1000 simultaneous connections. A million dollars project costs. When Facebook still uses MySQL.
And yes, before you ask me, it does crash every now and then.

The office computers are of course loaded with Windows.
I know, Linux is know to be complex. Ubuntu is also know to be pretty user friendly.

Nevermind.

Result: Mess

Since no local consultant is there to support full time their IT structure, their bandwidth is very badly distributed.
Their secure connection got recently hacked, by a local.
A virus infection recently cost them several month of shutting down their operations, plus the cost of outsourcing the cleaning up.

I won't pretend to offer an immediate solution, but I'm sad to see that so much money wasted because "they have better at home".
I know where my next donation won't go though.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

NGOs and IT: Hate, love and money relationship

2010-10-18T04:37:00.001-07:00

So, I have a good Friend, who works for an NGO.
And of course we talk. And of course, we chat through IM.
And funnily enough, my friend's connection drops more often than mine, even when I'm using a simple EVDO modem.

Standards are better, it's a fact. By why don't they let local organizations implement their procedures, when they can actually do it well, is still a mystery to me.

Expensive: good.

Oracle. Less than 1000 simultaneous for a database. A million dollars project costs. When Facebook still uses MySQL.
And yes, before you ask me, it does crash every now and then.

The office computers are of course loaded with Windows.
I know, Linux is know to be complex. Ubuntu is also know to be pretty user friendly.

Nevermind.

Result: Mess

I won't pretend to offer an immediate solution, but I'm sad to see that so much money wasted because "they have better at home".
I know where my next donation won't go though.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: Don't like, don't click

2010-10-04T20:11:00.001-07:00

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Get rid of blocked tweeps coming back in your timeline through RTs and mentions with Greasemonkey.

2010-10-01T04:53:00.001-07:00

So, have you ever had to deal with this frustrating experience: blocking a user on Twitter, and seeing that user back and again in your timeline through RTs an mentions?
If yes, this little script can help you.

It will replace any tweet containing that user's name with "Just another tweet", so your adrenalin never spikes again.

You will need Mozilla Firefox and Greasemmonkey to run it. I can't host .js files, so you will have to follow the tutorial below in order to install the script. It's currently designed for one username only, but I could enhance it later, if ever you asked and treated me for a pizza.

Here is the tutorial:

1) Install the GreaseMonkey add-on . After installation, you should see a monkey icon on the botton-right of your browser, that's where you can manage your scripts, deactivate and reactivate Greasemonkey.

2) After installing, go to Tools -> Greasemonkey -> New user script

3) Fill in the blanks:

4) Greasemonkey will ask you for your favorite text editor, notepad or textedit will do

5) Copy and paste the following, fill the blank space between the quotes with the username you want to block (keep the quote marks, no need for a @), save and close.

For Twitter:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           TwErazer
// @namespace      TwErazer
// @include        http://www.twitter.com/
// @include        http://twitter.com
// @include           http://*.twitter.com/*
// ==/UserScript==
erazeme = "     ";
setInterval(function()
{
    el = document.getElementsByTagName('span');
    for(i=0;i<el.length;i++)
    {
        if (el[i].className == "entry-content")
            {
                str = el[i].innerHTML;
                if (str.match(erazeme))
                {
                    el[i].innerHTML = "Just another tweet";
                }
            }
    }
    el = "";
}
, 5000);

For "New Twitter"

// ==UserScript==
// @name           TwErazer_new
// @namespace      TwErazer_new
// @include        http://www.twitter.com/
// @include        http://twitter.com
// @include        http://*.twitter.com/*
// ==/UserScript==
erazeme = "    ";
setInterval(function()
{
   el = document.getElementsByTagName('div');
   for(i=0;i<el.length;i++)
   {
   if (el[i].className == "stream-item")
        {
        subEl = el[i].children[1].children[2].children[1];
        str = subEl.innerHTML;
            if (str.match(erazeme))
            {
            subEl.innerHTML = "Just another tweet";
            }
        }

   }
   el = "";
   srt = "";
}
,5000);

6) Go to Twitter, breathe.

7) You can test the script with any word or username you want.

Voila, hope it's helpful :)

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: Philanthropy

2010-09-26T04:20:00.001-07:00

This is #10! Hence a bit of a special edition.
Props FTW!

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: Semantics

2010-08-31T21:57:00.001-07:00

Chat roulette is a service allowing you to anonymously video-chat with other users, at random.
It can be compared to what /b/ would be with the addition of video.
If you haven't tried it yet, just don't.

Here is the story about the Oxford going online only.

Man am I hungry.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: Captain TapDance

2010-08-29T21:37:00.001-07:00

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: Internet Cat Justice

2010-08-27T00:12:00.001-07:00

The story has been making the news for a little while now.
For reference, you can check here and here.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: Cinematic Tongue Twister

2010-08-26T07:03:00.001-07:00

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: The Beast Of Olde calls you baby

2010-08-25T03:44:00.001-07:00

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: Diagnositis

2010-08-23T20:18:00.001-07:00

"When you enter the Web with a cold, you leave it with a brain tumor" -Me

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: Diagnositis

2010-08-23T20:12:00.001-07:00

"When you enter the web with a cold, you leave it with a brain tumor." - Me

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

FirePork: Diagnositis

2010-08-23T20:09:00.001-07:00

"When you enter the web with a cold, you leave it with a brain tumor." - Me

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: Diagnositis

2010-08-23T20:08:00.001-07:00

"When you enter the web with a cold, you leave it with a brain tumor." - Me

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: Stalker Stalker

2010-08-22T22:33:00.001-07:00

Click to enlarge.

This has anything to do with the fact that you can't block Zuckerberg on Facebook.
Which is intereting. And funny. Or totally unimportant, but a good topic for a web-comic. Bacon.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

FirePork: Freedom

2010-08-20T03:30:00.001-07:00

Click on the comic to see full size. Feedback is welcomed, sharing is caring, or I'll throw a tantrum.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Firepork, my attempt at a web comic

2010-08-20T01:05:00.001-07:00

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Maafkan kebencian dan makan siang ramai-ramai

2010-08-09T20:56:00.001-07:00

Marhaban Ya Ramadhan...
(in English here)

Hari pertama puasa...besok.
Selamat tinggal makan pagi, selamat tinggal warteg, dan selamat datang kepada kolak dan berbuka bersama.
Selamat datang juga kepada muda-mudi yang sebentar lagi akan berkeliaran di jalan sempit sekeliling kosanku, sembari berkata 'sahuuuur' dengan suara tinggi dan keras, agar jiwa-jiwa yang kelaparan dapat bangun dan isi perut sebelum kosongkan nafsu.

Saya sebenarnya bukan orang muslim. Saya bisa dikatakan bagai anak haram hasil kumpul kebo pak Confucius dan pak Nietzsche.
Tetapi perlukah mementingkan agama pada hari ini, saatnya kita saling maaf-memaafkan?
Kalau saya lihat lebih jauh daripada pemohonan maaf tersebut, yang bisa saja menjadi formalitas tampa inti sebenarnya, saya tetap senang mengucapnya dan mendengarnya.

Kerena kebetulan juga, banyak yang dapat dimaafkan.
Lihat saja seputar Internet, dan anda akan melihat kebencian yang melewati batas negara, mengotori bendera, dan merendahkan iman-iman dari agama apapun.
Mari, kita mamfaatkan kesempatan ini untuk menghapus tinta buku dosa umat manusia, dengan harapan pena sang iblis menjadi hancur, hilang dan tak ditemukan lagi.
Harapan juga tidak cukup, mari kita berusaha untuk tutup buku ini, bersama.

Demikian, kepada semua teman-teman maupun muslim baik nasrani baik pagan, buddha, yahudi dan banyak lagi agamanya, saya mohon maaf lahir dan batin.

Nah, sekarang makan siang yuk yang banyak, hari ini masih bisa sampai kekenyangan :D

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

Forgive the hate and go have lunch

2010-08-09T20:33:00.001-07:00

Marahban Ya Ramadhan...

The fasting is tomorrow. Good bye breakfast, good bye warteg and hello kolak and huge evening meals.
Hello to the youth walking the narrow streets near my room, at three in the morning, shouting SAHUUUUR so every hungry soul can wake up and fill their belly before emptying their appetites for the day to follow.

I'm not a Muslim. I'm probably more of a feral Taoist, or the disciple of a love child between Confucius and Nietzsche.
It doesn't matter, today is about forgiving. That's what everybody says around here. Mohon maaf lahir dan batin, 'I beg you to forgive me, body and mind'.
Past the dull exchange of formalities any seasonal greeting turns into, I actually enjoy the ritual.
What did I do that could have offended you?
Ah, you didn't say, rascal! And now I feel bad. But hey...now, if you mean it, all is forgiven, and thank you for that.

If you think about it, a lot is to be forgiven.
Take a look around the web, and see all the hate toward... well... toward too many, from too many places, under too many flags and too many faith.
I think it's the right time to see what we've gotten into and again, this year, turn the page and forgive the hate, start over an empty tab and with it won't ever get filled again.
To wish... don't I write foolish words? To endeavor so that tab, the great buku dosa of mankind, stays blank.

So to all of you people, I beg for forgiveness, body and mind.

Now let's go eat a huge lunch while we still can :D

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

You don't need to like it :D

2010-08-07T07:27:00.001-07:00

Sod - A - Capella - Medley by Danny
Download now or listen on posterous

SOD-A-capella-medley.mp3 (1164 KB)

That's what happen when I have too much time in my hands.
In other words: Saturday.

--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

140 Character are not enough for love.

2010-07-08T06:36:00.001-07:00

I’ve recently tweeted the following:

“ If every ‘love’ tweet I see in my timeline were real, there would be mass suicides every time twitter is down “

That tweet has triggered some reaction, some of them I can’t help considering, given the context, pretty uncalled for.

Since we are all humans, with different experiences and point of view, and since I can’t ask you all something as personal as your own definition of love, based on your deepest feelings and experiences, I am going to give you mine.

Being ready to let everything go, friends, family, comfort, money to follow someone at the other end of the world. Persist and start over without a penny to your name, in a place where you’re a stranger, to stay with that same person, because he/she needs you. Even if he/she is ‘only a friend’.

Staying in a city that breaks people and swallow them whole because you want to share it with its citizens, because the most beautiful thing you’ve seen is the sunrise over its buildings, proving you there’s always a tomorrow. Because everything you miss can’t compare to anything you would miss if you left. Even if you’re so often seen as ‘that weird foreigner’.

Forgetting anger, jealousy, lust, grief because he/she opened his/her door again. And be ready to take yet another bullet.

Be hungry together, because you’d rather share the hunger than see him/her in trouble.

Being broken and fix yourself because you’re his/her rock.

Feeling that there is only one home: next to him/her.

You can call me sarcastic all you want, now. But as far as I’m concerned, I need to give more than 140 characters to show my love.

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

More reasons why the SNS trend can be a bubble waiting to burst.

2010-07-07T03:02:00.001-07:00

I have already introduced the topic with that post. But I think that through all my perusing, musing and meditation, I have found some more factors to why the SNS trend can actually be seen as a bubble ready to burst. Here: Wrong values and unqualified ROI

From the top of my skull, that's the very first thing coming in, and the topic about which I am the most vehement.

Wrong values because now everything seems to be quantified by either the amount of followers, likes, or facebook friends you get.
The numbers have to be huge, since the bet is "if you are visible to many, some might buy"; unfortunately I barely believe in that approach, and I'm probably not the only one.
It was probably true a couple of years ago, but now so many have jumped in the bandwagon it derails at every turn, being visible to many means taking part in an infomercial flood invading too many time lines.

Now, I see a huge bunch of consultants and experts wanting to jump at my throat, screaming that the results are quantifiable if you know where to start.
Indeed they are. We hear from the revenue generated from online campaigns. Generated by the ads agencies.
The ROI of the actual advertisers though, is unknown.
I'm not talking about isolated cases, I'm talking about a global survey and real figures; what I want to read is " n% of of the companies advertising on Twitter experienced a ROI of n% during the last 6 month"

Too much snake oil

I'm not saying that every SNS consultant is a fake, but many are still pretty inexperienced, or plain useless.
As a result, many companies are lured into thinking that:

- They can sell online without previous authority (not everyone is called Starbucks)
- They can sell absolutely everything online ( PR is different from sales)
- Having lots of followers/likes/friends is a proof of success (you can buy followers in some forums)

Then, confusing talks about the results come into the game, and mess it up a little more. Take this article for instance.

What do they mean by "countless donations", "increased their traffic by 300%" or "sales bump of 20%" ?
If I have 1 visitor, having 3 by the next day will be a 300% increase. Be specific!

What kind of trust do you want to build with these stats? Seriously?
What is economy based on, by the way? Oh yeah, trust.

The balance is fragile

Platforms, users, advertisers and third parties are tied in a very tight way.
The platform depends on the users, drives its traffic through third parties, and exposes it to the advertisers.

If the platform fails, everything is muted
If the users get bored, everybody loses interest in the platform (no content generated)
It third parties are not competitive enough, users will get bored (but then again, what if the platform fails them?)
If the advertisers stop advertising, the platform can't maintain itself (and in the other hand if the "lesser" and noisy ads smother the users, they will get bored)

The not so funny fact being that Facebook and Twitter are in a position of quasi monopole. There is nowhere else to go right now.
Does it mean that investors and companies will keep on pumping in money and effort until someone panics? I hope not.

The topic is being discussed

As I said earlier, economy is based on trust.
You'll always find a base of skeptics being grumpy about mostly every topic you can imagine, that's given. But in the middle of the current SNS fever, articles about disappointments and doubt about the real value of the system (like this one) are becoming more common, and that's not really a good sign.

What can we do so it doesn't burst?

What I have in mind is pretty simple. Diversify, leave more space to the competition, stop advertising stuff no one care about, and start treating social media like, yes, media and not like some universal solution to all advertising problems.
The internet is not limited to Twitter and Facebook, it is a mine of innovation, it's time to remember it and get back to making stuff.

Burstingly yours.
Danny.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

8 Easy Steps to Drastically Clean Up Your Twitter Timeline

2010-07-02T01:38:00.001-07:00

Your Twitter timeline is a bloody mess? You've created lists but it doesn't matter?
The probability is that you are both using Twitter to look for information to share and to keep in touch with some friends.
The probability is, now your timeline is gorged with non-sequitur quotes and repeated bad marketing attempts, that you failed.
Like I did.

So what now? It's time to unfollow everybody, yessir, and re-follow the Tweeps you really bear in your little heart.

I have some easy steps for you:

Tell everyone you are cleaning up and starting from zero. You don't hate them, you just need to get rid of all the bots, you were a victim of your own eagerness to make friends and followed too many accounts, people forced you at gunpoint, you're saving the trees...
Do that a day or two before you actually press the big red nuke button, some people don't tweet everyday and might be surprised if it happens too fast. Who wouldn't?
Make a new list with people you will re-follow. Unfollowing them will not delete them from the list. A good way to do so is to check your mentions and private messages, it will give you a good hint about who dialogs with you the most.
Once you're sure you really, really want to do it, go to http://www.unfollowall.com/
Enter your ID, Password, validate and check your account.
If your 'following' counter is not showing zero yet, go back to Unfollowall.com and repeat/refres.
Time to re-follow everybody in that new list you created.
As a couple of extra steps I'd recommend to create some special lists such as "Info only" and "real people" or "nice dialog" and keep these strictly separated. If you are using a tool such as hootsuite or tweetdeck, it's pricelessly handy.

Notice that you will inevitably experience a drop in your followers, since all the accounts using automated mutual follow will also unfollow you. But then again, you're in there for a reason that doesn't include pleasing the bots. Be tough!

Wishing you a happy reboot!

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

The Free Mindset

2010-06-21T00:07:00.001-07:00

I do advertise my shoes as "Free shoes", but what does it really mean?

I doesn't mean that I give them away...not all of them.

I give away the brand, the design and pretty much all the rights the the products. No brand, no patent, no retrictive licence.
That's what I mean by free.
You can take it, sell it, put your brand on it, make money out of it, as long as my name is on it.

Reference my blog, my deviantart page, contact me to get my full name, the choice is yours!

As far as I know, even if this concept is pretty new in the sofware industry, that's a first when it comes to goods, even moreso when it comes to clothes.

Here is the first model, I'll upload much much more about how everything is done.
Contact me if you like them, want to buy them, or donate for the project.

And yes, that's a French design!

Posted via web from Free Shoes - Open source, creative common, unbranded shoes.

Karate Kid Vs Prince Of Persia, or How to Fuck Up a Remake.

2010-06-13T22:24:00.001-07:00

When a meal tastes good, don't mess with the recipe.

That's why I like Karate Kid.
The storyline is the same. Take a kid, a bully, an obscure dude that can actually kick ass, make them interact through an unlikely training program, break the kid's leg and finish the bully with a snake move (actually crane, but, hey, snake and crane go well together).
There, actually, the movie adds some salt by putting the said kid in China. We get a glimpse of the scary training kids get in these parts of the globe, and the feeling of not belonging experienced by Dre is pretty well rendered.
In short, it's the same movie in a different context. There nothing new, but it's refreshing. And you get to see Beijing.

Now Prince Of Persia.
I'm a fan of the game. Not that I have much time to play it, but I love it. It's the best platformer around.
If you don't know yet, PoP has revolutionized the world of video games when the first opus came out.

The game is all about acrobatics and wicked 5 vs 1 fights against sand monsters, a scimitar in one hand and the sand dagger as a "main gauche".
The Prince volts around, rolls on the ground, flips over his opponents and bounces against the walls.
Spectacular.

Now, the plot is is twisted. The Prince likes the Vizier's niece, the Vizier's a wicked warlock, who screws pretty bad with the fabric of time.
Result: Prince and Princess fight together to bring back time normal. It ends in an epic rewind, where they haven't done anything together, at all, and the only thing the Prince can do to remind the Princess is remind her of her secret childhood password: Kakulukian.
It does remotely resemble the movie's plot. Remotely.

But where are the epic fights, the sand monsters (the real ones, the legions, not the pathetic Persian remake of Inspector Gadget), the 'run on the wall, jump, swing around a pole while beheading evil fiends' ?
Nowhere. So much wasted potential makes me cry.

References are good, recycling is bad

As said earlier, Karate Kid kept all the right references to keep the storyline consistent. That's the least the movie could do. But it did more: adding some real background, building some real atmosphere. You hear people speaking mandarin, and no, no subtitles thanks. You're as lost as Dre and you wonder all the same what in the world they mean by *some funny monosyllabic noises*.

Babylon? COME ON!
Tantrum time. This movie has nothing to do with Aladdin! Stop throwing apples and making benevolent thieves appear out of nowhere.
Seriously, the next thing I was expecting while watching the movie is a bloody flying carpet, powered by a (I'll say it) BLUE DJINN (I said it).
And what about the beautiful Persian language? When is it heard?
That's what I mean, you don't just take some bits and kludge them together, you have to build around it, and PoP just doesn't.

Don't improvise

Karate kid does it, a minimum, to keep the storyline believable. The mountain village is a bit overdone to my taste. But it correspond to another magical place in the original movie.

PoP does it all the time.
Most frustrating points:

The Princess' name. For Enlil's sake, her name is FARAH! Not Tabitanitavinalina or whatever. The only other female character in the game is called Kayleena, and that's still pretty far from Tibitinatitalita or whatever.

The button on the dagger. Now COME ON, we know, there are no blue prints for the damned knife. But a button? Does it also send text messages or does it need a plug in? Most importantly, can I go fish with it if I bring my own sinker?
What about the spiritual binding between the dagger and the bearer, wouldn't it be enough? And spare the cost for a button?

The Prince's siblings. Oh, now, there's the happy family yes? The prince is a loner. When he escaped from his first adventure, the first thing he does is, out of despair from losing Farah, go to the Island Of Time, and face the tentacle-heavy-shadow-Minotaur (you'd expect it in a Japanese shonen, but there it is) called the Dahaka, and go as far as free the Empress Of Time herself. Just. Because. He's. Pissed.
No brotherly love here.

Then another thing KK does well and PoP screws like never: the fighting.
KK did actually cast kids who COULD fight.
PoP, not so much. "Ok take a scary stance, try punching while looking as Persian as you can and the steady cam will make them forget you can't do jack." Yeah. Main gauche.

12 years-old and blood sports are not compatible

There, PoP actually stops at apple throwing.

Karate Kid, though, drives such a high amount of violence through mere kids it almost becomes pornographic.
The movie Kick Ass did trigger the same feeling of disgusts.
Kids and violence should never match for our entertainment. They should actually never match at all. Ever.

In conclusion, PoP sucked like the eye of a sandstorm, full with out of nowhere plot elements and mismatched ambiance. Karata kid did much better, much better, but I'm still grinding my theeth at the idea that kids are fighting on screen just to amuse us.

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

Give a break to the grumpy man: he's probably right.

2010-06-10T01:21:00.001-07:00

Finally!!

Usually, when studies quoting the obvious appear in the papers or in the blogs, I tend to enter 'Fark mode' and sadly think: "and still no cure for cancer".
But today, after years of longing, I stumbled upon this article.
Yes, it says the grumps are good for you.

So, so you are warned, I am a grumpy person. I "complain too much", I "worry too much" and I also happen to be right 90% of the time when it comes to analyzing situations.
Day after day, I find my Twitter timeline and, Facebook activity stream crowded with positive thinking from "The Secret", quoting nonsensical nuggets of unicorn rainbow poop such as "Think about bananas and you'll get bananas" and "A smile is free".
Day after day I find myself thinking "Shall I wrap my mood in caramel marshmallow so luck comes to me?"

Well, good news for me: I don't have to, and I was right. Again.

Just so I give myself the joy of overemphasizing on some points I have probably written before:

Positive thinking has nothing to do with being positive. Positive thinking is about finding constructive solutions to your problems, solution that make you go forward, thus the "positive"; It has nothing to do with thinking yourself to whatever your target is (except slacking, I'm very good at thinking myself to that)
When someone comes at you complaining, give their 'bad attitude' a break and try to find out why these persons are complaining, yeah, sometimes people actually complain for a reason
When someone tells you 'I told you', they probably did tell you. When it happens more than once: try listening, the smart-ass is not who you think

I know I'm not alone in here, to get worried when problems come along, to see where a certain set of bad data can lead a situation (or a company, for what it's worth).

So next time, when this grumpy dude from the IT/Support/Whatever service comes to you and tells you "I don't think that's good", keep in mind that they don't want to ruin your day, they're probably right.

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

Pendidikan seks: agar tidak jadi korban.

2010-06-09T21:21:00.001-07:00

Saya tidak mau sok bijaksana, atau sok mengajar hal ini pada kalian semua, tapi menrut saya ada beberapa fakta yan seharusnya sedikit diterangin tentang pendidikan seks.

Kini kita hidup dalam suatu lingkungan di mana seks selalu hadir dangan berbagai bentuk. Internet sudah dipakai secara rutin oleh jutaan orang, dan media-media memang tidak pernah malu membahas seks dengan cara yang sangat bebas. Siapa yang belum pernah dengar lagu yang liriknya "I wanna make love right now, right now" ?
Jadinya, kita tidak boleh tutup mata dan sebaliknya kita harus lebih tahu tentang hal yang ternyata masih sedikit tabu ini.

Saya ambil contoh yang agak aneh, tapi coba kita samakan seks dengan demam berdarah alias DB.
Kalau sifat kita terhadap DB sama dengan sifat kita terhadap seks, yang bisa terjadi adalah:

Tidak ada orang yang mau mengaku telah terinfeksi DB
Tidak ada orang yang berani berbagi informasi tentang cara mencegah DB
Anak-anak dilarang keluar kamar pagi-pagi dan sore-sore, tapi tidak dijelaskan alasannya
Anak-anak mengucapkan kata "nyamuk" dimarahi orang tuanya
Orang panik setiap kali digigit serangga apapun (kan belum begitu jelas kenanya dari mana)
Munculnya banyak obat-obat anti-DB yang ternyata palsu/tidak mempan
Tentu saja jumlah orang yang meninggal dunia kerena DB setinggi langit

Ya, memang takkan ada video-video nyamuk disebar-luaskan melalui HP, tapi kalian get my point kan?

Nah, sekarang kita lihat, di dunia ini, apalagi dengan rutinisasi pemakaian internet dan social media, anak-anak semakin terekspose dan remaja-remaja bisa semakin sering dijadikan korban skandal-skandal tidak jelas.
Tapi kenapa ya bisa sampai ke situ?

Jawabannya jelas: Kalau saya tahu tentang sesuatu dan kamu tidak tahu akan hal yang sama, saya dapat mamfaatkan ketidaktahuan kamu dan mamfaatkan kamu.
Kalau hal itu mobil, kamu jadi pembeli, kalau hal itu seks...kamu jadi korban.

Makanya solusinya jelas, tidak usah tutup facebook, tidak usah buang hp... tambah ilmu saja tentang seks! Seks itu manusiawi, seks itu sebagian besar dari hidup kita, seks itu bukan teori tapi fakta. Jadi kita anggap saja seks sebagai fakta, dan menjelaskannya kepada adik-adik kita sebagai fakta.
Kenapa harus takut? Mendigan orang tua dans sekola-sekola mulan mengajarkan pendidikan seks, daripada adik-adik kita cari tahu sendiri dengan risiko mendapat jawaban serba salah atau jadi korban, kan?

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

Mobile Ads: Location or Nothing.

2010-05-25T00:04:00.001-07:00

Now, we're seriously stepping in a phase where the mobile broadband integration has become a sine qua non requirement, and we're hearing about the war between Google and Apple to milk the biggest jug out of mobile customers. But I wonder... is the traditional ad system worth it when going mobile or is there an alternative?
Location based advertising and partnerships are the sanest answer coming to my mind, here is why:

Ads in a matchbox?

In all my browsing experience, the only time I have clicked on ads were accidental. But it never turned out to be a real problem, tabbed navigation, mouse, big screen... all these help when you get tricked into visiting that awesome money-making-twitting-towel's website.
Now, on a mobile, that's pretty different, the screen is small, the fonts are small, and as long as I admire the efforts put into mobile web browsers I can't really say it's the best way to enjoy the web...

What about ROI?

When you try googling anything about the topic, you end up with a huge amount of articles describing how Facebook and Google are making money out selling ads and even more money out of selling even more ads for mobile. What about the return on investment of those who actually buy the ad space?
Please send me a link, I have yet to find anything that's realistic about advertiser's ROI.

Ads through apps?

That's another thing. I've seen ads embedded in apps I use for my mobile. I will never click on them simply because doing so would open my browser. I don't need more lag than I already have, thank you very much, and then again, the small screen would make it as comfortable as gnawing on my toes.
I won't worry about it too much though, Twitter has announced they wouldn't allow ads from their third party apps anymore. Nice for them to secure their own channel (tweetup), but not so nice for many a developer's business plan.

Back to the real world, sns advertisers could choke on the red pill.

What seems to be profitable, then? Coupons. Location based advertisement.
Where does it bring us back to? Traditional advertising.
Will it work? Yes, Yes and YES.

Why?

1) It brings direct rewards to the consumer
2) It's directly relevant to the user
3) It's less intrusive

Am I the only one to think that? No.

Apple did forbid developers to implement location based ads, they want to keep the candies for themselves.
Google battled and won over location based ads.
Yahoo! is so desperate to enter the battle it offered to buy foursquare, and just bought Koprol.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Tips-Tips belajar bahasa inggris sambil nyantai

2010-05-13T23:06:00.001-07:00

Anda ingin belajar bahasa Inggris? Selamat!

Bahasa Inggris sudah lama menjadi salah satu hal terpenting dalam kehidupan kita dan tidak hanya dibutuhkan di dunia kerja lho.
Sayangnya proses belajar bahasa Inggris itu tidak selalu gampang. Agar suatu bahasa bisa dimengerti dengan baik, Anda harus sering latihan.
Masalahnya, Anda mungkin tidak punya kenalan yang bisa diajak mempraktikkan bahasa itu.

Nah, tip-tip berikut ini bisa membantu Anda belajar bahasa Inggris tanpa tambah pusing.

1) Teknik lima kata.

Atau seperti kata teman saya: jurus ajaib lima kata masuk mimpi.
Tekniknya sangat gampang:

- Tulis lima kata baru di atas kertas atau notebook kecil, serta terjemahannya.
- Baca lima kata baru itu 10 menit sebelum tidur dan coba pelajari.
- Saat bangun, dijamin Anda akan ingat sekurang-kurangnya dua dari lima kata itu.

Andai memakai teknik ini setiap hari, Anda sudah bisa hafalkan lebih dari 700 kata setelah satu tahun!

Kalau ternyata keberatan mencari lima kata per hari, kurangi saja sampai jumlahnya sesuai dengan daya ingat Anda.

2) Teknik DVD

Belajar sambil meniru peran-peran Avatar juga boleh.
Cukup beli DVD dengan teks Inggris yang sudah oke. Daripada menyetel teks Indonesia, tonton filmnya saja sambil membaca teks Inggrisnya.
Metode ini juga sangat berguna untuk latihan pendengaran.

3) Teknik Orang Gila (bicara kepada diri sendiri)

Sambil jalan, bersih-bersih kamar, di dalam angkot, Anda bisa mencoba berdialog pada diri sendiri...tetapi dalam bahasa Inggris!
Tidak usah bersuara juga kalau takut dianggap orang gila :)

Saat masih pemula, saya selalu pakai teknik-teknik itu dan ternyata kemajuan saya sangat cepat, dalam bahasa Indonesia maupun dalam bahasa Inggris. Jadi, jangan ragu-ragu mencobanya yah? :)

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

11 Tips For Your Little One's Safety On The Web

2010-05-11T01:42:00.001-07:00

You've seen it, we've seen it, cyber-bullying is around the corner.
Facebook and Twitter, as any other communication platforms, are as many ways to find yourself the lucky owner of an official stalker.
While it's worthy of all your concern as parents or siblings, it's sadly not the only thing you should worry about.
Here are some of the negative aspects of the Internet and how to prevent your little ones from bumping into them.

What is seen cannot be unseen.

The most disturbing event I've had to face so far is friend being tagged in a photo depicting a beheaded corpse.
These pictures are unfortunately very common, and very easy to find.
What to do then?

Set up search filters
They are available for Google, Yahoo and Bing
Be informed.
4chan (really [nNumber]Chan), Encyclopedia Dramatica and a load of Shock Sites are already sources of major freak out for many grown ups, you don't wanna know what they can do to a 10 years-old.
Don't be fooled
Even Wikipedia has some pretty graphic explanations about sex-related topics (that's the fun side, don't go near the dermatology section).

But you can monitor all you want, you know kids are pretty smart, they'll do anything to access the kind of pictures/videos that will make them stop believing in Santa. So talk to them, be open and be with them when they access the web.

This crazy little thing called P2P

I'll be brief: Either do it yourself, or ban it. You know this pre-release of the latest blockbuster you just downloaded? You know you feel stupid when you discover that, really, it's a porn flick. Your little one will come back with a lot of question about Iron Man if you don't take care.

We're all friends, right?

Well, no. Remember, Internet was created by the people, for the people. It's been created by geeks, who are known to have, sometimes, a pretty sick humor (I should know). And even if yes, it's for the people, as far as I know it still includes the percentage that's nuts enough to come out with the 47 original rules of the internet. I invite you to read it with your sarcasm detector fully charged, it's pretty informative.

So now you know what kind of crackpot you can stumble upon, and since you already know we're only six levels away from pretty much anybody on this planet, you'll find that the following advices make sense.

No chatroulette. Ever.
Nuf' said.
On social networking sites, only let your kids befriend people they (you) already know in real life.
Taking a look at their profiles (of course you know their password yes?)
Never let them meet face to face someone they met online.
Just in case they did meet someone online
Their data are theirs.
So, no darling, you can't give the nice man/website your phone number.
The same goes for pictures and videos.
Anonymous Coward is a Coward
If your little one gets unfriendly messages from an unknown persona, don't let her take it seriously, anonymity combined to aggressiveness is just plain cowardice. Let them laugh at the scaredy haters.
Block the undesirable.
Facebook, Twitter, IM, Chatrooms, Forums... they all have at least a blacklist feature, don't hesitate to use it. I cant explain step by step here, but tutorials are widely available through a simple Google search
Social is not just Facebook and Twitter.
Forums and chat rooms are still active, and if they are not under the spotlight right now, you still should be careful about their content, especially the chatrooms.
Privacy is the new black. Learn and teach!
I've written a piece about it some weeks ago, and you can scour the web for many other useful tips. Being informed yourself is the best way to teach online safety to the apple of your eyes.

Hoping it's been useful. And remember, the more you know about the web, the safest your kids are. Be open, talk and experience, that's the ultimate key!

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Trying French? Shut up!

2010-05-10T23:10:00.001-07:00

Here is a first class rant.

French is considered a classic, classy, romantic language.
What happens, thus, is a myriad of Frenchabes (French wannabes, wapanese's remote cousins) trying to compose their best neo-romantic piece with the help of a year of high-school French class and/or Google Translate.
To understand how an automatic translation can transform your sweetest intent into an embarrassing word soup, here are some examples:

What you meant:

- My love for you will never fade away
- Love me tender, love me sweet
- Only you and you alone can thrill me like you do

What I read:

- Mon amour pour toi ne sont jamais à la décoloration.
- M'aimes offre, m'aimes douce
- Seuls vous et vous seul pouvez me passionnent vous ne

What you really wrote:

- My love for you are never at the washing-up
- Do you love me bargain, do you love it sweet
- Only you all and you alone can passionate me don't

The first line is a copy paste from a chat with a friend, the two others are from some old-time love songs.

I've tried to render the grammatical chaos in the French translations, but I gave up.
I guess you can see where the problem is.
Whereas my English tends to be somewhat (yeah) broken, I guess you can still get some sense out of my writings.
These are plain garble.

Let it be clear, if you're actually learning French, there isn't anything wrong with trying.
BUT, if you don't know a word of the language... leave it alone.
You'll end up reading like French lolcat, especially if you're addressing a native.

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

Scobles, you're pushing it too far.

2010-05-10T03:07:00.001-07:00

This post is an answer to Robert Scobles's post, where he wishes privacy to be dead for good, again, and Facebook to turn full disclosed.

Robert, if you allow me...

First of all, I do think we have something in common. I am popular among my offline friends for the same reason you are famous online: our inflated ego. No that's not a bad thing. But here, in this very case, I think you're pushing it too far.

We're not all celebrities

I might be a star before my friends and a demigod before my girlfriend, there are some things I like to keep for them and them only: the silly faces, the naked pole dancing, some of my pretty disturbing thoughts about gastronomy and babies...
Facebook would go all open, it would be even better for you, more visibility, better way to let your opinions known.
Then again, we are not all celebrities.

We're not all techies/internet marketers

You and I, Robert, have something to say. Me on a much smaller scale (but I'll get you one day don't worry), but still. We know how to crawl for information, we know what to say and when to open our mouth, and before all, we want it to be heard.
That's not the case of my auntie. I wouldn't want people to know my auntie is 75 years old and still single....oops?

Not everybody knows how to use Facebook.

Apparently, tutorial about Facebook are highly demanded. Nearly 10 millions results on Google with "how to facebook".
You have to realize that 400.000.000 people have various levels of knowledge about the site and its features.
The proof? Well, that article, which dates from last April, states that more and more people are bullied online.
They wouldn't if they knew how to use the site, right?

Apparently users are idiots

Well, at least that what I can deduce from the privacy settings policy.
It switched from "It's safe, it's on Facebook" to "OMG it's on Facebook HOW DO I REMOVE IT?" through multiple layouts and rules changes, and yes, obfuscated settings.
If we compare the skyrocketing concern about privacy on Facebook and the plethora of tutorials to the introductory sentence
"It should be easy to find and connect with friends. Your privacy settings should be simple and easy to understand." found on the site's privacy guide, we can only be drawn to one conclusion : users are idiots.
Or Facebook thinks so.
Anyway, idiots tend to publish things they regret later. No?

Last but not least: It's people's right...why, it's their life after all....

That the easiest argument of all, the one that makes the most sense.
Controlling our lives and deciding what we should expose and to whom is our right.
It should be easy. It should not be an option.

Bonus: your naked picture (from flickr), it's probably everywhere. Mine coming soon.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Fellow Geeks, Hard Times Are Comming

2010-05-06T20:15:00.001-07:00

Here I am going to digress from my usual ranting about everything technology. Or maybe not, you chose.
Though since I'd like to write something different from "Google bought something, again" and "Oh God, Facebook/Nokia/The Universe sucks" and the last week in news has been pretty flat, I'll just free-opine.

See, there are things I'm aware of right now, such as the iPad being pretty popular and the tablets coming right our way, I'm sensing a disturbance in the Force.
I had a vision.

A vision were, lead by Apple, tech gadgets are going to behave more and more like home appliances. I don't say it's bad, at least not for everybody, read further.
I hear here and there that games are now being streamed from the cloud, I realize that connecting computers to a network is becoming as easy as pressing a key and, it's been a long while already, expressing yourself online is becoming a standard.

I come from a planet where, not long ago, you had to punch holes in wall and spend a couple of centuries configuring your machines if you wanted a LAN that really does work.
I remember, in junior high, telling a friend "What the heck are you gonna do with a TWO Gb hard disk? That's so big!".
At that time you had to restart your computer every time you install a program.

Yesterday I was in need for a codec. For those who don't know, it's the thingie you need to decode audio or video format. I am the happy borrower of a MacBook Pro, and yes QuickTime sucks (I know, I just ranted), I am thus opting for VLC as my media player. The codec I needed is AMR, which cannot be integrated directly in VLC due to a licensing problem. I know what to do: download the source code and compile with the right options (It means baking it myself from the pre-made dough...effort though, I might pass on that).

Now, this is still somehow possible, but what will happen the day I can't mess with my apps myself?
Oh, what will happen when my friends will ask for help because her streamed app doesn't work?

"Well, I can do nothing, the problem is in their hands now, no way I can fix it"
-"But I though you were a Geek?"
-"Yes, a computer geek, not a home appliance geek"
- pointing at her tablet "But this IS a computer"
- *facepalm*

Yup, the same way that many broken cars now can't be fixed the way they were because of the very electronics that make them so comfortable, I'm afraid our future "computers" will follow the same path and won't be fixable for the very reason that makes them user-friendly.

I SO should re-learn Linux now, so I still have a couple of years to brag about my Terminal-Fu before surrendering to user-friendliness, while telling the kids to stay out of my cables.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

D Day - Done.

2010-05-03T23:40:00.001-07:00

I'm done with it, that's it, deleted.

I know, Facebook, you told me a lot of my friends will miss me.
My stalker definitely will but, sorry, for the rest I've got many more ways to reach to them and them to reach to me.

Let's see how it's done now, I'm going to plan a meeting with a couple of friends I've met back in a bar after 9 years of not having lost touch.
Will it dramatically fail?

Wait and see.

Posted via email from Living Without Facebook - A diary

D -1, Creating another account and scary friend suggestion engine

2010-05-03T03:33:00.001-07:00

Now, today was the inaugural day for my networking account. The one I am going to use to experiment. The one that is going to stay hermetically secluded from my private life and avoid fuss over my relationship status.

I have opened it already and I was amazed, though not really in a reassuring way.

I transferred my old account to my secondary (is there such a word as pentatiary?) email, and re-used my main for the new shiny thing.

What surprised me is, Facebook already knew about all my previous contacts. When I registered the new account, all my old contacts and some more I never had as Facebook friend popped-up as suggestions. Several times. Repeatedly. On the head.
I can assume that since I re-used my main email, Facebook had kept track of it and suggested me users from the former profile.
I can also assume that they don't really get that if you need to make another profile, It's probably to get rid of the first persona.

That's a minor annoyance. What really did annoy me much though, is their insistence on getting my phone number, and make it visible by default. Even though I really want to build a professional network with this new account, I do not want to reveal my phone number. I've had enough with stalkers. Yes, I've been stalked, yes it's very annoying.

So yes, you can now connect with me on my profile

What? You said you'd live without Facebook now, and you are opening a new account?

Yes I am. As I said in an earlier post, I intend to deactivate my current account for various reasons, including privacy. I do not want to use Facebook as a tool to "cnnect with my friends" anymore. But I cannot, for professional reasons, let the whole thing go.
Do not worry, none of the persons in my old profile will be included in the new one.
Definitely, tomorrow will mark the end of my private self on the web. At least on Facebook.

D -1 !

Posted via email from Living Without Facebook - A diary

D -3, Hacking the interface, getting rid of stalkers.

2010-05-01T03:25:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I couldn't access the internet at all, meetings all the way.
Somehow it feels good to live away from the screen for a little wile.

It didn't prevent me to have several discussion about the web's panorama with mister W who, while not being as interested as I am in social shenanigans, has rightly remarked that there is so much information circulating on the News Feed that we tend to look at it, think "ooooh", and go do something else without involving ourselves further.

Today I was expecting... well I don't know, my friends are surprising, so I wasn't expecting anything in particular.

I got a good surprise though. One of my friends sent me this message: "You're closing your Facebook account? I will text you more then :)"
I just love it.
First-off because it's a formidable ego boost to know that some people actually care for you further than pressing the "like" button,
Then because that's the proof not everybody considers leaving Facebook a social suicide.

Also, I received this friend invite for my official stalker, the one that got my number back from the CV I'd posted when in dire need for a job.
I'm pretty relieved to know she won't bother me anymore. Not being available will cost me much less than covering her in honey and unleashing the fire ants.

Last but not least, while replying to a Friend who was remarking that I wasn't ready to notify me every time he goes to the bathroom (though I know he would, if he knew it to annoy me), I got eye-mugged by a popup asking me if I wanted to link my profile to "these 24 pages".
I've had the same thing happening before, and kindly told Facebook to remind me later. This time I wasn't offered a choice, I had to do it or they would kill a bunny and I wouldn't be able to answer my bathroom friend.
Well, the bunny is dead. I happen to have Firebug installed. Where I can hack (read:"edit") everything that show on my browser. Of course I do know HTML, so I found the harassing popup and simply deleted it from the page, along with two other more or less visible layers preventing me with the rest of the page. Status answered.
I don't know what would have happened has I simply refreshed the page, the adrenalin jumped a my fingertips and I didn't try an find the non barbarian solution.

That's it for today.

Stay tuned for more, D-day approaching.

Posted via email from Living Without Facebook - A diary

D-5, Idleness and Beheading

2010-04-29T05:08:00.001-07:00

I haven't done much today about this cancellation thing.
The inertia of the process is annoying me: Next to the couple friends who see my decision as a near-suicide, there I can count a hundred and more not having given any kind of feedback whatsoever, including people I've been knowing for ages.

I am probably right about Facebook lamentably failing to fulfill its prior promise to bind me to my friends in an ever communicating digital paradize.
I still see the Farmville updates though.
Speaking of news feed, this morning a friend got tagged in the picture of a beheaded corpse, it showed in my updates.
Corpse-coffee is bad, even on Thursday.

In other news, I've had plenty of exchanges through e-mails about pretty meaningful things. Is that why I am feeling old?

More tomorrow, stay tuned!

Posted via email from Living Without Facebook - A diary

D-6 preparations, being called silly, buggy tagging feature.

2010-04-28T00:41:00.001-07:00

I've began preparing my exit by sending an explanatory note to everybody, plus a direct message with my phone number, blog address, Y!M ID and so on...
It looks like I am going to commit suicide, or leave the planet or something, I even end up feeling guilty at some point. Come on, you can do it!

Here is what happened in details:

The Facebook Tagging function is terrible.

May you've seen me complaining about it on Twitter. Here is the deal:

- Write a note
- Tag as many people as you can in the note
- Reach the tag limitation
- Remove people
- Try adding people again...

Voila. The people you have untagged are still receiving the notification, and you can't add anybody anymore. Very, very practical.

I thought I could use it to tell my friends about important things

But Facebook probably thinks that you can't have more than 20 real friends, thus a 20 tag limit on direct messages.
I know, it's made to limit spam. But the one time I had something really important to say turned into a mind numbing chore.

Several Y!M contacts added

Well, that was to be expected.

People don't seem to care much

Apart from a few people, most of whom I used to communicate with off-facebook, and in spite of the personal message AND the note, not many reactions here.
Either they are too busy (though farmville still works for them), either they don't really care. Shall I feel sad?
Well 6 more days to go, so I shouldn't worry much.

But some are very sad

Some of my friends are reacting as if I were leaving the country. Which is funny since I didn't interact with them on facebook much.
I am not ending my days, be assured.

I've been more or less subtly called "silly" by a random stranger.

More here: http://bit.ly/a79KrV .
In the original Mashable thread, I think the dude also calls me pretentious. Ah. Maybe.

More tomorrow!

Posted via email from Living Without Facebook - A diary

Friends: Why I don't treat them as a batch.

2010-04-27T23:35:00.001-07:00

Mashable has posted a short but nonetheless relevant article: Nobody can stop Facebook because nobody understands Facebook.

I commented there, saying that I was closing my personal Facebook account (I keep the diary here). It's both a personal choice and an experiment. My comment received a very interesting answer, I quote:

Just curious, how old are you? I know it's virtually impossible to go without Facebook at my age (20) without losing contact with lots of friends and acquaintances. I have friends all around the world, those who have moved because of school, work, and those who I've met through vacations, traveling, chance encounters as well as my own website.
It's hard to keep track of all these people as well as continue to keep in touch without Facebook. It's just plain silly to say that you can close your account and still be up to date with everyone in this day-and-age.
I don't have time to call or meetup with all my friends and those who I want to keep in contact with everyday.

Let me answer here then, since it's a little too long to be posted as a comment.

You are asking me several questions here... Could my age influence my social media usage, are my friends all around the world, can I keep track with all of them...

I am not a grumpy old man... yet.

I may get there at one point, but today I am twenty-seven years old, to say, I still qualify for the "Kid" status (I think the day you don't is when you can't find many people who are twice your age). It probably did influence my use of the Internet. I began using it in 1998, when, in my country, it was not really popular yet and , quote my parents, too expensive to use it often.
I am thus used to many more way of communicating other than Facebook. Email, Bulletin boards, Blogs, Chat rooms, I've seen them grow as a happy user. I've had meet-ups and real life fun with many of the people I met that way, some of which I still can contact today.

Are my friends all around the world?

Definitely yes. I am an expatriate (to be precise, I'm a thrill-seeking self-exiled), I live in "the other end of the world" and tend to travel quite often, for various reasons. I have friends mostly in Indonesia, Singapore and France.

Can I keep track with them?

Now that's the tricky question. First of do I want to? Then, let's think a minute about who my friends are. And by that I mean my real friends, the ones who would share joy and pain with me, an who would kick my butt to the curve if I turned full emo.

I know a person in Singapore, let's call her J. I only have J's phone number. Why? She works in a shop. Every time I come to Singapore, I show up at her shop totally unannounced and ask around. J then takes a day of leave and we spend it telling each other stories. I would do the same for J. The phone number? We rarely need it.
J is a real friend.

So who do I call a friend? Actually, people you don't need to keep in touch with in fear of being forgotten. People who stay with you, and I mean "in your heart" even if you don't show up. And I do the same for them.

Acquaintances? Tons. The whole street where I live and around. The crew of various cafe, food-courts, shops. I meet them everyday, and if want to share something with them, we have a sit and a tea.

Now, all these people have a strong emotional value to me. They are part of my everyday life, as much as my room is. But no, I will never have the same experience on a social website as I have face to face. On Facebook, they flood me with quizzes, Farmville statuses, tag me on silly pictures. Facebook makes me hate them (well, for a minute or two).

Then again, if I am not ready to tell someone face to face something I would post as a Facebook status, that person has nothing to do with me. Or wait... maybe I just want to chose what I share. Yes yes you can make groups on Facebook. My friends are so diverse that I would probably need a relational database to know how to share things the will interest them.

So, the answer is, no I don't keep track with them on Facebook, because I don't need to.

Am I "plain silly" ?

I may sound condescending (tends to happen when I try being "polite" in English, not my native tongue), but I do not think I am, or my decision is plain silly.
As a matter of fact, I do know that networking is extremely important from a professional point of view. That is why I will re-create a persona entirely dedicated to research and networking on Facebook.
Facebook is not the ultimate solution to having and making friends. It's a platform. The Internet is a platform, Life is a platform. You're on it, or you aren't, sometimes you're forced to (not really into ending my days lately), sometimes you can chose. But in all cases, you're free to use it as you wish. I wish to use it as a professional networking tool, and keep my private life out of it, just like many people separate their personal and professional emails/phone numbers separate. Just like, in life, you wouldn't invite your boss for dinner with a friend of yours who has totally opposite views on mostly everything.

Now my turn to ask you, what are your friends for you?

You sound like you have a lot of Facebook friends. I would be glad to hear about your experience. What do you really share with them? Would everyone of them (ok, would the two third of them) take your called of you needed something at 3.30 in the morning?

And now, a random thought: Kindness is rarer than you think. More expensive than you think.

It's easy to be kind online. It engages you to nothing. It looks free, and it's a win-win situation, you give "free love" and you receive "free love" . Twitter is a good example, with a very high ratio of "You're all awesome" tweets. If I want to be an ass both to the tweep and myself, I can go and ask "And why am I awesome, please, detailed answer?". Both of us will end up disappointed.
Yet, this kind of kindness is expensive in time. You have 1000 friends? If you want to really engage, meaningfully engage with all of them, even online, it will cost you a lot of time. Some people make it a full time job.

You don't have time for meet-ups, I don't have time to un-tag the silly picture. We prioritize different behaviors and, as a person, I feel that human contact, even with fewer people, is much more meaningful than letting hundreds of people know I like the last Mashable article. I am ready to give away my time for things and people I find meaningful, I don't consider my friends as a batch ( I'm not saying you do though).

I just spent approximately thirty minutes of my time answering you. I don't think this kind of action would qualify for adding me on Facebook and, time by time, commenting on my status. I wouldn't need that, because I don't think it build any real trust. What I would enjoy though, is a real reply, and a notice on my email next time you visit my city, because I will be glad to treat you for a coffee.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Friends: Why I don't treat them as a batch.

2010-04-27T23:32:00.001-07:00

Mashable has posted a short but nonetheless relevant article: Nobody can stop Facebook because nobody understands Facebook.

Just curious, how old are you? I know it's virtually impossible to go without Facebook at my age (20) without losing contact with lots of friends and acquaintances. I have friends all around the world, those who have moved because of school, work, and those who I've met through vacations, traveling, chance encounters as well as my own website.
It's hard to keep track of all these people as well as continue to keep in touch without Facebook. It's just plain silly to say that you can close your account and still be up to date with everyone in this day-and-age.
I don't have time to call or meetup with all my friends and those who I want to keep in contact with everyday.

Let me answer here then, since it's a little too long to be posted as a comment.

You are asking me several questions here... Could my age influence my social media usage, are my friends all around the world, can I keep track with all of them...

I am not a grumpy old man... yet.

Can I keep track with them?

Acquaintances? Tons. The whole street where I live and around. The crew of various cafe, food-courts, shops. I meet them everyday, and if want to share something with them, we have a sit and a tea.

So, the answer is, no I don't keep track with them on Facebook, because I don't need to.

Now my turn to ask you, what are your friends for you?

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

What the hell are you doing? Are you out of your mind?

2010-04-27T01:42:00.001-07:00

I will close my Facebook account in one week from now. I will take notes about what happens and how, and keep the diary here. Later on this blog will be open for anyone to share their experience about a life without Facebook.

Facebook... a tool to connect with your friends.

In 2007, I wasn't intending to open one. My boss made me. He said it was good for marketing.
So it began, I opened it, and began playing with it.
After I moved to another job, I kept it, and made it my personal account, began to look for my friends and yes, connect with them.

I am now a Facebook Ninja. I know how to keep my stuff private, what to hide, how to stop receiving Farmville updates even if I don't play it... oh and I know how to see your pics even if you hide them (some of them).

Now the social media craze is here and very real and I need to deal with it in a professional way, since I am a technical adviser in the web field. I need to play with the "like" button, the social graph, I need to make my data available, I need to expose my persona.

So I am taking the decision to kill my personal Facebook account, and recreate one only for research purpose.
The new account will include nothing from my private life, and I will not add anybody I know personally or consider a Friend.

Why?

Practical reasons:

I do not share much personal items. Actually, I never do. My digressions are all in my personal blog.
I've had enough of being tagged in useless photos. It happens much more often than you think.
I do not want to be tagged in silly web pages when the Facebookers finally come to use it on regular basis.
I've had my share of Facebook drama. I am tired of people asking why I am a female on Facebook (damn, they know me physically) and make a fuss out of a "wrong button" moment.
I am tired of the "Please, add me, pleaaaase" requests from people I barely know. Like having a lot of "Facebook friends" is an achievement in life.
I prefer getting to know someone by having a cup of coffee to reading a profile.
I want to pool my data somewhere else. I actually find Facebook unpractical, the features it offers are way better in dedicated sites (Deviant Art for my photos, Posterous for my rants).

Personal reasons:

I do not want my behavior to belong to Facebook. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but having Google tracking everything I do is already enough. I can't get rid of my Google account for both practical and professional reasons, but I'd do it if I could. It has nothing to do with paranoia, I don't have anything to hide. It's just that my life is mine. I'm territorial.
I am curious, I want to know the alternatives to everything. I am not using 10% of what Google has to offer because I use alternatives, I want to explore the vastness of the web, and I feel that Facebook is the lazy way to do so.
There must be a way to keep on sharing like crazy while keeping your privacy as you want it, that doesn't force your friends to join a network or another, I want to find it.

You're not deleting your account, you're creating another, cheat!

Nope. I have 139 Friends on Facebook, I have met them all (minus one or two people) at least once, and deleting that account will delete my Fabebook Bound to them. By creating another persona, I will start from scratch, and never include my private life, the approach is entirely different. Plus, ignoring Facebook now would make me the most incompetent person in my field right now, and I don't want it to happen any time soon :D

Stay tuned for the updates, starting tomorrow!

Posted via email from Living Without Facebook - A diary

Closing Your Facebook Account While Keeping Your (real) Friends

2010-04-26T23:45:00.001-07:00

Facebook is everywhere now. I won't emphasize on it, just go to any tech site and you will see what everybody is taking about now.
I've never liked wearing a uniform, and I am thinking of closing my Facebook account.

But I've been thinking, I still have some friends I want to keep in touch with, and there is still a part of my work I want to share (show off, really). Of course, I don't want any of my friends to feel obliged to subscribe to any service to give their feedback, so I am looking for the most open ways to share my life. You'll see, you can even gain more control on your privacy.

Here are the features Facebook proposes, and what you can do to replace them:

Sharing Photos

If you only need to let your friends know about how wonderful your last drunk pole dancing was, there are two pretty discrete ways:

Posterous, the service I use to blog, can also double as a password protected (that's optional) site to share your pictures, you just need to send them from your email. It allows "anonymous" comments, meaning that you don't have to sign in to leave your feedback.
All you need to subscribe is an email address and 3 minutes of your time.

E-mails are still a very good solution. I sounds old school and much less grandma-friendly, but the truth is my 76 years-old auntie knows how to use it.

If you're more into sharing for the show, Deviant Art is the best solution out there, with plenty of features (enough to make you forget there is a premium version). The community is wonderful and you'll even get advices on what you publish. Only subscribers can comment, this is the exception on the list.

Sharing Links

Delicious, if it's not the ultimate solution, allows you to make your bookmarks public. Your friends can view your delicious bookmarks and even subscribe to your RSS feed.

While you're at it...just send them the link by email or messenger. Copy-paste is not that difficult.

Sharing Thoughts/Status/Chat

Who doesn't have MSN messenger, Y!M, Google Talk or BBM? Seriously?
The question is: Do you want to let the whole world know what you had for breakfast, or just your friends?

Here I'll refer to Posterous again. You can open a blog there and everybody can comment, commenter can see each other's comments, no worries here :)

Dialog online

Facebook inbox or email? Same use, without the updates from all the groups you joined out of fear of disappointing your contacts. Email has more features too.

Organizing events

A phone call. Seriously. I've never had any difficulty organizing something with a simple phone call or a couple of sms.
If it involves more than 3 people, just send an email.

Discovering content

The whole web.
You don't need "real life" friends to discover content, and joining Twitter, Delicious, Flick, Picasa, YouTube... random googling are as many ways to extend your views on the intertubes.
I've discovered many awesome bands, comics, rss feeds. Funnily enough nothing I have ever been tagged in on Facebook has ever had any value to me.

Finding friends/Keeping in touch

If you're thinking of getting rid of your Facebook account, you probably are the type of user who only added people you really know anyway. Keeping in touch with them is not really a problem then. Phone, emails, blogs, they are available for you to use at will.
You might be asking: What if we lose contact? My answer is: Up to you to foster your relationship with the person you love. Friendships are a lot more than tagging a picture.

The password thingie

With that many services (well, really a blog and an email), you may wonder how you are going to manage all the credentials.
That's actually pretty easy. All browsers have a "remember password" function. Write you credentials somewhere safe (on you home computer, a note on your phone, somewhere only you can access) for the sake of having them remembered and just forget them :)

I might close mine soon, I'll blog about it if it happens. Stay tuned!

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Next On Facebook: Facebook OS

2010-04-26T00:32:00.001-07:00

I'm peeping at the crystal ball again, and here is a forecast for the month to come.
Of course I could be completely wrong, but at least that's good discussion material.

Look at what the others are doing:

I've written about it already in my chapters about the "Internet Wars" (there is a tag for it, if you want to dig in).
Here is, again, how can today's web giant's "estate" can be summed up:

The three main actors are now Apple, Google and Facebook. While Apple doesn't do social yet (and it would be wise for them to keep it this way unless they want to become the next OVI network) , Google is trying hard.
Google is also, of course, engaged in the "real world" market race with Android, Chrome OS and , in fact, since Chrome Browser.

Facebook is still 100% online, but it might not last long. When you see that Facebook's search is topping Google's, you can think that they got the job pretty much done with, and it's time to think about expending.

Who said Palm? Perfect timing?

Speaking of who goes down and who goes up, Palm is not really having fun lately. They are selling. it's not a news anymore.
Not everybody want them, but someone could be more than interested...guess who?

So, Facebook OS or Facebook Hardware?

Maybe both, actually. Why not? A Facebook OS on a Facebook branded hardware, with GPS and Camera, so you can upload everything about yourself without effort, and with, for Facebook, the greatest control over their API.

That's another chapter about the internet wars, stay tuned, this year is definitely interesting.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

The Cheapest n97 Tripod You'll See This Week

2010-04-23T01:57:00.001-07:00

I've ranted a lot about this phone, I know.
But now it's cracked and enhanced, I love it again, and I found it the perfect companion.
The fist pic is the free and dirt easy way (provided you don't have to smoke the whole pack before taking your picture)
The second and third pics are the slightly harder way, where the same pack is used for both landscape and portrait more.

Go and take pics now! :D

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

[Video] Fail 2.0 Apps, Why Your App Could Suck And How To avoid it

2010-04-20T20:46:00.001-07:00

And here it its! The very fist video of the Vlogging serie!

This also mark a turn to this Blog's short history, new tagline and now a real domain name: www.danny-fr.com.

Here, yours faithfully is all about telling about that little "fever moment" that comes when you plan to write an app. That moment that can make you forget about your real goal if you don't keep it real. Just hit the play button and tell me what you think, there is a lot of effort behind this video :)

Posted via web from @Danny_Fr

Nokia Needs To Get Real : The N97 Nightmare.

2010-04-20T09:28:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to update my phone.
Nokia boasts about the terrific connectivity of their last N series, I got tempted, and got myself a N97.
I wanted to get these bashing new email functions as well as this rad Ovi Contacts thingy that could allow me, for 5 bucks a month, to chat and email at will.
No unlimited data plans here in Indonesia (RIM gets loaded over that, just saying), that offer was more than tempting.

I bought the phone (second hand), and, in order to access these latest features, I went to their websites to look for a firmware update. There it began.

Limited OS support.

That is, Mac (and Linux) users can go sit on it, that's apparently not going to change. I work on a MacBook Pro.
No problem, I went to the Nokia service center, not too far from my place, and after an hour of waiting in line...

Incompetent customer service

"Oh by the way you'll lose all your data in the process". - That's after an hour of waiting and filling in the blanks.
"You mean you can't back it up?"
"No we can't"
"You are a customer care center and you can't back up a phone's data?"
"Nope"
"Thanks for telling me earlier..."

Hideously unfriendly "PC Suite"

Ok, after all I'm a geek. It's seriously an overkill to bootcamp a copy of Windows XP (install it in parallel with MacOS) just to update the phone, but no other solution.
Once done, I proceed to download, install, backup...
The software is slow and unpractical, I remember now why I never used such things for my previous phones.
Backup done, update.. failed.
Turned out that I somehow had to remove my XP theme first. Weird, but at that point not so surprising.
Upgrade, then. Good.
Restore the backup....oh, wait.

Broken backup system

After the backup restored, I notice that some of my old apps shouldn't be there, since the upgrade hard-resets the phone and cleans it all.
No problem. I'll remove them.
Not.
Impossible to either remove or install an application after the backup restored. Nice. Hard reset again.

Second upgrade

Yes. It's not enough to have gone that far. Now there are other updates to download, this time from the phone.
Lucky I could access a wlan , because my data plan would have died of shame and exhaustion.

Memory leaks

Nokia isn't very smart. The N97 has 32GB of flash memory and... 100MB of phone memory.
Of course half the updates install themselves in the phone memory as well as, by default, are stored all the emails, sms, mms, notes, temporary files...
The only benefit I got from the hard-reset is wasted by a dodgy design choice, 26 MB free after all the updates are installed.

Unfinished apps

Now I finally can access the new Messaging and Ovi contact, I launch them for a test run.

Mail: Nothing to see there, my old LG Viewty had the same interface.

Ovi Contacts: Nothing to see there either, I have to use a long and not very reliable workaround if I want to add my messenger's contact.
Yes, you can only use Ovi Contacts it with other OVI members.

Sorry, Nokia, you are not RIM. I can use any java app to chat with my other contacts and use my email through Opera. That will do.

Cherry on the cake?

All these efforts for nothing, no price deal for me, and to top it the nice fade-out/fade-in effect for the landscape/portrait mode transition is gone.

Get real, Nokia!

You can't possibly make me believe that one of your flagship phone is a memory-hog, under maintained, inefficient BlackBerry wannabe.
You've just been slacking, your customer service is the proof of it. And I will not buy another device from you unless you pay me to use it (and even so, I still wonder...)

What now?

Well, I'm stuck with the phone anyway, and there is no way I use either an iPhone or a Blackberry, so... I am SO going to hack the bejesus out of that device, I don't care if I brick it in the process. At least if it's not functional, I'll be fun. Plus, it takes nice pictures.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Not all white male in Jakarta are gigolos. Nuff said?

2010-04-19T20:58:00.001-07:00

"This is my girlfriend Jane, she's from England...so, come over here, you have a girlfriend? Cause she's horny tonight!"

First things first: I know this is a cafe, I know it's near midnight, I know I've come alone, I know I'm an expat, a male expat.

Now, lady, let's talk (here comes the 'but')

I do realize that, around Jakarta, one tends to come across plenty of expatriates, generally in closed groups that include a minimal percentage of locals (mostly girls), usually speaking the most broken Indonesian possible, if at all, and roaming from cafe to cafe in the holy quest for boose and bosom.
I also take in consideration that you are now, as you just told me, thirty-one years-old, that you speak fluently several languages, make a wealthy living out of your own job and spend half your time in Europe or the Middle East.

Regarding all that, why would you think that by being alone in that cafe, and merely being what I am, I would not be more contained than, say, a stray dog?
Lady, you annoy me. I'll be over there, that's where you shouldn't go.

As what you just asked me is still dipped in adrenalin (yes, being treated as a gigolo tends to annoy me), I am thinking...

I once had to deal with seven drunk Afghans who swore they heard me scream death to their country, rescuing a lost and oh so innocent girl being dragged down the street (do not look for the metaphor, there is none) by a man thinking she was a prostitute, corrupt and probably fake policemen, and many, many more edgy situations.
But why does what you said upset me more than all the previous awkward/potentially dangerous situations I just thought of?

Because you made me realize three things:

1) Too many wealthy, educated, articulate people I have met in Indonesia ended up at the very top of my list of Reliable Sources Of Crass Prejudice and Downright Xenophobia. I can quote "I hate Chinese" and "You foreigners are only interested in sex" as the two best ranking statements, and my all time favorite "Eating is difficult" (apparently, so is thinking).

2) Too many foreigners go out in groups of liquor-dipped,self content neo-colonials. I am not that closed minded, but what I have heard makes me regret being white;
I quote again" Living in Jakarta is so easy when you're white", "Indonesian girls are easy", "Local girls, meh, just throw in the money and you'll get one". I can go on, it comes in many flavors.

3) The only people to have actually screwed me (pardon my French) in nearly five years in Indonesia are expats. Examples?
The only thing someone has ever tried to steal from me in the last five years is my hat. That expat girl she just took it. I got it back by running to her taxi.
The only fight I ever had in Indonesia was with a very drunk English speaking white male who did urinate in the kitchen of my friend's cafe.
No local has never said anything aggressive after I made eye contact with them (I don't usually do that on purpose anyway). Foreigners? Too many times.

How many is too many? Too many is when a situation happens so often you start seeing a pattern, and are tempted to generalize.

Shall I stop here? Yes indeed, with a conclusion though.

To all expatriate living in there, time to learn the language and see what's happening outside your circles. You have the privilege of living in one of the most active city in the world, a fascinating place where everything can and does happen, all the time. Don't waste it, navel gazing is bad for your health.
To all the wealthy, educated, articulate people who are still dumb enough to ignore their lack of knowledge about [insert race here], same advice, go out and meet people.
If you've done that already, you are probably sharing my thoughts.

To you, lady, since you and your friends are the ones passing the "too many" limit (congrats), here is, as a reminder, a list of fact you guys should refer to as a truth:

- Not all expat are alcohol-guzzling perverts
- Not all local girls are gold digging man eaters

I guess that's all, folks. Don't worry, I still love you all, wherever you're from ;)

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

Lodge, Maids and Barbwire.

2010-04-18T03:57:00.001-07:00

3 a.m.

Tomorrow is Saturday, I can afford some late sleep.
Well, I just did. Spent the night playing billiard, I'm still pretty bad at it but all in all, that was an enjoyable evening.

Now, I'm about to enter my Kost.

"Kost", while often translated as boarding house, is most often merely a place to sleep and I'd rather translate it as "lodge".

Any urban area around Indonesia will provide an plethora of such places, the cheapest being nothing more than a box (believe me, nothing inside the room, at all), and the most expensive, usually ten times the price, are labeled as luxurious "Residences". These are actually small apartments where everything is done for you, including washing your clothes and cleaning your room.
Kost have rules. Some are gender segregated, some close after a certain hour, some don't receive students or unemployed persons.
They are usually under the benevolent (read: malign and merciless) supervision a "Ibu Kost" of "Bapak Kost", landlady or landlord (I am in luck here, my Ibu Kost is adorable).
Kost have maids, even the smallest ones have a guard or a cleaning service to take care of the door and the day to day chores.

The kost where I live is a middle class one. I get my clothes washed and Ironed, I've got aircon and sometimes hot water.
The gate closes at 11, and you can ring the maid so she opens it for you in case your come dead tired from an after hours overtime bender.
Anyway there is no other choice, since the residents are not given the keys.

I sometimes work overtime.
Also, I'm a bat: during week ends, I go full nocturnal.

3 a.m.

I ring the bell. Nothing happens.
I wiggle the cable running from the bell to beyond the gate. Ring again. Silence.
Still, I can knock at the gate, the guard will wake up and...wait...no guard, he's gone home and the new maids arrived today.
Obviously they didn't hear me knocking. Knock harder, whistle the same tone as the bell (despair should be the title), call them over...
Apparently these are either ignoring me or in some kind of coma.

3.15 a.m.

Climbing is fun.
Barbwire is not.
Nor jumping down.

I made it to my room, yes.
Betadin was there, patiently waiting for me to use it over the scratches from the rusty barbs.
And sleep. Glorious sleep.

The conclusion?

Maybe I should move.
Maybe I should tell you all that if you're looking for a kost, remember asking Ibu Kost the right questions, such as: "Will I eventually have to become a night ninja and pull a Chuck Norris over the gate?"
And yes, betadin.

Bonus: A photo of the spiky baby.

By the way, don't leave just now. If you want more kost stories, I can deliver them by the metric ton, I have moved 13 times in 3 years and not always because I wanted to see around the city. So just let me know :)

Posted via email from Walking down the dragon's back

Could Google buy Twitter?

2010-04-14T23:16:00.001-07:00

A lot of news this week... it made me think: with all these new features announced from the three web giants, we might forget they are competing. What could happen next in the "I buy you" game? Google has all the reasons to buy Twitter.

Facebook is updating like crazy

Unlike Twitter, who's upsetting the developers and taking all the time it wants to air a new version of its web interface, Facebook forces the users to adapt to its new layouts and functions. The risk is minimum, try remembering what it was like two years ago...yeah, me neither.
Now, two major moves have been publicized, the security page and the Question feature.

The security FAQ shows a positive response to the user's worries. Not much to say about that but "kudos".

Now, the question feature appears to be a direct competitor to Aardvark.com. Who just bought Aardvark? Google.

Twitter has more ties to Google than you think

Twitter is build with several components from Google: maps, analytic (statistics) and Ajax (key framework for web development).
You can search tweets from Google.
You can tweet from Buzz.
Yesterday, Google launched a Twitter timeline feature.
Today, Google launches a the Follow Finder feature.

Apparently they are really good at "filling holes" or they have something else in the back of their mind.

Google can't do social, is slow with mobile.

Orkut, Waves and Buzz are two examples of big G trying to get social, and failing.
Which is too bad since, if they had a good, well known framework to begin with they would be able to port it to the exec level, along with Google docs.
Which is too bad, since they could play a little bit more with their adds through real time web.

Facebook mobile VS Google search mobile? You bet, Facebook wins. And now Tweetie is the official Twitter app, who's left behind in mobile traffic ?

Twitter takes on the add market

Now Twitter launches sponsored tweets. Everybody is wondering what it's going to look like, but one thing is sure: advertising benefiting to Twitter may show in Google search.
I wonder if they are going to like it much.
Until now, real time search has been a good way to collect more data about our googling habits, and the new features are for sure a consistent addition to it.

Google can't buy Facebook.

No they can't. But they can invest in/buy Twitter, and it wouldn't surprise me it happens if the sponsored add campaign is successful.

Wait and see...

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Why Apps are Twitter's Junk Food

2010-04-11T23:27:00.001-07:00

So, lots and lots of noises about Twitter buying theTweetie app.

The news has generated plenty of discussion elsewhere, and I won't discuss the developer VS twitter point of view here.
Instead I'm going to tell you why focusing on apps might me a huge mistake.

Twitter's traffic is actually stalling

They can brag as much as they want about their international growth, but the fact is: they are stalling. Just take a look at this graph, voila.

There is a lack of new tweeps: Web users.

I am going to repeat it, again and again, new users are still subscribing from their website. From.Their.Website.
A newbie is going to visit their front page, and subscribe from there, because of the keyboard, because of the big screen of their desk/laptop and because users are not used to register from an app, even when the app gives them the possibility.
Users have been registering from the web since...the web, and they'll keep on doing it for a while.

Apps better than the web interface?

Maybe because Twitter's web interface hasn't evolved much, except for the a retweet function everyone hates and a hover card function nobody cares about.
Randomly, I pointed myself to a trending topic and counted.

60% of the tweets come from an app.
50% of apps users had more than 300 followers
40% of web users would also tweet from an app

100% of web/mobile web only users had less than 300 followers

Would it mean that the web interface is either disliked or not practical enough? I take it as a yes. Once again, that's where new users will register.

Justin B. Fanclub and ugly profiles, that's what the newbie sees

Another detail that's more a hunch than anything, but have you looked at the start page? Have you look at the trending topics?
While Chinatown's fires and the death of the Polish political elite may pop in to say hello, Twitter looks like either a Justin B. fan site or a list of what people listen to.
This aslo bad since JB's fan's pages can be real eye sores.
That might be repelling. That repelled me from using the service for a full year.

Why buying Tweetie is partly a mistake?

Well, dear Twitter, you have proven us to be pretty looking, but not the best at designing a great user interface.
Now you are alienating the same developer community that made your popularity possible, by letting you go lazy on your own interface.
Don't you think it's time to launch this massive overhaul everybody is talking about and raise your standards and/or listen to your users a little?

Why Apps are Twitter's Junk Food?

Just like apps, junk food is easier than home cooking and cheaper than high-end service.
And when you abuse it, you tend to get big (in size) , slow (your size prevents your reactivity) and lazy (to cook at home).

Ok, tell me what you think about all that, I'm going to grab a cheezburgerz.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

YouTube New Layout Just Framed You...With Ads

2010-04-07T22:36:00.001-07:00

So I've been wandering on YouTube, no more than the average geek, but I've noticed the change of interface.
As a good friend of mine puts it "It sucks". It indeed suckles much.

But don't be fooled, beloved readers, this is totally on purpose.
This is a technique called "eye tracking", where you determine where your users look based on the amount of clicks on "hotspots" on your web page.
Facebook do that a lot.

Let's decompose YouTube new layout and see what new purpose the frabjous eye tracking technology is serving this time.

(1) The new toolbar

Gone are the stars, you can now see who likes and dislike the video
You can save it to your playlist (not your hard disk, no, never)
The embed code is put there now, same for the flag
And last but not least, the share function that doesn't display Buzz as an option (maybe because I have deactivated it

It takes now more clicks to do several things you could do without clicking at all wit the last layout (get the embed code, see the ratings).

(2) Comments now just under the video

That's where the real fun begins. Comments have fled the top right corner to lend just under the video. Why is that?
Beside the video itself, what do users most often look at?
The poster's comments and the user's comments.

It's logical then, to thread them in the same column... just under the huge irrelevant ads at the bottom of the video.
Bad if you like to see user's comments quickly though, since it makes you scroll down even more than before.

(3) Additional ad on the top right corner

Haha! You thought you'd find the comment there, right? You've been punked, that's an ad for you!
Since the poster's comments were a hot spot, what's best to fill in the blank than one more ad?

You've been framed

Most of us read from left to right. Considering that the video is the most important part of the page, that's what you're going to look at first.
Then, looking for the poster's comments, you are going to look further right, and stumble on the ad. Then you are going to look for them under the video, and in your way, the overlay ad will catch you by the eyeballs. The video is now literally framed with ads. That's what the eye tracking was for.

That's it, my two cents on the topic, I wish I had more than that but I have hard time framing my blog with ads.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

5 Free Wallpapers For Orange Lovers

2010-04-07T00:55:00.001-07:00

Mister Orange who?

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

7 Reasons Why You Need A Real Keyboard For Your Smartphone

2010-04-05T20:56:00.001-07:00

So, the iPad is out.

One of the first questions coming to my mind : how good is the soft keyboard.
Answer: not good enough so there is no need for an optional keyboard/docking system.

It made me think. Handhelds are now in more or less everybody's life, and are sometimes said to increase productivity.
While receiving and composing emails on the go is for sure an improvement, bringing it to the next level would mean editing document without getting the curly thumb syndrome.

And, sorry to say, there is nothing better then a real keyboard to be productive or simply do more stuff, here is why:

1. 10 fingers typing

Nothing can beat typing with all of your fingers. The learning curve is pretty fast, and professional typists can achieve speeds above one hundred and twenty words per minute. A Blackberry keyboard won't usually allow you to go over sixty five for a very skilled user.
You can see how fast you can go here, it's a cool test, try comparing with your thumb typing skills.

2. Comfort

That one is easy. Lots of big keys and space to rest your hands. Nothing can beat that, ever.

3. Keys

Yes, it seems easy, logical and whatnot, but a clear delimitation between the keys helps the fingers keep on striking the right spots, take a closer look at the "F" and "J" keys on your own keyboard.

4. Keyboard shortcut

A keyboard shortcut takes no more time than typing two letters or three letters in a row. Many users, on all operating systems, are used to shortcut. Undo, redo, cut, paste, open, close, save and exit... at least. When working on a text document, shortcuts are also available for bold, italics, underlined and more.
Nice gestures are now available, notably on Apple products, but I doubt they can all help you to navigate and format a text as quickly as shortcuts.

5. Hotkeys

Keyboards... have space, a lot of space, and usually twelve function key that can act a hotkeys anyway. The best example I can find is the MacBook Pro keyboard, where the functions keys double with systems hotkeys for screen brightness, volume and so on.

6. Gaming

I'm not talking about Mafia Wars here. Take WoW, Command and Conquer, any first person shooter (all the descendants of "Doom" and "Quake") and ask the players if they want to drop their mouse+keyboard combination. Then run.

Just for fun, here is what a pro gaming keyboard may look like:

7. Stock food

Well that's not properly speaking an advantage and it could be the perfect place for an ants colony to dwell in, I have seen it happening in a MacBook. But hey, that's still a story to tell.

Are our thumbs doomed?

No, not really. At least not always.

Editing documents won't happen in the bus, and more rarely (though it does happen) in a taxi. If you want to carry a brain heaving editing task outside your office, you may as well do it in a cafe, where you have some more space for these little monsters down there.

The bluetooth folding keyboard is my favorite because of the hard finish, you can feel the key response, it's important to me (laugh, I hear you).
Here is a version compatible with Symbian S60, Poket PC/Smartphone under Windows mobile and Palm OS:

Ok, it looks taken straight out from a Terry Gilliam's movie, but Oh So Practical.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

How To Decrypt Marketing Bullshit - 7 Tricks That Won't Work On You Anymore.

2010-04-04T19:38:00.001-07:00

I know who you are.

You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. At times you have serious doubts whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.

Or not.
The sentence you just read is the most obvious example of what is called the Forer's effect (a.k.a. Barnum effect), it means nothing in particular, refers to mostly anybody in general, and everybody can relate to it due to it's vagueness. These statements are mostly used in astrology, cold reading, and any for of, excuse my French, utter marketing bullshit you can find around the web.

Consider this paragraph

Interested in social marketing? Make up to 1000 bucks per week with our cutting edge new system!
Out-the-box thinking and user centered dashboard designed by our specialists are the two component of the system that will allow you to make up to a thousand bucks per week, increasing your traffic and assuring you a high CTR for your PPC campaigns thanks to viral buzzword strategies.
Watch our free introductory video here [the video shows very motivated, well off people talking about this method]
Take a look at this free case study [link to a free case studies quoting percentages and numbers int the hundred of thousand range]
Order now and receive a free complementary booklet! Over 400.000 happy marketers already!

Here I can list 7 instances of downright fallacy (a.k.a. bullshit)

Forer's effect
"Interested in social marketing?" : Duh, I wouldn't be reading it, you posted it on my SNS marketing blog.
Weasel Word
"Make up to 1000 bucks": Up to? It means it starts from 0.001, right?
Illusory Correlation
"Watch our free introductory video here": So, the dudes look well off. It doesn't mean they got wealthy by using their own method, does it?
Gambler's Fallacy
"Take a look at this free case study": Even if this case study is related, what tells me it will work for me?
Ignorance of Regression Toward the Means
"Viral": Viral is creativity+good content+LUCK. It worked before, it's not sure it can work every time.
Bandwagon effect
"400.000 happy marketers": Happy of what? They have a lot of reasons to be happy... But they are a lot, right? That's also a nice instance of Forer's effect
Jargon/Obfuscation
And here we go!

Cutting Edge: Overused, the edge of what, what technology are we talking about?
New: New compared to what? You mean it's never done before, ever? All the bits of the product? Wow!
Out-the-Box: Overused, trying to substitute for "original" when it means "horizontal thinking" and the latter is hard!
User Centered: Really? I thought it was animal centered!
Specialist: Specialist of what? Any reference?
Traffic: Google bots also make good traffic. I want money.
CTR/PPC: Acronyms make you appear clever. Or so you think. For me, it's obfuscation.
Buzzword: Same as "viral", you can try your best, but there is no guarantee.
Strategies: A strategy apply to a single case, your offer is a package. Thanks for thinking I'm dumb.
Free: There is no free meal. Ever.

And the ultimate conclusion

If you can make so much money, so fast, why would you need to sell me your method for a ridiculous price and use all this jargon? Google doesn't use jargon.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

One Free Hungry Wallpaper

2010-03-28T21:54:00.001-07:00

On Saturday night, I dined-in.
Big dinner. It was my first time there and I had no idea the servings were so huge.
There were some leftover, still untouched.
They were bagged and given to a couple of beggars.
It would have been a crime to waste that food, too many people starve.
So here, pass on the good word :)

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

One "Like" Button to Bring Them All and in the Darkness Bind Them

2010-03-26T01:03:00.001-07:00

Seen on TechCrunch: Facebook is about to release a "like" button for the whole internet.

Facebook want's to deploy its "Like" button. I have seen various comments about that, ranging from "they want to copy Digg" to "That's awesome", and none makes me really happy. I don't think you guys really get it.

Hidden meaning

Just because the button is labeled "Like", which has a very strong positive connotation, doesn't mean it's only meant for you to tell your friend you like it.
What's hidden behind the "Like" label is a much longer sentence: "Redirect the content to our website and diffuse it, it's a win-win, you get to communicate and we get a metric ton of data to mine in a single click and tons of traffic, plus the content and all your friend's comments."

Comments: get them and you'll be everywhere

We are currently facing the problem of multiple entry point for online content. If you share to five websites, you will have to monitor them all to reply to the comments.
I have discussed this issue here, while wondering:

And there is no way I can aggregate that. Or is there one? After having thought about it for a little while, the ideal solution would be a unique ID and/or entry point for curated data, something ressemblig Disqus, but for all uploaded content. If we could link single pieces of curated info to a unique ID, all metadata reffering to it would become easy to access.

I have already written about this topic here, I self-quote :

The knee-jerk reflex of sharing content and point of view through a status update could be the perfect vector of a web-wide comment gathering system. In 140 characters, native, and in Twitter's database, of course.

Facebook as more or less exactly the same approach about comment gathering, and goes even further with Open Graph. In short, it does all the things I've stated earlier, and the unique entry point is, of course, Facebook itself, via its API. That is: from anywhere there is a discussion, now mostly everywhere on the web.

What being everywhere means

Every piece of shared content is redirected to your site, if people want to comment it, they need to do it with your tools. It means more content, more comment, more data to mine, more people joining in and... more exposures to your adds and games, the money has to come from somewhere.

Why is it bad?

Whoever believes in open standards and whoever not liking being tracked online already know what I am going to write:

I do not want my online identity/behavior to be owned by a non neutral entity that can, if it get the monopole, just tell me "Use us or cease to exist online"

The generalization of proprietary standards is dangerous for the openness of the web. An example? Facebook's now patented news stream is based on the open protocol Activity Stream .

So what solution, then?

The salmon protocol and PuSH are two systems ready to be integrated, relatively simple to understand, that could give birth to some independent services allowing us to unify comments. Coupled to OpenID, if handled correctly, there is a possibility for all of us to have an identity that's independent from any commercial service.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Why Google's Chinese Policy is a Dangerous Farce.

2010-03-25T11:07:00.001-07:00

Enough.

I swore to myself I wouldn't touch politics, but after having read "Congress slams China and Microsoft, praises Google" I feel that's too much. I must rant.
I declare that in my world, Google leaving China is nothing but a dangerous farce.
And here is why.

Corporation VS Goverment - Sorry, governments should prevail. Abide or leave.

Big corporations controlling citizen's lives and lobbying governments? Sadly it doesn't happen only in books. Weapons and Tobacco industries have already been under the spotlight, locally or internationally (Europe and US alike are shifty on these issues). Governments are not always wise -to say the least, but corporations have little in common with humanitarian help either, they target profit, as a fact. Which is not a problem per-se, but a government has laws, and these laws are to be respected with no exception.

On what ground? Morals? Dangerous game.

We are now witnessing a debate summed up by "My moral against yours". China is "Evil". China censors search results. It's understandable to disagree. I disagree deeply, I am against any kind of censorship of the internet, freedom of thoughts is most precious to mankind.

But this is my opinion, this.is.not.my.business! The cherry on the cake, US government applauding. I remember a time, not so long ago when a big country assaulted a smaller country on the pretense that it would liberate its citizens. Iraq, yes.

A revolution must come from the inside, sorry.

Just say it, you're pissed to have been hacked.

What an awesome PR move now! How many comments pouncing on China and their oppressive government (no, won't quote, go read, it depresses me), how dignified and brave of Google to stick with their policy and give the middle finger to the Chinese censorship. But...Big G broke the rules first, got an angry backlash and is now slamming the door, screaming about not liking the host anyway (is that my fault if they sold their shares of Baidu in 2006?).

What you may not know

Google has also invested some shares in the P2P service Xunlei. I wonder what they will do about it?

Google is suspending the search service. Do they make money out of it? Ads. Wait...

This news on the Chinese Google blog is not that old, it seems that they will still run AdSense after all

Google censors in several other countries including Turkey, France, Thailand, and more, see the list here.

How is that for downright hypocrisy? I'd give it a good 9/10.

Don't get me wrong. Freedom of press yes, freedom of information, yes. Regulatory organism and pressuring non-profit organizations to defend it, yes.
BUT here we are talking about a company with a market cap approaching 200$ billions (tops the GDP of 134 countries, just saying), taking on a foreign country about a moral problem. Now applauded by its home government...

Extreme corporate bullshit can be hilarious, given the right timing. This time, though, it is not funny.

36MFRRSWRSXF

2010-03-23T22:29:00.001-07:00

36MFRRSWRSXF

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

8 Tips To Keep Your Privacy Online.

2010-03-22T23:01:00.001-07:00

'If You Have Something You Don't Want Anyone To Know, Maybe You Shouldn't Be Doing It' - Eric Schmidt, Google CEO - December 3, 2009

You see the problem here, yes? Let me rephrase:

'If there is someone whom doesn't want you do do something, maybe you shouldn't be doing it"

I have been writing long and large in this post about how your private things should stay private, and how the Internet could, in a worst case scenario, turn into the global version of that small town in the mountain where everybody know you've been holding hands with Suzie's sister's best friend (who's got an uncle in England).
There are several solutions to this problem. Some are scarier than the current situation (online unique and certified identity, thus legal right to privacy), some are simply utopias (free open web where everybody is nice and caring), and giving the whole world the middle finger is just too childish.

So, what do you do to protect your real identity online?

1) Use a persona

I am lucky enough to have a very common name, it makes me difficult to find as a person. My nickname though, Danny_Fr, can be found easily.
I can write whatever I want under this pseudo, the most you'll find about me is that I'm somewhere in Jakarta.

2) Hide your face

That I don't do. But you should if you're more concerned about stalkers, or if you're young, female, and pretty (you should also send me your number).
If my name is pretty common around the world, my face though, is pretty unique (see related pic on my blog profile), and I am endowed with a pretty showing Mohawk haircut. Stands out in the crowd.
Luckily none of my ex want me dead.

3) Phone number, address? Forget!

The very last thing you want to do is to deliver your personal data anywhere online. NEVER. do. that.
I once made the mistake to publicly upload my CV on Facebook.
Stalker here I am, call me on my personal line. It took me a tiring while to get rid of it.

4) Split your professional and private life

It's mainly the same as using a persona, but it goes a little further. Use separate phone numbers, addresses and SNS accounts for your work, you can smext and upload your pole dancing photos on your private accounts

5) Several emails are good too

One for you, one for the office, one for the junk. That's also practical.

6) These privacy settings, use them!

Facebook settings: It sounds like a "DUH!". But you'd be surprised by the amount of Facebook profiles delivering funny information about their owners. Have you ever had a person waiting for a while before adding/refusing to add you? I have, and I can see this person's updates on my newsfeed.

Twitter settings: You know your tweets are public, yes? You'd be surprised how applications like Hunch use them to profile you. I am going to use it before hiring my next slav..er.. employee. Protect your tweets.

Here is a quick guide if you are confused.

7) Are you sure you want to reveal your location?

I don't use foursquare. I do not want to. I am where I am, and if you want to know what's my position, kindly ask.
But then again, I deactivated the geo-tagging option in Twitter. I do not like the idea of 280 persons and potentially all their followers knowing where I am.

8) Chose your friends.

Once again, it sounds obvious. But do you really know everybody you befriended on Facebook? Oh, do you really know every single follower of yours, and their followers, who will get your tweet after a RT?
It seems nearly impossible to control your follower and their RT (again, protect your tweets). On Facebook though, it's pretty easy, you might as well do it if it matters for you.

I don't exactly follow all these advices; I'm not a privacy freak and I actually let some information leak just to know how far they can go.
With a little bit of whit, you can find out where I work (good luck), you know how I look, now try finding me and tell me what you found out. I'll treat you for a drink.

Meanwhile I'll be lurking on /b/.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

How To Edit Your Privacy Settings On Facebook And Twitter

2010-03-22T22:55:00.001-07:00

Wonder about Facebook and Twitter privacy settings?
I let you know here why you should be careful about them, and here is the guide :)

Facebook

First off, find the "Privacy Settings" link, hidden behind the account button.

Profile/Contacts

All the settings you will need to modify fill show like this:

At that point, you are free to chose what to set private. I am pretty touchy about my family and relationship info and who can see what was posted by my friends.
You can fine-tune the setting after clicking on the lock icon and choosing "customize".

A pop-up will appear, where you can chose to show/hide from specific people. The interesting part is: you can type in groups names.
Creating a friend group called "limited" and hiding some information from them is quick and easy.

Search

Search offers less granularity, here are the setting I find optimal for a good privacy (e.g. you won't be found on Google and only your friends will be able to search for you). Make good use of the "Preview My Profile" button. It's pretty useful and will save you time.

Application and Websites

This one is a trickster. I do not really understand why Facebook has taken the decision to hide "What You Share" and "What Your Friends Can Share About You" under that section, since it seems more logical for it to appear under "Profile". Design flow or obfuscation?
Be sure to visit these pages and chose carefully what you what to be shown.

Twitter

Much easier, you only have to worry about two things, the geo-tagging and the tweet protection. Protecting your tweets will prevent them from showing on the public timeline. and It will also prevent Google and other third party applications to harvest them without your consent (just google "@yournickname" to know what I mean).
Locating your tweets is a matter of choice, I do not really want people to know whether I tweet from home or from a cafe. Deleting previous location information is a useful feature, since the geo-tagging is enabled by default.

This is the end of the guide. Hoping to be useful. Don't hesitate to share your feedback and keep in touch!

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Social media, Online Business? Since 1982, Dear Sir!

2010-03-21T22:09:00.001-07:00

Social media fever is so high lately, it can almost make us forget that communicating over a screen is actually way older than two thousand and five.
Actually the concept is older than me. Older than the Internet. And exclusively French!

Enters the Minitel

Source: wikipedia. Here is a flickr group about the beast.

Isn't he ugly as hell? For sure he is. But what was it, exactly?

A plastic box with a screen, a keyboard and a modem (dumb terminal).
Extremely easy to use, you just had to type a 4 digit number on your phone, connect the terminal and hang up. The hardest part was to type in the service name, and fill in the blanks. No mouse? You just had to press the "send" or "menu" key.

Inexpensive at the time, and connected to the phone lines, it would let you:

search the yellow/white page
send faxes
check the stock market
shop online
check train and plane schedule and purchase the tickets
translate text
consult various databases
play online
chat (cybersex...yes, already!)
post on bulletin boards

The Minitel in figures (Sources: wikipedia, l'expansion.com)

late 1990's: Minitel connections were stable at 100 million a month plus 150 million online directory inquiries, in spite of growing Internet use
late 1990's: Minitel sales in the late accounted for almost 15% of sales at La Redoute and 3 Suisses, France's biggest mail order companies
1998: Minitel generated € 832 million ($1,121 million) of revenue
1999: almost 9 million terminals — including web-enabled personal computers — had access to the network, used by 25 million people
2005: there were 351 million calls for 18.51 million hours of connection, generating € 206 million of revenue
2009: there still were 1,5 million active terminals all around France

Way before the Internet, start-ups were already making money out of online chat, forum and cybersex, the foundations of today's social media. Informative enough, when you still can read online marketing being promoted as the 'new hotness'...
I don't mean to lessen the importance of SNS marketing, but some nostalgia is not that bad for the mind. And...er...get off my lawn? :D

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

3 Sign language gesture for Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz

2010-03-18T23:29:00.001-07:00

The fingers are supposed to represent the users. The thumb represent yourself, as the 'central user'.

Facebook:

Your friends, their friends and you in the middle

Twitter:

Follower following a follower who follows you. Plus, it kind of looks like a bird, isn't that rad?

Google Buzz:

Nothing special. Just a bloody mess.

Yes, I did have five minutes to lose.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

How are you supposed to survive a sunset?

2010-03-18T20:56:00.001-07:00

There are some evenings…

You just happen to tilt you head back and dusk is already right in front of your face.
Sometimes it’s just you, sometimes, some dude taps on your shoulder and while pointing straight upward he goes “Hey…look at that!”

And of course you’re gonna look, ‘cause what’s to see is just not real.

The sun is suddenly more than a big ball of flaming gas, the clouds more than some vapor. This red hot blood spread across the sky seems to come right from your veins.

You gaze into this huge scenery and you realize that it’s taking everything away. No more endless commute to your office, no more bitching for your missing pencil sharpener, no more reports, boss, todesangst… Damn… for what it’s worth girls don’t even have boobs anymore.
Right that moment, it’s all burning along with the clouds and slowly sinking.

Then you just have enough time to blink twice and it’s dark already. Daddy Sun is gone to his other family.

You’re still there though, staring at nothing, feeling your existential mess creep back up your spine, cramped between the pencil sharpener and some girl’s boobs.

What are you supposed to do then?

You’ve just been the enlightened Zen monk from the movie for a full minute, and now papa’s gone home, you’re back to your old whiny self. Suck it up.

How are you supposed to return to your everyday’s plasma screen craving and internet porn when you feel you’ve just been dumped by the Sky itself?

I mean… how are you supposed to survive a sunset?

Posted via web from Walking down the dragon's back

Hello world?

2010-03-18T20:49:00.001-07:00

Here, I have finally split my content.

For the technical and geeky, you still can find it here full of win and updated.

Here is for me, and those who want to read the stories of a happy exile.
If you feel like leaving, like losing it, like reading or just luking around, I might have something for you.

Free mind candies to come, soon.

Posted via web from Walking down the dragon's back

How are you supposed to survive a sunset?

2010-03-18T20:17:00.001-07:00

There are some evenings…

And of course you’re gonna look, ‘cause what’s to see is just not real.

The sun is suddenly more than a big ball of flaming gas, the clouds more than some vapor. This red hot blood spread across the sky seems to come right from your veins.

Then you just have enough time to blink twice and it’s dark already. Daddy Sun is gone to his other family.

You’re still there though, staring at nothing, feeling your existential mess creep back up your spine, cramped between the pencil sharpener and some girl’s boobs.

What are you supposed to do then?

You’ve just been the enlightened Zen monk from the movie for a full minute, and now papa’s gone home, you’re back to your old whiny self. Suck it up.

How are you supposed to return to your everyday’s plasma screen craving and internet porn when you feel you’ve just been dumped by the Sky itself?

I mean… how are you supposed to survive a sunset?

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

My Lighter as a Social Media

2010-03-17T21:17:00.001-07:00

Just to prove my point: social is in the people, media is in everything.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Six Questions to Redefine Social Media

2010-03-17T20:34:00.001-07:00

After reading a very good blog post from @belindaang about the nature of social media, I've been tempted to leave a nice little comment, but I let the idea boil my brain overnight, and came up with a little something.

Media, in Latin, is the plural of "Medius", meaning "Middle". I don't see it as the common "mass media" term.

What's the difference?

It's all about relations. Where radio, TV, and the early Web were about one channel diffusing to many viewers, the social Web is about many users diffusing to many users.

Where's the "middle"?

The middle is what we call now Social Media. I deeply agree with @belindaang, the term is over-used, over-hyped, and is now in my list of BS vocabulary. But still, we have to call it something. Social Media, then, are these services based on the relation between their users.
No need to be Facebook to be one, you just need allow your users to subscribe to one another's updates ('add', 'follow', 'friend'), share and dialog.

Is that just about it?

That's where I'm tempted to say...no, not at all. Facebook, Twitter and many more offer a great framework to subscribe, share and dialog, but many more platforms actually fit the requirements.

Your blog: Users are allowed to comment your post? That's a match. Plus, have you remarked that you generally can follow other people's blogs from your own? Blogger.com has this feature, so does Posterous. Blogs are giant profile pages, with long status updates. They are usually discussing deeper topics, on a longer format, it makes them difficult to read for the busiest of us, but any SNS consultant you'll hail in the street (just go out, you'll find one) will tell you: don't neglect your blog readers!

Bulletin boards: I know, it's old and busted. It's still a major source of information, and the concept is just about the same: subscribe, share and dialog. BBs are the most useful when it comes to looking for professional/technical help. They lack an update summary, like Facebook's newsfeed, but the brand new Gravity is working on it.

Your email: Sit back in your chair. I know it's hard to associate gran-daddy email with Twitter. But think about it. Subscribe, share and dialog, many to many? It's all there. Of course you can't "follow" someone who hasn't given you her email address, but that what makes its charm. It's also very old school, and still too complicated for some.

Youtube, Deviantart, Flickr, social all the same.

Ok, you're cool and all, but what's your point?

My point is: the term "Media" should be seen as 'anything that makes people communicate, a middleman for thoughts', and "Social" as 'Whatever builds a community'. Social Media should be seen as 'Any support allowing a community's members to communicate'.

Why should I think like that?

Because if you realize that your audience is not the media, but the community, you might want to broaden your views on what's social. Don't target the road, target the travellers...or else...

Or else what?

Exactly.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Twitter wants your comments; Open Web seen crying somewhere.

2010-03-17T01:21:00.001-07:00

Lately, Twitter has broken its 10 billionth Tweet.Today, this just in, Facebook traffic has outgrown Google's.

Facebook statuses are updated 60 millions times per day
Twitter register more than 40 millions daily tweets
There is at least 20 billions indexed websites on the web

Daily, Facebook and Twitter together produce 5 times more status updates than the total of all indexed websites on the web.
Just imagine if every status update was a website.Because, in essence, a status update can be much more valuable than a website.

Say, let's compare.

A blog/website is (mostly)

complex
maintained
isolated
published
searched
visited
univocal (delivers information)

A status update is (mostly)

simple
burst
exposed
updated
streamed
watched
equivocal (calls for comment)

What about it?

With all the new social media marketing buzz, marketers are beginning to understand ( keyword:inertia) that effortless status updates are sometimes more than just, excuse my Tibetan, a brain-fart. When it comes to opinions, instant statuses are immensely more valuable than polished blog posts: they are better seen, faster, better relayed, and by way more users.

Status updates could be the new comments...

Of course, statuses are just another way to comment on content. But what about the marketing value of 100 millions of daily comments? Worth a try, yes?
We've seen efforts from various side, from Discus to the Salmon protocol to unify comments, but what strikes me the most is the @anywhere framework developed by Twitter, which will allow you to "tweet about a video without leaving YouTube"
The knee-jerk reflex of sharing content and point of view through a status update could be the perfect vector of a web-wide comment gathering system. In 140 characters, native, and in Twitter's database, of course.

Controversial? You bet!

It might not be that obvious, but Twitter and Facebook are all about gathering your data. I've told you earlier about the mobile tagging.
Comment tracing is another juicy fruit they want a bite of.
Many don't see it, but not only it poses a serious threat to your privacy/freedom of choice as a user (you can still argue it though) but it also poses a serious threat to the openness of the web, see for instance Facebook patenting his news stream while it's built on an open standard. See related post by Dave Winer about "Twitter as a Force For Good".

What to think?

Social networking sites are here to stay, they are the place where the data (money) is
There is finally a justification for Twitter's need of expansion (I couldn't believe they expanded basically everywhere just because)
Comment tracing could be the next cake after geo-tagging
Open-but-closed standard are becoming more visible, Google is not alone anymore.

Will the "open-web" be a geek only destination in the years to come? Will we see a fully open social networking service emerge?
Many questions... what do YOU think?

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Twitter new feature "hover card" reviewed and explained.

2010-03-11T23:58:00.001-08:00

Twitter just introduced the "hover card".
You can now put your cursor over a twitpic to pop up a quick profile view.

You can then expand the card by clicking on "more" and access more stats.

The good:

Way faster to know who's posting
Way faster to interact

The clever:

The hover card is not pre-loaded but loaded on-hover, good for the bandwith

The not so good:

You might not see it, but yes Twitter is loaded with javascript. It adds to the load. Browsers will love it, especially Firefox
I can't update through the web interface since the update, hope it doesn't last

Also:

Take a look at the that:

That's what sometimes shows in my address bar. It either mean that conversations are logged (behavioral data mining) or that a conversation tracking function will appear soon.

Conclusion:

It proves that twitter still loves its web users, even if the non mobile users mostly come through API
Twitter is in good health, that's a lot of server load to add for one feature
This strategy seems to be aimed at attracting more user to the native web interface, it comes right after the enabling of the geo-tagging feats. I guess someone, somewhere, is data mining hard
More updates are to be expected, pretty soon

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

8 Free Wallpapers That Make You Laugh And Discourage Peeps

2010-03-11T21:08:00.001-08:00

Here, just for you. Free to use and redistribute.
They are specially meant to address people looking at your screen.

Enjoy, and feel free to comment/critic :)

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

[Webxibitionism] New corporate haircut: The Mohawk

2010-03-10T21:29:00.001-08:00

I think it suits me, fellas in the office don't complain. I'm happy.
Now, what do YOU think about it, in principle and esthetically?

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Why Facebook and Twitter want to know where you are, break in your privacy.

2010-03-10T03:36:00.001-08:00

The news fell in recently, Twitter will share your location on a tweet per tweet basis, Facebook will follow, sharing your location in your News Feed®.

Privacy Nightmare:

First, about twitter. Do you know how many people follow you? Do you know them personally?
I'm asking because you're going to reveal important data.
To people you don't know.
Sometimes you won't even know they're following you.
Nice. Hope you can turn it off.

Then about Facebook, and that's where I'd advise you to be VERY careful if you don't want your position to leak out.
I remarked two weeks ago that you can actually see news about people with your friend request still pending, that is, who haven't added you.
They also have rendered the un-friending process pretty difficult, burrying the link at the bottom left of the user profile.
Upon this knowledge, I carefully revised my privacy settings. But who does that except me and terribly hot looking chicks?
And I bet it will be on by default, thus allowing people you don't even want to be friend with to follow your moves.

Stalker Enabled Sites: For the sake of your data

You might ask yourself why the SNS giants are so found of adding geo-tagging features, when their popularity is still rising day by day?

Is that because they love you?
Is that because they get deals when you check in in some outlets?
Is that because they need to ride the geo-tagging wave?

Nope.They are after your footprints. The real ones.

Take a look a these stats, I quote:

"
Some 25.1 million people are accessing Facebook via a mobile Web browser, a growth of 112 percent from January 2009, according to new research from comScore. Twitter use via a mobile browser grew 347 percent to 4.7 million users. MySpace lured 11.4 million users. In total, some 30.8 percent of smartphone users accessed Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010.
"

And you know what can be triangulated precisely enough to give you transit pattern, real-life-crowd-behavior-data?
Bingo. A cellphone. And the mobile web will soon outgrow the desk/laptop one.
So yeah, Facebook and Twitter love you, but really they love your habits more.

I don't say we're all doomed to be the puppets of the capitalist mercantile pigs though. The 'setting' link is still there, top-right corner ;)

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Twitter: Unfollow without losing followers, 7 easy steps.

2010-03-09T08:46:00.001-08:00

There is this latent fear about unfollowing someone.
The fear that your "follower" counter drops at the same rate as your "following" counter. Thus inducing panic, loss of self esteem, morbid depression.

But hey, since I'm still trying to find the phase two between 1.Get plenty of followers and 3.Profit (or fame, or you win the bet), I just tested, recklessly, FriendOrFollow.
This little free tool will make a list of everybody you're following but don't follow you back, and arrange them by activity, last tweet, followers and more.

The nice way to do it:

Go to FriendOrFollow
Enter your Titter username
Arrange the list to conform to your priorities
Click on all the profile pics you don't like (there is actually a nice tooltip providing you info about who you are about to unfollow)
Check their timeline (after all, you might be following @guykawasaki for a reason)
Decide
Unfollow, causing despair and anger all around the globe

This method is pretty humane, since you could be following not-so-active/popular users who need support and are not aware of you yet, and might lose them with an automated "cleaning" tool.
And if you are lucky, you might even gain some followers this way.

Hope it was useful. Happy cleaning!

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Things Your SNS Consultant Doesn't Want You to Know Lest He Loses Money

2010-03-09T00:06:00.001-08:00

Dear you all whom I love,

Is it me being blind or what?

When I read about "Social Media Strategies" and their stats, I see two kinds of astronomic numbers :

The ones related to SNS activities (A hellion member, and so forth and so on)
The ones related to how much money is spent on trying to get a slice of the fruitcake.

Question: Where can I see the silly huge amount of cash some real venture has done in profit related to their SNS campaigns?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a great Social Strategist of the new communication era, but I'd have my own startup right now, I'd seriously weight it.

First I'd ask myself if I really need to market anything online.

Do my canned red beans really need to be getting social?
Do my customers need to be more aware of that product?
Is there really a canned red beans community I can target?
What can I bring to the community if ever I find one?
And oh yes, how long will it take to get famous, if ever? Time is money after all.

There are a plethora of business related articles around (Google search for "Make money online": 155,000,000, feel free to feel them.), and some of them are actually full of common sense, and even a bit beyond the obvious see here (Futurebuzz) and here (The Relationship Economy).
But they often forget to ask this one question of who actually needs it.
And then they forget to ask themselves how much it's going to cost.
And then Google brags about his billions of dollars in adwords.

I'm not a marketing genius but some aspects of it just plain make sense. Would it be wrong to:

Ask myself all the questions stated before
Spend more time networking away from my desk than in front of my screen
Invest the least possible in hardware and tools (the starter kit and the book, you know...)
Base my campaign on free solutions (which work pretty well e.g. with SEO, try googling "Danny-fr", "Dannyfr", "@Danny_fr","Brutal Opinions" see who comes first)
Do something as basic as trying to sell my used laptop on Twitter and see what happens

Bah. These advices don't make money. By that I mean they don't bring money to @FastBucksOnlinePro.
Or I am so very wrong I am in denial.

In my next post, we're going to play a game with real money just to prove my point.

Stay tuned ! (and retweet, favorite, buzz, bookmark this post and call your first born after it ;) )

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Tech Rehab Week End: DOs and DON'Ts

2010-03-08T00:14:00.001-08:00

You shouldn't get near a keyboard during Week Ends. Week Ends are a time sanctuary dedicated to the self, the ego the you and your rest.
I call it the Tech Rehab, and it's easy to do :

Dont:

Tweet
Access your Facebook profile
Browse from your phone
Use this shiny new social app
Share these uber cute pictures of whatever mangy pet you have
Fantasize on Steeve Jobs

Do:

Sleep
Practice whatever OTHER hobby you have
Do dangerous things in your garage
Sleep
Finally give this long lost friend the call he's been waiting for 3 1/2 years
Get new underwear
Sleep

The result?

You'll actually feel you've left work for two days
You won't try alt+F4 to stop your car
You'll appreciate your job better, especially if you're in tech
You'll gain followers on Twitter. Yes people like it, sometimes, when you're away

Well, that's my point of view only, but I do feel good, and it's Monday :D

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr