Beyond text

Do you know Robin Sloan? Probably not. He's a Californian writer and media-inventor whose story Mr. Penumbra and the Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store I stumbled across a while ago, and I was hooked. His stories are smart, fast and full of surprises in a way that I've never seen before. The latest story (The Truth about the East Wind) is based on classical Greek mythology whereas the sci-fi crime novel Annabel Scheme is set in the future San Francisco dominated by quantum computers and Grail, the second best name for a search engine that I can think of. Very smart indeed, and just a little nerdy.

The creative way in which Sloan plays with formats gave me pause to think about how un-creatively today's media work with their formats on the web. For incumbent producers of print, the acme of production is text, while TV people produce video. To the man with the hammer, everything looks like a nail, I guess.

But in this day and age of cross-media, things have to change. Content needs to be optimised for effect and for convenience. Convenience means that content should always be available in all possible formats so that I can hear a text when I'm on the move, for instance. Effect is the best possible way in which content can be presented. A picture may say more than a thousand words, but often times, complexity is not open to imagery, but only to text. But - text is difficult to digest and demands a concentrated effort. So there's a number of dimensions across which to choose the most effective mode of communicating something.

Digital persona

This is my digital persona - nice, isn't it. It's particularly interesting to watch its creation, so go ahead and have your own!

Don't be evil!

Good news in my bank account statement today - a wire payment from a Dublin based finance services firm, representing no other than Google! This is the first payment ever that I receive as a result from my Adsense membership and people using those ads. Great - it actually pays for two months of internet access. Never mind that it's the first payment in four years' worth of membership ...

Betting against Jobs

We've been fairly early in beginning to speculate that Steve Jobs might sooner or later end his tenure at Apple - some will say, way too early, especially seeing how discussions are heating up again following Apple's cancellation of its Macworld participation. But now, we have it from His Steveness, namely that he is not intending to step down just now.�

On the very same day, intrade has opened two contracts where participants can speculate about whether Jobs will resign before June or December 09. I'll make sure to keep watching. There's no trading so far, and both contracts are at about 20% likelihood. If you own AAPL, you may want to go long those contracts ...

J to L

The seventh of fourteen volumes of the Historic Encyclopedia of Switzerland�(HLS) has just appeared - yes, they keep printing encyclopedias on dead trees. But it's all good - the full text of all articles is available simultaneously in German, French and Italian (and partially in�Romansh, too!) and can be referenced directly. No pictures, though; strangely, they are reserved to the print edition.�

As an example, here's the article about eminent historian Jacob Burckhardt (1000 words), and here it is in the Wikipedia edition�(1438 words, 2 pictures plus a number of links, among others to the HLS article). For good measure, Britannica invests 1791 words. True, the number of words is not relevant: I prefer an efficient (terse?) text over a verbose one any day, but why they would use quite so many abbreviations in the HLS is beyond me. I prefer the Wikipedia article for its more comprehensive overview of Burckhardt, whereas the HLS shines on the substance of Burckhardt's work. It's a pity, though, that the editors haven't recognised that printed encyclopedias are definitely a thing of the past. Yet, their key remit is to produce a printed encyclopedia. But then again, they are historians for a reason ...

Banksy's Pet Store ...

You know you're in for a treat when Banksy opens a pet store cum grill ... enjoy!

The way out of the moral matrix

Here's an excellent presentation about moral psychology. I particularly like the way in which the speaker comes across as very confident of his own political position despite of the apparent moral relativism (but it's actually moral humility) that he proposes. Being aware of and respecting your opponent's standpoint doesn't have to mean that your own position is weak.

Craigslist

Cool! I just remembered reading (NZZ) that craigslist has recently become available for Basel - and bingo,�here it is! I guess this really gives us a boost in the metropolitan index.

Here hung those lips?

Interesting stuff, discovered via an episode of vernissage tv. Speaking of vernissage tv, this is rather disturbing stuff, coming from Russia ...

Snap, the fish got you!

I've always been interested in concepts like mosquito marketing, so when I was offered the opportunity to participate, I took it. The guys over at dot-friends offered a free snapfish collage poster if I would blog (fairly & honestly) about it, and so, here goes ...

It's about photocollage posters, a new snapfish offering. Naturally, I've tried it out, and it worked fine for me. The resulting poster is printed beautifully on high quality photo paper. Snapfish did, however, underperform in terms of delivery times: The promise was for the poster to be produced within 1-2 days; effectively it took them three. Mail was delivered in time.

As for the creation process online, I'll say that my enthusiasm is limited. Like I said, it all worked, but it worked in a PC (as opposed to Mac) kind of way: the process allows for very little in design creativity (photos can only be arranged in 90 degree angles, there is a fairly limited set of frame colours and frame strengths - that's it!). On top of that, the website design was not rendered well on Safari, as some of the buttons (important ones like OK) were missing - I had to guess!�

So, in conclusion, I don't think this is a product I will use again, as it isn't much fun to create, and you don't have many degrees of freedom in creating it. Nor is it a steal at CHF 25. Yet, I will keep snapfish bookmarked because they offer a range of less complex, but nice & useful products, such as picture cups, jugs and caps.�

Hmm, this is probably not the kind of review that my dot-friends were hoping for, but since I'm expected to give a review, the free poster I got is not a gift horse that you're not supposed to look in the mouth ...

Swan Upping

Haven't we talked about Swans before? Here's an interesting video on HM Swans - enjoy!

Subscribe to keep

About a week ago, I subscribed to the download membership that is newly on offer at Magnatune. Magnatune is an extremely fair online music label with a selection & quality of classical music, jazz and world that is very much my cup of tea. With the download membership, it got that much better: for $54, you get three months of free download access to all of their program. Did I mention quality? You can choose between a number of different formats, including AAC and full quality WAV. Unlike with other subscription models, you don't loose your music when your membership expires. Very good value indeed!

Trainspotting

No, not the movie - this! Amazing!

Apple pays

That was quick! Local newspaper BaZ seems to keep close tabs on the Apple-Suisa skirmish - we've reported earlier. �Now BaZ breaks the news that Apple has backed down on Saturday and will be paying up the millions that it has accrued in levies. But apparently not before getting a letter from a Swiss consumerism organisation demanding that Apple pays back the surcharge retained from consumers, should it be successful against Suisa. So that matter's settled - but Suisa continues to look into whether iPhone will be considered a media player that is subject to the levy.

Apple refuses to pay levy

This story is about our preferred purveyor of fine fruit, and I post it because I haven't seen it anywhere else - probably no netizen reads Basler Zeitung ... anyway: they have this story about Apple refusing to pay a blank media levy imposed on the sale of media players (i.e. the iPod) by Suisa (Swiss Society for the Rights of Authors of Musical Works). Apple apparently refuses to pay because their online store is located in Ireland and mails iPods directly to its Swiss clients and therefore, Apple thinks, it is not liable to pay. Suisa's levy on RAM-based media players used to be extremely hefty: until 1 April, the levy on a 32 GB iPod touch was CHF 153. Under heavy attack, Suisa decided to lower that levy unilaterally to 42 francs.

Now I am certainly no friend of Suisa's. Nevertheless, I think Apple's position in this matter is quite untenable. They claim that they never included any levy in the pricing of the players, yet the price difference between the Swiss Apple store and others magically is about equal to what the levy amounted to before it was lowered. And it hasn't been lowered still, so everybody who buys an iPod on Apple's Swiss online store is not very intelligent. This certainly does not generate much goodwill with clients either. What's more, Swiss VAT is applied to the goods sold online, and the store claims to be subject to Swiss law, so ... I'm guessing that the legal goings-on in a tiny province of Apple's vast realm (that doesn't even have the iPhone, yet - legally) has escaped the eye of Cupertino's lawyers so far. This is bound to change soon, and we'll hopefully see a levy refund to Swiss Apple Store clients soon.

Update: As this post creates so much traffic, I went back to check my facts and, lo & behold, the prices of the Swiss Apple Store have been brought back in line with the Euro pricing: CHF 719 (EUR 440) for the 32GB iPod touch, down from ca. 840 on last check. This is lower than the price at the German store (EUR 459), but not by as much as the roughly 10% points difference in VAT would suggest. The difference, again, is close enough to 42 francs. Therefore, the retail price includes the levy, but Apple refuses to fess up. Good policy?�

Interesting numbers

Accumulated time spent on building Wikipedia ... 100'000'000 hours
Total time spent watching TV in the USA ... 200'000'000'000 hours per annum
TV time of global web-connected population ... 1'000'000'000'000 hours p.a.

That's what Clay Shirky calls Cognitive Surplus. An interesting thought indeed.

Rule Britannica!

Coolness! Being the web publisher and blogger that I am, I have been accepted into Britannica's Webshare programme by virtue of this blog (among others). This programme gives its participants free access to Encyclopedia Britannica online and lets them (me!) share whatever article they fancy with readers - yes, you! So, here goes, and most appropriately to start with, hell! This looks like a great way to compete with Wikipdia - you better get used to the thought of not getting any more Wikipedia references from this source.

Oy, Google!

What have I done??�Since about 16 April, the amount of search based traffic that Google has directed my way has fallen off the cliff quite dramatically, as witnessed by the chart. Not that it matters much, as most of that traffic has been after the globe's most expansive posterior (I paraphrase, obviously), which I talked about in an early post, but it's strange anyway. Ah well, somebody else must have come up with a more relevant reference, then ...

The Distillery List

I am a veteran member (#303) of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, Swiss Branch, and I enjoy their bottlings a lot, especially from distillery 1. I used to keep the distillery list online myself, but since you only get it when you join, it would be rather dated by now. So here I found a pretty current one - thanks Julian!

Screw Yoga

This is excellent stuff!

Bored of the dance

Surely, some fellow travellers on my train trip to Zurich yesterday must have thought me nuts as I was smiling and sniggering to myself while I was listening to Stephen Fry's latest podgram edition on the iPhone. I'm so perfectly with him on his innate aversion to dancing that it's uncanny! Why don't you subscribe to it yourself - he's utterly dry and funny.

A Swiss iPhone

Please sign this petition, asking Apple and Swiss mobile phone companies Orange, Sunrise and Swisscom for a release date of the iPhone in the Swiss market!�

Essential watching

This is essential watching for every Anglophone who stares blankly at continental Europeans quipping about the same procedure as last year. The video is a 1963 Swiss-German co-production that is traditionally aired on virtually every TV station on the last day of the year.

Good stuff!

If you ever happen to need a simple, efficient tool to produce maps, here it is!

Sometime along the way to Mac OS X, I lost touch with�SETI@home, the�experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Meanwhile, you can even use your spare CPU cycles in the screen saver to help calculate climate change models. How cool is that?!

Wise evolution

Here is an intuitively convincing essay which is meant to demonstrate the possibility of evolutionary systems despite of their counter-intuitivity. I like the style and the ambition (via /.).

Asia pics

Thanks to iPhoto '08, check out my new web gallery with the pictures from my recent trip to Singapore and Seoul! The things you can do with web gallery are neat, but it's a bit of a bandwidth hog ...

Peccabo

Interesting! Swiss / Lufthansa have started a partnership to offset carbon emissions from air travel. To offset the 342 kg of CO2 produced by my forthcoming trip to Ireland will cost CHF 11, for instance. A trip to London is CHF 9. Good stuff - never since the days of indulgences was a clear conscience attainable for less! Too bad that the indulgence cannot be added at the point of sales directly - that is going to be the next step in the sales cooperation, I guess.

Therefore, in the spirit of Sir Charles Napier's immortal pun, let's keep sining!

Rankings galore

If you are competitively minded, you will certainly be interested in the Economist's rankings repository. There you'll find a number of interesting rankings, from MBAs to operational risk. Eminently quotable ...

As we may think

Vannevar Bush's July 1945 essay As we may think is a breathtaking piece of futurology. Have a look!

Blogging against music taxes

The Swiss Supreme Court has upheld a decision to introduce a hefty levy on digital music players and HD recorders. The proceeds go to collecting societies, which then redistribute the leftovers (after admin) to artists. The levy will be substantial, and consumers will start paying it on 1 September, irrespective of whether they use the player for music they bought legally. This is grossly inappropriate.

The Swiss Consumer Protection is requesting your support to mount a political campaign in the Swiss Federal Parliament to change the law which allows for this nonsense. Please give your support by sending an email - just click here!

This blog campaign has been started at freilich. If you want to support it, just use the following code in your own blog to encourage your readers to protest:
<a href="mailto:mp3@konsumentenschutz.ch?subject=freilich.ch gegen Musiksteuer!&body=Sehr geehrter Herr Parteipr�sident%0ASehr geehrte Frau Parteipr�sidentin%0A%0AHiermit fordere ich Sie auf, das Urheberrechtsgesetz so zu �ndern, dass Abgaben auf digitalen Abspielger�ten und Festplatten-Recordern nicht mehr m�glich sind. Es liegt in Ihrer Hand, die Abgabe zu verhindern, die vom Bundesgericht aufgrund unklarer Gesetzeslage beschlossen wurde. %0a%0aBesten Dank f�r Ihr Engagement!%0aDer Absender" rel="nofollow">Mit zwei Clicks ist es schon getan!</a>

Local news

Go check out local.ch! It's a very useful site if you're in Switzerland for it gives you a map based access to yellow and white pages as well as to events and classifieds. It's really useful and it works. Yesterday I was looking for a dental technician that I could visit on the way to the train station, and today I was looking for an unlisted hairdresser in Rheinfelden on behalf of my sister. Both worked perfectly smoothly. Oh, and it also displays blog posts from geotagged blogs from the map area. This is the Web 2.0 stuff that's really useful!

In other local news: My mom is currently in hospital to have both her knees replaced. She's had her second operation yesterday, and I am glad to report that everything went well. She's well on the path to recovery, which includes a few more weeks of hospital and rehab stays away from home. In order to make that easier on her, I gave her a digital picture frame today. It's a little TFT monitor that displays a slide show of all pics, movies & sound files that are on the memory card you plug into it. She's enjoying it a lot, especially since it contains literally hundreds of conversation starters. I tested a cheaper one before, but that was a bad experience: apparently buggy software, bad physical quality &c. I spent quite some time trying to get it running, whereas the Kodak one was just plug & play.

Fix this!

Check out this week's installment of the BBC's StoryFix, a weekly videocast. The bit about Imagine, a world where there is no news is fabulous!

Windows is for grandmas ...

Nice piece, but what else is new?

D'Omeisele

Fun! I just discovered this newish gossipy blog about Sch�nenbuch, the place where I happen to live. The blog is called ant after an old nickname of the village used by our neighbours - must have been the villagers' proverbial industriousness ... I wonder who the blog belongs to, and how long he will be able to maintain his anonymity. Good luck, and keep up the good work!

An iPhone for Smaran!

The buzz is on again! Probably recycling contact information from the WSJ article, the Times has its own article featuring Smaran, this time placing him as an opinion leader on all things Apple. If he plays his cards right, he might just be one of the first people to get a (free) iPhone on the subcontinent!

Buzz wizzards

The Wall Street Journal offers an interesting insight into how social bookmarking sites work. The article came to my attention thanks to Smaran, an online friend and frequent commentator on this blog who is justly proud to be featured as an influencer in that article. Congratulations - way to go!!

Karl Kraus on the web

"... das beabsichtigte Einspinnen des Erdballs in ein Netz elektrischer Wellen ist ein so verlockendes Phantasma, da� es, zur Wahrheit geworden, als eine Gro�that �berquellenden Erfindergeistes bezeichnet werden m��te."

Professor Victor Loos in Fackel #130, p. 10f., 1903; login using bla_bla / p5JPV6Pri

No, Prime Minister

If you are interested in all things happening on the Fairest Isle, this is for you! 10 Downing Street has opened its door to virtual visitors. The rooms do in fact very much look like those we already know from the famous TV serial. One wonders whether they were shot on location?