Niels' eclectic Blog

Best of Tweets - Jan '12

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:31:00 +0000

Here come the most interesting links I tweeted in the past month:

Beer 'must be sold' at Brazil World Cup, says Fifa - and for that Brasil needs to change its laws that prohibit the sale of beer in soccer stadiums...after all Budweiser is a major sponsor of the World Cup. Another sign that Fifa is mostly interested only in $$$.

Inside the World of the N'Dragheta - the mafia of Calabria (southern Italy).

Scotland's bid for independence explained - hilarious!

A NASA video how the earth has been heating up over the past century

What happened aboard AF447 - the flight from Rio to Paris which mysteriously crashed into the Atlantic. It's got human error written all over it.

The rape of men in war - we know that in war often women are being raped. It's also happening to men, but nobody talks about it.

Coaching a surgeon - what makes top performers even better?

Wunderkit Beta Review

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 21:00:00 +0000

I just received my invite to the Wunderkit beta. Wunderkit proclaims to be 'the best productivity platform ever'. It has been hyped quite a bit in recent months (mostly because of the not-so-bad Wunderlist - basically a to-do-list app that syncs across platforms).

So what does Wunderkit essentially offer? It allows you to create "projects". Inside these projects you can write simple text notes (which you can share with project members), you can assign tasks (to project members) and you can write status updates (to followers) and comment on everything. What else? It allows you to follow the status updates of other people's projects.

Let me guess. This description didn't blow you off your feet. Well...it doesn't get any better.

There is no significant integration with Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus. So pretty much Wunderkit creates another social network (just what we needed!). Within Wunderkit you can only follow other Wunderkit users and vice versa.

I guess it's no wonder the video Walkthrough of Wunderkit spend most of the time on the social aspect of Wunderkit rather than the actual functions of the "productivity" suite.

What the best thing about Wunderkit? It's got a neat polished look to it. Usability is good, but still below let's say...Apple standards. It's not as intuitive as the pretty user interface might suggest. You need several clicks to get things done, well...if you can get anything done with the limited functions Wunderkit has to offer in the first place.

My take: Wunderkit is not wunderbar. There's not much it does well. It's just...pretty to look at. Don't expect to get more productive by using it. Google Wave was light years ahead in terms of collaborative (social) work.

P.S. If you want an invite to Wunderkit and see for yourself, leave a comment with your email address. Otherwise you might also just try Wunderlist and see if that does it all you need for you.

P.P.S Care for a positive Wunderkit review...try this one. Or another not so friendly one (Men Who Stare At Wooden Walls 2.0) can be found here. That review suggest to use Podio.

The Love Dossier

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:50:00 +0000

On Sunday, Acácia and I are finally heading to London together. But only after having had a major struggle with bureaucracy.

You might remember that we got married in Mallorca back in October. We figured that it would be great to kiss our long-distance relationship goodbye and live in the same place again. Two years of l-d are more than enough. Since I could not tell precisely when I'd be done with my PhD, Acácia decided to quite her beloved job and leave our equally beloved Barcelona to come to London and look for a job there.

In early December she had her last day at work, so she came to Germany for Christmas. I was also in Germany because of research I had to do in the national archives and I also got medical treatment on my foot. We had tickets to go to London for the 24th of January and we even had entrances to the West-End musical Billy Elliot for the 26th of January, i.e. today. The Billy Elliot entrances had been a cute good-bye present from Acácia's work colleagues.

The only thing we still needed to get was a family visa for Acácia, also known as an EEA family permit. As an EU citizen I can live, study and work anywhere within the EU without having to do any paperwork (that's one of the amazing things of the EU we take for granted nowadays). Acácia does not (yet) have an EU passport, so she needs a visa. Fortunately, as my wife she has the right (by EU law) to live and work wherever I am living as well. Obtaining a visa for her seemed to be just another formality.

We applied for the visa in early December with all the documents specified on the UK Border Agency's website (Passports, Marriage Certificate, Financial Statements, Supporting Letter, Contract, Immatriculation letter from LSE, Proof of Insurance). Three weeks later we get a letter refusing her the visa on the grounds that they were certain that we were having a "marriage of convenience", because we did not hand in letters, e-mails, photos, cards and other items from special occasions.

"What the....?!" was pretty much our first reaction. Sure, the government officials making the decision can't possibly know about the exact details of our relationship in the past years. Neither can they know about our kick-ass wedding, where friends and family came from all over the world to celebrate with us. But assuming from the mere absence of personal items in our application (which the UKBA does not explicitly ask for on its webpage) that we are having a marriage of convenience, is a decision pulled out of thin air.

In case of doubt, the officials have the possibility to ask us for more supporting documents or even to summon us for an interview at the British Consulate in Dusseldorf. Instead, the official decided to send an outright rejection letter without making use of these possibilities (I assume it also has got to do with the new UK government's crackdown on immigration).

At first we were determined to appeal the decision. On second thought it did not seem such a good idea anymore. After all, in an appeal you need to prove that the government official had made the wrong decision based on the information submitted to them. And that is no easy feat. Instead we figured that nobody could keep us from re-submitting an application. Applications are free (whereas an appeal would not be) and a much quicker procedure compared to a judicial appeal (it can take months). So we submitted a fresh application with a big "mea culpa"('We were too stupid to hand in a correct application the first time round') and the personal effects they wanted to see.

The tricky bit about the rejection letter was that it did not specify how many photos, letters and cards the government officials wanted to see in order to deem our marriage to be genuine. There was no clue, so we went full on and collected all the bits and pieces documenting our relationship that we could scrape together in a week's time in one massive Love Dossier. It contained:

1. an overview of all the trips we have taken with each other and to visit each other since September 2009. This included an excel sheet summarizing the information as well as printouts of all the bookings. This alone took me two days to compile.

2.ninety-four personal photos from our 3 1/2 years of relationship. Each had a caption documenting where, when and with whom it was taken.

3.wedding-related material: Invitation, Wedpage, Wedbook, bills, the menu, thank you cards we sent out, my blog entry about the wedding and 25 wedding cards we received.

4. an overview of e-mails exchanged since the beginning of our relationship in May 2008. We included one conversation for each month since then as well as 18 conversations with different members of our families.

5. samples of Christmas and post cards we sent out jointly

6. several blog entries from this blog, where Acácia is mentioned

7. a supporting statement from my father

and last but not least

8. a list of references including many of our beloved friends who were there from the first kiss.

Fortunately, the Love Dossier did the trick. Acácia got her visa yesterday and we're finally set to go.

Looking back at this episode, I'm wondering whether it might not have saved both us and the border agency time, money and nerves if we just had given them our Facebook logins...alternatively we could also have settled for something like a social interview ;)

The Megashutdown

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:27:00 +0000

Just a few thoughts about the Megaupload shutdown:

1. Megaupload was a criminal enterprise. I have no idea why Anonymous is going bananas over its shutdown.

2. Megaupload described itself as a file storage and sharing service (such as my beloved Dropbox). But it was quite unsuitable for this primary purpose of storing your "data" long term.

If you were not subscribed to Megaupload you could upload the files, but they would be deleted after 21 days unless they are downloaded in this time period. If you were subscribed but not paying, you could upload files, but they would be deleted after 90 days, unless someone downloads them within this period. Only if you were a paying subscriber would your data be kept indefinitely.

Thus, the only chance as a non-paying user for your file to be stored for a long period of time by Megaupload, is, if you use your files on a regular basis, or if you make it public and it's massively popular. And what tends to be massively popular with the general internet audience? Bingo! Copyrighted movies and songs. Did anybody even know Megaupload, i.e. Megavideo for anything else? Don't think so.

Oh, and Megaupload actually paid people to upload copyrighted material.

3. Megaupload had 180 Million subscribers (!). Only a fraction of these were actually paying, but it was enough to make a small fortune (US$ 150 million + another US$ 25 million in advertising revenues).

4. I would love to know where these subscribers come from. In the US there's a good offer of digital movies and series via iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, etc. I would suspect that most of the subscribers of Megaupload would come from outside the US, where such services are scarce.

5. The FBI managed to shut down Megaupload, which was operated from other countries (although it had servers inside the US). Remind me, why does the American Congress think that it needs SOPA or PIPA?

6. How on earth did Megaupload get so many superstars to appear in a Megaupload ad? The ad video features - amongst others - Will.i.am, Sean "Diddy" Combs, Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg, Chris Brown, Kanye West, Jamie Foxx and Mary J Blige. Are they all pro-copyright infringement or did they simply not know what Megaupload was and were paid handsomely for their endorsement? I think the latter is the case.

7. Anyway, the best part of the video is that the main guy behind Megaupload "Kim Dotcom"(who, by the way, has been convicted twice for fraud in Germany), one of the lead roles in the video.

Sources: The official indictment of Megaupload for the facts & Ignacio Escolar (in Spanish) for inspiration.

Banks park their money

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:33:00 +0000

European banks do not trust each other on an unprecedented scale.

During normal times, banks lend excess money to other banks at the end of the day to earn a small interest (currently on average 0.37%). However, at the moment European banks prefer to "park" their money with the European Central Bank (ECB) earning them an even smaller interest (at the moment 0.25%).

Think of parking as something like an emergency current account at the central bank, which a commercial banks can use when it hasn't found a suitable place to lend its excess funds to at the end of the day.

It goes under the official name of "Deposit Facility" of the ECB. These days around €420 billion are parked with the ECB:

Source: Bloomberg

To put the €420 billion in perspective you need to know that in normal times not even €1 billion is deposited with the ECB. Even in the days after the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008, when financial markets were in a state of collective freeze, European banks deposited "only" about €290 billion in this emergency account, far short of the current amount or the €500 billion at the beginning of January.

Banks do not know where to put their money due to the uncertainties surrounding the sovereign-debt crisis. They see no opportunity to invest the money profitably. Instead they just leave it with the central bank, where it serves absolutely no productive purpose. This is grim news, indeed.

Unless European leaders decide on a way to go and actually start going it, things will only get worse, not better. Lots of people will lose a lot of money in the months to come, that's for sure and EU leaders know this. At the moment EU leaders are haggling over who will bear the burden. The longer they need to decide, the harder it becomes, as the bill gets bigger by the day.

The sad thing is that we've known this when Greece started getting into trouble...

The Virtual Cash Vault

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:57:00 +0000

The European sovereign debt crisis is far from over. Greece is still negotiating with its creditors about the planned debt relief. Other countries are implementing drastic budget cutbacks in an effort to reign in government expenses.

In the meantime, investors (insurances, pension funds, private individuals(!), etc.) are lending Germany money, and are paying the German government for it, too. No kidding! Have a look:

This is the yield of a 1 year German government bond via Bloomberg. At the beginning of 2012 you can see that the yield dipped into negative territory (and then went up again, but we'll ignore that). People are willing to give the German government money, just to store it. Quite remarkable.

To some extent it has got to do with the fact that people do not want to lend their Euros to countries like Greece, etc.

But why would investors actually go so far as to pay the German government to take their money for a while? After all, investors always have the chance to just hold the money in their bank account.

Apparently, many think that giving banks your money is too risky these days, as well (even banks think so at the moment and prefer not to lend each other).

If one doesn't trust in the stability of banks, companies and individuals could simply hold the money as cash. The problem is that holding cash is a tad inconvenient for larger amounts. You need to store it safely somewhere, which costs money as well. Thus, companies are paying the German government as their (virtual) Euro cash vault.

The world is in a mad rush for "safe" assets these days.

National Archives

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:49:00 +0000

The U.S. National Archives in Washington D.C.

At the moment I'm spending my days at the German National Archives in Koblenz - Germany.

National Archives? These are pretty amazing institutions not many people (besides historians) know about. Essentially National Archives are the memory of a nation. They are in charge of collecting and storing (government) information of a country. Virtually every country has a national archive (with several branches over the country).

Unlike a museum, the information is not displayed nicely according to a certain theme in these archives. Instead it's like a gigantic pile of raw data, stored in millions of boxes in large warehouses. This raw data is one of the few links we have to our nations' pasts.

In my case I'm looking at how a certain banking regulation came into being in Germany at the beginning of the 1960s. Therefore I'm having a look at all the recorded correspondence with respect to banking regulation within the German government from 1949 onwards.

Of course I'm not looking at all information generated by the German government in that time period. That would be impossible. Only a small fraction (typically 1% or 2%) of the documents produced inside government were stored in the first place and only another fraction of that is interesting to me (that's still a couple hundred of files with several hundred pages each).

Luckily, the files are generally stored by institution, topic and time period, making it quite easy to find relevant data. But they are raw; there is no summary for these files in most cases. Only when somebody actually writes a book or a research paper using these files as sources, does the data turn into more useful information. Generally you never know exactly what you'll be getting when you open up a file.

Therefore I'm spending my days reading letters, memos, speeches, official publications, drafts of all kinds and even handwritten notes trying to make sense of it all. In particular I'm looking for juicy bits, which tell me about the motivations of the politicians and bureaucrats and will help me craft my "story" of how I think the banking regulation was born. Who was actually involved in drafting the legislation? Who were the key people in driving the legislation? What was their line of thought? Why did they go one way and not another?

In a way, this work is a bit like being a crime scene investigator. You can see what ultimately happened. In my case instead of having a dead body lying there I know that a law was passed. And now I need to collect bits and pieces of information from various sources close to the "body" to reconstruct what happened before the "death". Who was involved in the murder? What were their roles in the murder? What were their motivations? Why was that particular person murdered and not another?

You can see, that digging up the past can be quite exciting if you frame it like a "crime scene" investigation.

Naturally, what will come out of my research will not be "the truth". But it will be my best guess given the evidence available and my interpretation of it. That's the nature of dealing with the distant past. But, again, it's also not that different from a police investigation, only that you generally cannot talk to anyone involved anymore...

P.S. If you ever are in Washington D.C., make sure to visit the American National Archives. The public museum is home to the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Furthermore it has an excellent exposition of the daunting challenge it is to be in charge of selecting what information to preserve for future generations and what not. Even more so in digital times, with information exploding day by day.

Social Interview

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:01:00 +0000

It's been only a matter of time, before someone would go for it.

The Social Interview is here.

If you want to land an internship with the Ad agency R/GA, you'll have to give them permission to post three questions about you to your Facebook profile, which your "friends" are then supposed to answer.

Before you apply for the internship, make sure you unfriend people you don't get along with...or at least make your wall invisible to them.

And while you're at it, you might as well clean up your entire profile and kick out inappropriate images and posts.

The Steve Jobs Biography

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:15:00 +0000

I finished reading the biography of Steve Jobs on Christmas Eve. It has received rave reviews and I cannot but agree that this is an outstanding biography. This book affected me deeply.

Surely, to a large extent it helps that the biography is about Steve Jobs, one of the most interesting and intense personalities to have walked the earth in modern times.

The products he helped launch are legendary (iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPad, iPhone, etc.). The biography serves as a "behind the scenes" case study on how these products came to be. That alone makes it such a fascinating read. You know every single device they are talking about (at least in the second part of the book).

The book once again makes it clear is that Apple was not a first mover when it came to technological innovation. There were computers before the Macintosh came out, there were MP3 players well before there was the iPod, there were tablets before the iPad, etc. Steve Jobs just rushed into markets where he saw that the products weren't particularly good and improved upon them dramatically. Innovation came from improving existing products rather than creating new ones.

Steve Jobs focused on making technology as accesible and intuitive as possible. And indeed, much of the criticism of Apple products comes from "geeks" who like play around with technical features. Whereas most of us just want the products to do their job and get out of the way. And this is what Steve Jobs understood like no other (except Jonathan Ive, the main designer of Apple products, who was in turn heavily inspired by Dieter Rams of Braun.). It made Apple products so immensely successful; their usability is second to none.

I believe many people do get it wrong by claiming that Apple's success is only due to good marketing. Apple has produced genuinely great products with few flaws that were simple and intuitive to use. There are no comparable products out there. And this is one thing the book really hammers home. Steve Jobs tried to create a company where it's first and foremost about the product. Not about the bottom line, nor the marketing.

Don't get me wrong, Apple had great Marketing, but it only worked because its products delivered on the promises they made. Most companies promise you heaven on earth, but fall desperately short.

What the book does best, is probably transmitting Steve Jobs' mindset ("simplicity is the ultimate sophistication") and that he was driven by creating products that mattered.

The book devotes a lot of time to describe where Steve came from (an adopted child of a lower-middle class family, with not enough money to pay for a reputed college, but a burning interest to understand the IT world) and which things in his early life influenced him (such a the study of Calligraphy, LSD or Zen Buddhism.).

I especially cherish the fact that Walter Isaacson interviewed dozens of IT- colleagues of Steve Jobs to write this biography. There are many quotes from Bill Gates and the likes, who had a love-hate relationship with Steve.

A laudable aspect of the biography is that (to me) it seems to be an honest account. This is not merely an recount and praise of his achievements. Just as much does it show Steve Jobs' failures (there were many, but he learned from them brilliantly) and his messy, almost bipolar character.

Indeed, the book goes to great length to try to transmit Steve Jobs personality. Jobs' personality was both attractive and repulsive at the same time. He must have had a charisma second to none and could easily sweep you off your feet with his enthusiasm for his ideas and visions. At the same time, Steve Jobs' world was either black or white. "Awesome" or "totally shit" - that were the two categories into which he divided his world.

For many people it was impossible to work with Steve Jobs, because of this. Either you were miserably yelled at or you were praised to the highest tones. And sometimes you were first yelled at and then praised the next day for exactly the same thing. He was a pretty lousy manager. It's quite ironic that he was obsessed with minuscule details of his products, but he was virtually incompetent when it came to straight forward managing of his employees. I am pretty sure I would have a hard time working with someone like him. Apple dealt with Jobs' bipolar nature by limiting the amount of employees who would get in direct contact with Jobs...go figure.

The book also sheds light onto Jobs struggle with cancer. Jobs wasted precious after his original diagnosis as he ignored his doctors' advices to undergo immediate surgery (even though they were arguably the best in the world). Instead he tried numerous "alternative" therapies and he only resorted to surgery and professional treatment 9 months after the initial diagnoses, after which the cancer had spread to other parts of his body. If it weren't for that he might still be around.

What are the weak points of the biography? Well, to be honest the deficiencies I can think of are not really fair to mention. If you buy a family van you don't expect it to drive like a Porsche. In that sense, the biography is aimed at the mass of people who use Apple products, but who don't care much about the technical details behind them. So sure, the book is lacking technical detail and analysis, but let's leave that up for a future biography.

Overall, if you're interested in a biography of the digital times with live in, this one is a must-read. Steve Jobs' life is captivating from beginning to end. This biography has the feel of the "One more thing"-moments so typical of his product presentations. Only that this time, it's the "one more thing" about himself. It shows Steve Jobs just as he was. A normal human being with strengths and weaknesses. Luck and Misfortune. Good Decisions and Bad Decisions. Albeit one with a burning desire to create a legacy that would outlast him - just like those featured in Apple's Think Different Ad.

Did he make it? I would say he did.

Bonus: some trivia from the biography

- At one point, Steve Jobs wanted to have the initial Macintosh renamed into the "Bicycle"(p. 115), because he could not stand the engineer who had first envisioned and named it. However, his employees pretty much ignored the name change and stuck to Macintosh. Steve Jobs eventually accepted it.

- For a long period of time in the 1970s, Steve Jobs did not use any deodorant and did not shower regularly, since he believed that his vegan diet would make it impossible for him to develop body odor (p. 82).

- Steve Jobs signed his name in lowercase letters only.

- His favorite way to engage in important (business) conversations was while taking a walk (p. 82)

- Jobs didn't like self-proclaimed Entrepreneurs: "I hate it when people call themselves "entrepreneurs" when what they're really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They're unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business. That's how you really make a contribution and add to the legacy of those who went before. You build a company that will stand for something a generation or two from now. That's what Walt Disney did, and Hewlett and Packard, and the people who built Intel. They created a company to last, not just to make money. That's what I want Apple to be." (p. 569)

Gotta love the Canadian Post

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:04:00 +0000

A Merry Christmas to all my Dear Blog readers!

The corporate world we live in

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:06:00 +0000

Source: Dilbert
HT to Stefan via FB.

Hysteria in North Korea - redux

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:51:00 +0000

Kim Jong Il - the North Korean Dictator - is dead. The country has plunged into collective hysteria unseen anywhere else in the world - not even after the death of Steve Jobs or Lady Di. Have a look:

Given the magnitude of the hysteria and the kind of regime in North Korea, it's only natural to wonder, whether the histeria is real or whether it is staged by the government? The answer is: both.

The book Nothing to Envy - Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick can give some remarkable insights into what is happening in North Korea at the moment by looking at the country's past. In the book Barbara Demick describes what happened when Kim-Il Sung - the predecessor of Kim Jong Il - died in 1994. I just re-read the chapter and the mass hysteria taking place in 1994 is strikingly similar to the hysteria witnessed at the moment:

"Within a few hours of the [...] announcement, people all around North Korea began converging on statues of King Il-sung to pay their respects. By one frequently cited figure there are 34,000 statues of the Great Leader in the Country and at each of them loyal subjects prostrated themselves with grief. People didin't want to be alone with their grief. They burst out of their homes and ran toward the statues, which were in fact the spiritual centers of each city." (p. 99)

To understand what is happening in North Korea one needs to realize that the leader of the country is considered a father figure and a demi-god to all. Generally all good things happening in the country are attributed by the state propaganda to their marvelous leader and his kind and wise actions. The ordinary Korean has no access to foreign media and thus state propaganda is the only source of information (besides the odd rumor). Of course, some North Koreans might not buy as much into the personality cult as others, but virtually the entire public life and religion revolves around the leader. If you are brought up in a totalitarian system built around a central god-like figure, and that figure suddenly dies, it is bound to create a shock and a sense of emptiness. And of course even more so if you thoroughly believed in the system.

So it is not surprising to see spontaneous grieving by many North Koreans as the major pillar of their lives has been swept away and needs replacement. And it is also understandable for them to mourn in a public place, which represent the spiritual centers. Also, it is easier to be "carried away" in a group of mourning people, rather than when you are alone. It is a period of great uncertainty for many and back in 1994 it was even a reason for some to take their lives.

"No doubt many people were sincerely overcome with grief at his passing. Whether it was due to shock or suffering, many older North Koreans suffered heart attacks and strokes during this period of mourning - so much so that there was a marked increase in the death rate in the immediate aftermath. May other showed their distress by killing themselves. They jumped from the tops of buildings, a favorite method of suicide in North Korea since nobody had sleeping pills and only soldiers had guns with bullets. Others just starved themselves." (p. 102)

But here sets in another observation from 1994 from the book - the role of the government propaganda in fostering the grief:

"The histrionics of grief took on a competitive quality. Who could weep the loudest? Who was the most distraught? The mourners were egged on by the TV news, which broadcast hours and hours of people wailing, grown men with tears rolling down their cheeks, banging their heads on trees, sailors banging their heads against the masts and their ships, pilots weeping in the cockpit, and so on. These scenes were interspersed with footage of lightning and pouring rain. It looked like Armageddon." (p. 100)

This is exactly what you can witness in the video above. People had gathered in grief together at one of the public places. The fact that there was a TV camera "increased" the "quality" of the grieving The propaganda machine going into overdrive certainly helped foster a general sense of doom amongst the general population on top of their already fragile state of mind.

"What had started as a spontaneous outpouring of grief became a patriotic obligation. Women weren't supposed to wear makeup or do their hair during a ten-day mourning period. Drinking, dancing and music were banned. The inminban [a figure responsible to keep an eye on the behavior of people in the neighborhood] kept track of how often people went to the statue to show their respect. Everybody was being watched. They not only scrutinized actions, but facial expressions and tone of voice, gauging them for sincerity." (p. 101)"

In a country where every step you take, every word you say, every emotion you display might be recorded and evaluated according to your conformity to the system, you have little choice but to play the game to some extent. Loyal believers in the system will also try to use this public display of affection to their "advantage".

The takeaway is the following: Yes, the government uses the grief for its purposes, however many North Koreans surely would be (and are) under genuine, severe distress during these days, even without any additional government interference. This is due to the totalitarian system in place and the world view centered around Kim Jong-Il, which the system has projected for decades on its citizens, which now needs to be "readjusted" for many North Koreans.

P.S. An interesting fact I discovered while reading on the death of Kim Jong-il: There are no permanent links on the official Korean Central News Agency website. So I cannot link to any of their news directly. This is quite "convenient" since it allows them to chance articles at will, with no easy way to backtrack. In any case I suggest you check out the page and read the official announcements regarding the death. Some sound a bit surreal, like they've been taken from a terrible Hollywood movie, e.g. the article 'Korean People Fully Determined to Win Final Victory under Leadership of Kim Jong Un.'

Moneyball and soccer

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

The book "Moneyball" by Eric Lewis is about Baseball - one of those American Spectator sports with gigantic amounts of money involved. Just like most other spectator sports in the US, coaches and spectators alike are obsessed by all kinds of statistics.

The key takeaway from the book is that professional baseball coaches and scouts had been looking at a flawed set of statistics and characteristics for several decades when judging a baseball player's performance.

In the late 1980s just this was realized by a guy called, Bill James, who was obsessed with both baseball and statistics. Something was wrong with the traditional way of interpreting the statistics of Baseball players. Head coach, Billy Bean, of the Oakland Athletics - the "poorest" team in the Major League - decided to implement the findings of Bill James. Nobody else in the league paid much attention to these statistical findings.

Billy Bean began to rebuild the Oakland Athletics pretty much from scratch according to this new interpretation of the statistics. The players he hired were dirt cheap, since the the traditional interpretation of the statistics implied that they were rather useless players. However, in the following years the Oakland Athletics' performance improved dramatically, even though it only had roughly 25% of the money the richer teams had at their disposal.

Of course, over time the richer teams would catch up on Beane's method of evaluating players and would replicate it. Consequently, the advantage of the Oakland Athletics faded and the richer teams would regain the superiority handed to them thanks to their financial firepower. One lasting effect of Beane's 'revolution' was however a re-evaluation of what players are worth.

When I was reading the book I was wondering whether it was possible for something similar to take place in soccer. Is there a way to read the statistics of football players in a different way that would imply that certain players are grossly overvalued and others grossly undervalued?

Yesterday I read two articles (here and here - both in Spanish), which hinted at this possibility. They are about Real Madrid's superstar Cristiano Ronaldo. Surely almost everyone knows him (The guy who said ""I think that because I am rich, handsome and a great player people are envious of me.").

Cristiano Ronaldo scores a lot of goals. But apparently, they don't seem to help much. Most of the time, he scores against weaker teams...and when these teams are already losing anyway. Ronaldo hardly scores in games against good teams and even less in situations when it truly matters.

One of the articles cites a statistic, which attributes the number of goals a player had to score in order to win his team a point. And Ronaldo needs to score 27.6 goals, before he earns his team a point. Compare that to his nemesis Lionel Messi. He only needs to score an average of 7.2 goals before his team earns a point. He is much more effective. Higuaín, the other superstar striker of Real Madrid, needs only 3.2 goals. He should be an absolute superstar, but still, it's Ronaldo whose market value is close to €80 mio whereas Higuaín's is about €30 mio.

There are definitely bargains to be made in the world of soccer.

P.S. Btw. I have no idea how exactly they devised the metric and of course it's problematic to attribute points to single players on the basis of goals in a team sports since some players don't score at all...but if you only compare goalgetters to each other, that should be less of a problem.

P.P.S. The movie Moneyball with Brad Pitt is based on the book by Eric Lewis.

P.P.P.S The images are from the respective Wikipedia pages.

Best of Tweets - Dec '11

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 11:22:00 +0000

This is a new category for all those who are not following me on Twitter(@MrLdorado). I'm using Twitter mainly to recommend interesting articles I have read. So this 'Best of Tweets' section will periodically gather the `best' stories I recommended via Twitter, so my blog readers don't miss out.

Culture in Economics and the Culture of Economics - "the average guy on the street doesn’t understand economics, and it’s also true that we [economists] don’t understand economics. We just have a more sophisticated lack of understanding than the guy on the street."

Does Moore's law apply to solar cells? - Yes it currently does!

The limits of statistics - Great post by Felix Salomon: "Statistics can be illuminating, but they can also be misleading: we all know this. The trick is to try to get a feel for when they’re the former and when they’re the latter. And that kind of thing — often based on the old-fashioned smell test — is always going to be more of an art than a science."

The news stories that were largely missed in 2011 - e.g. Ship piracy has gone global, Peak Camel and Mexico's drug gangs went south

Britain is ruled by the banks, for the banks - I would add to that, it's not just Britain.

The story behind apple's think different campaign - If you didn't read the autobiography of Steve jobs, yet, this article will give you a good feel to what kind of person Jobs was.

Democracy is not a truth machine - "The truth is not a matter of opinion and the popularity of truth claims is no guide to whether we should believe them"

Escaping the Personalization Bubble

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 21:37:00 +0000

For quite some time now all kinds of online companies (Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc.) have been scrambling to increase the personalization of their products. Did you notice?

Google searches are no longer ranked by their worldwide popularity, but they are generally ranked by what Google thinks is most relevant to you. There is no "one google" anymore. Every google search, conducted from a different computer, by a different user, will generally yield different results. Sometimes the difference isn't large, sometimes it is completely different. Google decides what's important for you, and what's not. And to be honest, I'm having a hard time finding good, interesting and stimulating results via Google nowadays.

As an example: just the basic country filter google applies (based on your physical location) is quite a pain to me. I travel between different countries every now and then. So when I'm in Germany, it will search the German speaking internet-domain - even though I might search terms in English. When I'm in Spain it searches the Spanish domain, no matter what. It really restricts the results to the country you are in. It is quite hard nowadays to get a search that truly encompasses an international view of the internet.

Similarly, Facebook is personalizing the news feed. What you see depends on what and who Facebook thinks is important for you. The other day I already posted about how lousy a job Facebook does at determining just that. Back in 2007, I used to have the feeling, that Facebook helped me keep up to date with what my friends were doing, where they were etc. I had a pretty good overview. Now, I just feel like I get snippets of random information here and there. It's unsatisfying to me and, quite frankly, if Facebook didn't have the benefit of its network size (frickin' everybody's on Facebook), I'd be off Facebook sooner rather than later. Especially considering the gigantic privacy issues with Facebook. I'm still keeping my hopes up for Diaspora to work out...

But its not only Google and Facebook who are personalizing the internet. Almost every other webpage is doing it nowadays. Multilingual pages automatically determine your location and change the language of the webpage accordingly. Again, as a traveler I really dislike this! Online Newspapers, like NYT, Huffington Post, etc. all track your browsing behavior (including your search history and the things you "like", share or comment on) and personalize the content according to you. So basically you always get more of the same. If you like Obama, the articles filtered for you are less likely to be critical of him.

Ever wondered why Yahoo is still alive? Well, because of Flickr...but also because they are experts at personalizing news.

Before the advent of the internet, newspapers, radio channels and television stations had the role of gatekeepers. They decided what their target audience got to see and what they did not. And of course, there will always be someone structuring and filtering information. But what's happening now, is that the filter is no longer general, but personal. Every person is having their personal filter bubble, their personal gatekeeper. Most people don't even realize that they have their own gatekeeper. And even if you do realize, it takes effort for you to escape that gatekeeper.

Former Google-CEO Eric Schmidt said "[...] the technology will be so good, it will be hard for people to watch or consume something that has not been tailored for them". Great. That's exactly what I'm trying to avoid. I want somebody to present the world to me as seen through somebody else's eyes, not mine. I'm already good enough at that. Laziness already keeps me sticking to similar news sources (I suppose everybody has their favorite news site they check regularly). I don't want Google, Yahoo, or whoever, to reinforce the biases I have. I want them to counter my biases, to provide me with inspiration, with thoughts that didn't cross my mind, uncomfortable ideas, not just that squirrel dying in front of my house, but also the war in Africa (to rephrase a Zuckerberg quote). It's the beauty of the internet that it sets information free whether I like that information or not. Give me space for serendipity - let me be intellectually surprised by things I did not expect to find.

There is no way for you to permanently opt out, if you want to use Facebook or Google. Whatever results you get, for searches or your feed, they will always be filtered to your "taste". But there are a few things you can do to escape your personal Truman Show...

What am I doing about the "personalization bubble"?

Well, first of all I read the book "The Filter Bubble" by Eli Pariser. It gave me a great overview in which direction the internet is developing and it builds awareness for how they are affecting me. I also read more quotes by Eric Schmidt, like these ones. It tells you what kind of worldview advocates of increased personalization have. The only statement I can agree with is #6. Again, awareness is key.
I changed my default search engine of my browser. I am using Scroogle (it searches google for you, so you don't leave any personal information), DuckDuckGo or ixquick (search engines which do not save any information about you).
I avoid clicking "Like", "Recommend" and "+1" - because based on what you "like" Google and Facebook will personalize your (search) results.
I delete my browsing history and my cookies every week.
Watch TED videos to keep yourself intellectually on your toes.
Use Twitter! Seriously! I used to dislike Twitter, because of it's fast pace and short messages, but it all depends on how you use it. Twitter doesn't filter and the more I use it, the more I get to like it. Just don't overuse (i.e. tweeting 50 times a day) or over-follow (following too many people, which tweet 50 times a day). Create your own filters to manage the information and you're set. Btw. I'm @MrLdorado
I am using an RSS Feed. It lets you assemble your own small filter of the world and gives you regular updates.
I am thinking of starting my own internet company, which offers services that are both 100% free of personalization and that guarantee your privacy 100%. I believe there is lots of money to be made in that. Care to join? ;)

Here's another simple introduction to the bubble and tracking, brought to you by DuckDuckGo.

P.S. This post is all about escaping the bubble to get a more complete and more stimulating view of the world. The issue of privacy, that Facebook & co. are selling my data for money is a completely different, but equally important, matter.

P.P.S. The image is from a TED talk by Eli Pariser.

Why I love RSS feeds

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 15:41:00 +0000

Have you heard of RSS feeds yet? You might, or you might not. But you probably have seen the symbol to the right, either in the address bar of your browser, or somewhere else on webpages. It's one of the best inventions the web has to offer!

In order to use RSS feeds, you need to get yourself a RSS feed reader software. They are free and easy to use (at the moment I'm using Google Reader). The RSS button lets you subscribe to a certain webpage or blog. By subscribing you get every update on that webpage sent to your RSS feed reader.

Why would you want to use an RSS feed reader?

1. It increases the breadth of the information you take in! Usually you go to three or four different (news) sites every day, plus the odd links you follow on Facebook. On your (semi-) random ventures through the internet following those links, you come across really cool sites. Some of them you bookmark (and then never visit again) and others you simply never visit again - even though they are cool and interesting! But you just can't be bothered. When you add those sites or blogs to your RSS reader (via the RSS Feed), you are permanently connected with that site and get the updates. No need to manually surf back to that site (because let's face it...we just won't do it!). The information comes to you, instead of you having to go out every time to get the information. By having different pages like that in your RSS reader you read regularly from several sources, other than your three or four favorite news sites (which can get pretty dull). And on top of that, it saves your surfing time!

2. It keeps away the clutter and the ads, and lets you focus on the content. Usually, what you get in the RSS feed is the text, the images and the videos of the post you want to see. The entire flashing and blinking of the webpage around it is gone and you can concentrate on what matters: the content.

3. It's great to follow blogs or other webpages, which don't update frequently. Take this blog as an example. There are times, where I blog almost daily - as these days - and then there are times, where I can't find the time or the inspiration (or both) and I only blog once a week. Now imagine yourself during those lean times coming back manually to my blog every day, by typing in www.niels.me, just to find that there is no new post. Pretty frustrating. Soon enough you'll stop coming back, even though you liked it. If you are subscribed to this blog's RSS feed, updates will be automatically sent to your RSS reader. I have several blogs and webpages in my RSS feed, which only update very infrequently. But I really do enjoy reading them a lot! And this way, I don't loose the connection and I don't miss out when - once in a blue moon - they post something.

and last but not least 4. It's absolutely hastle-free, you don't need to sign up, or leave your e-mail address with the page you want to follow. Just click the button and you're basically subscribed (once you have set up an RSS reader). The RSS reader organizes the feeds for you by, which is the big advantage over e-mail newsletters. Newsletters invariably get lost in your mailbox. With an RSS feed reader you can always go back in time and reed the posts from three years ago. It's all there, just scroll down. Also, there's no spam, since you control, which page you subscribe to. Don't like the page you subscribed to after all? Then unsubscribe at the click of a button.

I am an RSS junkie. Some of you have often asked me, where I get the inspiration from, to write on my blog. In 98% of the cases my inspiration comes from articles I read via my RSS reader or the links provided in those articles. It's my treasure trove.

Here are some tips when using of RSS feeds.

Use a reader whose layout is appealing to you. I like Google reader, because it's functional but neat. Good Noows, Feedly and Pulse (for mobile devices only) have gotten good reviews as well.
Check into your RSS reader (almost) daily - just like you check the news.
Don't feel obliged to read every single update in your RSS feed. Just pick and chose what you want to read based on the title or the first few lines and then move on if it doesn't catch your interest.
Don't subscribe to feeds, which update 50 times a day - it'll stress you out (besides maybe the Browser). Don't subscribe to too many feeds either (that number depends on you and the times the feeds update per day/week. I have about 40 subscriptions)
Very often webpage have separate feeds for different sections of their page. For example, The Cool Hunter, has feeds by topics, such as architecture, travel, design, etc. That way you don't have to subscribe to the "everything" feed which updates 50 times a day.
If for whatever reason you didn't check your RSS feed for a longer period of time then you'll probably have 500+ unread items. The best move is to mark all as read. Don't try to catch up. Again, it'll stress you.
If you notice that you don't read most of the items of a certain RSS subscription, unsubscribe! You get tired of blogs (because they are repetitive) or your interests change, no problem. Find something else.
Be careful - it's addictive.

You still didn't get how RSS Feeds are working or how to get started? Check out this Google Reader tutorial.

Last but not least here are a couple of subscription-recommendations to fill your RSS feed reader with.

Niels.me - my blog
Marginal Revolution - Tyler Cowen's general economics blog
sethgodin.typepad.com - Seth Godin's blog, pushes you to go out and improve things

xkcd.com - legendary by now

presentationzen.com - preparing elegant, clutter-free and interesting presentations

calculatedriskblog.com - lots and lots of fresh data analysis on the state of the (US) economy

polycapitalist.com/ - comments on the state of the world economy

blog.foreignpolicy.com - Foreign Policy News

wired.com/dangerroom/ - National Security related News

The Browser - They scour the internet for interesting articles on all kinds of topics.

GOOD - A site for those that try to move the world forward in whichever way.
The Cool Hunter - Looking for cool things all over the globe

How the internet is evolving

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 11:53:00 +0000

It's evolving at breakneck speed and the "mapping" by the legendary xkcd illustrates this:

This is the 2007 version:

XKCD's (somewhat hidden) comment on this map is great, too: "I'm waiting for the day, when you tell someone 'I'm from the internet', instead of laughing they will just ask, 'oh what part?'."

And here is his 2010 edition

So what happened in a nutshell? Facebook exploded and so did Farmville and Happy Farm (gigantic!!). Twitter & YouTube & Skype grew up. Myspace, Friendster and Orkut pretty much died (compared to what they were). Forums and Blogs lost out quite a bit as well!

Remember, the sizes are relative to each other. Overall, the internet interaction has skyrocketed from 2007 to 2010. So for example blogs might be getting more hits than they were before, but relative to the interaction that is taking place on Facebook it's minuscule.

Oh, one more thing...see that giant QQ? I didn't have a clue either. But that is more than 800 million Chinese using an instant-messaging program called Tencent QQ or simply QQ, which is an offshoot of ICQ (remember that one?). It's quite sad how little I know of East Asia and what's going on over there...anybody know a good blogger to follow from that region?

My best Facebook "friend" - according to Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 07:50:00 +0000

For those who haven't noticed: Facebook ranks your friends, and depending on how much "friends" it thinks you are, it shows you more or less information of your friend's posts on Facebook.

Yes, Facebook hides stuff from you. Lots.

Of course, big events, like getting married, will show up on almost all of your "friends" feed. Things you post that are "liked" a lot will get a wider audience. But posting something on Facebook doesn't mean no longer that all the 400 friends you have, will see it in their newsfeed.

Is there a way to find out who Facebook thinks your best friends are? Yes!

You have to go to the blog of Jeremy. There, you have to add a bookmark to your bookmark bar (usually just drag an drop). Then you log-in on Facebook. Once you are logged-in, you click the bookmark you just added and the list appears. From most important friend (with the most negative score) to the least important (a score close to nil). NOTE: You need to disable Facebook's "Secure Browsing" for it to work (FB Account Settings -> Security Settings). Make sure to turn it back on afterwards.

Who does Facebook think my best friend is? Not considering my wife Acácia (at least Facebook got that right), my best facebook friend is ...*drummroll*... Eric G. ...and he wasn't even at my wedding (but he's still a great friend).

I just met him a little over a year ago. This implies that Facebook does not really take into consideration whatever interaction happened in the more distant past. Indeed, my #3 and #5 are people I haven't interacted with much at all. They just happen to have posted a lot of pictures recently and I had a look at those images. And #15 is the husband of #5 whom I have never met and who isn't even in my "friend". Interestingly enough, #369 of my 371 friends is someone whose profile and pictures I looked at just yesterday. I have no idea why the person is still down there.

Some people I interact relatively heavily with, don't appear in the Top 30 at all. I have now idea what's going on there. I am a bit surprised really. It shouldn't be too hard for Facebook to figure out who I interact with the most. After all they can count every single interaction, every like, every profile view, every picture I look at every share I do, every link I click on...

Anyway, Eric, at the moment you've got the golden opportunity to post whatever you feel like on Facebook, and have the certainty that for the next few weeks and months, it will appear on my newsfeed...that is, unless I block you ;-)

The difference between Assange and Zuckerberg

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 10:47:00 +0000

I must admit, I was always a bit critical about what Assange was doing. I still am, but this phrase puts things a bit more into perspective. It's spot on.
This phrase actually comes from a sketch on Saturday Night Live (back in late 2010), which is well worth watching.

HT to Gonzalo via FB.

Why the Facebook Like is not Awesome

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 13:50:00 +0000

Have you ever thought about the fact that Facebook's "Like" button is called "like"? Probably not.

Indeed, Facebook considered alternatives such as calling it the "Awesome Button", or using plus and minus signs (as YouTube) or a star rating (as Amazon). In the end they went with "like".

Why does it matter? It matters, because the "like" button is everywhere and the fact that it's called like primes our usage of the button.

For example, you "like" a book, you "like" a joke or you "like" an image. But would you "like" a news piece about the revolution in Syria, reporting that 15 people died? Probably not. Would you click on an "Awesome" button next to such news? Even less.

I hope you get what I'm going for. The "like"-button has an influence on what we share and how we interact with our friends online. The fact that it's called "Like" primes us. It biases us in a way that makes it less likely for us to see things that aren't necessarily "likable", but relevant or important.

Imagine Facebook had called the button the "important" button. Would you click the important button next to a shallow joke? You'd think twice about it.

I'm not advocating to abolish the "like" button. I think it's important to being able to share things that matter to us with our friends (that's also why I have this blog). I'm just saying that maybe "like" is not a good word to calling this button, because of the influence it has on our sharing behavior.

Facebook recently added the "recommend" button for webpages (did you notice?). Namewise it's a step in the right direction. I'd have no problem "recommending" a negative (but interesting) news story. But then again, the recommend button forces me to publish a big snippet including a link of that story on my profile. Because of that I'm inhibited to click the "recommend" button. After all, I do not want to spam my friends with every article I "like".

I think Google's "+1" is a far better way of sharing. It's more neutral. I would be 'comfortable' clicking "+1" next to an article about a catastrophe as well I would be comfortable clicking "+1" next to a joke.

Why I still don't click on "+1"s is an entirely different matter. It has got to do with what Google does with that information, but that's reserved for another post...

P.S. This entry was inspired by the book "The Filter Bubble", which I'm currently reading. This book is making me think intensely about so many aspects of the way the internet evolving. And it is massively important to think about it, because very few people seem to care where everything is headed. Social Networks, Cloud Computing and Personalization are massive changes to how societies interact and that requires us to put some thought into what's happening and whether that's beneficial or not.

P.P.S. I couldn't track down the source of the image I used. It's been around the entire blogsphere for a few months now. It seems to be some kind of street art.

James Vincent McMorrow - We don't Eat

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 11:40:00 +0000

This song is plain magic. I just have to dedicate a blog post to it:

Here's his webpage with a few more song samples (none quite as good as this one though).

Summer & Fall 2011 Reading List

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 18:02:00 +0000

We Are All Weird

I'm a bit late with my reading lists. Below you'll find the books I read over the summer up 'til now. If you would like me to write a more extensive review or if you would like to borrow one of these, let me know:

Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis (10/10) - The investment banking world of the 1980s. Just like today... Hillarious must read for anyone remotely interested in how these guys think. Hasn't lost any of its relevance even though it was written in the 1980s. No need for technical knowledge.
The Big Short by Michael Lewis; (8/10) - About those that saw the recent bubble and made money big time. More complex than Liar's Poker and more explosive in its implications.
Exorbitant Privilege by Barry Eichengreen (8/10) - About the international financial system, its problems and the role of the dollar. Barry has a great writing style, easy to understand for non-experts.
The Adventures of Johnny Buko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need by Daniel Pink (8/10) - A cartoon career guide. Wise but a bit cheesy at times.
Presentation Zen: Design by Garr Reynolds (10/10)- Concrete advice on how to design slides. Love it!
Resonate by Nancy Duarte (10/10) - How can you captivate an audience? By telling a story that resonates and this book can teach you to get closer to that ideal.
Slideology by Nancy Duarte (9/10) - On how to design slides. A slightly different approach than Garr Reynolds. Excellent book as well!
War by Sebastian Junger (9/10) - A reporter goes to live with US Marines in a Afghan Valley for several months and records the fighting as well as the psychological side of these soldiers. Great, honest, book!
Moneyball by Michael Lewis (10/10) - Collective Wisdom can be dead wrong and that's your chance to outperform others. In this case it's a Baseball team, that hired cheap but better players, because the other teams and scouts were looking at the wrong statistics; not the ones that really mattered. Again, embedded in great story telling.
We Are All Weird by Seth Godin (9/10) - The world is shifting from one of mass products or mass audiences into one that is multipolar. "One size fits all" will no longer fit the majority as it used to. The fat tails are getting obese.

I'm currently reading:

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick
The Filter Bubble - What the Internet is Hiding from You by Eli Pariser

In the pipeline:

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson
You are Not so Smart by David McRaney

The Cloud Visionary

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:27:00 +0000

I'm pretty excited that I received the Steve Jobs biography in the mail today (it's thick!). I'm sure I'm gonna read through it within a few hours. But at the moment I still need to finish up the Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser; that book is great food for thought.

Anyway, lately I was watching a few old Steve Jobs videos on YouTube. One part of a talk he gave almost 15 years back, is almost frighteningly brilliant. In minutes 16 to 21 he is talking about cloud computing, i.e. having your data stored on a server and being able to access it from whichever computer you like.

He describes how he set up a cloud for himself and his own data in 1990 (!!) and how it worked flawlessly already back then. And here we are 15-20 years years later with that vision having come true; it's really everywhere. Gmail, Google Docs, Facebook, Dropbox, you name it. Keeping your data, emails and photos in the cloud is becoming the new normal.

But if you look at the audience (and especially the person making a comment at minute 21:00)...they seem not to have grasped what Jobs has just shown them. They are restricted by their own narrow mindset. For them it seems like Steve Jobs has talked to them about species and colors on planets far far away which they simply cannot envision. They don't seem to understand the vision's usefulness and the game changing nature of what Jobs is "seeing".

If you were wondering how you define a visionary, this is maybe it: having such a profound knowledge of technology and technological development so as to being able to realistically envision the future 10-20 down the road, when everybody else is still stuck in the status quo or (at best) the immediate future.

Steve Jobs set the seeds for Apples current overwhelming success back in 1997. He know where he was going with Apple before anybody could even see a destination.

P.S. This other video is also from 1997, where jobs gave a talk to Apple employees, just after he had returned to Apple. There, he explains how Apple's marketing will have to change. It's not about communicating technical details and how you're better than this or that competitor, because the world is too noisy for that. People won't remember. Rather, it is about the core values you stand for.

My favorite phrase from the video: "We believe people with passion can change the world for the better....and that those people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who actually do."

HT to Garr Reynolds for the video on Marketing.

When the groom won't shut up

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:12:00 +0000

A month ago, Acácia and I got married. 72 loved ones, from 11 countries, traveled an average of 3508km to come together on the gorgeous island of Mallorca to celebrate with us for four days and four nights.

Photos

If you want to get a glimpse of what it looked like, we created a 'Best of' our wedding in Mallorca in 84 pictures. The pictures will be deleted in 30 days. So hurry up and have a look now.

What it's like?

So what is it like to get married? We loved every second of it. All these great people from different countries and times of our lives coming together in one place. It was as if our entire lives condensed in one spot, in Mallorca; quite surreal really.

Wedding Organization

Our venue: Son Marroig

There is a lot of preparation that goes into a wedding beforehand. Especially if you're doing a "destination wedding", i.e. a wedding in a place you don't live nearby and your guests might not even speak the local language, as in our case. So it has been a lot of shuttling back and forth between Barcelona/London and Mallorca. We had to organize both a ceremony and a civil wedding separated by a day in between.

At one point we even had hired a wedding planer to help us organize things and (so we hoped) to get us a better deal, but we quickly realized that the opposite was true. The options they gave us were outrageously expensive. We ended up researching prices ourselves every time we got an offer from them and that was not the point of the exercise. So we dropped them soon after hiring them. They were happy to let us go as well, because we weren't good money for them either, since they could hardly earn commission on anything. So we got our money back (!) and we went our own ways again.

Guest management

What we spent quite some time on, and which we were rewarded richly for, was "guest management". What do I mean by that? Well, we figured that our wedding is not so much about the decoration or the perfect food, but about our guests who made the amazing effort to come from far away to celebrate with us. We knew that most of our guests were staying at least 3-4 days on the island. And we wanted our guests to interact during this time and bond. That's why we made it a high priority to foster guest interaction.

First we made sure that our guests all found accommodation in the villages Deià and Valldemossa, near the wedding venue Son Marroig. So they were bound to bump into each other during these days. And they did. We also rented a house for 14 people - for the young singles coming to the wedding. This was a killer move! During our wedding weekend it turned into the central party temple every single night (except the night of the Wedding).

Also a month before the wedding, we sent around a Wedbook. It contained information regarding the island, the venues for the ceremony and the civil wedding, but most importantly, it contained information about the other guests. Every guest/couple/family had a page with a large picture, their names, their hometowns, their current city of residence, their occupation and how they got to know us. That way, as a guest you had already seen the faces of people before the event. And it was a big success indeed! Everybody loved knowing who they were about to meet and it created a big buzz amongst our guests and lots of anxiousness for what was about to happen.

The night before the wedding we had organized two barbecues in two different places. One barbecue for the parent generation (starting at 18h) and one for the younger generation (starting at 20h), so they had a chance to get to know each other before the big event. Acácia and I first went to one barbecue and then to the other. And that paid off as well. The barbecue for the younger generation turned into a full-blown party until very late at night. But also the barbecue for the parent generation was an astounding success. We were told by our guests that thanks to that, they felt like they were attending a wedding full of friends, rather than the standard awkwardness of a wedding where you know just a handful of people (or just the couple getting married).

In the nights after the wedding there were, again, barbecues for those that had stayed on the island. And that really gave our guests a chance to bond. Virtually everybody knew everybody by the end of our wedding weekend. Our (younger) guests were going bananas on Facebook after our wedding weekend. They added each other as friends, shared photos, commented on each other's statuses and made plans for a reunion, at the same place and the same time next year. That's probably the biggest reward we could get!

Focusing so much on guest management also had another brilliant side-effect for Acácia and myself at the wedding ceremony. We had the days before and after the wedding to talk to our guests as well. Not just a few hours after which everybody would depart again. Indeed, we had seen virtually all of our guests in the days before the wedding. As a consequence Acácia and I were extremely relaxed during the celebration.

"When the groom won't shut up"(I'm quoting Acácia)

Finally, a word on male participation in wedding planing. I am not ashamed to say that I was in the planning process head over heal. That included having long discussions about color schemes and flowers (which in the end, trust us on this one, only really mattered to the two of us and nobody else...). Of course it's harder to plan the expectations both (the guy and the girl) have, but in the end, the skills do compliment nicely. That said, Acácia was definitely more into the latest decoration fads, while I was working overtime on guest management.

Wedding Advice

As a groom who has been full-on in the planning process of the wedding, here is my condensed advice:

Getting married is all about guest management! It's your guests that make or brake the celebration, not the decoration, nor the food, nor the dress or the suit.
If possible, make your wedding into a weekend event. It's more pleasant for everyone, even though it's a bigger financial burden. The guest will appreciate the extra time. It's less stressful and more intense, compared to single day events.
Plan get-togethers with your guests before the wedding and if possible on the day after the wedding. That way, they have a chance to get to know each other before the big event. By meeting after the wedding as well you allow the guests to bond even more.
Smaller is better! We invited over 130 guests and just over 70 came. Of course we were sad for the ones absent, but to be honest, it made for a much more intimate wedding. You actually get to interact a lot with your guests and you have time to appreciate the presence of every single one of them.
Only hire a Wedding Planner if you don't want to plan your wedding and you are prepared to give them full control over everything. It's a convenience service for people who have little time or no interest in planing their own wedding.
Location, Location, Location. Our venue had the most stunning view I have ever seen for a wedding location. The indoor facilities were great as well. No need for extra decoration really.
If you get married in a "neutral" territory, i.e. which is not the home country of either the groom or the bride, you have the advantage of not having to deal so much with expectations on what the wedding is supposed to be like.
Let friends and family help you. They can take large loads off your shoulders and they'll be both thrilled and honored to help. This is especially important for a destination wedding where most of the guests don't know their way around the place.
Suit up! Last but not least some advice on which suit to buy. Either buy a full-on Carlo Pignatelli suit (US$1500+) or go budget with Zara and pimp it with Carlo Pignatelli accessoires. Don't go in the middle - the no man's land. Nobody can tell a $100 Zara suit from a $700 Armani one, just by casually looking at it. It's a waste of money. But you can see a Carlo Pignatelli from 100m away. Also, make the suit a surprise for everyone (including the bride). It saves you from a lot of unsolicited advice which, eventually, makes you go nuts.

If you need some extra advice check out the comments section after this post. They helped us get things into perspective.

P.S. Our wedding credits: venue, catering, photographer, DJ & master of the ceremony and the restaurant after the civil wedding.

Macbook Air Review

noreply@blogger.com (Niels) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:26:00 +0000

So I have had my Macbook Air (13" with 4GB RAM and 250GB of flash memory) for about two months now and I think it's a good time for the review I promised.

First off, the switch from a regular (black) Macbook to a Macbook Air did not rock my world as much as it rocked my world when I switched from a Windows Laptop to a Macbook, back in early 2007.

What is and remains Apple's best asset, is neither advertising nor great design of the physical appliances. It's the design of the programs that run on their devices (e.g. iOS, Mac OS and everything that comes with it). Mac OS is still the best operating system out there, by far! So changing from a Macbook to a Macbook Air did not change much in terms of the software (just a slight upgrade from OS X Snow Leopard to OS X Lion). The only thing that really changed was the hardware.

Size & Weight

The Macbook Air is just as thick or thinner than the Nexus S

The biggest difference in terms of day-to-day usage is, of course, how incredibly thin and light the Macbook Air is. And it does makes a big difference to my ease of use of the laptop. I am more comfortable when working with it, because I can hardly feel it on my lap and doesn't get as warm. It's just like a small book really, which you open and close at your convenience. No effort required. So I use my laptop really whenever, even if it's just for a minute, just like a mobile phone (or an iPad!), and then close it again. I didn't do that with my old macbook.

I don't think about whether I'm gonna take it with me or not...I always do if I think I might need it. It's so light, you don't even notice it in your bag really. You might even forget it's even in your bag. Thanks god, the charger is small as well, so it does not add much weight. As a result, my shoulder never hurts, as it used to when I carried my old Macbook for more than 15 minutes.

The Macbook Air is thinner than a Canon IXUS 95

The size of the laptop is just right. I had a tough time deciding between the 11" and the 13" Macbook Air. Now I'm glad I chose the slightly bigger 13"one. I have rather large hands, so they need every space they can have. The fact that the Macbook is almost razor thin where you rest your wrists, has saved me a lot of pain. With my Macbook, my wrists would start to hurt, if I worked long hours with it or if I worked with the laptop on my lap. This pain has completely disappeared with the Macbook Air. Also I have the feeling that if it were smaller it wouldn't be as comfortable working with it on my lap.

Speed

Thanks to the flash memory, the Macbook Air is extremely zippy. I open a program and a second later it's there for you to use. You start up the computer, your desktop appears and it is ready to go - no more waiting for all the programs in the background to load. It's really a huge difference in terms of speed that matters to me. Speed that matters to me is zippyness. No waiting for programs to open, no waiting times when playing around with multiple windows or large chunks of data. It's a dream!

Battery Performance

The weak side of the Macbook Air is the battery. Apple says it can last up to 7 hours. It can, but not at full screen brightness (the screen is really super-bright!); you need to drastically reduce brightness if you want to get to the 7 hours, and you shouldn't do too much heavy duty work. For me it lasts in between 4 and 6 hours. That's a slight improvement over my old Macbook, which lasted 3,5 - 4 hours. Then again, there's not much space for the battery in a Macbook Air, so overall I'm satisfied with the battery performance.

Keyboard

I like the keyboard's touch point better than on my old Macbook and the extra background illumination of the keyboard when it's dark is great as well. I never thought that this might make such a big difference.

SD Card

The 13" Macbook Air also has a slot for SD cards and I'm loving it! It's so convenient to have! No need for silly cables to transfer pictures from cameras anymore - a big hurray for that!

Missing DVD Drive

Am I missing the DVD drive? There were a few instances were I needed a DVD drive, but fortunately there was always an alternative laptop or computer around to help out. But DVDs are a thing of the past. USB sticks, SD cards and programs like Dropbox are the future. Just the other day I was given a DVD with pictures and within a day or two it was scratched, rendering the DVD useless; bravo! I'm not missing the DVD drive.

Conclusion

If I would have to go back to September of this year and decide all over again which laptop to buy as a replacement for my old Macbook, would I buy the Macbook Air in the same configuration again? Absolutely! I love it and I can't think of going back to a chunky laptop or Macbook (pro), ever. I am glad I made the change and can recommend it wholeheartedly.