Blog Feed

These are the sites I'm always coming back to

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I like reading a lot, and I read a lot. Most of it on the web. Even though I have around fifty tabs open right now with articles to read, I'm always coming back to a few sites I genuinly enjoy reading. Happy Notes Smart technology commentary out of the view of a human being by Andre Torrez. Bitssplitting If Daniel Jalkut has something to add to the reporting of the rest to the tech press it goes here. As well as some notes about himself as developer. Lucian Marin The first person with three paragrafileph articles that got me to subscribe to his site. Lucian Marin publishes smart stuff on his 2022 website. Ignore the Code This is the best blog I know that consistently gets usability right - written by Lukas Mathis. Next Draft Dave Pell helps me to get my hands on the most fascinating news of the day - in a daily email newsletter. Craig Mod Well written essays about storytelling and the future of publishing by Craig Mod. I will do my best to keep this list up to date. Also, I'm subscribed to about a hundred feeds - some bulk feeds like Svbtle - via RSS, and get to a lot of other great content via Twitter or Link Blogs. Right now, I'm trying out Feedly as Google Reader replacement, and I'm not too sure if I like it yet.

That Google Blink

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Just at the beginning of the last month, the web developers were in shock that Opera anounced to switch to WebKit as rendering engine. WebKit then being the most widely used layout rendering engine, with also Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome using it. Then, just two days ago, Google said that it moved from WebKit to Blink. And there I was, using the world's most popular web rendering engine, and the universe couldn't let that stand. So then, "Hello Blink."— Arne Kaufmann (@arnekaufmann) 4. April 2013 So, what is Blink? Blink is a fork of WebKit. Just taken the WebKit source and building on top of it, but as your own project, not for Webkit itself. It is pretty similar to Linux and its distributions. All started with one base, and then have gone their own ways to improve, and one feature won't necessarily make it into another Linux distribution. Same here. Google argues that they had to do the move, because they were using a different multiprocess architecture than other Webkit browsers, and didn't want to deal with the other architectures Webkit browsers had. That however isn't anyone's fault but Google's. As they were asked to give their multiprocess architecture back to the WebKit project, they simply said no, according to Maciej Stachowiak, Apple's Safari/Webkit team. So apparently Google has been doing its own thing, even when they were said to be using Webkit rendering engine. Right now with Blink, they are using it as much as before - as base for their own innovations. Just now, they don't have to give anything back to the base ever. And that's with the name Blink official. And that’s what you’re missing from everything else you’re reading about this announcement today. To make a better platform faster, you must be able to iterate faster. Steps away from that are steps away from a better platform. Today’s WebKit defeats that imperative in ways large and small. It’s not anybody’s fault, but it does need to change. And changing it will allow us to iterate faster, working through the annealing process that takes a good idea from drawing board to API to refined feature. We’ve always enjoyed this freedom in the Chromey bits of Chrome, and unleashing Chrome’s Web Platform team will deliver the same sorts of benefits to the web platform that faster iteration and cycle times have enabled at the application level in Chrome. (Alex Russel, Google) That sounds like an explanation, but better go and read the whole article. However I still wonder, why Google didn't want anybody to have their multiprocess architecture? Developers who complain about having to test in another browser, are not right. They don't have to test in another browser. If they've done their work right, they've tested in Chrome and Safari separately, and not just in one Webkit browser. Why? While they both used the Layout rendering engine Webkit, they used different Javascript rendering engines, different CPU & GPU rendering, and different network stacks. (Read more about tha.) Also, the prefix -webkit remains the same for already existing functions, and does not change to -blink. So no worries, what worked previously in Chrome will still work now. At least it's supposed to. What is going to happen right away is basically nothing, but making Chrome smaller and faster. Removing some clutter that was there from the Webkit days. But what about Opera? The browser that was supposed to update on Webkit? Well, it doesn't. They said they'll use Chromium, and they do. Blink will be their new rendering engine. (Hello Blink!) That's also the end of the Webkit monoculture that many didn't like, but actually wouldn't have been that bad. WebKit fills a similar role. Thanks to WebKit, anyone who needs a world-class web rendering engine can get one—for free. And the products built with WebKit are as varied as those built with Linux. Even products in the same category vary wildly. Chrome and Safari, for example, have different features, different extension mechanisms, different JavaScript engines, different process models, and very different user interfaces. Opera adds yet more variation. And these are all just standalone web browsers. Consider all the embedded applications of WebKit, from game consoles to theme-park kiosks, and the idea of a homogenous, stagnating WebKit monoculture seems even more unlikely. (John Siracusa) In short, DON'T PANIC. It sounds like a huge change, but in terms of day-to-day development, the internet will still be the internet. Just as WebKit grew out of KHTML, Blink grows out of WebKit. It's interesting! (Jake Archibald, Google) In the short term, Blink will bring little change for web developers. The bulk of the initial work will focus on internal architectural improvements and a simplification of the codebase. For example, we anticipate that we’ll be able to remove 7 build systems and delete more than 7,000 files—comprising more than 4.5 million lines—right off the bat. Over the long term a healthier codebase leads to more stability and fewer bugs. Throughout this transition, we’ll collaborate closely with other browser vendors to move the web forward and preserve the compatibility that made it a successful ecosystem. In that spirit, we’ve set strong guidelines for new features that emphasize standards, interoperability, conformance testing and transparency. (Google)

Facebook's Vision

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

At one level, [Facebook Home] is just the next mobile version of Facebook. At a deeper level, I think this can start to be a change in the relationship that we have with how we use computing devices. For more than thirty years, computers have mostly just been about tasks, and they had to be - they were too expensive and clunky and hard to use, so you wouldn't really want to use them for anything else. But the modern computing device has a very different place in our lives. It's not just for productivity and business, although it's great for that too. It's for making us more connected, more social, more aware. Home, by putting people first, and then apps - by just flipping the order - is one of many small but meaningful changes in our relationship with technology over time. When I think about the world today, what amazes me most is the number of people who are getting on the internet every day and how it's improving their lives as they join this modern knowledge economy. I grew up with the internet, and I can't really imagine a world without sharing, and messaging, and searching, but actually only about a third of the world is on the internet today - a little more than two billion people. So we're really very close to the beginning of this. If you look out, maybe five or ten years, when all five billion people who have feature phones are going to have smart phones, we're soon going to be living in a world where the majority of people who have a smart phone - a modern computing device - will have never seen in their lives what you and I call a "computer." So, just think about that for a moment. The very definition of what a computer is and what our relationship with it should be hasn't been set for the majority of the world. And when it is, I think a lot of that definition is going to be around people first. We're about to see the most empowered generation of people in history, and it's really an honor to be able to work on these problems. This is a deeply technical problem and it's also a deeply social problem. This is the kind of problem that Facebook, our culture and our community, are uniquely built to work on. And we look forward to continuing to do it and to sharing what we come up with with all of you. Thank you. - Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Facebook

Email advice: Quote, not copy the whole thing

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I hear you complain about email all the time, how bad it is, but you're just waiting for it to get better. But I tell you, without doing something to make it better, email is unlikely to change anytime soon. While switching the system might be a problem, tweaking it could make a huge difference. So called email replacements are shooting themselves in the foot, by requiring an email adress to sign up. Yeah, I totally get it. Replacing email by requiring email is as logic as 1+1, isn't it? Well, maybe - but doesn't seem right to me. Here is an easy, time-efficient way of replying to emails you get. Easier for you to write, and easier for them to read. A poor email style would be quoting the whole history of sent messages at the bottom of the mail. Nobody wants to dig through all that, even if he has forgotten what exactly the topic was. Taking the last email and either putting it to the top or the bottom, wouldn't solve the problem, and is poor form as well. Writing an email is more like talking to someone about a certain topic or arguing on your blog why this article is wrong/right. What you do is, quote the important parts and then work with them - extend them, argue with them, correct them, whatever. So, why do you do this? For the other person to understand what you're talking about. And by that you're making it easier for yourself too, because you don't have to explain your poorly explanation again. By not having to explain something again, makes the explanation given at first much, much stronger. This is exactly what you do in an email as well. Quote the questions for example and answer them right underneath - one after another.

Chrome affecting eyesight?

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

David Darnes today posted that Chrome is affecting his eyesight. I use the browser day in and day out and have the same problem, and if I use it for a longer period it all gets blurry and I can't seem to focus. Tell me if you are having the same problem, or if it is just us.

Publishers desperately try to get money, but don't get that it's all their fault

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

«Publishers are like the most stupid thing», is what I've been thinking a lot in the last weeks. No, months. It's awful how desperately they try to get money, by suing and demanding for money they actually have no right to get. That's not just one publisher, or not just the publishers in one country. No. That are publishers, one after another, from all over. In France publishers already won half the battle. Google payed them a lot of money, but disagreed with having to pay them for linking their content in Google Search. Hello? If you don't want your content to be published in Google Search you can just create a single file, robot.txt, and put it in your server root. That's it, Google no longer cares about your site. How do you even come up with the idea that Google should pay you something for listing you in the world's most used search engine and so driving you a lot of traffic? Isn't that wanting two times the win? Woha, slow down, publisher! We all know that you've been doing pretty bad in speaking of revenue. You wouldn't be the first to close, but that really isn't anybodies fault, but yours. Do you want to charge me for sharing your content on Twitter or linking out to you too? The ones who are most likely to adapt, are the ones who will last. So where is the problem with todays publishers that are getting less and less money, and have to close their doors, one after another? Apparently they don't adapt and so don't last. If you ask them, it's everyone's fault but theirs. And that doesn't seem quite right to me. The answer is unspoken between the discussions: people quit on these publishers, because they suck. The publishers tell everyone that bloggers won't replace journalists ever, and by that they don't see how many people without being ever at J-School are doing journalism. As soon as bloggers say something they don't want to hear, they end the interview with bad excuses. They know they have to watch out, and the way they are doing it actually puts them into a worse position than they were in before. They will never admit they have a problem. However, the problem is that the part of media I'm talking about just repeats the facts. There is no further content. Just quotes from one side and the other side as well. No analysis, no opinion, no conclusions. Nothing human in news. The modern journalist does the coverage «unbiased.» Everything but the facts are eliminated, and that results in something that the journalist doesn't write something because it's in interest of him, but what is thought of being popular in the world. Of course giving all the judgement away to the reader, who knows best. How good reporting is, relies on what is reported in the first place. It can be better or worse depending on how it's done, but a story about a coin, remains a story about a coin. When the journalist surrenders the power of his values over his work, he destroys the very foundation that makes the work good, by his own evaluation. The publishers are trying to stay in the market, even with the huge losses. They are trying this with ridiculous demands of getting money from Google in France and now Portugal too, where it worked, and other countries where they are still fighting like Germany with the «Leistungsschutzrecht», that is like the worst thing. If it comes through, it would be forbidden to even write the headline of an article down somewhere. Yeah, sure. That's smart.

Switching to Kirby for better writing without friction

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I have used all the big blogging engines. That I did, either comes down to, I wanted to find the best by knowing each and every single one or (b) I wasn't pleased with any of them and wanted the right one. It was a dumb move though. I wasted a lot of time doing so. A lot of time I could have been writing, and actually bringing something to the table. A blogging engine is there for you to push content out, rather than get you stuck before there is any visible result, right? The first engine that I enjoyed was Movable Type. The static publishing and the great template editing were and still are killer features. But there is a lot to overtake with Movable Type to actually write - that's the problem. I don't want to manually publish the site again if I want to change the smallest thing (publish the site is what Movable Type calls renewing the static HMTL files on the server that represent the site you have been visiting if you've been visiting in the last month.) Not anymore though. I found something better. I removed friction, as Aaron Mahnke recommended often in his writing advice articles. And that is great. There is one big issue with the tools you use, you get easily too obsessed with them. Obsessed to the point that you aren't doing what you want or are supposed to do anymore. I have read a lot of german blogs lately that are way different than most english blogs I follow. Most of the english blogs I'm follwing publish short articles linking out with commentary, so called linked blogs, which then lead me to the longer articles. The german blogs I follow are mostly sites publishing online essays. And those are the truly things I enjoy to read. Longer quality content. I like it.1 News get shorter and shorter. And then there are people that shorten the news even more. Everything goes shorter. Every article longer than 400 words has a too long didn't read (tl:dr;) byline now, summarizing the article so you don't have to read it. The problem with it is, that it assumes that reading should be without a cost. And if the article isn't in a bite sized length, it is the fault of the article and/or creator. People have problems reading an article a bit longer, they have to plough through it, but probably won't, because it is just too much. They want it instantly. All for the sake of consumption, for not missing out. Like people following the news just to «stay informed», rather than for the act of learning something. Reading comes with a cost, and the greater the cost is, the more is given back to you. With tl:dr; someone else cut down the cost for you, but what is given back has gone mostly into their pockets, not yours. I'm doing stuff wrong, and am about to do it even wrong-er by wanting to write more longform content. However maybe longform isn't even so bad as it sometimes seeems to be doing. Christine Haughney, writing on her blog Media Decoder: Publishing a 36-page cover article called “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us” certainly didn’t seem like a shameless attempt to bolster newsstand sales for Time magazine. But the 25,000-word article that Steven Brill wrote for the magazine’s March 4 issue appears to be on course to become its best-selling cover in nearly two years. Ali Zelenko, a Time spokeswoman, said the issue sold more than double the typical number of copies. … The most surprising attention came from younger readers on social media who are less immediately concerned with medical bills. The article was shared 100 times more often on social media than the average Time article in 2013, and the #BitterPill hashtag was mentioned nearly 6,000 times on Twitter. Even if the bigger media would abandon longform, I believe there is still a place for it. Even if we longform enjoyers are doing something wrong. I want to produce longer stuff than your average 400 word blog post or news article.2 Getting in those four digits word counts around a thousand or two thousand words. Not more to still keep content coming, as Arne Report is obviously a one-man-show right now. One that doesn't make any money. And for writing in longer and more thoughtful form my previous setup just wouldn't work. I had set up a linked list. Why would I need a linked list anymore? I wasn't particular proud of the previous content either. In retrospect it was all pretty bad. Some thoughtless paragraphs of text with nothing but quotes. The advantage? It was easy and effortles to write. Not to get what to write about, but to write the articles in the end. Crazily that's not what I ever really wanted, I wanted to write; really write. And that's different. Catch Kirby So I need something that just works and doesn't get in my way. Lucky for me, I found a CMS replacement that met all these requirements. Cirby CMS. It isn't needed to install it, it needs no database - just files and folders working like magic as soon as they lay on the root of your server. From that point it's to tweak it until it exactly fits my needs. Getting the CMS to be a blog. Getting the blog to look like I want it to. Add some containers and snippets. Add a RSS feed. Add the basic content. Add the backend panel. Add blueprints so I can more easily publish trough the panel if I would want to, what I probably won't. 3 It's straightforward from here on. Everything that is needed is found in the amazing tutorials and documentation of Bastian Allgeier, the creator of the CMS. How to add pagination, how to add this, how to change that. There isn't something I wanted I haven't found there. Templates are done with HTML and CSS, and content placeholders are in PHP. But you don't have to know PHP to change the site the way you want normally. This is pagination for a single article. No need to write this all yourself, it's all like taking lego pieces and putting them together. And this is pagination for a list of posts, like the home page: Only problem I had, was that mod_rewrite didn't work, though it was activated on the server. I should have taken a minute and thought about it, but I spend about an hour searching around until I noticed that there was no .htaccess file on the server. How how was mod__rewrite without it supposed to work? So where is the file? Basically the bad guy was the operating system. But it would have been the same result with any other. Modern operating systems are hiding files starting with a dot in the finder or explorer by default. Luckily on Linux Ctrl+H lets you easily access these files anyway. Transfering the file to the server and the job was done. Posting Posting with Kirby CMS is as simple as dragging a text file into a folder. And that's everything that is needed. Right after the file is in the right position, it's published. Nothing further to do. I really enjoy this , because it makes the posting a lot more enjoyable, what concludes in more writing being done, because it's more fun from start to finish. Remove that friction, friend. It's for me, but not…

Comparing sponsorhip costs

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Virtual Pants has done the math and analyzed the RSS sponsorhip prize of Daring Fireball in detail, as well as a day later the connection between pageviews and price on Daring Fireball, The Loop and Marco.org. I thought this was interesting - just not enough. So here is what I did: I took some more sites and calculated the price an advertiser has to pay per RSS reader if he would like to book a RSS sponsorship. The price-range starts at 0.00921 (Grain Edit), and goes up to 0.04 (Marco.org). The Loop and Minimal Mac are both with 0.0333 pretty high too. Daring Fireball and the Syndicate take the middle with 0.02125 and 0.02777. (Note to The Syndicate: These are multiple sites that have to be booked at once, so it is counted as one. Math is exactly the same.) Swiss Miss then follows with 0.01625. That proved me more or less wrong with the assumption that small sites would actually be the most expensive ones, because they don't want to charge nothing for their few subscribers. The reason for that is, (a) they want to look bigger or/and (b) their subscriber base is so low that they can't charge with the same price per reader a bigger site does and so wouldn't get into the two-digit numbers for advertisers to pay in total per week. The result would be they wouldn't make any money, and another problem that banks really don't like such small transactions of just a few cents. Though, who knows how it's with sites I didn't check?

What is all this?

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I love the Internet. The possibility to get information about everything at any time and everywhere. The possibility to consume content, and most of all, create content myself. Then publish it. It's the first time that you, every individual with access to a computer, has a whole production studio right in front of himself. You have a video editing studio, an art studio, music making, animation - just whatever you like. It's too sad that many don't see it, or just don't want to? It's sad that newspapers, many of them, have no clue about design, and never had. Did you look at a standard newspaper in the last days? I did, and they still look the same as in 19-something. Not because they were great then, and so couldn't get better because they already reached the top. For unexplainable reason they took this design and just ported it to the digital form without any change. Charles Darwin says «It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.» According to this, traditional newspaper organizations won't surrive and you can already see them struggling. There are others, really responsive to change, that already make their money digitally with their journalism. They, with the start of the web, have gone full digital and it worked for them. Now they are far ahead, and the print guys apparently have problems catching up. Though, digital isn't equal awesome - far from it. There are blogs like 9to5-insert-something for technology. There are blogs like Business Insider. Blogs like DigiTimes. Blogs that are like the worst sources for anything. They go for pageviews, and that is understandable. High traffic makes their sites more attractive to advertising partners, and that's how they make their money. But journalism standards get to a lower standard with this. The funny thing is that one-man-blogs of people not making any profit with their blogs are many times more trustworthy and valuable than the professional blogs listed above. The techniques of these professional blogs are easy. Take PR-releases and rewrite them. Or even better, just copy and paste them. That's how you easily fill the site. Easy, quick, painless. And if that isn't enough. Take reporting from another site and rewrite the article in a way to make it unecessary to visit the original author's site. That's not a copyright infringment and it would be awful if it would be, but that's really a move I don't like and don't want to make myself. I want to write good stuff. I want to write for others to read it. So, here I am. With a new publishing system set up on my server. With a lot of «this is what I want to do» feelings. And you can join me on my journey through technology, design, philosophy and culture.