brain tags

Concerns about my iCloud account

2011-07-26T08:32:56Z

In preparation for the iCloud launch in autumn, I have been thinking about its impact on my use of Apple services. Our family uses several iDevices and the better syncing options offered by iCloud will be very welcome. However, I have some concerns about purchasing and synching.

At this moment I use two different accounts to access Apple’s services: I have a regular Apple ID which I use for purchasing Apps and home sharing media, and I also have a MobileMe account for synching data between my Macbook and the iPhone. The MobileMe account is used just by me, while all iDevices share the same Apple ID for the obvious reason that I don’t want to purchase apps twice. Furthermore, by using two separate accounts we are able to access all iTunes libraries from the AppleTV, without being obliged to synchronize calendars as well, as those are being synched using another account. In short: the Apple ID identifies the family/home, while MobileMe is used to identify a person.

When Apple activates iCloud, my Apple ID will also become the token for synching information, which is a problem for me. I would like to continue using the Apple ID to make purchases for the whole family and stream media between the devices of our family, while on the other hand each member needs a personal ID for synching calendars, mail accounts and other personal data. When Apple closes MobileMe I will be forced to sync my calendar through iCloud, but my wife has no interest at all in my appointments (and vice versa).

As far as I have been able to find out, iCloud will not offer such granularity. I assume that my situation is quite common and that many families with several devices will face the same issue. Does anybody know a solution for this problem, or do we simply have to wait for the final version of iCloud and hope that Apple has already a solution?

Google's 2-step verification horror

2011-06-28T14:58:01Z

Google has released a new security measure to help you protect your ever increasing amount of data stored on their servers. This 2-step authentication means that when you log in to your Google account with your username and password, you will receive a code by SMS message. Only after entering this code you will be able to get to your data.

Even though I don’t have a lot of data on Google’s servers (I hardly ever use Gmail or Google Docs, mainly just Google Reader) I thought that it was a good idea to activate this service — better safe than sorry, right?

Activating 2-step verification

So I went ahead and activated the service. The procedure is fairly easy: First you switch the service on, then you configure your mobile phone number and activate it with the code you receive by SMS. Finally you have the possibility to print out a list of backup verification codes. Google advices you to keep this list in your wallet, which I found very strange: if you loose your wallet, you give the lucky ‘finder’ the possibility to get into your Google account without needing the SMS confirmation.

I immediately tried it out by opening Google Reader, and yes: after I gave my Google credentials I received a SMS message with a new code from Google. They appear to be sending them from the UK, which means that —with the current roaming rates in Europe— they are willing to spend a small fortune on better security. When I entered the verification code I noticed that fortunately there is a possibility to remember the verification on a computer for 30 days. It worked!

External applications

Satisfied I closed the browser Window and went on with other issues. Later that day I opened Reeder on my iPhone to read some news, but got an error. It appears that by activating the 2-step verification all access from external applications is blocked automatically. To re-enable access to your Google account from a third-party application, you will have to generate a special password for that application only:

Some mobile or desktop applications that work outside of a browser aren’t yet compatible with 2-step verification. These applications are hard-coded to ask for a username and password, and do not prompt for a verification code. If you want one of these applications to access your Google Account, you must enter an application-specific password, not your Google Account password, when asked for a password.

I went ahead and generated passwords for IMAP access, Reeder for iPhone, FlipBook, Reeder for iPad, Feedly, Google Earth and a bunch of other applications. After generating each password, Google warns you that you will not be able to see the password anymore once you close the screen, so I made sure to configure each application immediately and test it before going on with the next application.

Does it make sense?

After a while I started wondering what the heck I was doing. On one side I had made my account more secure, because whenever I access my account through the browser I have to give the SMS verification code. However, if instead of the browser I access my data through an external application, I can choose from a whole list of valid passwords for my account. API access went from a single username/password combination to a whole bunch of passwords valid for the same username.

I know that Google sees the browser window as the principal interface to their services, and for users who work that way, the 2-step notification process is quite an improvement. However, I see the browser as just one of the many interfaces/applications I use to access my data on Google’s servers. To me it makes no sense that —even though one application increased its security— the security level for all other applications is significantly lowered.

I finally disabled the 2-step notification for my Google account, when I found out that I can’t use Google anymore as my OpenID provider, since I am required to generate a new password for each blog or web —those that require registration— I want to comment on. Too much of a hassle to be functional…

Welcome back to brain tags!

2011-06-23T11:12:48Z

After some weeks of work —though I only spend 1-2 hours every week on this project— I am re-releasing brain tags. I have lost the count of the version numbers of this blog, but is should probably the 6th or 7th overhaul. I am very excited about it, as I see it as a fresh start with some important changes:

A new CMS

After many, many years, I have exported all data from my old Movable Type Pro installation, and installed a fresh copy of Melody on a fresh new account. For those who are not familiar with those two applications, Melody is a fork Movable Type version 4.

I choose to move to Melody for several reasons. First of all, I was not completely happy with the latest versions of Movable Type, which added a lot of unneeded bloat, such as the possibility to create sites. In fact, Movable Type obliges you to first create a site to be able to create a weblog. But the biggest reason is the fact that support for Movable Type is decreasing, now that the owner is focussed on advertising, and development on Movable Type takes place in Japan.

Melody was created by two former employees of Six Apart —one of them was product manager for Movable Type— and a very active community member. They have already been able to solve a lot of the main issues in Movable Type in Melody, and I simply trust more in them than in the current developers of Movable Type.

A final note on the change: while both Melody and Movable Type can handle multiple blogs and I traditionally have managed all my blogs from a single installation, I am now separating them again. This way I can make my customizations without making my other blogs more complex. It also gives me a way to test out things.

A new theme

Melody comes with a very nice minimalistic theme as the default theme, DePo Clean, and I decided to keep it. For the moment I haven’t personalized the templates, though I did fix some minor bugs in the theme. Once I figure out how to make diff files, I will probably submit the patches to the Melody developers.

I do have a list of wishes and desires for the theme, so don’t be surprised when things change over time.

Comments are disabled

Even though the combined Akismet and Typepad spam filters are very effective, I still had to deal with several comments in the moderation queue every week. Since nowadays there are plenty of other ways to express your opinion, I have disabled the comments function. If you want to share your opinion, feel free to send me a tweet or mail.

Less images, more text

When importing the old entries, I left out all decorational images. In the last years, I always accompanied each post with an image to make the post more attractive. Those images are now gone, you will only find images which help making my point. I want the focus to be on my words, and will also try to write longer, more thoughtful posts from now on.

I am very excited about this new start. What do you think?

Brain Tags migration

2011-05-03T08:20:46Z

Starting Monday May 23rd I will be moving this blog to a new platform on a new server. This migration serves as a test for the migration of El Canasto and I will be trying out many different things in order to make the migration of El Canasto run smoothly.

Since my available time is limited and I can only dedicate a few hours per week to this test, I expect Brain Tags to be down during a significant period of time (read: days).

The reason for moving from my beloved Movable Type Pro to Melody (a fork of MT) is simply the fact that most of the community effort has moved to Melody and I expect a better support in the future now that the development of MT only takes place in Japan.

On files and applications

2010-11-09T14:48:05Z

The mobile revolution is shaking up the software market. Old paradigms (bigger is better) disappear and new ones are created.

One area where these changes are specifically noticeable is the relation between applications and the file system.

Most computing environments are in what I call the second generation, where the file system is the dominant part of this relation. The file is the centre of our activities. To start working we open a file and the associated application is automatically launched. We only start application directly when we want to create a new file.

This has not always been like this: in the past (first generation) the applications were the core, where applications gave access to data on the mainframe or in databases. There are some situations where we work in applications without having any idea of the underlying file- or database structure. E-mail is one of the uses of this system.

Like I said, the mobile revolution is changing this again. Mobile operating systems as iOS, Symbian and Android give very limited access to the file system and force us back to the mainframe era. Even the desktop operating systems don’t give you direct access to the file system anymore, but rather a virtual system mounted on top of the real file system.

It looks like file system abstraction is the future, but I don’t think that applications will be the centre of our universe. The operating system of the future won’t be centred on files or applications, but will use processes and tasks as the leading parameter.

In the operating system of the future, you will be able to say that you want to write, and a simple text editor will open. The moment you access more advanced editing functions, the application will automatically switch to another editing engine. Of course, you text is automatically saved and can be used in many ways.

In the future, operating systems will actually help you being productive. Trust me.

Comments and tweets

2010-04-30T11:25:38Z

A recent trend in the blogosphere has been to add tweets as comments on posts. I understand where this comes from, as in general commenting on blog posts has decreased in favour of twittering. By adding all tweets mentioning your blog posts, your posts look more alive and will probably attract more readers.

Whenever I think about features for my blogs, I always ask myself what the value is for my readers. In the case of tweets as comments, I look for the answer based on my own experiences. It happens frequently that I find an interesting post with let’s say 20 comments. When I finished reading this, otherwise interesting, blog post and get ready for participating in the conversation, I find out that there actually are only two real comments, followed by a tweet of the author and 17 retweets adding absolutely nothing to the post or the conversation. Immediately my motivation to participate in the conversation is gone and I quickly move on to the next blog.

Although in theory tweets are comments about your posts (or at least mentioning the post), they hardly ever contribute to the discussion. If you absolutely want to display the tweets on your blog post, go ahead, but don’t mix them with the comments. If in the example above the tweets would have been separated from the comments and the blogs metadata would have shown me that the post has 2 comments and 18 tweets, I would not be so disappointed and probably would have left a comment as well.

A comment is a comment and a tweet is a tweet.

</rant>

Manifiesto «En defensa de los derechos fundamentales en internet»

2009-12-03T14:50:19Z

Ante la inclusión en el Anteproyecto de Ley de Economía sostenible de modificaciones legislativas que afectan al libre ejercicio de las libertades de expresión, información y el derecho de acceso a la cultura a través de Internet, los periodistas, bloggers, usuarios, profesionales y creadores de internet manifestamos nuestra firme oposición al proyecto, y declaramos que…

Los derechos de autor no pueden situarse por encima de los derechos fundamentales de los ciudadanos, como el derecho a la privacidad, a la seguridad, a la presunción de inocencia, a la tutela judicial efectiva y a la libertad de expresión.
La suspensión de derechos fundamentales es y debe seguir siendo competencia exclusiva del poder judicial. Ni un cierre sin sentencia. Este anteproyecto, en contra de lo establecido en el artículo 20.5 de la Constitución, pone en manos de un órgano no judicial —un organismo dependiente del ministerio de Cultura—, la potestad de impedir a los ciudadanos españoles el acceso a cualquier página web.
La nueva legislación creará inseguridad jurídica en todo el sector tecnológico español, perjudicando uno de los pocos campos de desarrollo y futuro de nuestra economía, entorpeciendo la creación de empresas, introduciendo trabas a la libre competencia y ralentizando su proyección internacional.
La nueva legislación propuesta amenaza a los nuevos creadores y entorpece la creación cultural. Con Internet y los sucesivos avances tecnológicos se ha democratizado extraordinariamente la creación y emisión de contenidos de todo tipo, que ya no provienen prevalentemente de las industrias culturales tradicionales, sino de multitud de fuentes diferentes.
Los autores, como todos los trabajadores, tienen derecho a vivir de su trabajo con nuevas ideas creativas, modelos de negocio y actividades asociadas a sus creaciones. Intentar sostener con cambios legislativos a una industria obsoleta que no sabe adaptarse a este nuevo entorno no es ni justo ni realista. Si su modelo de negocio se basaba en el control de las copias de las obras y en Internet no es posible sin vulnerar derechos fundamentales, deberían buscar otro modelo.
Consideramos que las industrias culturales necesitan para sobrevivir alternativas modernas, eficaces, creíbles y asequibles y que se adecuen a los nuevos usos sociales, en lugar de limitaciones tan desproporcionadas como ineficaces para el fin que dicen perseguir.
Internet debe funcionar de forma libre y sin interferencias políticas auspiciadas por sectores que pretenden perpetuar obsoletos modelos de negocio e imposibilitar que el saber humano siga siendo libre.
Exigimos que el Gobierno garantice por ley la neutralidad de la Red en España, ante cualquier presión que pueda producirse, como marco para el desarrollo de una economía sostenible y realista de cara al futuro.
Proponemos una verdadera reforma del derecho de propiedad intelectual orientada a su fin: devolver a la sociedad el conocimiento, promover el dominio público y limitar los abusos de las entidades gestoras.
En democracia las leyes y sus modificaciones deben aprobarse tras el oportuno debate público y habiendo consultado previamente a todas las partes implicadas. No es de recibo que se realicen cambios legislativos que afectan a derechos fundamentales en una ley no orgánica y que versa sobre otra materia.

NOTA: Este manifiesto fue redactado conjuntamente por periodistas, bloggers e internautas. Si estás de acuerdo, copialo, publícalo en tu blog, leelo en tu podcast, imprímelo y difúndelo por todas las vías que puedas.

Commenting not possible

2009-03-13T10:56:10Z

I just discovered that it currently is not possible to comment on this blog. At first sight it looks like the problem is caused by the AJAX part that tries to publish the data to another domain.

However, it has been a while since I last touched the templates, and the commenting feature worked fine in January, when I received the last comment.

When I have time I will try to fix it or I will simply remove the fancy AJAX part. I`ll keep you informed.

[Update 2009.03.16] I have removed all AJAX stuff from the templates, so commenting should be possible again. I still have to remove some rough edges though.

Back from the CeBIT

2009-03-13T08:15:45Z

I am back from the CeBIT show. Actually, I came back on Monday, but have been too busy to post. This year has been been a huge success for our company, mainly because we had a better place for our booth and because we presented right in the middle of this crisis a revolutionary low cost product on which we have been working for three years (sometimes you need a little bit of luck).

The show has been such a success that this year I haven’t been able to visit the other halls of the show to see what is happening in the IT sector. Anyway, nowaday we don’t depend on big trade shows anymore to inform us about the latest new products.

Downloading viruses?

2009-02-24T09:44:02Z

I just saw the screen above, which is the ClamWin antivirus software uploading its virus database. On the left hand side they have an animation trying to show that the virus definition files are being downloaded from the internet onto my PC, but in my eyes it looks more like virus infected files arrive from the internet to my PC.

Designing good and clear icons is an art!

New: Google Notebook

2009-02-03T16:40:17Z

I know that Spain usually lags behind the rest of the world, but Google Spain really doesn’t know what is going on. While all over the internet you can read stories about the dismantling of the Google Notebook team - a sign that this product is about to disappear, Google Spain still presents Google Notebook on my Google Account page. And not as a regular tool, but together with Google Chrome as new option!

Please Google Spain, wake up!

Google Analytics Event tracking

2009-01-22T11:21:09Z

One of the most interesting parts for web site owners are the access statistics, and Google Analytics offers one of the most complete statistics solutions, which I use on a weekely basis for my most succesful blog El Canasto.

Besides being a typical blog with pages, I offer calendars for downloading, and of course I also want to track those downloads. When two years ago I started with the downloads I search Google`s help files for a solution to track them, and found a small javascript sniplet that when a visitor clicks on a download link registers the download as a pageview. This trick allowed me to analyse the downloads.

The disadvantage of this trick is that it inflates the pageviews, and I never have been completely satisfied about this solution. You can imagine my happiness when last week I discovered the Event Tracking feature, designed specifically to track downloads, videoplays, etc.

I quickly changed my code to use a javascript sniplet like the following:

onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackEvent('Downloads',
'XLSX', '/calendario-compacto/calendario-compacto-2009'); "

This sniplet registers the download under the category Downloads, the action XLS and the label /calendario-compacto/calendario-compacto-2009. Google Analytics has Event reports by category, action and lavel, so now I know for example which of the four file file formats are more popular:

My new social e-mail signature

2009-01-12T09:59:34Z

Until now I always had a very simple e-mail signature, with just my name and usually one of my web sites. But now that more and more people are active on several social networks, I have created a new signature with links to my profile on several social networks and even a link to download my vCard. What do you think of it?

Jeroen Sangers • www.jeroensangers.com

El Canasto: Productividad Personal
Brain Tags: Themeless blog

Mobile: +34-619204630

IM/VOIP: jeroensangers jeroen.sangers

Contact me:

Christmas

2008-12-25T19:21:01Z

I already posted this a few yaers ago, but it is still valid (or even more).

In defence of e-mail

2008-11-19T12:34:21Z

Image taken from Luis Suárez

Last weekend I attended the Evento Blog España conference in Seville, and one of the more attractive talks on the schedule was called 2.0 services and technology in business by Luis Suárez, technology evangelist at IBM.

Luis explained how he stopped using e-mail completely and replaced the functionality by a variety of web 2.0 tools, each specialized for a specific task. When he started talking, I remembered how Tim Ferriss also ‘attacked’ e-mail in his book.

In The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim explains how he only reads his e-mail a few times per day while an autoresponder tells the senders to use the phone instead for more urgent messages. I have read it several times, but I still can’t see where the productivity increase comes from. I’d rather check my e-mail twice a day to reduce phone calls. In my opinion, phone calls are a bigger time waster that e-mail. When someone phones you, that person decides for you that the issue he is phoning about is at that moment more important than all other issues you are working on. A phone call is almost always an interruption in your workflow, while e-mail is part of the workflow. Of course, there are times when a phone call is justified, for example when a customer is having technical problems that stopped his business. The idea is to use the right tool for the job, and in the past years I have spend quite some time explaining that the phone usually is not the right tool and that e-mail or IM for more time-dependant questions are more adequate.

Using the right tool for the job is exactly why Luis Suárez stopped using e-mail and changed it for instant messaging, wikis, blogs, rss, bookmark services, quickr, etc. In principle I agree with Luis that e-mail is not always the best tool to use, but at this moment there is a scattering problem when using web 2.0 tools. I already noticed this when I try to convince people to stop phoning me and use IM instead. There is a myriad of IM tools and protocols available, and to be able to communicate with all my customers I need ICQ, AOL, Yahoo!, Messenger, Skype and GTalk. All of them! I am a tech savvy guy, so I can handle this (all accounts are nicely accessible from one client: Digsby), but this surely is no option for many other people, who already find it very difficult to install one IM client.

Now imagine the same thing happening with all other functions of e-mail. To collaborate on a document there are dozens of services available. Of course I will choose one of them, but will me customer also use that? Of course not, they use Google Docs instead of a wiki. And as I cooperate with more people, my shared work will be shattered across the internet. I remember a customer send me a link to an interesting article, but where is it? I need to maintain a database to know that this particular customer uses Delicious to share bookmarks.

You can say a lot about e-mail. It is not the perfect tool for collaboration or status reporting. But it is a standard. Everybody has e-mail, and everybody knows how to use it. And if you work together with many customers, using web 2.0 solutions will not be an option in the majority of cases, until there will be a common protocol or tool such as Digsby for IM that allows people using different services for a functionality to cooperate.

Apple on your car

2008-11-14T10:51:35Z

Lately I notice more and more cards driving around in Lleida with the Apple logo, and each time I see one I think by myself “why on earth would somebody stick that onto his car?” I also have that sticker at home, but it never occurred to me to stick it on my car.

Of course, Apple is a cool brand, is different and has a very nice logo. But whichever way I look at it, I see it as a profitable company, and sticking that logo on your car is free publicity for this company.

I guess it is the same people buying Bikkembergs shoes (if you remove the logo nothing is left) and certain Nike sportswear (a manufacturer logo on clothes should never be bigger than 2cm and preferably not visible at all) without asking any payment from the manufacturer in return.

In fact, the only logo I wear on my clothes is the logo of my employer, and only because they pay me to do so!

In my opinion, driving around with an Apple logo does not make you look cool, but rather stupid for making free publicity for a company.

Eleven

2008-11-11T11:00:58Z

This is just a short post to commemorate the eleventh birthday of this blog. Eleven years ago I decided to post short notices on my personal site, not realizing that this habit would become very popular eleven years later. I still like it, and probably will continue blogging for a long time.

El Canasto nominated for Spanish Bloggies

2008-11-10T16:45:43Z

Since I started writing on my Spanish productivity blog El Canasto, I had less time to write on Brain Tags. But it looks like it was worth any minute of my time, as today I received the good news that El Canasto has been nominated for one of the Premios Bitacoras.com, the Spanish Bloggies.

The past month, Spanish blog readers could vote for their favourite blogs in several categories. El Canasto quickly took the lead in the Best Business Blog category, and maintained the first position until the end of the voting period. Tomorrow the jury will be announced, and they have until Friday to choose among the top three of each category, which means that I have about 33% chance of winning the price.

What makes me even more proud is that El Canasto ended at the 10th position on the list of most voted blogs, which in my opinion is really good for a blog in a not so mainstream niche.

The final winners will be announced this Saturday in Seville, and of course I am going to be there to see whether I won the price and to meet a lot of other bloggers. The winner will take a statue and a Toshiba NB100 home.

Lights on

2008-10-29T17:53:04Z

Sometimes you have to let go some good habits to adapt yourself. When I came to live in Spain, I was used to drive all day with the lights of my car turned on for better visibility.

However, the people over here do not have that custom, and friendly as they are, they tried to warn me to tell that I forgot to turn of my lights. That is nice if it happens a few times, but actually it happened several times a day, and after a week I was getting quite fed-up with it. So I stopped driving with the lights turned on during daytime.

This week, the Spanish governement started a campaign to tell people about the enhanced security when driving with the car lights turned on. Guess who is happily driving around with the lights on again?

Evento Blog España

2008-10-24T06:31:02Z

The EBE is Europe’s second largest blogging event (after Les Blogs in France) and will take place in November in Sevilla. And yes, on November 14 I will take the airplane to Sevilla to be present at this event.

When the event was first announced I doubted whether I should participate due to the high costs (plane ticket and accomodation; the EBE itself is free) and decided not to go.

What made me change my mind? Well, part of the program is the election of the best Spanish blogs, and my blog El Canasto makes a very good chance of being elected as the Best Business Blog! In the last partial rankings I held the first position, while previously I was number two.

Of course, the EBE is also a great place to meet some people in real life, people I have been working with for quite some time. I am also looking forward to meeting tons of new people, making new connections and new plans…

I am looking forward to participate at the Evento Blog España.