I wish you all a gorgeous New Year’s eve! Have a great 2011-kick-off, stay fresh and keep it dirty!

Kudos to xkcd.

I teach at the university (department of science and communication), and when I explain the basic concepts of social media to my students, I use the tools we’re discussing as our collaboration platforms. (The new Facebook groups are a great improvement for this kind of usage!) So naturally, I’m very interested in the experiences of other teachers, so I was listening very closely, when Peter Purgathofer (Technical University of Vienna) explained how he uses social media tools in his lectures. If you’re still not convinced about the potential of online collaboration tools, watch this video. One can always argue about theories, but Peter Purgathofers results speak for themselves:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yoram Savion of YAK Films documented the dance:

YAK began as a production team of young photographers and filmmakers dedicated to youth-led multimedia production which provides a voice for resistance and an alternative to played-out mainstream media. At its core, YAK is a visual wrecking crew built to use every form of expressive multimedia to share the voice of youth in urban America and promote change on every level. YAK’s work with urban dance began with the legendary TURF FEINZ crew from Oakland, CA, innovators of the TUF dancing style. YAK is now evolving to take the lead in the street-based documentation of the global dance movement.

For more YAK videos, visit the producer group’s vimeo channel: vimeo.com/yak.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Seems that Lieutenant Dokes will not be the last victim working for the Miami homicide department. And since I bet that the fifth season will not only be about family-man Dexter, I’m very curious in which form manic evil will appear on the stage this time.

But why would you want to backup your Facebook data at all? There are many good reasons, the most important being that one day your account just might disabled. Happens a lot these days, sometimes because users violate the TOS, sometimes because some algorithm triggers a false alarm. SocialSafe is an Adobe Air based client that stores Facebook data offline and tracks changes between single “snapshots”. After the installation and the initial authentication the program generates a snapshot of one’s current contacts, wall, photo albums and profile information. SocialSafe ain’t free, but it’s still one of the best things in social media life, and €2,48 for a two-computer license definitely is a steal. This video explains the basics (actually, this covers pretty much everything that can be said about this simple yet helpfull app):

Click here to view the embedded video.

The first backup takes a while, depending on your number of photos. From there on, SocialSafe does incremental backups. This means that only the differences between the previous and the current backup are stored, allowing an interesting function: the program keeps track of the users friends and filters the list for “lost” and “found” friends. So SocialSafe not only backs up all the data but also generates an account “history”:

The software is quite fresh, and there are still a few items on the wishlist: currently, there is no way to trigger a full backup manually, videos and private messages are ignored and, in my case, the wall backup didn’t work. But the team seems quite motivated, and they are working on an update right now:

We are however continuing our work to fully utilise Facebook’s apis so that you can export/backup all that you have created for your Facebook .. and expanding SocialSafe’s capabilities to include the backing up of your data on other social networks. But it’s not just about backing up. It would be very easy for us to simply export everything into one unreadable file and store it somewhere on your computer as a backup, but what use is that if you can’t view it? We have been working busily over the last few months on a better way to view this backed up information.

Good work guys — this year, the Easter Bunny forgot again to bring me my Facebook export function, and since Mark Zuckerberg probably won’t deliver, I’m glad you guys are filling the gap!

Comments which receive many likes are graphically highlighted. I found Comment Rating by Bob King and instantly loved it. After a short test-drive I bought the pro version — actually, I always do when I find useful plugins, whether I need the extra functionality or not. After all, it’s just a nice way of telling a plugin-author that you dig his work.

Comment ratings are more than a nice community gimmick: it’s a great approach for crowd-sourcing comment moderation on popular blogs. Also, the pro version comes with a handy widget which lists the most popular comments. So here’s my message to you, dear reader: don’t keep your opinion to yourself: comment, vote and give me a thumbs-up (or down)!

Unlike most themes, Thesis isn’t available for free. Christ Pearson is selling his template for $87 per personal site, and so he’s been racking up sales. Why do people pay for Thesis when there are so many free themes available? This question is a lot easier to answer: Chris thought about what pro customers want and started to offer a flexible, highly configurable theme which caters almost every need of professional publishers and pro-bloggers. But even though his sales figures are skyrocketing, Matt Mullenweg, founder and head of WordPress.com/.org argues that Thesis violates the GPL license — because GPL-software not only is freely available (in source code), but the GPL (Gnu Public Licenses) also states that all products built upon GPL software must also use the same license. In other words: It’s illegal to make money on the hard (and free) work of others.

Today mixergy.com invited Chris and Matt for a Skype discussion which covers some very important aspects of software licensing:

[Check out the full posting to listen to audio]

In my opinion, Matt is right but Chris is not the bad guy here. I definitely think that programmers should be compensated for their work — after all, if Chris hadn’t sold Thesis but given it away freely, he probably couldn’t put so many development resources into his flagship product.

The same problem actually applies to many popular plugins I use on this blog: Ajax Edit Comments and PrettyLink are both available as pro version. I happily spend a couple of dollars on plugins that offer great value. (When it comes to software, “great value” in most cases means that it’ll help you to save time and work, or in this case blog, more efficiently.) Yet still, the GPL license must not be violated. After all, we all profit enormously from freely available software. And even though I understand Chris’ position, he tends to exaggerate: Thesis is a nice theme, but stating that it was the one crucial factor which made commercial webmasters chose WP is just ridiculous: here in Europe, many companies use WordPress, but Thesis is widely unknown.

So how can we solve this conflict? Can vendors of pro plugins / themes change their business model to offering the software for free but offer paid support? The programmers of PrettyLink and Ajax Edit Comments chose a different approach. In both cases, there’s free version (available in the WP repository) and a pro-version available on the author’s website after payment. Legally, this doesn’t count though: no plugin or theme is a stand-alone software: without mothership WordPress, the code is useless — that’s what “builds on GPL software” means. Seems like this discussion will keep going on for a while. What’s your opinion on paid WordPress themes and plugins?

Austrian bloggers and journalists are warmly welcome. There is no entrance fee; due to the capacity of the venue the spots are strictly limited though. In the next weeks, we will invite our international guests and give away all tickets via weblogs and media partners. Secure your spot now and join us: the first ten spots are available… NOW!

How to join the World Blogging Forum 2010

Blog conferences rely on active participants: there are no speakers, there’s no audience: we want all guests of the WBF 2010 to join the discussion and spend a great day of international networking and learning from each other’s experiences. Hard thinking requires hard relaxation — after the conference, we’ll party like it’s 2999. But first and foremost: help is *very highly* appreciated! So just tell us:

Why you want to join the World Blogging Forum 2010

Drop a comment — we’ll give away the first spots until August 15th! The conference language is English, and just in case you won’t be able to make to Vienna: we are going to record all the sessions, but what happens at the party… stays in Vienna

What is the World Blogging Forum 2010 all about?

Bloggers use state-of-the-art technology on a daily basis — they’re at the very forefront of technology. Only 10 years ago, the internet was a collection of static webpages. During the last five years, social networks have entered the mainstream media stage. How is the digital world going to change in the next 10 years? Which role will the internet play in our daily lives? How will new hardware change multimedia production? These are the kinds of questions we want to address at the WBF 2010. The bloggers we invite have become popular media experts in their countries, and I can’t wait to share thoughts and ideas with this excellent crowd.

Regular readers of this blog know very well that the World Blogging Forum 2009 in Bucharest was an unforgettable highlight for all participants. I’m extremely glad that together with A1 Telekom Austria I can continue this fascinating conference format in Vienna — and of course I count on support of the Austrian blogging scene! (Yes, I did spend all day on my phone… just love being the bearer of great news.)

More details on the program and our guests follow soon. And if you’d like to join, tell me why you’re as enthusiastic about the WBF 2010 as me

Please read the original posting — there’s not much more I can add except for this comment:

I own an N97, and it get’s crappier with each firmware update. Since the last one, *every single action* has to be confirmed twice. (Like: “Do you want to allow *insert-computer-name-here* via Bluetooth.” User clicks yes. Next step: “Do you want to allow *insert-computer-name-here* via Bluetooth.” User clicks again. Every single time. I’d love a third button: Yes/No/F**king yeah, I told you before, stop nagging me twice every time!).
The OVI service is a disaster as of yet — I mean, the different parts work fine, but there is no master plan; even gaming isn’t integrated. OVI to me seems like one huge roof over a lot of very different isles.

At the end of his posting, Symbian-Guru included a message to Nokia. I totally agree:

To Nokia, you guys are losing. Hard. Wake the hell up. Doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results is the definition of insanity. I’ve been a huge Nokia fan since my 2nd cellphone, and I just can’t do it any longer. You guys aren’t competing like you once were, and everyone but you seems to see that. You used to build the world’s best smartphones, the world’s best cameras, the world’s best GPS units – you’ve lost pretty much all of that, and with nothing to show for it. You unveiled your Ovi vision over 2 years ago – I was there. Today, it’s still a complete mess. I have to log in every single time I visit the site – regardless of how many times I check the ‘remember me’ box. I spent 6 months (and about 3 hours at Nokia World 2009) trying to find someone to help me with Ovi Contacts on the web – no one knew who to point me to. You spent millions of dollars purchasing your Ovi pieces – Ovi Files, Ovi Share, and a host of other little companies – are you proud of what you ‘built’ with them? Most of your own employees (that I’ve talked to) don’t even use them, so why should I?

The new version is ready for download — I haven’t upgraded yet but I will keep you updated on my experiences as soon as datadirt is powered by WordPress 3.0!

Want to know more? check out Eric’s blog Socialnomics.com and follow @equalman on Twitter. Thanks again for the interview — Eric has a profound knowledge of the social media realm and he’s also one of the nicest guys I ever chatted with in front of my camera. As always, comments and feedback are highly appreciated!

[Show as slideshow]

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The change I’m talking about extends to many areas, from industry to politics. Here in Austria, we can only dream about the level of transparency in the US when it comes to public funding and documenting governmental expenses. I hope this will change — Max’ talk on public data was very inspiring, so let’s set the fat ass of our government in motion. Now.

All in all, I enjoyed the weekend a lot, so thanks to the organisers and to Microsoft Austria for hosting the Barcamp Vienna 2010. Many of the presentations prove one of my strongest points by the way: companies that sell legitimate products and services — and by legitimate I mean the quality as well as ethical and environmental production standards — can harness amazing new ways of getting in touch with their customers.

But if your business model relies on secrecy and lack of information, the power of transparency fueled by the social web is bound to become your Waterloo. In other words: Social media forces companies to stop lying to their customers, which is great.

About the interview: A1 Telekom invited Thomas Malone to Vienna. Last Wednesday, I joined a table talk with Austrian blogger colleagues. I did the interview after our discussions — thanks for the great talk! Chatting with a fellow optimist was very nice for a change (since these days everybody predicts a new age of doom that social media will inflict upon us). I hope you enjoyed the video, and as always: opinions and comments are highly appreciated!

Just drag their bookmarklet to your browser, log into Facebook and click on the new link. The result is a top-bar containing the results of the privacy scanner:

Fearful user might suspect some phishing action going on here — but fear not, the tool is open source, so code-savy folks can take a look or even contribute. The scanner offers no new functionalities — basically, it’s just a central view of all of Facebook’s privacy settings.

Don’t over-interpret the results though: while the red color and the word “insecure” suggest imminent danger, take a look at the detail settings or you might make your profile less accessible than desired. For example, the script warns you about “information that your friends can accidentally share”. This is not necessarily a bad thing though: I definitely want my videos, my links and my photos to be sharable. Even my weblog URL is not a secret

In other words: use with caution. Don’t forget you’re on Facebook to communicate in the first place. And by the way: technical glitches happen all the time, new bugs give programmers a headache. Plus nobody likes a bully, so the safest strategy is not to post any offensive material on Facebook — just keep that in mind and you’re pretty much in the clear, even without the help of Reclaimprivacy.org.

These kinds of classifications are fine with me as long as I’m not a Twitter sissy Plus I fully agree with Gerald’s view on “Twitter ethics”:

Various people have different opinions on how Twitter should be used. To my mind, it is up to everyone. I am not a big fan of Twitter ethics: if you don’t like someone, just don’t follow him!
That being said, everyone has the right to use Twitter the way he wants. Would you like to know which group of Twitter users you fall into?

What’s your opinion? Are you up for stricter twitter jurisdiction or do you generally prefer the idea of self-responsibility?

found the perfect drink for tweet-ups and all kinds of social media gatherings: Foursquare spiced rum is way older than geo-location. The golden-brownish spirit is distilled in Barbados:

And this Foursquare is a lot older than the first GPS chip:

Foursquare is the name of the oldest sugar plantation (1636) in Barbados. It is home to the most advanced Rum Distillery in the world. Foursquare spiced rum is a combination of rare island spices and specialty aged rum blended in accordance with a centuries old secret formula known only to generations of the Seale family.

I couldn’t find a homepage of the distillery, but MinistryofRum had some details:

The Foursquare distillery is built on the site of the Foursquare sugar factory which was closed for many years before Richard Seale bought the estate and installed state of the art distilling equipment. A number of innovations are incorporated into the design in an effort reduce the environment impact of the spirits distilled here.

Sounds pretty sustainable – and it actually is. The distillery includes a carbon-dioxide filter, a vacuum distiller which saves a ton of energy and many other environment-friendly gadgets. I guess our friends from Cuba and Guatemala would not agree though that it’s the “most advanced distillery” – there’s nothing like the traditional “systema solera”, a complex re-casking-process involving various types of barrels.

Even though I’m generally not a huge fan of spiced rums, I do like the Foursquare mixture: it tastes nothing like the heavily spiced Captain Morgan, the various flavors keep in the background. Mr. Seale adds no sugar to the 37°-proof mixture and achieves a convincing result: Foursquare got the silver and bronze medal at the rum-fest 2001 and 2002 (category: spiced and flavored rums). Using herbs and fruit extracts is an interesting way to add complexity in taste – which usually requires much more time – of course, Foursquare is not comparable to a 20 year old Malteco, but considering the name I had to give it try. Plus I really like the wax-sealed bottle cap with the embedded release line (that’s HTML5, right?) Try a shot at the next Barcamp in Vienna

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’ve seen a lot of serious blending, even parts of a Ford Fiesta got pulverized. So what’s left out there in the world of purposeful destruction? (No, it’s not meaningless, as it obviously increases their sales.) There’s one show left I’d love to see: can one Blendtec device blend another Blendtec tender? I won’t order two of them just to find out though. Maybe you could, I’m really curious!

Of course WordPress will continue to “support” the JPEG format; after all, image rendering is the browser’s job, the CMS is not involved when it comes to the actual rendering of images. This is my first April fool on my English blog. I’ve been doing this for a while on my German blog datenschmutz. Have you spotted any april fool postings on your favorite blogs? Please leave a comment, I’m curious!

Last Week Matt Mullenweg announced on his blog, that the upcoming WordPress 3.0 version drop the support for the JPEG file format. Increasing license costs and Microsoft’s announcement to include SVG support in Internet Explorer 9 were the main reasons for this decision:

With the upcoming Internet Explorer 9 there is no more need for jpg — Microsoft finally embraces the SVG standard, thus helping to make the web a much more open place. JPEG does have some advantages, but they are simply out-weighed by the license costs.

I guess some bloggers will be quite surprised when they upload a jpg images just to find out that WordPress 3.0 doesn’t actually render the picture, it just inserts a download link (just like when you upload an “unknown” format, for example an Excel sheet). A step-by-step upgrade tutorial will be published on the official blog tomorrow. One question yet remains to be answered: how to deal with existing, published images? It looks as if there’s a lot of work coming our way, because probably bloggers must re-upload all the old pictures in a different format one by one. In the long run the WordPress team never has been wrong, and I guess Matt is right when he argues that it doesn’t really matter:

Try to put yourself in the user’s place: if you use your probably pirated copy of Photoshop or your legal copy of Gimp for exporting your pics into web format, it really doesn’t matter if you choose jpg or png — I expect a smooth transition.

I always found JPEG-artefacts quite weird, so I’m happy about WordPress getting rid of these brownfields. And even if you don’t a computer and update your blog from the internet café where they don’t have Photoshop installed, worry not! WordPress 3.5 comes with a new core-plugin called “trans-imageizer” which will enable bloggers to convert jpg images via a centralized Auttomatic server during the upload. I’m looking forward to the new version — are you gonna miss JPEG?