planet sab

Moving on to sebastiankeil.de

Four domains and four blogs was just too much. As a consequence I have imported this blog planetsab into the newly self-hosted version of sebastiankeil.de, creating a category "English". The old feedburner planetsab feed, will give you just the blog entries written in English. This is the last entry in this old typepad blog. Over time, once all the other blogs on this account are safely transferred, I will downgrade the layout so I can get away with a cheaper typepad plan. Just remember, it once looked like this:

Not everybody's friend: contact policy

Two things made me write this post, first the amount of friends request and the type which consume a lot of time lately, and recent great posts and videos by Mr. Gray, Mrs. Barone and KommonKraft:

Here is how I decide whether to be your friend on any platform (except Twitter, I'll get to that in a sec).
If I don't know you, I won't be your friend. Yes, even on Facebook. It doesn't matter if we have 137 friends in common, if I have never heard of you, I'll ignore you. Why? Just because. I actually like to use the service, not just boast my numbers.

On Twitter, I am a bit more flexible. If you have no URL and no bio your out, but otherwise I'll check your blog and read some tweets. If I like it, you're in, at least until the monthly follower management session ;-) And to be honest, my current follower/follwing ratio will only increase.
But don't be heartbroken, plenty of other people are eager to read you increase their numbers by following you.

Quick thoughts on publishing: Kindle and last.fm

Ok, so the Kindle 2 is out, with read-out-loud feature which the publishers don't like. I don't get it. This is a prove of concept feature. People will realize, they like having a book read to them, when they are driving. Or on the treadmill. And the Kindle 3 will have more HD space and Amazon will ship real audio books. And have a color display. And play music, too. And Steve Gillmor will be right again about the value proposition of liner notes. And I about audio books. But let the publishers complain for now, we shall not tell them about how giving away something for free actually entices people to later buy more.

And last.fm got all upset about Techcrunch writing that they give their data away, in this case about users playing the new U2 record before it was published. They are right to be upset, but the issue is different in my opinion. Again, users shouldn't be blaming the company but their own behaviour. Downloaded an album before the release? Played it on iTunes, let it scrobble, maybe even broadcasted what you're playing via the iChat status or the Skype status? How stupid are you? You were going to buy the album later anyway? That's fine, but not the point, downloading is still illegal. And telling everybody you did. That is the really troublesome part to me. Do I trust last.fm with what they said? Sure I do, but when a court were to make them release that data, they'd have to anyway, so I'll just be careful how I use the programm.

kindle, lastfm, publishing

Awesome video about the future of interactive by Microsoft

(via Werbeblogger)

Report Card for January/February 2009

One thing about setting goals is that it helps when one is held accountable, either by oneself or by friends, family etc. So here is what I have done so far this year.

Fitness
I set out to become much fitter again, chasing myself ca. 1999, when I lived in the States, ice skated and went to the gym a lot. Two bouts of illness basically leave me way behind, but I'll get moving.

Reading
The list is long, and I finished these:
McCarthy's Bar (370p)
The To-Do List (330p)
Evelyn Wood (212p)
Personal Devolopment for Smart People (160p)
The To-Do List wasn't on it, but I am still par for 26 which is almost all. Furthermore, I am two thirds in to Time of Our Singing and one third into Shadows of the Wind. Not sure though, whether I'll finish the latter.
In addition (due to the illness), we basically breezed through The West Wing's first 4.5 seasons. And we thought, getting rid of the TV would help watch less TV...

Web projects

• The Speaking English Podcast continues to run. Six episodes in 2009 so far.
• One work project went online as planned.
• The "taking the cell phone off the grid" project was a nice idea, but the charger didn't put out enough power for the iPhone. Will try it on the Nokia 95 to use that as a camera maybe.
• Three Kanal 14 episodes were published, two more interviews are done, this week I have two more scheduled.
• My "Portfolio Project" looked like dead on arrival after early criticism. Illness didn't help here either, but I re-started recording again. It will certainly look different than announced, but I'll pick it up for sure.
• The band has now a repertoire of about 40 minutes (all covers). I hear Jessica Simpson's sets are not much longer.

Life in the modern world vs. taking stuff for granted

Hilarious video of Louis CK on Conan O'Brien

Political Links

What a great idea (via David Weinberger): US government agencies are required to use RSS to report on the stimulus money they give out. So everybody can easily stay informed!

I finally finished reading what must me the longest and worst formatted piece I ever read online, the Oral History of the Bush White House (Vanity Fair). Here is my favorite quote:

The contrast with having briefed his father and Clinton and Gore was so marked. And to be told, frankly, early in the administration, by Condi Rice and [her deputy] Steve Hadley, you know, Don’t give the president a lot of long memos, he’s not a big reader—well, shit. I mean, the president of the United States is not a big reader?

The Financial Crisis in Plain English (via Bjoern Ognibeni). Great video on how it all fell apart.

Facebook, Twitter and the Gillmor Gang

I realize I haven't trumpeted my Gillmor Gang fanboyism in a while. This neglect comes most likely from the two facts that A I haven't been listening that religiously and the frequency has dropped, and B because the shows just haven't grabbed me as they did last year.
In a recent show Facebook opening it's status API was discussed, which was a fun episode. Talk came always back to the Marc Canter statement that Twitter would be worth only have as much after Facebook's API announcement which proved a nice thread. I found myself agreeing with Hugh MacLead about not being able to get much use out of Facebook. I made an effort of playing with the stream controls and found that first and foremost it is slow. When I look at it in the morning, I see the same news items I saw when I went to bed. As if nothing had happened. Granted, I don't have as many "friends" as MacLeod or Calacanis, but with 256 people there should be some activity. Where as, on Twitter, I am just in the zone. Robert Scoble was actually the great catalyst of the conversation, reminding everybody that it still need the user/comunity to make or break a service, not the feature.
Missing from the debate was the mention that one was previously able to connect Facebook status with twitter, thereby automatically displaying any twitter message in the status, and, with the new API, that now applications such as Twhirl might be able to integrate "Facebook" as a destination to send updates to. Not a game changer, but still that is stuff many geeks live for.
Try as hard as I might, I am not getting sucked into Facebook. One could argue that Twitter is wasting a lot of my time, but at least I get return. Not so much with Facebook. And apparently, not so much with the Gillmor Gang neither. I guess I just miss Dan Farber and Mike Vizard on the show.
(cross-posted to sebastiankeil.de)

Twitter down: newsworthy

As of this moment, (11:45am, EST+1 (Berlin)), Twitter.com has been down for about 35 minutes. No story about this yet on Techmeme.com, but Friendfeed.com is running and noticing. Interesting timing, since there was talk about a business model again yesterday. Scoble says, productivity is up, but how could that be, when he is on friendfeeed 24/7? Well, there are other fish to fry...

On Spitting as Teaching Method

Michael Arrington was spit on at the DLD and not suprisingly he was not amused. Factoring in the backstory he relates in his post, his call for change makes sense. Paul Carr weighs in, urging himself and others to be nicer and reflect a bit about our fucked up actions and not believe everything that is written on the internet. One would think we knew that, considering yellow press is old news and  these publication are fish-wrapping paper at best. Why would it be different on the internet?
Interestingly enough (at least to me), this whole episode comes in the wake of the Change-Master's inauguration. I am emotionally still in a "change" mood, waiting for and no doubt expecting exciting actions from Barack Obama. And, I am indeed watching the TV show The West Wing at the moment, fascinated by how fast things happen, which brings me back to Arrington's Techcrunch blog. Successful operations will piss people off, because at some point the volume of input will be prioritized and stuff will fall of the back shelf. That's life. No reason to spit. And no reason to forget you manners.
The day before reading Paul Carr's article I had just watched the quoted West Wing episode, which not only was a reminder to stand by your own words

"You know what, fellas, when I say something, I sign my name." Sure
enough, he grabs a pen and paper and scribbles the message "you're
fired – Sam Seaborn". Surely that's rule number one – the Seaborn Rule
of internet commenting: If you've got something to say online, say it
in your own name or fuck off.

but also to be respectful to other opinions, even to listen to what the other side has to say, think about it and maybe, maybe come to the conclusion that you've been a horse's ass and change you own view of things. (Sam changes his mind on a position after listening to Ainsley with an "n")

Now, I am going to put myself out there a bit and I know Mike Arrington doesn't need people standing up for him - that is not what I am doing here, but I just have to call out Marco Arment, developer of Tumblr, and will proudly put my name under this post.  Who the hell do you think you are, hoping that the spitting incident will

"make him (Arrington) a better person. Maybe he will finally make TechCrunch a worthy publication with quality writing and some semblance of journalistic integrity."

Not only are you mixing up personal stuff with business stuff, in my opinion "you're so far over the line, the line is a dot to you" (JT). Who died and left you the judge on who is good person? I know I am not, maybe you are and nobody told me, but, and let me quote Will Hunting here, from the scene were Clark emberrases Chuckie:

The sad thing is, in about 50 years you might start doin' some thinkin' on your own and by then you'll realize there are only two certainties in life. One, don't do that.

I care and my name is Sebastian.