Short facts about writing on the web:

1. Twitter – None of your tweets will be remembered in a few days. On Twitter, everyone seems to have ADHD and a short attention span, including me.

2. Tumblr - Everyone’s busy to reblog others, you’ll probably receive a few “likes” for something you wrote but you’ll remain just another Tumblr user.

3. Your blog – This is probably the place where content lives a longer life, as you have more control over it than on Twitter and Tumblr.

4. Facebook – Uhm, why am I talking about Facebook? There’s no writing there!

Everything on the web is ephemeral. Use pen and paper for your most important things and use the web as a backup solution. Keep what you write on a service like Zoho, just in case you lose your notebook.

While browsing the web, I found this presentation of Shay Howe about the right way of writing for the web. Although the Internet is mostly about content, it seems to be considered the least important part of a website when developing one.

Here’s the presentation. I hope you’re going to find it useful:

This is something I wrote when 2010 just started. It’s mostly a draft, but I think it’s enough for the moment. I’m posting it now or I’ll never do it.

2010. This year looks so Sci-Fi when you write it down. Just try it for a few times. Write 2010, 2010, 2010. Now, if you lived sometime around the 40s-50s or even the 60s, you would’ve imagined that in 2010 flying cars or those flying personal shuttles like the Jetsons had would exist.

So, what do we have now? We’re not making any real progresses. We’ve made only really small steps, steps that seem to show up mostly online. We’re living our lives connected, online, sharing everything. We *HAVE* to be connected. Just that and nothing else.

Exactly 100 years ago, in 1910, Edison demonstrated the first talking motion picture. You can have a look here. Chemotherapy was born in the same year. Wow, two major things at the beginning of a century. Interesting, isn’t it?

These are just two things that happened 100 years ago. We’re in 2010 and we get excited when Google launches Google Buzz or when Steve Jobs presents the iPad. We surely are on the wrong track. Let’s hope that this decade will bring its geniuses up front.

Am o problemă când vine vorba să scriu pe blog. De fapt, sunt mai multe probleme, dar toate duc la același lucru: scriu extrem de rar pe aici.

Unora le este foarte ușor să scrie despre absolut orice și chiar să pară că se pricep la lucrurile despre care vorbesc. Mie mi-este greu să vorbesc pe lângă subiect – și, uneori, să vorbesc despre ceva la care mă pricep -, ceea ce mă duce la o altă problemă: mi-e un pic greu să-mi expun părerile. Pot scrie foarte ușor când este vorba să inventez ceva, dar mă încurc când trebuie să vorbesc despre un subiect dat. Mi-e frică să nu scriu vreo tâmpenie. Cu alte cuvinte, mi-e frică de ridicol. In cel mai rău caz, stau și mă gândesc prea mult ca apoi să nu mai acționez în niciun fel.

Așa că vin și cer ajutorul persoanelor care scriu des – și bine – pe blogurile proprii: cum reușiți să lăsați temerile deoparte și să scrieți exact ce vreți, oricând vă doriți?

Am primit de la Irina aceasta leapsa, am preluat-o fiindca se leaga de un subiect care-mi place tare mult: cartile. Si uite asa ar putea editurile sa creezi profiluri ale unor cititori. Pe gratis si la indemana.
1. Când citiţi, pentru a marca locul unde aţi rămas cu lectura, folosiţi semne de carte sau îndoiţi paginile?
Semne de carte sau tin minte pagina la care am ramas. Imi place sa imi creez propriile semne de carte, uneori.
2. Aţi primit în ultimul timp o carte drept cadou şi dacă “da” care a fost aceasta?
Da, am primit. Se numeste “Omul duplicat”, iar autorul este Jose Saramago. E un pic greu de urmarit, datorita felului in care este scrisa.
3. Citiţi în baie?
Niciodata si nu am de gand.
4. V-aţi gândit vreodată să scrieţi o carte şi dacă “da” care ar fi fost aceasta?
Da, m-am gandit. Inca scriu la ea, o sa o mentionez cand e gata.
5. Ce credeţi despre colecţiile de carte de la noi?
Pot spune ca imi plac cele de la Polirom. Dar rar ma orientez dupa colectii cand este vorba de cumpararea unei carti.
6. Care este cartea preferată?
“Crima si pedeapsa” a lui Dostoievski. Nici o carte nu a reusit sa ma faca sa simt ca sunt “acolo” cum a reusit aceasta.
7. Vă place să recitiţi unele cărţi şi care ar fi acestea?
Rar recitesc carti si chiar nu imi vine in minte ce carte as reciti.
8. Ce părere aţi avea de o întâlnire cu autorii cărţilor pe care le apreciaţi şi ce le-aţi spune?
Mi s-ar parea interesanta o asemenea intalnire. Ce le-as spune? Chiar, ce le-as spune? Probabil as vedea in acel moment ce le-as zice. Continue Reading »

In 2009 am reusit sa dau peste cateva carti care s-ar putea dovedi utile oricarui publicitar, dar in special celor aflati la inceput de drum in domeniul publicitatii – fie ea traditionala sau online – sau domenii conexe, cum ar fi PR-ul sau brandingul.

Pot spune ca editura Polirom e o adevarata mina de aur in privinta cartilor destinate acestor domenii. Am gasit in colectia Collegium cateva carti bune de comunicare, relatii publice si publicitate, carti pe care le voi enumera aici:

• Strategia creativa in publicitate
• Cum gandesc si cum vorbesc ceilalti – Prin labirintul culturilor
• De la publicitate la consumator
• Redactarea materialelor de relatii publice

Una din cele mai bune carti de copywriting pe care le-am intalnit este “Copywriting“, de Mark Shaw, pe care o puteti cumpara de la Carturesti. E o “no-bullshit book”, fara detalii inutile, si cred ca ar trebui sa fie prezenta in biblioteca oricarei persoane interesate de sau care lucreaza in publicitate, fiind un adevarat manual al copywritingului.

“Branduri senzoriale” este o carte scrisa de bine-cunoscutul expert in marketing, Martin Lindstrom. Cartea a aparut la la editura Publica, pe site-ul careia puteti afla mai multe detalii – si cumpara – aceasta carte.

We share so much personal babble about us on so many social networks. The internet has become the marketer’s dream, if one knows how to use it in one’s interest.

We’ve started to shed the clothes of anonymity, thinking that the Internet will give us at least a small amount of fame. Those 15 minutes of fame, at least. Or 15 MB of fame, if we move the whole thing online.

I am witnessing – as we all do – a complete renunciation of privacy in favor of a weird transparency that on the long run will affect our relationships, whether they are professional, love or family relations. We’re in a fast-forward medium that also allows us to skip moments. We only want the start and the end, forgetting about what’s in-between.

We share pictures on Facebook, let the whole world know we’re in a relationship with another Facebook user, tweet about things that a decade ago were considered intimate.

That’s why I am asking you: where are we heading? What’s the future of “sharing” and how does the current state affect us on the long run?

Everyone talks about Twitter these days: personal branding on Twitter, making friends through Twitter, finding new stuff on Twitter… Twitter, Twitter, Twitter!

As one of the somewhat-early adopters of this service, I noticed that Twitter is – actually was – based on the concept of simplicity. In time, along with the features introduced by users (conventions like the @ sign for replies) noise was created and the need to separate the interesting, juicy stuff from the mundane, boring things appeared.

Buuut… that’s not the subject of this post. Still, I want to relate to simplicity. We all have a favorite Twitter client which we use on our PCs or Macs. For example, I have two of them: at the office I use Tweetie (for Mac) and at home I use an app I just discovered, called Ada.

Ada Twitter from Madan

Before Ada I used Twhirl on my home computer but it kinda got too bulky for my taste. Many buttons and too many features doesn’t mean an application will satisfy everyone.

Ada is a small, simple, AIR-based app that won’t bother you with notifications while you’re working. The most recent version is 1.20 and you can find it here. It has a few themes that you can use and a drop-down menu from which you can choose what to see: main timeline, mentions and direct messages.

Although it’s pretty minimal and it won’t bother you like other apps, it still lacks some basic features. For example, I think that it wasn’t necessary a button for marking favourite tweets but one for sending direct messages to a tweet’s owner. I also don’t see why a “favorite tweet button” exists as there is no way to see the tweets you favourited through Ada. Or maybe I haven’t discovered it yet…

Another much needed feature would be using different colours for replies and direct messages. This would help out users who follow a lot of persons to differentiate replies and DMs from normal tweets directly on the main timeline.

Anyway, this little app is lovely and I would recommend it to everyone who wants a multiplatform Twitter client based on the concept of simplicity.

A few months have passed since the last time I used Ubuntu and started using Windows XP. Sounds like a confession, right? Why I did that? Because imediately after I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 I got myself a brand new version of the popular distribution and as a bonus I got a low resolution, of 800×600, which really loves to be here, on my computer. It can’t be changed. I went through all the known methods and it’s still there. I manually edited xorg.conf, ran the already famous “sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg” command and still got nothing.

I admit it, I’m not as good as many other Linuxists but this thing made me use XP for a few months because I didn’t want to change my resolution from the NVidia Xserver Settings application every time I logged in. I asked on Ubuntuforums.org but I got the usual answers. And the problem is that this thing is happening to some other persons too.

If you have any idea on how to fix this, please leave a comment. I really need to get back on Ubuntu.

Meritocratia

Comunitatile open source folosesc un sistem de organizare ce pare iesit din comun la prima vedere, dar este de fapt foarte natural. La prima vedere, ati putea spune ca in open source se aplica un stil de comunicare si dezvoltare socialist, dar sunteti foarte departe de adevar. Open Source promoveaza libertatea de exprimare si impartirea de idei si proiecte, lasand posibilitatea oricui de a folosi, de a da mai departe si a modifica un proiect.

As putea lua ca exemplu unul din cele mai dezvoltate proiecte open source existente la momentul actual: Ubuntu. Ubuntu este un sistem de operare bazat pe kernelul Linux si o alta distributie Linux mult mai veche in domeniu, Debian Linux. Canonical a dezvoltat Ubuntu avand la baza ideea de “umanitate”. Canonical, in frunte cu Mark Shuttleworth, au reusit sa isi creeze o imagine de companie prietenoasa, pastrandu-si sistemul de operare gratuit si incurajand utilizatorii sa dea mai departe acest sistem de operare. Pe site-ul ubuntu.com se pot “comanda” CD-uri ce sunt trimise peste tot in lume, pe gratis.

Fac legatura cu Ubuntu si Canonical pentru ca au reusit sa creeze o comunitate ce se dezvolta in continuu in jurul acestei distributii Linux, totul bazat pe un sistem meritocratic. Cel mai bun exemplu este probabil Ubuntu Forums, unde utilizatorii sunt recompensati pentru mesajele postate. Unul din cei mai cunoscuti utilizatori este “Artificial Intelligence”, inscris pe forum de acum patru ani, cu peste 9000 de mesaje postate. In momentul de fata face parte din staff-ul Ubuntu Forums, dupa o contributie destul de indelungata.

Desi meritocratia a fost “inventata” la sfarsitul anilor ‘50 de catre Michael Young cu un sens peiorativ, putem observa ca acest sistem este folositor societatii – online sau offline – , datorita faptului ca aduce in fata pe cei mai inteligenti si productivi dintr-un anumit grup. Acest sistem da nastere unor persoane (despre care am putea spune ca si-au format un brand personal) in care comunitatea are incredere. Din pacate, cel mai mare dezavantaj al meritocratiei se datoreaza timpului indelungat necesar pentru a “culege roadele” muncii proprii. Pe langa asta, meritocratia mai poate duce la unele lucruri neplacute, si imprastierea dezvoltatorilor/utilizatorilor/etc. care nu au suficiente resurse sa ii depaseasca pe cei ce se afla pe o treapta mai sus decat ei.

Continue Reading »