Saptamana trecuta, Razvan mi-a aratat acest print de pe adsoftheworld, print ce face parte dintr-o campanie a Skoda pentru a-si promova masinile cu acoperis panoramic.

Acum cateva zile mi-am amintit de el si am zis sa mai arunc o privire. Uitasem pentru ce producator auto era, asa ca am cautat Citroen, stiind ca Citroen au masinile (Citroen C4) cu acoperis panoramic de ceva vreme. Nu am reusit sa gasesc, pana la urma mi-am amintit ca numele afisului continea cuvantul “skydiver”. Am fost uimit cand am descoperit ca acel afis nu avea legatura cu Citroen, ci cu Skoda.

Printul de mai sus m-a dus prima data cu gandul la siguranta masinii si la cat de bine absorb scaunele socurile, nicidecum la un acoperis panoramic. Am continuat sa ma uit si la celelalte afise – seria incepe cu afisul “Human cannonball“-, sperand sa ma lamureasca ele.

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Am citit din nou din cartea “Copywriting” a lui Mark Shaw. Am inceput sa am un ritual pe care il execut din cand in cand. Iau cartea si citesc bucatele din ea pe care le intorc pe toate partile, le verific, incerc sa le demontez sau sa amplific puterea ideilor din spatele lor. Tot citind cartea asta, mi-am dat seama ca oamenii care ajung sa lucreze in publicitate au o obsesie pentru verbul “a crea”. Vor sa creeze. Vor sa isi lase amprenta asupra lumii. Poate suna un pic exagerat, dar nu este deloc asa.

Diane Ruggie, intervievata in aceasta carte spune ca a fost intotdeauna interesata de puterea cuvintelor si si-a dorit sa lucreze cu ele intr-un fel sau altul. Aceasta dorinta a aparut cand a descoperit ideea ca literele alfabetului pot fi aranjate in diferite feluri si face oamenii sa rada, planga, sa se roage sau sa injure. Cuvintele bine alese pot starni emotii. Daca stii cum sa intorci acest lucru in favoarea ta, vei fi foarte incantat de rezultate. Mutand acest lucru in lumea online, cat de eficiente mai sunt cuvintele? Mai sunt oamenii atinsi de cuvinte bine aranjate, de expresii care ar fi trezit de obicei amintiri sau i-ar fi facut sa priveasca increzatori spre viitor? Read more »

I think it’s a good thing that I’m starting to analyse a service before using it. I’ve had a few bad experiences with social services because I impulsively signed up. My inbox was filled with spam messages coming from these services, privacy issues appeared, and if I used some service, it turned out to be a total bore after some time.

The worst decision you can make when choosing from this ocean of social services is to use a service just because “everyone’s on it” and it’s cool. If you are choosing a service, analyse the advantages it can offer you and then decide if it’s worth it.

These should be the main questions you should ask yourself when signing up:

• Why should I create an account on “New Social Network X“?
• What are the advantages of this service?
• How can it help me?
• How will it affect my online privacy?

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I decided to install the Blackbird Pie WordPress plugin and play a little bit with it. The WordPress plugin was created after Twitter created the Blackbird Pie service. It allows you to embed tweets into your blog posts, just like you would do with other embeddable media (flash games, videos, etc.).

The plugin gives you a few possibilities to embed tweets. The most easy to use is to take the complete URL of a tweet and paste it into your blog post. I added the following two tweets by using the complete URL and the id of the tweets.

Here are two embedded tweets from my timeline:

A tweet in Romanian:

And one in English:

I used [blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/danielvoicu/status/14483309763"] for the first tweet and for the second I used [blackbirdpie id="14439778971"].

When you use these commands, you will notice that the plugin creates custom fields. You can edit them afterwards. I didn’t edit the first tweet just to show you the plugin has a small issue when it comes to special characters, in this case some Romanian letters.

You can find the plugin here, and if you want to read more about it, visit the developer’s site.

As I wrote here, I recently got a NAS server and wanted to mount its shared folders permanently. After going through some forum threads, reading tutorials, asking around and trying stuff like installing packages that might not be necessary (like nfs-common, it didn’t change anything afterwards), I managed to mount my Seagate BlackArmor NAS shares permanently.

So, here’s what I did:

I found my user and group id by typing “id” into a terminal, as I needed them later for adding them to fstab. Most of the tutorials or help manuals suggested using the name of the server from your local network. It didn’t work this way. So I had an idea: to use the IP instead of the server name. It came after seeing this forum thread, which I found after looking for the CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -22 error on the web. I could see the most recent system errors by typing into a terminal

dmesg | tail

The next step was to modify /etc/fstab. I did it by using gedit as root, using sudo gedit /etc/fstab.

I added the following line to /etc/fstab:

//192.168.0.65/privatefolder /media/servfolder cifs username=xxxxx,password=yyyyyy,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0

The final step was to type:

sudo mount -a

and I had the shares mounted permanently. I gave up on using another file for storing the credentials, as I am the only user of this computer and I don’t think I’m going to face any hacking threats soon.

I recently got a NAS server and tried to map a network drive in Ubuntu. I was very happy about it and wanted to automate the mounting of the network shares. As there’s no GUI for doing this – or even a simple way as Windows has, the “map network drive” command – I had to go to the console.

So I asked for help through the almighty Google. I found this wiki page, this forum thread and this help page. The help page is the hardest to understand. It looks like it was written by geeks for geeks. It seems that the open source community hasn’t yet learned a valuable lesson: not everyone has your experience when it comes to configuring servers, writing bash scripts or whatever.

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?