Nicole Simon's passionate but pragmatic approach for using blogs, podcasts and other tools in professional and private endeavors. And some other stuff she is passionate about. Nicole lives in Lübeck, Germany and likes to facilitate a broader perspective for some readers ;)
"It is not all sunshine and flowers" says Stowe (meaning his talk), and the several problems with recording this interview should have been a warning for me that the editing would not be a walk in the park either. Let's just say that while I am extremly unhappy to release this last interview so late, I am more than grateful that I managed to recover the pieces (and keep most of my hard drive). nuff said.
We start from semi-international conferences via the obligation of web culture to do something for the greater good via "do not switch your brain off" to farmer's markets and the bottom two billion. And even if this sounds strange, it is definitely worth a listen even when reboot is over.
I am interested in exploring the conflict between web culture's tribal aspects -- exclusion of the 'others', the power laws, the mob mentality of fads, herd behavior, taboos -- and the value of deep bonds that can potentially transcend race, language, gender, and culture. Freedom cannot be unattachment.
Our web cultural ethos has be be based on something deeper than self-interest. The web brings us a sort of freedom, but we become ensnared in each other at the same time. I want to explore the known universals of human cognition, and pull out some of the threads about the universals of belonging and examine the bright and dark that can arise from that.
It may be that to be free, we have to accept the traps within us, and unsnare ourselves through web discourse and post-national, glocalized identity. We are like a recovering alcoholic: a kind of freedom, but one where any joy is tempered with doubt.
Francesca Birks is a analyst with the Foresight group at design and engineering consultancy ARUP in London UK.
She and I talk about her work and what a foresight analyst does, how destilling information is relevant, how her area of engineering and technology is on a different time scale than for example the internet as well as about her topic of "structure versus freedom":
Structure vs Freedom: An exploration of the dynamic relationship between freedom and structure in the fields of architecture and engineering.
How do structures create freedom, and when is freedom constrained by the deliberate imposition of structure? When does architecture reinforce its own cultural bias instead of supporting the community interactions at play?
Quick and dirty abstract + links
[please feel free to add helpful comments :)]
Ianus Keller is questioning if you still are able to collect images / impressions or if you are too focussed on the computer, the net and social tools.
You might remember Ianus from Reboot 2006 when he presented "a low cost version of the Jeff Han / Surface table", which is called Cabernet.
He and I talk about collecting visual impressions and getting inspired by it (or not). Misqouting him a bit, but Ianus basically noted that interaction designers like to zone out of the physical space - and not even touch it. For them there is not much more physicality than the laptop and their mobile. Also he shares how his work with Wacom worked in expanding their business from hardware to more.
Ton and I talk about why we should "speed up awakening to the effect of internet and mobile communications", the benefit of the pro active role of citizens, intuitive ways of perceiving information and how the Eurocup is reminiscent of the old race of nations. ;)
Quick and dirty abstract + links
[please feel free to add helpful comments :)]
Brian Suda is best know for his involvement in Microformats, but also plays around with mobile now.
[Note: When we recorded this, Brian thought he would not be able to make it, but good news is now, he managed to get plane tickets!]
Quick and dirty abstract + links
[please feel free to add helpful comments :)]
we talk a bit about his talk why freeloaders are an asset and not a liability, different examples of freeloaders making companies like flickr, youtube, skype, or stumbleupon more valuable
why microformats are awesome and why they may be even better on the mobile
[Preliminary shownotes as I am on the road today but wanted to put this quickly online as the file did not need much editing. ;) Proper context will follow this evening.]
This is the interview with Guy Dickinson, who will not only do again the awesome Micropresentationformat, but will also foster conversations about the cool topics of "urban gardening, why not grow your own food" and "future of books".
Martin Ludvigsen is an interaction designer with a special interest in the physical space where we live our ordinary lives.
In his talk he wants us to rethink the user: "Design for the collective user’s experience", meaning instead of coming from the single user rethink the approach with a collective in mind.
Similar to the analogy of people considering the Internet to be about computers but others see it as a space / place, his desire is to connect the meat space with 'social' gap that bridge between the worlds so that the collective wins and not just the single user.
My favorite quote of this interview probably is "I want to redesign the last 40 cm of the Internet." (and I am not done yet with that refrigerator thought).
Anne van Kesteren works for Opera on web standards and will talk at reboot about "Keeping the Web Free".
The proposal consisted of one sentence "A talk about the recent advancements in Web browsers and Web standards to keep the Web free from proprietary lock in." - so this is probably a longer 'description' of the possible content. ;)
We talk about the tools of the trades and the standards; how while the web grows, so does HTML and how bad things lead to standards.
He wants to hear about your examples and use cases, so try to find him and talk to him.
(Sorry for the ending and the cut in between, but there where some issues while recording.)
Peter Rukavina finds himself exteending his time in Copenhagen every reboot he attends - which makes sense, because it is a long way from Canada. His ventures pay off for us, because he discovered the great Sim card deal at Thelia.
When I work for free, I retain almost complete creative freedom -- what are they gonna do, fire me? -- and so, ironically, I find myself working better, faster, and more productively without the artificial incentive of remuneration.
Claus Dahl is a software developper from Kopenhagen and would like to hear sounds from you. Well more he wants us to make / have a Sine Wave concert!
"You can add yourself to something which you cannot do on your own." Listen to how it works and how you too can be part of this. We also talk a bit about how reboot has evolved over the years and why you need to participate.
Flemming Funch is Danish, lived for 18 years in California and now runs a software company in France. He likes to talk about philosophical / technical issues and looks like a Musketeer. A strange, but interesting combination. ;)
It is always a pleasure talking to David Weinberger and just catch up with what he is up to, but I am also looking forward to listen to his after dinner talk at reboot and learn a bit about the history of information!
Shownotes (did I miss something? add in the comments!)
what he has been up to the last 6 months
why the history of information interests him
from information extremism to something new
forgetting and remembering (I was referring to this interview with
there are more important things than the digital divede [and I admit putting him on a spot there where he could not really give an answer ;)]
about the after dinner talk he is given - and the competition of football
how he is looking forward to be taken apart and challenged by the audience
(Btw, I was calling David on his skype phone and found the quality to be surprisingly good.)
Windows Live Writer gets automated linking, how to fake import and export of those and some links to useful plugins.
Have you ever restrained yourself not to mention a person or company in a blog post because you did not want to go through the hassle of linking to it, because it was additional work? Did you ever find yourself wondering why you needed to do this over and over again although your computer can learn other things when you repeat them? Excactly.
If you get used to how tools work and what features they provide, you are disappointed when you encounter new tools in a slightly different setting and they did not learn from what was already available. I have been talking about that a lot in the past in regard to Feeds and lifestreams (no experience gathered from personal scoring systems of Usenet) and Chats like Twitter (nothing learned from IRC).
Blog postings are another area where I am missing so many features I am used to from other tools. My search for an offline blog editor fell flat so many times because as somebody who is used to work efficiently in Windows most tools are just not living up to my expectations. It starts with a UI which is not up to par with how Windows is set up (I am a Windows user, I do not care about cross plattform), none existent or poorly done keyboard shortcuts (I live by them) and does not end with cross application features. Many people for example never understood how powerful the clipboard really is.
You know you are a geek when two words can send you in a state of delight.
Imagine my delight when I paid again a closer look at the new technical preview of the Windows Live Writer and noticed this time the term auto linking. Yes there are template solutions available. The magic word here is ?auto?.
It is a feature I have been missing from the beginning: Automatic linking at known words, called I think Auto Correction in the English Word. Used for spelling mistakes, it basically takes whatever you are typing and replaces it with something you want to have instead. I always deleted the whole file of suggestions and replaced it with my own typical mistakes plus used it in a short hand way. For example typing gbw would result in "Global Business Women" so I would not need to type that every single time.
And the link you see there with Global Business Women is how the new preview of Windows Live Writer handles the first mentioning of this term: It links it because it is in the dictionary. Notice how it is not linked to the second? That is a setting as well.
Though it does not replace like in Word it at least makes the links. It would be great if it would be handled like in Word because then you could use something like lname to change into <name with a link>. I am missing an import / export feature (yet) but the adding process is nice enough for the moment. As I know I will be writing a lot about Reboot over the next weeks, I will add a link to it once through the dialog and have it added automatically next time I write. I could use the word reboot10 to be more specific, but actually, when I write Reboot (especially with a capital R) it is unlikly for me to mean the verb.
Highlighting the word Reboot and hitting CTRL-K I get this dialog:
And my new entry for the autolinking is ready. Next time I write Reboot like this it will not get linked; but it would if I removed the original link and did write it again, so the tool is checking against ?already entered yes / no?. Now there are still a lot of kinks in it and knowing what Word provides with this feature I am greedy and want all of that as well. :)
My suggestion if you are not on the search for a new editor
You may not be looking for a new blog editor and it may seem contraintuitive, but how about making use of the tools at hand? Prewrite part of your posts in a tool like Live Writer, hit the source view and c&p it to your blogging platform and work from there. Even though my blog platform does not work well together with WLW (the metaweblog api seems not to be implemented well enough) I do use it for all of the writing and automatic upload of the images and then quickly edit the rest online. And there are several things I do not like how WLW implements them, so I just clean it up with a script in my text editor afterwards. Too much hassle? Not really, because the amount of time saved and the increased pleasure of writing is very much worth the extra steps.
Faking import and export
Though the current version does not yet have an import / export feature, the file itself is stored as XML in this path (if C: ist your homedrive):
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Windows Live Writer\LinkGlossary\linkglossary.xml
[Thanks to Dirk for helping me out with that, Vista search is just unusable and my locate32 failed me. ]
The file is structured extremly simple:
With a spreadsheet and some text editors search and replace you can make and keep your personal link file in seconds. Due to the structured xml file, even exporting it again and working with it is a piece of cake.
It is not only a blog posting tool, it is a marketing vehicle for other services from MS
Have a look at the second half of this writer demonstration. Once you get over the ?bah it is scripted? you should pay attention at how easy it is made for a normal user to a) do great enhanced blog postings and b) even more important get tied into using Microsoft offerings from Video to Maps to more.
Now imagine how MS pushed this to the massed out there and they get used to having these features at hand for blogging. Now go back again to a plattform like Wordpress and have a look at the dashboard and imagine your mom and dad. Do they really need to have that ugly interface to have control which they do not desire or do you think they will go for a Spaces account (which they have anyway) and use the shiny tools at hand? Exactly.
WLW Scrubber Some code that WLW automatically add into your post make you angry? With this plugin, you just select the entire post, and then click on this plugin (Insert Scrubbed Content), some code such as "<div class="wlWriterEditableSmartContent" ... will be removed Note: does not work with Vista, not tested on other systems
Related Posts This plugin provides a way to add a "related posts" section in your blog post no matter what blog system you're using.That said, the plugin does depend on del.icio.us on which you have to save links (and tags) to all of your blog entries for the plugin to reference (see Usage below).
Polaroid Picture Add cool Polaroid-style pictures to your blog. This plugin allows you to tilt your polaroid in either direction and even add a text-caption to the photo.
Insert Source Code Snippet This plugin converts clipboard with source code copied from Visual Studio or any other development environment and converts it into well-formatted HTML to post into your blog. Optionally you can add lines numbering or formated header for your snippet. It also detects, that the content of clipboard has been changed and promp you to update your snippet
Text Template The Text Template plugin lets you save commonly used "snips" of HTML. From phrases you use, to moods, links, terms and more. Apply Categories to your templates to allow for easy sorting and filtering. You can even givem them their own icon...
Flickr4Writer Flickr4Writer is a plugin that enables interaction with the Flickr(tm) services. You can browse by tags, photosets, or a simple photostream. After browsing, the plugin enables inserting the image reference into a post.
Event Plugin Create your own events or find existing events through intergrated search of the Eventful.com website. Format the event, add a picture, edit the description, customize what data is displayed. The published post included correct hCalendar microformatting. The plugin also enables pastes of Live Clipboard copied events and Blog This of events from the Eventful.com website.
About Nicole Simon
I love working with people and help them get successful, especially through the use of social software. Though I have been on the net for over a decade and have consulted SMB for years, I also understand the corporate side, as I have worked in a major corporation for 15 years.
If you need a name for what I do, I usually call myself a European New Media Specialist with a special interest in blogging, podcasting and second life. I also love to 'testdrive' products / concepts which is best described as Technology Implementation Analyst.
When I do interviews (mainly pre conference podcasts I put them up here: Bloxpert so I can seperate blog / podcast talk a bit more from the stuff here.
Useful Sounds is my personal podcast, and I also have a German blog. Living in Lübeck, Germany, a European point of view comes with everything.
Why ctbk? Smooth-tongued responses are for the timid ones, and if there are no challenges, there is nothing to gain either. :)
Complete Feed for ctbk