cruel to be kind

When Dave Winer wrote “Why Feedburner is trouble“, stating basically that only an ecosystem with a lot of competition is good so nobody can concentrate too much power, he is of course right, but that is not what his posting is about. And in follow up posts again people like Todd Cochrane state how evil feedburner is because they “eat your feeds”.

Which is nonsense, but Todd likes to frighten not so tech savy people with his argument about feedburner being evil. Anyone knowing what they are doing is able to set up a feedburner feed the way that you …

There has been an interesting I would say cultural discussion about splitting a bill or not on a birthday which I left comments but I also wanted to share, for the simple reason that I think this is a topic to pay attention to.

• The Dinner Party: Individual vs. Collective
• Being The Bank: The Only Way To Solve Restaurant Squabbling
• Against Splitting The Bill
• Tara Hunt on Being The Bank: Individual vs. Collective

It seems trivial but yet it is one which implies a lot of emotions on both sides. You need to read the ‘history’ first to get an idea what is is about, …

While trying to catch up with mail and news from nearly 4 weeks (being on the road and sick) I was reading on the new entries to the old discussion on female speakers. I have talked about this before as well but while reading Rachel Andrew’s article “Diversity thoughts” a thought popped into my mind about the lack of women raising their hands and applying for speaker positions.

Is it possible that social structures are drilled so hard into our behaviour that most women will not raise their hand and say – basically – “Take me! I am available!” because there is a …

I recently had this kind of conversation with several men from different directions and thought I would like to get an input from you as well.

It is about women in the workplace not wanting to invest time “after work hours” for their job as well as complaining to their significant others if they do.

I am in the lucky position to now do what my passion is. Which also means that it is possible to work with a client and send her or him a link / text in the middle in the night because it fits the project we are …

Ben Metcalfe has splitted up his blog towards a personal blog and a more serious one – and he explains in here why.

I find this whole splicing up and getting back together annoying and at the same time I totally agree with what he says.

I struggle with a similar reason (add two languages as well) and have not found a decent workaround for myself how I want to use the different media / possibilities as I see fit .. and much more would like to see more tools being used to tailor what ever you want to see on your side.

Because …

Okay, if somebody can explain to me how I can send messages to twitter without having to pay SMS fees I am willing to be pushed by my dear friends into this new nonsense of hype tools. *g* Well, maybe just for reading them.

In case you do not know: Twitter is a site where you can sms to some short blast and it will be distributed back to your friends. As it seems there should be a IM version as well.

It got me thinking about how different we treat our communication nowadays. At least with most people I am dealing with …

“Don’t Fuck With Simple. Especially when “simple” is synonymous with “useful”.”

Jeremy Zawodny

A hazzle after an event like barcamp is always to catch up with the systems we use daily.

I edited my “ways to get in contact with Nicole Simon” page and added an “Contact information after Barcamp London page

People asked how to stay in contact and Ben had quite a bit of work to do to find some of the participants. To make it easier for your fellow barcampers, it might be a nice idea to have a kind of overview somewhere, for example the non self explaining flickr name etc.

In case you think “bah, I have a blog, why should I?” …

you should go and read the comments on Scoble of Steve Ball about the coming forced vista startup sound. Go read the comments and if you are in favour for any of the features describe there, you should voice your opinion now. So far it looks hands down against such a feature.

Now, why do I hate the idea? Of course I do.
First of all, I know people who have my voice as their favorite startup. How can I support something which will take this away from them? ;) But seriously. Why does the thought bother me? Why don’t I buy …

Tara’s recent article “I subscribe to you” really resonates which me (no quote, go read it and come back) though I come from a different side onto this topic – the “subscribing” perspective. I don’t mind having several systems in which I have to follow a person, I don’t need the one place to “subscribe” to you, but there is the thing with all of these applications …

The usual way
Usually you meet a person and then you would just like to exchange the usual stuff – business card, email etc. After some time you may discover each other in another …