Her: “I’m trying to forget it” (in Danish: “Jeg prøver at fortrænge det!”).
I miss her!
Category: Kim Blog (English)
Personal blog. Thoughts, conspiracies with a danish twist etc.
It’s been a while since I wrote about the Jaiku online service, but it’s a service I use all the time, and I love it.
This is, mostly, due to the fact that Jaiku is filled with people, with whom I share interests, but the people there, all, seem to be more interesting than I am, so I can learn new things, and that is the thing in life I love the most.
One of the things I’m very adventurous about is my music, and another of my favourite online services, Last.fm, supports that perfectly.
Yesterday a conversation about Last.fm surfaced on Jaiku:
Translation: It just struck me why I’m so crazy about Last.fm. I can keep it going by doing something, I’d do anyways: Listen to music 🙂
That is correct, Last.fm builds and extends your network by comparing your musical preferences to the other users, and it also gives you recommendations based on your listening habits.
Eventually the question was asked: What do you use it for?
This triggered me to use Last.fm again, something I usually only do once a month, and the feature I love the most, is the similar artist radio.
In April 2008 I travelled to Lisbon, Portugal, and I was so fortunate to attend a concert by Dorit Chrysler, a very talented artist from Austria, that has specialised in using the Theremin instrument, a very strange instrument that you control by moving your hands in the electrical field generated by the instrument, that basically is a bend metal-rod.
So the Jaiku post triggered me into finally ripping the CDs I bought in Galeré Zee dos Bois in Lisbon, listening to them, and then using that to listen the Dorit Chrysler Similar Artists Radio.
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And what I dug into, was a wealth of wonderful music, that spans from Opera to Classical Chanson, over Russian Abstract Hip-Hop and even the wonderful Colleen, that I already knew.
Here’s a list of some of the wonderful artists I discovered:
- Robert – A wonderful French chanteuse
- Gudrun Gut – German female singer. Original member of Einstürzende Neubauten
- Ute Lempner – German chanteuse
- Susanna and the Magical Orchestra – Norwegian act that, for instance, does some amazing covers, especially one of Dolly Partons Jolene is wonderful
- Meret Becker – Another German singer that has be associated with Einstürzende Neubauten
The list goes on, and I’ll recommend exploring the artists that are similar to Dorit Chrysler, you will not regret it.
Last.fm remains one of the most impressive, and genuinely useful, online services – the list of these services is short, the big three are, to me, Jaiku, Last.fm and Flickr.
The picture used here was taken from Last.fm, and is, most likely an official promotional pressphoto, I hope my use here will go under “fair-use”
xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language – By Randall Munroe
I love xkcd, it’s way over my own humour, which, frankly, is Benny Hilly, I bow in respect, I’m not worthy :-D.
The ones about academia, often are over my head, but my online buddies Esben, Thøger and Jacob, who introduced me to xkcd, seems to get them (faster) than me, I suspect that they’re not uneducated drop-outs like me ;-).
The computing ones, sometimes, stoop to the Benny Hill level of computing jokes, like this one:
Nah, it’s actually quite profound…Brilliant…For even geekier computing humour check the geohashing wiki, I’ll have to try that!
The Danish Office for IT and Telecommunications (IT & Telestyrelsen) is experimenting with so-called RESTful web services, and I’m very happy to hear that, because this is an indication that something finally is happening again, after years of impasse.
Services for the REST (sry) of us
RESTful web services are the predominant implementation model for web services developed by web 2.0 companies, Last.fm and Flickr are prime examples of services with extensive RESTful web services and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).
A web service is a software service, or API, that software (application) developers can use to provide functionality to their applications, and thus users. The “web” refers to the fact that the service can be accessed using technology developed for the web, like a standard web-browser.
Other technologies for implementing web services exits, the best known is the web service or (WS_*) stack, often referred to as SOAP. REST is, however, much easier to use than SOAP, because it has a GET based interface, meaning that you can query a RESTful service using simple URIs for instance entered using a browser. REST is also much better understood by commercial web developers in the private sector, and the tools they use, eats REST for breakfast.
Here’s an example: http://oiorest.dk/danmark/veje?q=lindevangshusene
This retrieves the road-code and city-number of the street I live on in XML format, pretty sweet.
What IT&TS has done is that they, two years later, have picked up my idea, so that I don’t have to implement it (well it only means that I’ll never release my own code) ;-).
Concerns that history will repeat itself
I’m pleased, very pleased, and surprised that The Danish Office for IT and Telecommunications (IT & Telestyrelsen) has begun experimenting with such a relevant service, and has actually made some real-word applications available on the web-site.
But! I fear that history might repeat itself.
Something like 3-4 years ago, a sample SOAP service Address Web Service (AWS) was developed by IT&Telestyrelsen, they even had a competition to develop a sample application, and there even was a winner. But AWS never went into production, and the project dropped off the radar, that is until now. It seems that AWS soon will be released for production, and this is great news.
The problem was that I lost faith in AWS, I felt the project had died, so I didn’t really want to develop against it, and I hear the same concerns from others regarding the RESTful services today.
Do we need pseudo-standards like REST?
The RESTful experiments will probably never launch, but with the SOAP/WS_* AWS likely to go into production, we don’t really need them do we?
What we do need is an open and free infrastructure, for instance for eFaktura, it’s way too expensive to use the current providers, so I suggest that the next thing you do IT&TS, is to pick up another of my old projects 😉
In many ways I fail to see the real need for a RESTful service, but RESTful APIs are so much easier to implement than SOAP.
What I’d like to see is light-weight data-formats, like JSON, and JavaScript APIs Google style. The light-weight data-formats are simpler to parse than XML, so I’d love to see a JSON, or similar, version, e.g. something that is closer to the internal representations of data, without going to binary interfaces, even though they’re coming back, for instance through WCF (Windows Communication Framework).
Conclusion: BIG thumbs up! (but it was overdue)
All in all BIG thumbs up to IT&TS for this initiative, keep it up, and stay above the radar in the future, please. We need widely available, and free, services like AWS, and with the competition from Google GeoCoder, which can be implemented with few lines of code – and works with other than Danish addresses, and findvej.dk – that is using it’s own, outdated, copy of data from Kort og Matrikelstyrelsen to provide a nice, URI based service, reviving of AWS, and the new initiatives, were way overdue.
Monday the Copenhagen Hip-Hop community was served a defer than def jam (pardon my “old-skool”), when Redman and Method Man tried to bring down a sold out Store VEGA venue, and sometimes it felt like they might succeed, because the bass and the stumpin’ made the floor bounce.
The wires were heated by a local act, that I missed the name of. The Danish Hip-Hop scene seems to be experimenting with mixing of genres, I must admit that I like the more European approach to Hip-Hop, which means that we have live musicians on stage, this is not a problem for seasoned acts from the States, but few European acts can pull off only having a DJ and 3-4 MCs as the only instruments. The Europeans are bringing some degree of renewal into the genre, and I welcome that, IMHO French acts like Clotaire K and Kalash are the trailblazers, on the tailcoats of MC Solaar, but we can be quite proud of our local acts.
I refuse to complain about the delay in the starting of the concert, it was worth waiting for, and they need to “prepare”, which they supposedly did at “Staden” ;-), well when they finally arrived in a big black van, they went directly on stage, and almost from the get-go, the joint was jumpin’.
I was quite tired, having just arrived from Lisboa, Portugal, and at one point, before the jam kicked off, I was sitting in a corner sleeping, and one of the guards told me to try to keep my eyes open, really I don’t see why, he obviously thought it was Friday night at 5AM…That being said, the guards at VEGA are very professional, and the few times I saw them go into action, they managed the situation.
Well I was so tired, that I wanted to leave early, but when I was about to leave, I looked directly at the stage, and I could feel the energy radiating from the stage and the room, as Red and Method told us CONSTANCE: you have to work as hard as us, we feed on your energy, and they did, and I stayed, I didn’t regret that.
Store VEGA is the perfect size for a act like this, packed, and the lighting crew did a great job, a trick that is common in Hip-Hop is that you, quite often, shine lights on the audience, this was used to great effect, and when they did that the house was jumping, with the exception of the lame mid-section of the balcony, you s*ck! But it gave me a flashback to the time I went to the Ladies First Jam in New York’s Nassau Coliseum, where the crowd was 4-5 times bigger (and 99,9% blacker ;-)), where the DJ tore it up with the floodlights on the audience – that made a lasting impact crater in my cortex.
And the energy on the stage was nothing short of amazing, I love the cool, cool moves, especially when they did “the march” routine, that was so cool!
It’s been a while since I went to a Hip-Hop Jam, and the previous one was the disappointing Busta Rhymes concert in K.B. Hallen in 2006 (hey I didn’t even bother with a review 🙁 hmm seems that I did). Busta is returning this year, but I’m not going to see that. Red and Method delivered what Busta, unfortunately couldn’t, it might have been the venue, but his DJ was wack, and WAY too many hype-men. Red and Method keeps that to an absolute minimum, hey they even engaged in some of the most crazy crowd-surfing I’ve ever seen! Almost as real as it gets
This ranks in the top 3-4 of Hip-Hop Jams I’ve been to, competing closely with Masta Ace and Clotaire K, but I really prefer the hard accented flow of Red and Method to Masta and Clotaire, so I’ve decided that this is number 2 on my list, I doubt that Queen Latifah (<3) will ever loose that crown
Now I’m tempted to will go see can’t go see the Wu-Tang Clan, because they’ve rescheduled from June 7th to July 23rd 2008, I’d like to have attended, not just to feed on the energy, but to share it, because Redman and Method Man were 100% proof, seems like they’re the real deal!
Jeg er ude! Fred! Og ses vi til Wu-Tang? Det tror jeg nok vi gør…
The picture is the cover from the Soundtrack of the movie How High. It was copied from Wikipedia, it’s most likely Copyright Def Jam Records, but I consider my use of it here as being fair use.
In case you’ve missed it, this site was defaced by a cracker last week, most likely they were using a robot that used a wounerability in WordPress.
The evidence is mounting, and it looks like it’s the notorious Olaf Pirol – claiming to be the Al-Queda of ICT – that is the evil mastermind behind this vicious and uncalled-for attack on yours truly.
For proof look no further than these sites:
But I fear that the attack will spread during the day.
I’m completely flabbergasted by why he’s targeting me, but I guess that it’s due to the universal Karmic laws, and the fact that I’ve lost two friends within the last 6 months, due to idiocy on my part.
Paybacks are a b****, and I had it coming.
STAY TUNED.
Yesterday I had the, unexpected, pleasure of meeting Mark Wubben in person, and it was great.
The reason: yesterday we had a meeting in relation to a project, and webgrl extraordinarie, Henriette Weber asked if she could bring a guest. Sure! His name is Mark Wubben, do you knew who he is? No, not really!…Well it turned out that I did, he’s the man behind the incredible piece of code known as sIFR.
In case you don’t know what sIFR is – chances are that you don’t – it’s a method to display rich typography on the web, using Flash, but in a completely transparent, and accesible way.
So as a tribute to Mark and the fantastic work he’s done with SiFR, I’ve switched my sites theme to the sIFR experiment, I never got quite finished with last year – it’s based on the standard template.
I got to look at some of the work he’s done at his company, and it’s SUPER cool.
Mark is also finding time – which is amazing – to work on sIFR, and I got a sneak-view of version 3.0 of sIFR, and it’s going API, will be fully scalable etc.
The main reason I stopped my experimentation with sIFR, was because it didn’t support Danish characters, but Mark would LOVE to hear from you, so I’ll ask him for advice – really it’s “just” a matter of providing the correct Flash files. Another reason I stopped using sIFR, was that I didn’t have the energy to chase down nicer fonts, the defaults aren’t exactly the nicest.
Wondering what Mark is up to these days? You’ll better watch it!
If you’re using sIFR, do give Mark a shout, he’d appreciate it, and his work deserves ALL the recognition in the world!
ps. Incidentally I just lost a good friend, due to COMPLETE stupidity on my part, I guees that I’m an a**hole, and the irony is that, he was the one, who drew my attention to sIFR. So long buddy 🙁
This week, the world got a lot less interesting, when the visionary, humanist, inventor and author Arthur C. Clarke died. I really considered not commenting on it, because others would be better at it, and the picture from Joy of Tech on the left sums up my feelings.
Remembering a great visionary and humanitarian
Arthur might not be the best writer, but his clear visions, belief in humanity and always good spirit was such an inspiration.
Clarke has mostly been remembered for his two most famous contributions to the collective heritage of humankind:
- The movie 2001
- The concept of Geo-synchronous communications satellites
The only thing that I feel sorry for, is that Arthur didn’t live to witness the discovery of Extraterrestial Intelligence, which I’m sure is on the verge of happening, and when we have First Contact, I hope that the politicians and scientists read the works of Arthur C. Clarke, before trying to understand E.T., I really feel that Arthur did.
First Contact
I’ll give you an example, and it’s my favourite part from one of his books, “The Fountains of Paradise”.
As is traditional with the novells by Arthur C. Clarke, the plot contains several independent sub-plots, and that is the strongest aspect of his writing, it never gets dull, and it’s filled with humour, and insights into humanity.
The main plot in the “Fountains of Paradise” is really about the construction of an elevator to the Clarke Belt, the geo-synchronous orbit, 36,000 kms from Earth.
But the by-line is a story about First Contact – e.g. the discovery of intelligent Extraterrestrials – a favourite topic of Clarke – it’s also about Artificial Intelligence – the favourite topic of Clarke.
The sub-plot is similar to “Rendezvous with Rama”: Due to universal limits of relativity, you can only travel at sub-light speeds. Another universal law is that the ordinary life-spans are too short even for ET, so ET is investigating the universe using unmanned probes.
Earth, or rather the solar system, is visited by such a a spaceship, and onboard is a computer or more correctly an AI – that is somewhat secretive – but co-operative – and we have so much to learn, like the fact that we’re an emerging level 1 Civilisation, at least in the 22nd Century, where the book is taking place.
Clarke suggested that advanced Civilisations goes through three levels:
- Civilisation can control energy on Planetary level
- Civilisation can control energy on Solar level
- Civilisation can control energy on Galactical level
Needless to say we’re not even a level 0 civiisation right now. When ET finally arrives, some hundred years after the probe visited, he expresses admiration for the achievements of “such a young civilisation.
Well the computer abroad the space-probe, is co-operating and teaching us lot’s of things, without violating the rules about giving away information posessed by a higher level civilisation, so we’re only given hints, like a level 1 civilisation, has mastered the conversion of matter to energy and back – e.g. has things like matter transporters and replicators, like in Star Trek.
That is until someone at a Theological Institute decides to transmit the complete religious scriptures to the computer, it painstakingly analyses it, points out the fundamental flaws of religious thinking, shuts down communication with a comment that expresses disappointment at such tribal manners from an emerging level 1 Culture, and sorry but now you have to switch to direct communications, going to cruise mode, shutting down, bye.
Mind you, ET is 50 light-years away, so everyone was upset by the actions of the religious people, but really it was also the end of religious thought, and humanity could move on the bigger projects, like building the space elevator.
The concept of the Space Elevator was lifted from a Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, that Arthur credits in the closing notes of “Fountains”. Clarke also suggests that it might be possible to build it already in this century, and the concept is well thought out, and actually feasible with current technology, unfortunately the current funding of space exploration, dictates direct military benefits, and the military seems to love chemical rockets, what a shame.
Other contributions
Another important contribution by Clarke, was his 80th birthday special feature, where Discovery dedicated an entire evening to Arthur, another was his series The “Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World”, where he was also dealt with myths and Urban legends, paving the way for the “Mythbusters”.
Clarke deserved the Nobel Peace Price, not least for deciding to live his final many years in war-torn Sri Lanka.
The Pod Bay doors have been opened, Godspeed Arthur
The Imperial Cinema in Copenhagen is showing “2001: A Space Odyssey” on Monday 24th of March oops April 28th at 3.45pm CEST.
Imperial has one of the best cinemas in Northern Europe, expect me to be in the audience, I can’t really think of a better way to pay tribute to Arthur, get your ticket here (link will probably expire soon ;-)).
I’m humbled by your creative vision: The Pod Bay doors have been opened, and my God it’s full of Stars. Godspeed Arthur!
The picture that accompanies this article is from the great comic strip, The Joy of Tech. I dare to claim “fair use”, and why don’t you click here to buy some merchandise, or one of the paintings – I’d love to own “HAL 9000 shedding a tear” as a painting. BTW: I’m not making any money from providing Joy of Tech with such a link, welcome to the future of advertising ;-).
As it might have caught your attention, the second BarCampCopenhagen took place this Friday (25th of January 2008), and there was great energy in the building. It’s evident that there’s a strong interest in having an event like BarCamp in Copenhagen, and it was inspiring, just to try to tap into that energy.
On the practical level, BarCamp was a great success, especially thanks to generousity of Beaconware (Troels, Allan and Kimmy) and of course Toothless Tiger (Henriette and Thomas) and Laura who moderated the “Kangaroo?” sessions, and thanks to the sponsorship from BridgeIT (my employeer), the event could be taken to such a high level, without having to charge the participants.
I must say that I’m amazed by the group of dedicated and interesting people that showed up, this is what they do for a living, but they’re also interested in sharing their ideas openly – thank you all!
To me the greatest moments were that I, finally, got to meet some people, that I’ve been following online, in real life.
If you have to criticise the event a little, I think we had some “growing pains” – in 2006 the event was more intimate, since we could all fit around one table, this meant that we could have more of an “open space” type of event, and that is the format that I prefer.
Civilisation 0.1
I did a presentation – Civilisation 0.1 – a pun on Tor Nørretranders Civilsation 2.0 – and I had some (understatement) difficulty making my points, that most likely had something to do with the fact that I had the wrong audience, since they’re all “believers”. Knowing the audience is, I believe, number one on the list of things to remember when doing a presentation of any kind, so that was sobering.
Since I failed to get my points across, talking about Pyramids, Archs and Fountains, I’ll try to do better here.
My presentation was inspired by this famous quote from Alan Kay:
If you look at software today, through the lens of the history of engineering, it’s certainly engineering of a sort—but it’s the kind of engineering that people without the concept of the arch did. Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.
My argument is that we’ve, so far, been building pyramids, but that we’ve invented the arch.
“The Pyramid”, is current ICT businesses, and their monopolistic pratices
“The Arch”, is “open source” and MM(O)C (Massively, Multiuser (Online) Collaboration)
“The Aqueducts” is the “Internet”
“The fountains” and “Temples” are the “things” we can build using “the arch” and the tremendously powerful tools and technologies we have in our hands.
I also tried to make these points:
- Basic infrastructure should be free
- We’re busy building “Pyramids” – using brute force
- Civilisation is still in beta
- We actually have the power to change things – get involved
- The beer isn’t free – it will cost money
- Join the revolution
Like I said, and this was obvious if you attended, I wasn’t too good at getting these points through, and to me, one of the main ideas of BarCamp, is to throw ideas on the table, even half baked ones, and have them tested, and even shot down.
My ideas was mostly shot down, and I got a “Emperor’s new clothes” type of comment: “To build the aquaeducts that feeds the fountains you already need an arch”, and someone else pointed out, that “something” was missing going from “The Pyramid” to “The Arch”, did it just appear out of the blue? I didn’t really answer that too well, my point is that the technological equivalent of “The Arch” has been/is being invented, now we can go build the aquaeducts and fountains armed with that knowledge.
Christian Schade was the most sceptical, I need people like him to question my ideas, so thank you Christian.
I’ve actually done a lot of thinking about this, basically I’m a strong believer in utopian ideas – they’ re getting a bit old, and others are better at getting them across than me.
I enjoyed the discussion we had afterwards, and I think that I managed to sell some of my ideas. It’s really quite simple, don’t wait for the revolution to happen, get involved. Like I said, this was the wrong audience, since they’re all already involved in the revolution.
My presentation did align itself, almost perfectly, with the two that followed, those of Christian Schade and Tania Ellis.
The Digital Divide
I was very pleased to, finally, meet Christian Schade, a person that I’ve been following for some time. I’ve never met him before, and I only knew him because he, sometime ago, added me as a contact on the online service Jaiku. The way he’s using a microblogging service is very similar to the way I use it, he often posts short messages that only he can understand – like a song that he had some sort of association to.
Christian talked about “the digital divide”, and he started out by stating that the difference between the things he was going to talk about, and the things I talked about, was similar to “the glass is half-full” (me)/”the glass is half empty” (Christian). You could say that I’m the optimist and Christian is the realist.
Christian got his points through, and they’re quite sobering. It’s possible that the younger generation is tech-savy, but they’re basically IT illiterate, yes they know how to use their cellphone, but the Nokia N95 they’re carrying around really is an extremely powerful computer, that they’re just using to TEXT each other.
Since the current trend is that businesses, and the public, use more and more advanced electronic solutions – yes: e-mail qualifies as advanced – IT skills are increasingly important, skills that the educational system isn’t focusing on.
So the digital divide is getting bigger, even in developed countries, and no one seems to care, like Christian pointed out, no one has really seriously looked at the problem with the digital divide, since the Dybkjær report, and when that was issued, they weren’t even sure if the Internet should be the backbone of the “Digital Denmark”.
Of course part of the problem with technology has to do with accessibility, and the general computer really is too complicated to be the basic tool of the digital revolution – no-one should have to know what a firewall and an anti-virus program is…We have a great challenge ahead of us, but no-one seems to care.
I later had a long discussion with Christian, and that was great.
Capitalism with a human face
BarCamp was also graced by Tania Ellis, author of the book “De nye pionerer” (The New Pioneers), and her presentation was about “Social business” – new alliances (oops ;-)) between economics and humanism.
Tania started out by showing a picture of the two choices of careers you’ve had since the 70ies, either you’re the poor, “peace and love” hippie or the greedy business man, but could a third way be emerging? A way where you can merge and/or mix the two, achieving balance and the best of two worlds.
Tania has been giving this a lot of thought, and the examples she found were ranging from the relatively well known (Life Straw), to the “interesting” (Solar Powered Vibrators) to the self-contradictory (Environmentally friendly munitions).
After Christian’s venture into dystopia, Tania presented hope for the future, maybe that is an attribute of the feminine? Afterwards she said that having children certainly helps, something that Christian tried to protest ;-).
I think that Tania managed to put words to my ideas, and present them is a structured manner – the “exercise” of writing a book is probably helpful ;-). Seen as a whole, the pre-dinner presentations by Christian, Tania and me fit extremely well together.
BTW, the splash screen on Tania’s web-site is a quote from Alan Kay. It used to be part of the name of my PowerBook, until I discovered that iTunes Music Store doesn’t like long computer-names, strangely enough the fact that I’ve written about the solution, is the biggest driver of traffic to my blog!
del.icio.us
After these three Kangaroo? tracks, it was time for dinner, and that was just del.icio.us (sorry or soz as I’ve begun to say recently).
Ruby don’t take your love to town
After the break, I decided to stay truer to my Geek roots, and attended the session “Ruby, Rails <meta>?” by Casper Fabricius. This was a great introduction to Ruby. Ruby is definitely very cool – like Neo cool – and I do love interpreted languages. I got a flash-back to the strangest language I’ve ever worked with, APL – an interpreted language that I have mainly used on an IBM mainframe.
One thing I find interesting is the trench-digging, and categorisation of people based on what programming languages they use – with the possible exception of Perl, I haven’t seen a programming language I couldn’t master with relative ease, and I’m, of the conviction that you need to have some general awareness of the different languages and tools that you have at your disposal. If Ruby can get the job done, quicker and faster, you should be allowed to use it.
Unfortunately Denmark is Microsoft country extraordinaire, and .NET is way too dominant. I totally agree with Casper that Reflection in C# is very hard to grasp, within this field Ruby is pure simplicity, and it is just beautiful.
As with all interpreted languages, there are justified performance fears, but if you can deliver solutions quicker, the benefits might overshadow those concerns.
Casper asked the question: so what can you use all this Neo-coolness for? He didn’t really have the time to answer this, but Ruby is being used to build world-class applications.
If you want to get started with Ruby, Casper pitched the web-based Ruby development environment Heroku, and it looks like a good place to start venturing into Ruby coolness. Heroku is in closed beta, but you might be allowed to pass through the Pearly Gates to Ruby coolness, by contacting Casper. [Casper has made me aware (see comments) that Heroku is for Ruby on Rails development, it’s important to distinguish between the two].
Quo-vadis?
The most surprising presentation of the evening, was the presentation by Henrik Biering of the work NETAMIA has done to develop a single-sign-on (SSO) engine, called net-safe. Net-safe is a standards based, plug-able SSO infrastructure, that also contains address validation etc. Running a successful on-line business depends on correct identification of the users, and having valid user data, also means that the users are better behaved.
Henrik knew what he was talking about, based on the experiences of the huge user base of heste-nettet.dk, which he runs. I guess it is obvious, but it really was an eye-opener to me, correct/valid information of users is extremely important, if you want to run a serious web-site.
Everyone in the room was blown away by seeing how polished a product Net-safe is, and when asked how much it had cost to develop it, Henrik answered: hmm, it was something I did together with my son…Amazing!
Embracing the chaos
Henriette talked about how to get businesses to embrace the chaos of the net, it’s a topic she’s writing a book about, and I look very much forward to it.
Engaging the geek warp drive
After all these sessions, I really needed a break, but when Michael Widerkrantz aka. MC, started rearranging the chairs, I just knew that I had to attend.
MC talked about IPv6, and why it’s important. In case you don’t know, IP is the basic communications protocol of the Internet, and the version we’re currently using, has a build-in limit of the number of allowed network addresses, that we’re about to hit, MC said that a recent session of RIPE, estimated that it would happen in less than two years.
I know just a little about networks, but this was mostly over my head, basically I’m sitting somewhere above layer 7, and just want the network to, ahem work, so it beats me why the ISPs just don’t get started rebuilding the infrastructure for IPv6, before it’s too late.
An interesting side-note is that a friend of mine just recently returned from South Africa, and I found out, because her computer acted strangely, that it was because she had been using IPv6 – as seems to be common with developing countries, South Africa is skipping the legacy infrastructure completely, a legacy that will soon hit us, and the entire digital economy, which today is synonymous with the economy.
Thank you
That concluded the official program of BarCamp Copenhagen, and what a great night it was, the air was literally buzzing with energy. Events like this are important, and I hope that this will get people talking and taking similar initiatives.
When “Sergei and Larry” approached Yahoo with a brand new concept of a “search engine”, they discovered, to their dismay, that Yahoo wasn’t really interested in “search”, but in selling ads. So Google was born.
How I discovered Google
In 1998 I was doing a search of myself, e.g. ego-surfing, using my preferred search engine, Lycos, and I was stunned to see that the top hits were Usenet groups that contained my name, several of them in fact, but worse: they had names like kimbach.slut.slut.slut etc.
I was a bit upset, especially since I, at that point, was being sued over violation of the marketing law by a former employer – a case that was later thrown out – but I assumed that they might have created those groups, to slander me, and I was quite sure that it wasn’t me that created those groups ;-).
I took a look at the content of the groups, and they had very low traffic, I only found some spam, which was rare in 1998, and someone who asked the question “who is Kim Bach” – a question I’ve pondered myself, but it didn’t look like it had anything to do with me.
Eventually I contacted the hotline of my ISP, Image Scandinavia, and they referred me to…GOOGLE.
Doing a search on Google, I realised that it had nothing to do with me, but that the groups had been created by a disgruntled husband, and Kim Bach was his ex-wife!
I also believe that using Google for the first time, immediately made me drop Lycos. At that point Lycos actually yielded what I’d label “better results”, but that changed quickly.
Google, originally, cracked “the search code”, and the world changed.
How I discovered Wikipedia
This I also remember clearly, and it’s quite interesting, I googled it – indirectly!
3-4 years ago I was trying find the English word for the type of dog, that is called “gravhund” in Danish, I somehow 😉 knew that a literal translation wouldn’t do, since that would have yielded “diggingdog”, “digdog”, “gravedog”.
So a Google search let me to the English Wikipedia article for Dachshund, and that was what I was looking for!
Seeing Wikipedia was an instant eye-opener, and at that point it hadn’t even dawned upon me, that Wikipedia was pure user-generated content!
Google isn’t interested in “knowledge”
Google won by doing a better job, but now “we, the people” are approaching the world with a concept of a “knowledge engine”, only to discover, to our dismay, that for instance Google isn’t really interested in “knowledge”, but in selling ads.
The difference: “we, the people”, will, surprisingly, transform Google from a “search engine” into a “knowledge engine” as well, no matter what Google does. The algorithm Google uses will give preference to “quality”, at least in the long run, and since “we, the people” are so numerous this will happen sooner rather than later.
Case in point, the best SEO strategy I know of is to create a Wikipedia article, try googling the terms I’ve created Wikipedia articles for (for instance: Kim Schumacher, DB03 and DB07).
You’re brainwashed
Google and the big companies have had us, pretty much, brainwashed to think that we have no say. This is reflected by the response to the launch of the Wikia Search engine, on the historic day, January 7th 2008.
Everyone is trying to compare Wikia Search to Google, and that’s missing the point COMPLETELY, and people should read what Wikia Search are writing:
WE KNOW THAT THE QUALITY OF THE SEARCH IS: “PRETTY LOW” (a polite way of saying that it “stinks”)
The way to help change it, is simply to get involved.
Every-time you do a search on Wikia Search, you’re offered the option to edit a “Mini Article” on the search. A “Mini Article” is just a Wiki article, that explains the search term. The “Mini Articles” will be used to improve the search index.
“Unfortunately” people seems to have been using a search on themselves as a benchmark, meaning that a lot of the “Mini Articles” are links to private and small web-sites, but that reflects the community.
Ego-surfing was also one of the first things I did, and the first hit that could be attributed to me was result number 8, and that yielded the photos I’ve taken, that are in the Flickr pool I created for Sjakket, my former place of work.
Is that my major contribution to the world? Well it’s not that far from it, bordering that I believe that it could be.
Getting involved – choose a community to “work” for
My criteria are:
Not for profit, open, free, strong community, sustainable.
The beer isn’t free however, so you’re allowed to make money, but take into consideration how the money is being made, if it is sustainable etc.
Personally I’ve chosen these organisations
- Kim Bach . Org – My personal Internet presence with community support (some call that a blog ;-))
- Netværksgruppen i Mjølnerparken – Volunteer to help inner city kids, of non-danish descent, with their homework
- Æbletræet.dk – A Wiki-based community site dedicated to serving Apple users with content in the Danish Language
- Wikipedia – The open encyclopaedia
- Wikia Search – The open search engine
Currently I’m mostly involved in Wikia Search, I’ve found it really intimidating to be a contributor to an Encyclopaedia, so my contributions to Wikipedia have been quite limited, Wikia Search is much less intimidating, and right up my alley.
Where would you put your money (e.g. time)?
In ten years, Google has gone from no to 16.000 employees, but “we, the people” will, in ten years go from no to 6,5 billion, or how many it is that “we” are in 2018.
Where would you put you money (e.g. time)? It will only cost you time, and you’ll be involved in building a beautiful shrine to knowledge and human achievement.
Together we’ll do Google one better: crack the code of “knowledge”, and the world has changed forever.
Free at last, free at last, oh God almighty we’re free at last.
And “we”‘re hiring! No need to submit a resume, come join the fight!
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